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Title: A popular history of the United States of America, Vol. I (of 2) : from the discovery of the American continent to the present time
Author: Howitt, Mary (Mary Botham)
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "A popular history of the United States of America, Vol. I (of 2) : from the discovery of the American continent to the present time" ***
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, VOL. I (OF 2) ***
[Illustration: LANDING OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS.]
A
POPULAR HISTORY
OF THE
UNITED STATES
OF
AMERICA:
FROM THE DISCOVERY OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT TO THE PRESENT TIME.
BY MARY HOWITT.
Illustrated with Numerous Engravings.
VOL. I.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1860.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight
hundred and fifty-nine, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the Southern District of
New York.
CONTENTS TO VOL. I.
CHAPTER I.
DISCOVERIES—TO THE YEAR 1521.
America discovered by the Vikings.—Runic pillars of Rask and
Finn Magnusen.—Christopher Columbus: his various voyages.—John
and Sebastian Cabot.—The Portuguese.—Vasco de Gama and
Cortereal.—John Verazzani despatched by Francis I. reaches Nova
Scotia.—Jacques Cartier’s voyages.—Ponce de Leon discovers
Florida.—Fernandez de Cordova discovers Yucatan.—Conquest of
Mexico by Cortes 1–12
CHAPTER II.
DISCOVERIES—(_continued_).
Pamphilo de Narvaez’ expedition to Florida.—Ferdinand de Soto
lands with 600 men.—Their adventures in search of
gold.—Sufferings and death of de Soto.—The Mississippi
discovered.—Florida colonised by Huguenots.—The French
settlement destroyed by Pedro Melendez.—English
discovery.—Willoughby and Richard Chancellor.—Frobisher.—Sir
Humphrey Gilbert.—Sir Walter Raleigh.—The colony of Virginia
and its fortunes.—Sir Francis Drake 13–28
CHAPTER III.
DISCOVERIES—(_continued_).
Second attempt of Raleigh to colonise Virginia.—Rupture with
the natives.—Delay in the supply of necessaries to the
colonists.—Misfortunes of Raleigh.—His efforts for the
colony.—Bartholomew Gosnold lands at Cape Cod.—Penobscot river
discovered.—The voyages of the French.—Nova Scotia, New
Brunswick, Acadia.—Quebec founded in 1608.—Samuel
Champlain.—Henry Hudson’s voyages to the north.—He endeavours
to discover a passage to the Pacific.—His sufferings and death 29–38
CHAPTER IV.
COLONISATION OF VIRGINIA.
New motives for colonisation in the seventeenth
century.—England steps into the field of enterprise.—The
Plymouth and London Companies founded.—Vain effort of the
Plymouth Company.—The London Company despatches a squadron,
which lands in Chesapeake Bay.—The settlement of Jamestown
formed.—Wingfield and Smith.—Extraordinary adventures of
Smith.—His life saved by the Indian girl, Pocahontas.—Gold,
mania in the colony.—Dissatisfaction of the London
Company.—Lord de la Ware appointed governor.—Famine in the
colony.—New settlements and new charter.—Pocahontas visits
England.—Land-law in Virginia.—Written constitution.—Unexpected
rising among the Indians.—New laws.—Governors of
Virginia.—Democratic spirit.—Tobacco 39–75
CHAPTER V.
COLONISATION OF MARYLAND.
The London Company’s second charter.—Clayborne.—Sir George
Calvert, afterwards Lord Baltimore, obtains from James I. a
grant of land, which is called Maryland.—Cecil Calvert sends
Leonard Calvert to Maryland with emigrants.—Clayborne’s attempt
to discourage the colonists.—His turbulence.—Incursions of the
Indians.—Puritanism.—Toleration of the government.—Political
troubles.—The dissensions compromised 76–87
CHAPTER VI.
COLONISATION OF MASSACHUSETTS.
Smith’s Voyage to Massachusetts Bay.—New England.—Hunt kidnaps
the Indians.—King James grants the “great patent.”—Puritanism
in England.—The Pilgrim Fathers.—Commencement of English
Nonconformity.—Policy of James I. towards the Church of
England.—Oppression, and resistance of the bigotry of
James.—Struggle between established authority and the spirit of
liberty 88–97
CHAPTER VII.
THE PILGRIM FATHERS.
Many Puritans find refuge in Holland.—The congregation at
Leyden determine to remove to America.—They obtain a patent
from the Virginia Company.—The Mayflower and the Speedwell
leave Leyden.—The Mayflower sails from Plymouth alone.—The
emigrants land at Cape Cod.—Their sufferings.—The settlement of
New Plymouth founded.—Hardship and labour.—Friendly relations
established with the Indians.—The “unruly colony” at
Weymouth.—Gradual rise of New Plymouth 98–111
CHAPTER VIII.
MASSACHUSETTS-BAY COLONY.
Attempts to colonise the coast.—Portsmouth founded.—Richard
Vines’ expedition.—First settlement of Maine and Nova
Scotia.—New emigrants.—Settlement founded in the wilderness of
Salem.—John Winthrop.—Settlement at Boston.—Fortunes of the
colonists.—Bigotry creeps in among them.—Friendly disposition
of the Indian chiefs.—Commencement of trade with Virginia, and
with the Dutch, on the Hudson.—Representative government
established at Massachusetts.—Arrival of Henry Vane 112–121
CHAPTER IX.
RHODE ISLAND.—ROGER WILLIAMS AND ANNE HUTCHINSON.
Roger Williams arrives at Massachusetts.—His liberal doctrines
procure his expulsion from the colony.—His residence among the
Indians.—His character.—He obtains a charter, and founds the
province of Rhode Island, under the title of Providence
Plantation.—The Pequods and others threaten
Massachusetts.—Williams negotiates with them for his
persecutors.—Anne Hutchinson and her opinions.—She is banished,
and founds a new settlement in the neighbourhood of
Providence.—Her melancholy death 122–130
CHAPTER X.
SETTLEMENT OF CONNECTICUT.
The Connecticut river discovered.—John Winthrop obtains a
commission from England to build a fort, &c., at the mouth of
the Connecticut river.—Severity of the first winter, and
hardships endured by the colonists.—Attempt of the Dutch to
take possession.—Great emigration to the valley of the
Connecticut.—Expedition against the Pequods.—Terrible massacre
of the Pequods, who are annihilated as a tribe.—Theophilus
Eaton and John Davenport found the settlement of Quinnipiack or
New Haven 131–140
CHAPTER XI.
THE NEW ENGLAND UNION.
Complaints made against Massachusetts.—Laud appointed
commissioner over the colonies.—Preparations for
resistance.—Fearful religious persecutions in England.—The
danger averted from the colonies by the breaking out of the
great civil war.—Union of the states for mutual
protection.—Fate of the chief Miantonomob.—Roger Williams
obtains the acknowledgment of Rhode Island as a separate
state.—Fundamental laws of Massachusetts.—Educational
measures.—Samuel Gorton founds a settlement at Shawomet.—He is
summoned by Massachusetts and put in irons.—He escapes to
England.—The colonists repudiate the interference of the home
government.—Cromwell’s good will towards the new
Englanders.—The quakers persecuted in Massachusetts.—Their
obstinacy.—John Eliot among the Indians 141–160
CHAPTER XII.
NEW NETHERLANDS—NEW SWEDEN.
Hudson’s visit to New York Bay.—Indian traditions concerning
the event.—Particulars of Hudson’s visit.—Dutch settlements
around the Hudson.—Cornelius May.—Friendship between the Dutch
settlers and the New Plymouth colonists.—Charter obtained by
the “college of nineteen.”—Swedish emigration.—Settlement of
Swedes in Delaware Bay.—The Dutch governor Kieft.—His massacre
of the Indians.—Their vengeance.—A truce effected.—John
Underhill protector of the New Netherlands 161–173
CHAPTER XIII.
NEW YORK.—NEW SWEDEN.
Peter Stuyvesant arrives as governor.—State of the New
Netherlands.—Symptoms of weakness.—War between England and
Holland.—Stuyvesant subdues the Swedish settlement.—Tolerant
spirit among the Dutch.—Quarrel between governor Stuyvesant and
his people.—Sir Richard Nichols takes possession of New
Amsterdam.—Surinam left to the Dutch in exchange for New
Netherlands 174–182
CHAPTER XIV.
THE RESTORATION AND ITS EFFECTS.
The Restoration.—Execution of Hugh Peters and of Sir Henry
Vane.—Whalley and Goffe, the regicides, fly to Boston, and are
sheltered by the New Englanders.—The younger Winthrop obtains a
charter for Connecticut.—Happiness of the colony.—Life in
Connecticut.—Educational provisions.—Rhode Island obtains a
charter.—Quakerism established in Rhode Island.—Effect of the
Restoration on the remaining States 183–192
CHAPTER XV.
MASSACHUSETTS UNDER CHARLES II.
Deputation to Charles II. from Massachusetts.—The charter
confirmed with certain restrictions.—Struggle between the
colony and the home government.—Remonstrance addressed to the
king.—Collision between the constables of Massachusetts and the
Royal Commissioners.—Massachusetts refuses to send deputies to
England.—Prosperity of the colony.—Indian and white population
of New England.—Indian warfare and disaster.—The “swamp
fight.”—Destruction of the red men.—Their firmness.—Philip of
Pocanoket.—Results of the war.—Escape of Anne Brackett 193–207
CHAPTER XVI.
THE CHARTER OF MASSACHUSETTS ANNULLED.
The London merchants jealous of Massachusetts.—Maine redeemed
by Massachusetts for £1200.—New Hampshire separated from
Massachusetts and constituted a royal province.—Cranfield sent
out as governor.—Associations formed to resist taxes imposed by
him.—Retirement of Cranfield.—The charter of Massachusetts
threatened.—Efforts made by the colony to preserve it.—Vain
remonstrances.—The charter annulled 208–212
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SETTLEMENT OF CAROLINA.
South Virginia.—Carolina.—Tract of land granted by Charles I.
to Sir Robert Heath.—William Drummond.—Barbadoes planters in
Clarendon county.—The settlement of Albemarle.—Locke’s grand
model constitution and its provisions.—Its indifferent
reception among the colonists.—George Fox visits
Carolina.—Dissatisfaction with the English
government.—Navigation Laws.—John Culpepper’s arrest and
acquittal.—Governor Sothel’s tyranny.—Emigrants at Port
Royal.—Carteret county.—Charleston founded.—Prosperity of South
Carolina.—Influx of emigrants.—Huguenot fugitives.—The
Menigault family.—Slavery.—The buccaneers favoured in South
Carolina.—Disturbances.—Return of Sothel.—The grand model
constitution abrogated 213–234
CHAPTER XVIII.
VIRGINIA UNDER CHARLES II.
The Restoration disastrous to Virginia.—Sir William Berkeley
elected governor.—Loyalty of the colony.—Change in the form of
government.—Slavery in Virginia.—Tobacco cultivation.—Picture
of life in Virginia.—The Navigation Act enforced.—The English
episcopal church becomes the state religion.—The justiciary
government changed.—Exploring expedition.—Arbitrary grants of
land.—Dissatisfaction in the colony.—Incursions of the
Indians.—Nathaniel Bacon’s insurrection.—He obtains his
commission as commander against the Indians.—Berkeley’s
treachery.—Power of Bacon.—Sir William Berkeley at
Jamestown.—His flight.—Jamestown taken and burnt by the
insurgents.—Death of Bacon.—Cruelty of Berkeley.—His
death.—Culpepper’s administration.—Slave-code.—Spirit of the
Virginians in 1688 235–257
CHAPTER XIX.
MARYLAND UNDER CHARLES II.
Lord Baltimore’s liberal policy.—His toleration and
justice.—The Quakers and their position.—George Fox.—Adventure
of John Jay.—Administration of Thomas Notley.—Lord Baltimore
persecuted in England on account of his tolerance.—The
liberties of Maryland threatened, but preserved by the
dethronement of James II. 258–263
CHAPTER XX.
SETTLEMENT OF NEW JERSEY.—THE QUAKERS.
The land between the Hudson and Delaware made over to Lord
Berkeley and Sir G. Carteret.—The Delaware Indians in New
Jersey.—Philip Carteret arrives in Newark Bay.—Disorders in the
colony.—Lord Lovelace’s system of government.—The Duke of
York’s tyranny.—The “holy experiment” of the Quakers.—Creed of
the Quakers.—Their steadfastness under oppression and
persecution.—The fundamental laws of New Jersey as established
by the Quakers.—Emigrating Quaker-companies.—Resignation of the
territory by the Duke of York.—The Quakers firmly settled in
the New World 264–275
CHAPTER XXI.
THE SETTLEMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA.
Account of William Penn.—His reverses and constancy.—His
various imprisonments.—His wish to provide for the Quakers an
asylum in the New World.—He purchases land of Charles II., and
founds Pennsylvania.—The constitution of the new colony.—The
“holy experiment.”—The “free society of traders”
formed.—Surrender of territory by the Duke of York.—The first
assembly convened at Chester.—Penn’s celebrated treaty with the
Indians.—The “gospel tree.”—Peace between Quakers and
Indians.—Philadelphia founded.—Penn’s visit to Lord
Baltimore.—His return to England and subsequent
misfortunes.—His opinions on slavery 276–290
CHAPTER XXII.
NEW FRANCE.—DISCOVERIES IN THE GREAT LAKE REGION.
The French, settlers in Canada.—Their dealings with the
Indians.—The Jesuit missionaries and their labours.—Brebeuf and
Daniel live among the Indians.—The villages of St. Louis and
St. Ignatius founded.—Enthusiasm awakened in France.—Missionary
labours among the Indians.—Charles Raymbault and Claude
Pijart.—Jogues, his sufferings and heroism.—His fate.—Indian
warfare and cruelty.—Chaumonot’s labours.—Missionary
enthusiasm.—Mesnard.—Allouez 291–305
CHAPTER XXIII.
DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
Franciscan friars as missionaries.—Marquette’s design of
navigating the “Great River.”—Discouraging reports among the
Indians.—The expedition sets forth.—Bancroft’s account of the
journey.—Indian villages.—The river Illinois.—Joliet and Robert
Cavalier la Salle.—Colony planted on Lake Michigan.—Hennepin’s
travels.—Tonti and his misfortunes.—French colonising
expedition.—Erection of Fort St. Louis.—La Salle
murdered.—Hostilities of the Iroquois.—Small extent of the
French settlements 306–318
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE COLONIES AFTER THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
Quarrels in Carolina between dissenters and churchmen.—John
Archdale, chosen proprietary, favours the dissenters.—His
successor, Blake, sides with the churchmen.—Unsettled condition
of North Carolina.—Disturbances in the colony.—Governorship of
Nicholson and Andros.—Independent spirit of the
Virginians.—Maryland.—Its condition and
productions.—Pennsylvania.—The charter of
privileges.—Constitution of New Jersey.—New York.—Unpopularity
of James II.—Governor Dongan.—Leisler’s insurrection.—His
execution.—Benjamin Fletcher governor.—Captain Kidd the
pirate.—Lord Cornbury.—His duplicity and profligacy.—The
conquest of Canada urged.—Robert Hunter governor of New
York.—Yale college founded 319–343
CHAPTER XXV.
THE FIRST INTERCOLONIAL WAR.—THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT.
Andros expelled from Boston.—Massachusetts engages in war
against Canada and the Indians.—Sir William Phipps’s expedition
against Nova Scotia.—Indian warfare.—Prisoners sold to the
French.—New charter for Massachusetts.—The witch mania.—Mather
and his book.—Absurd and cruel persecution of supposed
witches.—Penn’s judgment in a case of witchcraft.—Renewed
Indian warfare.—Indian outrages.—Judicial code of Massachusetts 344–359
CHAPTER XXVI.
SETTLEMENT OF LOUISIANA.—QUEEN ANNE’S WAR.
Callieres excites the Indians against the British.—Lemonie
d’Ilberville’s expedition.—Arrival at Ship Island.—The
settlement of Detroit.—English expedition to explore the mouth
of the Mississippi.—The “English turn.”—The settlement of
Natchez.—The settlers of Biloxi.—William III. declares war
against France and Spain.—Combats between the settlers and the
various nations.—Deerfield destroyed.—Atrocities of Indian
warfare.—Port Royal taken.—Admiral Walker’s exploits.—The
Tuscarora Indians.—Issues of paper money.—The two Carolinas
become separate royal governments.—Enactments with regard to
slaves.—The treaty of Utrecht.—Population of the colonies in
1714.—Piracy 360–379
CHAPTER XXVII.
LAW’S BUBBLE.—LOUISIANA ESTABLISHED.—GROWTH OF LIBERTY IN THE STATES.
State of the American colonies at the accession of the House of
Hanover.—The “Mississippi scheme.”—John Law’s bank.—New Orleans
founded.—Louisiana established.—Destruction of the Natchez race
of Indians.—War with the Chicasaws.—Breaking out of the
small-pox in Boston.—Inoculation.—Benjamin Franklin and the
“New England covenant.”—British restrictions on colonial
manufactures.—Dispute on the salary of the Governor of
Massachusetts.—Liberty of the press advocated.—Acquittal of
John Zenger the printer 380–389
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE SETTLEMENT OF GEORGIA, AND PROGRESS OF THE STATES.
Oglethorpe’s benevolent exertions.—He obtains a charter for
Georgia.—His departure from England in 1732.—The town of
Savannah laid out.—The Moravians establish themselves in
Georgia.—The town of Augusta founded.—Friendly disposition of
the Indians.—Progress of the colony.—John and Charles Wesley in
Georgia.—Whitfield and his preaching.—The Baptists.—False alarm
for a negro rising.—War between England and Spain.—Oglethorpe’s
services against the Spaniards.—Character of Oglethorpe.—The
boundary of Maine.—The slave-trade.—Attitude of England with
regard to the slave-trade.—Hospitality of the
Virginians.—General advance of the colonies 390–406
ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. I.
PAGE
LANDING OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS _frontispiece_
PORTRAIT OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS _to face_ 2
POCAHONTAS INTERCEDING FOR JOHN SMITH „ 47
FIRST MEETING OF THE ASSEMBLY IN VIRGINIA „ 60
ROGER WILLIAMS’ DEPARTURE FROM SALEM „ 124
JOHN ELIOT PREACHING TO THE INDIANS „ 159
BAXTER PRESENTING THE CHARTER OF RHODE ISLAND „ 191
EJECTMENT OF THE SHERIFF BY THE PEOPLE OF NEW
HAMPSHIRE „ 210
BACON ADDRESSING THE COUNCIL „ 245
RECEPTION OF PENN „ 282
PENN AND THE INDIANS „ 284
PENN’S DEPARTURE „ 288
WHITFIELD PREACHING „ 396
A POPULAR
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.
CHAPTER I.
DISCOVERIES.
The mighty hemisphere of the West lay for countless ages shrouded from
the knowledge of the rest of the world, as by the darkness of night,
waiting for the appointed time of its revelation. That appointed time
was the close of the fifteenth century, for although upwards of four
hundred years earlier, after the reign of Alfred of England, and
Charlemagne in France, America was discovered by some of those
adventurous Scandinavian Vikings—the true ancestors of the so-called
Anglo-Saxons, who, in their stout-built little ships, traversed all
seas—still the knowledge of this discovery produced so little effect on
the rest of the world, that afterwards, when America was rediscovered,
the history of the Scandinavian colonisers was regarded as mythical. The
antiquarian researches, however, of Rafn and others, leave no doubt of
the fact. These bold adventurers, at home on the most perilous seas,
having colonised Iceland, Greenland, and afterwards Newfoundland or Nova
Scotia, came at length, in the year 1000, to the coast of America, where
a colony was formed under the name of _Vinland hin Goda_, or Vineland
the Good—so called from the abundance of wild grapes which grew there,
and because the mildness of the climate and the fertility of the soil
delighted the discoverers, accustomed as they were to the savage
sterility and severe cold of Greenland and Iceland, and even of their
native north.
The tract of country first explored by these earliest European
discoverers is supposed to extend down the coast from about where Boston
is now situated to New York. According also to the antiquarians, Rask
and Finn Magnusen, boundary pillars were discovered by them, in the year
1824, on the eastern shore of Baffin’s Bay, exhibiting Runic
inscriptions, and the date 1135. The generally uncivilised state of the
rest of Europe prevented these early Scandinavian discoveries from
producing any permanent or important effect. The time when this great
discovery of a second world could be availing was not yet come. The
precursors of knowledge had yet to be born; society lay under a night of
barbarous ignorance, and glimpses of light, coming from whatever quarter
they might, were lost in the density of its shadow.
The important thirteenth century arrived: Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus,
Albertus Magnus, and Vicentius of Beauvais, lived. A breath of true life
awakened the general mind, and geographical, as well as other knowledge
began to be studied. In the meantime, Iceland, which must be regarded as
the mother of colonisation, had lost her noble independent spirit with
her republican form of government, and become a fief of the crown of
Norway. In consequence, however, of her remote position, as well as her
high reputation for learning, she was made the depository of the most
ancient records of Europe, which was then agitated by internal
convulsions, and here they were carefully preserved for ages. In this
remote _Ultima Thule_ lay sealed up, as it were, the keys of a mighty
knowledge, which would unlock a second world. Here, accordingly, in the
month of February, 1477, came Christopher Columbus, “the sea,” says he,
“not being at that time covered with ice, and being resorted to by
traders from Bristol.” This is singular. Some historians doubt whether
Columbus heard any tidings here of the early discovery and colonisation
of America. No doubt he did; no doubt, in his conversations with Bishop
Skalholt and other learned men, he would hear the extraordinary fact of
a great country having been discovered by their ancestors beyond the
Western Ocean. They had found land where he had believed it to exist,
whether a part of Asia or not was of no consequence, and this
information would not be lost on a mind like his. No doubt, also, hither
came the Cabots, merchants of Bristol, who, in their process of
discovery, sailed northward, as if following the guidance of Icelandic
tradition, and arrived on the dreary coasts of Labrador, before Columbus
discovered the mainland of America.
[Illustration: CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.]
Columbus having, at the age of twenty-one, sailed, as we have said, to
Iceland, “to see if it were inhabited,” returned to Spain resolved to
navigate the great Western Sea, and discover the land which lay beyond.
He was one of the elect of Providence, men of the time and the hour,
whose work is appointed them to do, and spite of impediment,
discouragement, and adversity, who must succeed in doing it. The history
of his eventful life is well known; with inflexible resolution and deep
religious ardour, he pursued his object, and finally won the ear of
Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. On August 3rd, 1492, he set sail as
Admiral of the Seas and Lands which he expected to discover, and on
October 11, after a tedious voyage and long anxiety, stepped on shore of
one of the Bahama Islands with tears of joy and fervent thanksgiving;
and after kissing the soil of the New World, he planted here the cross,
in token of Christian possession.
Gold dust and Japan, or Cipango, as it was called, were the objects of
search, and Columbus, after twelve days, again set sail in the hope of
finding them. He found several other of the West India Islands, and
finally the beautiful Cuba, the most beautiful island in the world. He
believed that now indeed he had found the long-sought-for Cipango; and
San Domingo, which he next discovered, he imagined to be the ancient
Ophir, the source of all the riches of Solomon.
Columbus’s discoveries were confined principally to the West India
Islands; nor was it till his third voyage that he touched the mainland,
near the mouth of the river Oronoco.
The Cabots, as we have seen, enterprising merchants of Bristol, which
was at that time the second port in England, and accustomed to the
navigation of the northern seas, had discovered, in 1496, the coast of
Labrador—a country which could neither be mistaken for Cipango nor for
Ophir—a savage arctic region, abounding in white bears and deer of a
gigantic size, and inhabited by men clad in skins and armed with bows
and clubs.
About two years afterwards, Sebastian Cabot, the son, again sailed for
Labrador, by way of Iceland, and thence proceeding southward along the
shores of the new country advanced into a more hospitable climate, until
want of provisions compelled him to return. On a subsequent voyage,
steering still to his favourite north, in search of a north-west
passage, he entered Hudson’s Bay, but was now compelled to return in
consequence of insubordination among his crews. In 1526, having gone to
Spain, he was nominated by Charles V. as pilot-major of the kingdom, and
in the April of this year, proceeding across the Atlantic, explored the
river La Plata and some of its tributaries, erecting forts, and
endeavouring, but unsuccessfully, to plant colonies.
“The career of Sebastian Cabot,” says Bancroft, “was in the issue as
honourable as the beginning was glorious. He conciliated universal
esteem by the placid mildness of his character. Unlike the stern
enthusiasm of Columbus, he was distinguished for serenity and
contentment. For sixty years he was renowned for his achievements and
skill.” It is, however, greatly to be regretted that, of all his voyages
and discoveries, no detailed account has been preserved. In 1548 he was
pensioned by Edward VI. as “The Great Seaman,” and through his advice
and influence it was that an expedition to the North of Europe was
undertaken, which opened to England the important trade with Russia. He
lived to extreme old age, but the place of his death and burial is
unknown.
The fame of Cabot rests less on any discovery of summer lands, affluent
in natural beauty and precious commodities, than on his having made
known rich fisheries, the wealth and value of which remain to the
present day. The immense shoals of cod in the shallows of those new seas
soon attracted the attention of other voyagers, and within seven years
of Cabot’s discovery, the hardy fishermen of Brittany and Normandy
frequented the abundant fisheries of Newfoundland; Cape Breton remaining
as a memorial of them to this day. This fishery, on the coast and bank
of Newfoundland, formed the first link between Europe and North America.
The Portuguese, excited by the success of England and Spain, entered
eagerly into competition with them. Emanuel, king of Portugal, animated
also by the great success of his expedition under Vasco de Gama, who,
having for the first time doubled the Cape of Good Hope, had reached
India, thus opening to Europe all the vast treasures of the Indian
Ocean, now sent out Gaspar Cortereal with two vessels, to follow in the
course of the Cabots, and explore the north-western seas. Accordingly,
reaching the shores of North America, he coasted for about seven hundred
miles, admiring as he went along the beauty and fertility of the
country, and the grandeur of its forests, the pines of which appeared to
him admirably suited for the masts and yards of shipping. The commerce,
however, which occupied these Portuguese was of a much less innocent
kind than that of timber, or than the cod-fishing of the French;
Cortereal freighted his vessels with a number of inoffensive natives,
whom he sold for slaves, intending to return for more. But he never
returned; he lost his life, it is said, in a contest with the natives,
whom he was endeavouring to kidnap.
The successful trade which the bold fishermen of France carried on, and
some of the natives whom they had taken into their own country, turned
the attention of Francis I. to the subject of discovery. He fitted out a
fleet under the command of John Verrazzani, a Florentine, commissioned
to explore for the French monarch these new realms of wonder and hope.
Verrazzani sailed by way of Madeira, and after a most stormy voyage, had
the satisfaction of discovering land in a latitude which was unknown to
any European navigator. Sailing for a long time in search of harbourage,
he at length cast anchor on the coast of North Carolina. The natives had
as yet seen no white man; they were of a gentle and peaceful character,
dressed in skins, and ornamented with garlands of feathers. Coasting
northward, he relates, in his letter to Francis I., that nothing could
equal the beauty of the country; the climate was soft and balmy, the
groves full of beautiful trees and flowers which diffused a delicious
odour. The red colour of the earth, and the fragrance of the groves,
suggested at once the idea of gold dust and the spices of the East.
Still advancing northward, they reached Nova Scotia, where natives of
another character met them.
From this point he returned homeward; his narrative of this coasting
voyage being the earliest record of that part of the new world now
extant. Of Verrazzani’s further discoveries nothing is known, although
it is said that he visited the coast of America three times. He is
believed to have perished at sea.
Ten years afterwards, the Admiral Chabot, whose duties brought him into
connexion with the Newfoundland fishermen, became interested in the
subject of discovery. Jaques Cartier, a mariner of St. Malo, was
despatched with two ships on the commission to explore those northern
coasts of the new world already so familiar to the fishermen. Cartier
made a wonderfully speedy voyage. In twenty days from leaving St. Malo,
he was on the coast of Newfoundland, and after partly circumnavigating
the island, he planted a cross bearing the arms of France, in token of
having taken possession for that country.
Sailing within the magnificent bay on its west, he reached the estuary
of a vast river, which he ascended, until he could see land on both
sides; further he was unable to advance, being unprepared to winter
there. He turned his face homeward, therefore, and in thirty days
reached St. Malo, carrying two natives with him.
The success of this voyage caused a second expedition to be soon fitted
out. Three well-furnished vessels were provided by government, and
several of the young nobility joined in the enterprise. Solemn
preparations were made for departure, the ships’ companies assembled in
the cathedral to receive absolution and the blessing of the bishop; and
thus they set sail, full of hope and schemes for the colonising of that
splendid territory which was to be called New France. This voyage,
however, unlike the former, was stormy, and passing the west of
Newfoundland on the day of St. Lawrence, they gave the name of that
saint to the noble bay which expanded before them, and which name not
alone the gulf, but the magnificent river which falls into it, bear to
this day. Cartier again sailed up the river, but in a boat, and as far
as Hochelaga, where, ascending a hill, he was struck by the magnificent
view of woods, mountain, and river, which lay behind him. Anticipating
this as the site of the future metropolis of a splendid empire, he
called the hill Mont-Real, and “time,” says the historian, “which has
transferred the name to the island, is realising his visions.” He and
his companions spent the winter in these seas, and in the spring
departed, having basely kidnapped an Indian chief who had treated them
with the utmost kindness.
The report which the adventurers carried home of the severity of the
climate abated the ardour of colonisation for a few years. At length, in
an interval of peace, the remembrance of that magnificent river, which
exceeded in grandeur any river of Europe, awoke anew the spirit of
adventure, and Francis de la Roque, lord of Robertval in Picardy, was
appointed viceroy of the unknown regions of Norimbega, that is to say,
all the vast territories around the gulf and river of St. Lawrence, with
all its islands; and Cartier, on account of his knowledge and
experience, was associated in the enterprise, as captain-general and
chief pilot. Cartier was also commissioned to take with him artisans of
all kinds, that useful colonies might be established. We must suppose
that but little public enthusiasm existed on the subject; for Cartier
had to ransack the jails to make up his complement of men. This was an
ill-starred enterprise altogether; the two leaders did not even act in
concert. Cartier set sail long before his superior, ascended the St.
Lawrence, built a fort near the present site of Quebec, where he passed
the winter in hostility with the natives, and in the spring set sail
homeward, meeting Robertval on his way out, off Newfoundland. Robertval,
though he remained a twelvemonth in his new territory of Norimbega,
effected very little, and so returned home.
For the next fifty years nothing was done by France, which was absorbed
by her own internal conflicts—feudalism against monarchical power,
Calvinism against Catholicism. In the meantime, however, the value and
importance of the northern fisheries increased, and in 1578 no less than
one hundred and fifty French ships were employed in the Newfoundland
trade.
While the French were thus vainly endeavouring to colonise the regions
of Acadia and Canada lying around the bay and along the river of St.
Lawrence, the Spaniards were occupied in the south. The brilliant
discoveries of Spain had kindled the most extraordinary enthusiasm
throughout the nation for adventure beyond the seas. Nothing was too
extravagant for their imaginations to conceive of the new world, where
it was believed “that the natives ignorantly wore the most precious
ornaments, and the sands of every river sparkled with gold.” Spaniards,
high and low, young and old, rich and poor, were all ready to rush to
the conquest and the spoil. Among others, Juan Ponce de Leon, an aged
veteran in the wars of Granada, a companion of Columbus in his second
voyage, and some time governor of Porto Rico, fitted out three ships at
his own expense, and resolved to go forth to seek his fortune, and more
especially to seek for that which he had been told existed in those
paradisiacal regions of the sun and the palm—a fountain whose waters
possessed the extraordinary virtues of restoring or perpetuating youth.
In search of this poetical fountain, Ponce de Leon set sail with his
three ships, in March 1512. On Easter Sunday, which the Spaniards call
_Pascua Florida_, the aged adventurer discovered a glorious land,
covered with woods, which were brilliant with flowers. Spite of the
marvellous beauty of the country, to which he gave the name of Florida,
it was some time before he was able to land, in consequence of stormy
weather. At length a landing was effected, and formal possession taken
of the country; but though he remained exploring the coast for several
weeks, the fountain of youth was nowhere to be found, the natives were
hostile, and Ponce de Leon returned to Porto Rico still an old man. A
new and splendid region had, however, been discovered, and thither Ponce
de Leon returned a few years afterwards, intending to select a site for
a colony, but in a contest with the natives was mortally wounded.
Ponce de Leon’s discovery had opened a new path for Spanish commerce
through the Gulf of Florida, and in 1516 Diego Miruelo, a bold sea
captain, trafficking with the natives, brought away gold which he had
obtained in exchange for toys, and thus gave a yet more brilliant
colouring to the reports current regarding the wealth of this new
region.
In 1517, Francisco Fernandez de Cordova discovered the province of
Yucatan and the Bay of Campeachy, but soon afterwards, like Ponce de
Leon, was mortally wounded by the natives. The pilot of Fernandez in the
following year conducted another squadron to the same shores, under the
command of Grijalva. The amount of gold which was here collected, and
the costly presents of the unsuspecting natives together with the
rumours of the magnificent empire of Montezuma, excited the general
imagination, and led to the enterprise of Cortes.
While events were thus opening the way for the conquest of Mexico, seven
wealthy men of St. Domingo, at the head of whom was Lucas Vasquez de
Ayllon, despatched two vessels as slavers to seek for labourers in their
mines and plantations. These ships were driven northward from the
Bahamas by adverse winds upon the coast of Carolina, which they called
Chicora; they anchored at the Cambahee river, to which they gave the
name of Jordan. The natives received them with great kindness, being new
to the sight of Europeans, and visited their ships in crowds, both with
curiosity and good faith, but when they were all below, the hatches were
suddenly closed, and the perfidious Spaniards sailed away. One of these
ships was lost, the captives in the other refused food, and died of
starvation and distress of mind.
Again de Ayllon sailed with three ships to the newly-discovered Chicora,
of which he was appointed governor, intending now to take formal
possession. But the largest of his ships was stranded and lost at the
mouth of the river Cambahee, and he himself, though received with
apparent kindness by the natives, narrowly escaped with his life, many
of his men having been killed, the friendly aspect being merely a feint
on the part of the incensed natives to get them more completely into
their power. This unsuccessful attempt preyed so severely upon de
Ayllon’s heart as to cause his death.
But now let us return to the discoveries of Francisco Fernandez de
Cordova and Grijalva on the northern coast of Yucatan. On approaching
the shore, the Spaniards had been astonished to find no longer rude and
half-clad savages, but people well dressed in cotton garments, and
dwelling apparently in edifices of stone. They were of a bold and
martial character, and received the strangers with demonstrations of
hostility. Cordova being, as we have said, wounded, his expedition
hastened back to Cuba, only however to be followed by a second, when the
southern coast of Mexico was discovered, and Juan de Grijalva carried
home with him a large amount of treasure obtained by traffic with the
natives. Valesquez, the governor of Cuba, highly pleased with the result
of this expedition, resolved on the conquest of this rich country, and
hastily fitted out an armament of eleven vessels for this purpose,
giving the command to Fernando Cortes.
In March, 1519, Cortes landed in Tabasco, a southern province of Mexico,
where he defeated the natives with great slaughter. Advancing from this
point westward, he reached San Juan de Ulloa, where he was kindly
received by two officers of the monarch, Montezuma, who had been sent to
inquire into the object of his visit, and to offer him any assistance
which he might require. Cortes replied with great courtesy that his
business was important, and could be confided to no less a person than
Montezuma himself. The great monarch of Mexico, not being accustomed to
such interviews, his officers made valuable presents to Cortes, and set
before him the impossibility of his request. In vain; Cortes was
determined; messengers were sent backwards and forwards, and magnificent
presents still made to Cortes, with the request finally that he would
depart. But no; Cortes destroyed his vessels, to prevent his soldiers
escaping, and marched to the capital of Mexico. As he advanced, the
disaffected in Montezuma’s kingdom joined him. Montezuma was overcome by
alarm.
The Spaniards marched onward; and the vast plain of Mexico opened before
them. It was covered with villages and cultivated fields, all wearing an
aspect of prosperity. In the middle of the plain, partly encompassed by
a lake, and partly built on the islands within it, towered aloft the
city of Mexico, like some gorgeous fairyland city. The Spaniards could
scarcely believe their senses; it seemed more like a splendid vision
than reality. Montezuma received the strangers with great pomp and
kindness; admitted them into the city; appropriated to their use
splendid accommodations; supplied all their wants, and presented them
with gifts.
Cortes, astonished at what had befallen him, and anxious for his own
safety, thus shut up in the very heart of a city which might, after all,
be hostile, resolved on a bold expedient, which he accomplished with
wonderful success. He seized the person of Montezuma, whom he held as a
hostage for the good faith of the nation. And thus, having the
astonished monarch in his power, so wrought upon his mind, as to induce
him to acknowledge himself a vassal of the crown of Spain, and subject
his kingdom to an annual tribute.
Cortes, after this, was compelled to return to Cuba for a short time,
and the Mexicans, incensed by the cruelties and wanton excesses of the
Spaniards, who remained in charge of the monarch and his capital, rose
in arms. Cortes returned, and at once threw aside the mask of moderation
which he had hitherto worn. He compelled Montezuma, who was in his
power, to interpose with his exasperated people; the captive monarch did
so, and an aspect of submission was for the moment assumed. The Mexicans
reverenced their monarch almost as a divinity, and bowed their heads and
dropped their weapons at sight of him; but when, in obedience to the
commands of Cortes, he endeavoured to awaken amicable sentiments in
their breasts towards the Spaniards, their rage burst forth in fury, and
snatching up their arms, they assailed their enemies with tenfold
determination, and in this fresh onset the unfortunate Montezuma was
himself mortally wounded. The Mexicans, seeing their king fall by their
own hands, believed that the vengeance of heaven was pursuing them, and
fled; and Montezuma, refusing all food, survived but a short time.
The position of Cortes, in the heart of an exasperated nation, was
perilous in the extreme. He commenced his retreat from the capital, and
fighting almost every yard of ground, found himself on the sixth day in
a spacious valley, hemmed in by an innumerable army. Nothing was left
but to conquer or die; and they were but a handful of men. Multitudes
thronged in upon them, sufficient alone to trample them to dust. At that
moment Cortes beheld the great Mexican banner advancing, and
recollecting to have heard that upon its fate depended the fate of every
Mexican battle, resolved, at the head of his bravest men, to hew his way
to the standard, and gain possession of it. He did so. The Mexicans,
panic-stricken, threw down their arms and fled to the mountains.
The determination of Cortes was undaunted; he resolved to accomplish the
conquest of Mexico, and four months after his retreat, having received
fresh supplies and reinforcements, he again departed for the interior,
and after a siege of twenty-five days, the successor of Montezuma having
fallen into his hands, the city yielded, and the wealthy Mexico became a
province of Spain. This occurred in August, 1521.
While the conquest of Mexico was taking place, another important event
occurred in the history of Spanish discoveries. Ferdinand Magellan,
having spent several months in exploring the coast of South America,
finally passed through the strait which bears his name, thus
accomplishing the discovery so long-sought-for of a western passage to
India.
CHAPTER II.
DISCOVERIES CONTINUED.
Florida had remained unoccupied, and almost disregarded, for several
years, when Pamphilo de Narvaez obtained permission from the emperor
Charles V. to effect its conquest; accordingly he landed on the coast in
April, 1528, with three hundred men, and, erecting a standard, took
possession for Spain. Fired by the successes of Cortes, they advanced up
the country, hoping to find a second wealthy empire; but swamps and
forests met them everywhere, and hosts of ambushed savages attacked
them. Still intimations of a country northward abounding in gold, which
they continued to receive from captives whom they had taken, and now
employed as guides, lured them on. But they found nothing save a village
of wigwams; though the guides still persisted that still farther north
lay a region full of gold. Unwilling to adventure further to the north,
they directed their course again southward, and reached the sea after a
journey of probably 800 miles, their numbers being then greatly
diminished. They constructed five boats, but of so frail a description
that only desperate men would have ventured their lives in them; and
Narvaez and most of his companions perished. Four of the survivors
reached Mexico in the course of seven years, after a series of wonderful
adventures and hardships, having travelled through Louisiana, Texas, and
Northern Mexico, passing on from one tribe of Indians to another, and
frequently as slaves. A marvellous story of wild adventure was theirs;
and, like an earlier Robinson-Crusoe history, calculated to allure
others into the same path.
The most remarkable of the followers of these men, and the believers of
their story, was Ferdinand de Soto, a Spanish nobleman, and courtier of
Charles V., by whom he was appointed governor of Cuba. De Soto had been
a favourite companion of Pizarro in the conquest of Peru, and had
distinguished himself in the storming of Cusco. Believing all the
wonders which were related of the golden regions of Florida, he resolved
to fit out an expedition at his own cost, and conquer these lands which
were believed to be more beautiful and richer than those of Mexico and
Peru. His own enthusiasm excited that of others; hundreds of young men
of birth and fortune enlisted in this enterprise. Property of all kinds,
vineyards, houses, valuables, were all sold to purchase arms, horses,
and equipments for this undertaking. From the multitudes who offered
themselves for this expedition of conquest and discovery, its leader
selected six hundred young men, all adventurous and ambitious as
himself.
The landing of this proud and gallant company on the shores of the new
world was a splendid spectacle. Their banners floated in the soft
breezes of Florida; the golden sun of Florida reflected itself in their
armour; and thus they galloped onward, “very gallant,” says the old
chronicle, “silk upon silk,” along the sea-shore of that region which
they believed to be full of gold and great cities, and the destined
conquerors of which they esteemed themselves to be.
Ferdinand de Soto, who, like Cortes, wished to remove all possibility of
a retreat, either for himself or his companions, sent back all his
vessels to Cuba, where he had left his young wife as governor during his
absence. It was in the month of May, 1539, when they set out; taking
with them weapons of all kinds, work-tools and an iron-forge, as well as
chains and bloodhounds for the subjection of their captives. They also
took with them a singular accompaniment for so gallant an army, a drove
of three hundred swine, which were intended to stock the country when
the commander should have selected his seat of government; and these
swine were driven with the expedition through nearly the whole of its
route.
They advanced onward through a wilderness day after day, and week after
week, amid continual skirmishes with the natives, and ever, as they
went, mass was performed by priests with all the pomp of Catholic
ceremonial; and cruelties were practised on their captives, whilst they
amused themselves by gaming. Thus they wandered onward through
uncultivated regions for upwards of five months, and then established
themselves in winter-quarters. In twelve months they had advanced to the
ocean—to the very spot whence Narvaez had embarked; they had found
plenty of maize, but no gold, and no cities but only small Indian
villages. Next spring they broke up their winter camp, and set out for a
remote country, of which they had heard, lying to the north-east,
abounding in gold and silver, and the ruler of which was a woman.
They now advanced to the north-east, made a long and arduous journey,
and arrived indeed at the territory of the queen, of whose wealth they
had conceived such extravagant hopes; but the gold proved to be copper,
and the silver thin plates of mica. Still de Soto advancing with a
perseverance worthy of a better cause, came to the spring-heads of vast
rivers, and thus reached the Highlands of Georgia, where he fell in with
the peaceable and gentle Cherokee Indians. This was the second year of
his wanderings. Some of de Soto’s companions wished to settle down here
in the midst of a beautiful region, and enjoy the riches of an abundant
soil. But no,—de Soto would not listen to such a scheme: he had promised
a second Peru and Mexico to Spain, and he would not desist from his
wanderings till they were found. He was a resolute man, of few words,
and his followers yielded themselves to his commands.
Again he heard of gold still further north, and despatched two horsemen,
with Indian guides, to visit the country; and once more they returned
with copper; gold there was none. They wandered still further, advancing
into Alabama, where was a large Indian town, Mavilla, afterwards Mobile.
The Indians rose in arms; a battle ensued; the Spanish cavalry were
victors: it was the bloodiest battle ever known in Indian warfare. The
Indians fought for nine hours, and several thousands were slaughtered;
the town was burned to ashes, and numbers of Indians perished in the
flames. The Spaniards also lost many of their number, together with
horses and the whole of their baggage. Their situation was terrible in
the extreme; food they had none, nor medicines for the wounded—all were
lost. Fortunately for them, however, the spirit of the Indians was so
completely broken, that they could no longer molest them. Spanish ships,
from Cuba, now awaited them with supplies in Pensacola Bay, near
Mavilla. But, fearing that his disheartened soldiers might leave him,
and as he had no tidings of gold and great glory to send home, and was
too proud to send any other, he turned away from the sea-coast, and
again advanced inland.
Winter overtook them in the northern parts of Mississippi, with severe
frost and snow, and they established themselves in an Indian village,
which the inhabitants had deserted at their approach, and in the fields
of which the maize still remained uncut. The Indians returned in the
depth of winter and in the dead of night, and set fire to the village.
All that had been saved from the fires of Mavilla was now destroyed;
they lost all their beloved swine, many of their horses, and all their
clothes. Their sufferings were intense. De Soto ordered the chains to be
taken from the captives, and new weapons to be forged. Clothed in skins
and mats of ivy-leaves, he still advanced further west in search of the
land of gold. For seven days they wandered on through wildernesses of
forest and morass, and reached the Indian settlements in the vicinity of
the Mississippi. De Soto was the first European who beheld that mighty
river. He saw it then as the familiar trader on its banks beholds it
now, rolling its immense mass of waters through a rich alluvial soil,
more than a mile broad, and carrying trees and timber down its turbid
flood.
In May, 1541, the Spaniards, having constructed boats, crossed the
river, and proceeded westward into Arkansas. The natives, regarding them
with reverence, and believing them to be the children of the sun,
brought their blind to them, that they might receive sight. “Pray only
to God who dwells in heaven,” replied de Soto, “and He will give you
what you need.”
De Soto proceeded onward in the direction of the north-west, and reached
the mountains of the White River, two hundred miles from the
Mississippi; but there were neither gold nor precious stones in these
mountains. They took up their third winter-quarters among peaceful
Indians, who pursued agriculture rather than war; and the young
cavaliers found their pastime in practising cruelties on the natives. In
the spring, de Soto descended the White River, and became entangled in
the midst of dismal swamps; Indian settlements there were none; the
whole country was apparently interminable morass, forest, and cane
brake. De Soto received in gloomy silence this report from scouts whom
he had sent forward. Horses and men lay dying around him; and, to add
still more to his distress, hostile Indians were coming up on all sides.
His ambitious pride was now changed into deep melancholy, and his health
gave way under the pressure of disappointed hope. Of his gallant
company, three hundred alone remained.
Feeling the approach of death, he summoned his people round him, and
named his successor. The following day he died. “His soldiers,” says
Bancroft, “pronounced his eulogy by sorrowing for his loss. The priests
chanted over his body the first requiem that was ever heard by the
waters of the Mississippi.” His body was wrapped in a mantle, and, in
the dead of night, his soldiers bore him to the middle of the
Mississippi, and silently sunk his body in the river.
Singular to say, this was once more the month of May, four years from
the time of his setting forth; “the spring burst forth gloriously over
the Mississippi,” says a writer on this subject, “but de Soto rose up no
more to meet it.” “The discoverer of the Mississippi,” concludes
Bancroft, “slept beneath its waters. For four years he had wandered to
and fro over a great portion of the continent in search of gold, but he
found nothing so remarkable as his place of burial.”
The successor whom de Soto had appointed now attempted to lead back the
remnant of the party by the way of Mexico; but, after several months’
wanderings and adventures among the hostile tribes of the western
prairies, they retraced their steps to the Mississippi, on the banks of
which they passed the winter. Here they constructed boats, which were
ready for their embarkation in the month of July, and on the 20th of
September, 1543, they arrived, half naked and famished with hunger, at a
Spanish settlement near the mouth of the river Panuco, in Mexico.
Such was the discovery of the Mississippi.
The next adventurer on this ill-fated field was Louis Cancello, a priest
of the Dominican order, anxious to convert the nations: his scheme,
however, fared no better than those of others; the missionary priests
were looked upon with suspicion, and Cancello and two of his companions
fell martyrs to their zeal.
A spell seemed to rest upon these shores; nevertheless the name of
Florida, as if it were full of good omen, was conferred upon the whole
extent of American territory, not only on the portion of Florida proper
on the Mexican gulf, but northward to Canada itself, all of which vast
territory was claimed by Spain; still not a fort was erected on its
shores, not a single colony was established; and when at length a
permanent settlement of the Spaniards was effected in Florida, it was
only by means of jealous and bloody bigotry.
But this will lead us back to France and French affairs. The good
Coligny, admiral of France, who had long been seeking an asylum for the
persecuted Huguenots in America, and who indulged the hope of
establishing a French protestant empire in that country, obtained, after
long perseverance, a commission from the king to that purpose, and in
1562 a squadron sailed for Florida, under command of John Ribault, of
Dieppe, a brave man and a true protestant, accompanied by some of the
best young French nobility, together with experienced troops. Arriving
on the coast in the month of May, 1562, he discovered St. John’s River,
which he named the river of May; the shores were covered with groves of
mulberries, and the whole scenery was of a pleasing character. He sailed
northward, giving French names to the rivers and prominent points of the
shore, until he reached Port Royal entrance, near the southern boundary
of Carolina, and here he resolved to found the colony. A fort was
erected, and called Fort Charles, or the Carolina, in honour of Charles
IX. of France, and this name, given a century before the English took
possession, became the adopted name of the country.
The site of the infant colony delighted its founders; its harbour was
capable of containing a whole navy; immense oaks, the growth of
centuries, groves of pine, abounding with game, and flowers whose
perfume filled the air, rendered the country beautiful. Ribault left
twenty-six men to keep possession, and returned to France for fresh
emigrants and supplies; but in the meantime civil war had begun to rage
in that country, and the reinforcements for which Ribault had come were
not to be had. The condition of the colonists became desperate;
dissensions broke out among them; and the following spring they embarked
in a hastily-constructed brigantine for their native land. Their
provisions, however, were insufficient for the voyage, and they must
have perished of famine had they not fallen in with an English vessel,
which received them on board.
Again, two years later, Coligny renewed his endeavours for the
colonisation of Florida, and three ships were sent out under the command
of Laudonniere. Emigrants offered abundantly, for the fame of the
climate of Florida had awoke general enthusiasm; life there, it was
said, was extended to twice its usual limits, besides which, it was
still believed that a golden realm lay hidden in its interior, and
Coligny, who wished to obtain accurate knowledge of the country, engaged
a painter called De Morgues to accompany the expedition, that he might
make coloured drawings of all scenes and objects which interested him.
The misfortunes of the late colonists of Port Royal deterred the present
from going thither; and after a little search they discovered so
beautiful a situation, that the most delightful anticipations were
excited. The Huguenots thanked God in hymns of praise for a glorious
home of peace, as they believed, in the wilderness. The natives received
them with the utmost kindness, rival tribes vying which should show them
most distinction. Again the new colony received the name of Carolina.
Many of the emigrants, however, who had come out in this expedition were
dissolute adventurers; their excesses turned the hearts of the Indians
against them: the supplies were wasted, and famine threatened them.
Under pretence of desiring to escape from famine, some of their number
were permitted to embark for New Spain, but no sooner was this liberty
granted than they commenced a series of piracies against the Spaniards.
Before long their vessel was taken. Theirs was the first aggression in
the New World, and soon brought down its punishment. The pirate vessel
being seized, most of its men were sold as slaves, and such as escaped
to Carolina were condemned to death by Laudonniere. Meantime the famine
had become extreme; for three months there seemed no prospect but death
for the little colony, and they must have perished had not Sir John
Hawkins, the famous slave-merchant, who was just returning from the West
Indies, whither he had conveyed a cargo of unfortunate Africans,
relieved their wants, and even furnished them with a vessel, in which
they were about to return to France, when Ribault arrived with fresh
emigrants, abundant supplies, implements of husbandry, and domestic
animals of all kinds. New life was infused into the colony; God was
thanked fervently, and protestantism, it was hoped, had now found a safe
and fixed abode in the beautiful Florida.
In the meantime news reached Spain that a company of French protestants
had established themselves in the Spanish territory. Spain at home was
inveterate against France, Catholicism against protestantism; and Pedro
Melendez de Avilès, a soldier long accustomed to scenes of blood, a
bigoted catholic, a naval commander, who, having often been employed
against pirates, was accustomed to acts of summary vengeance, and who
had been appointed to the government of Florida on condition that he
subdued it in three years, introduced at least four Jesuit priests, and
imported five hundred negro slaves for the cultivation of the
sugar-cane, which it was intended to introduce, was now hastily
despatched to his office, with the strict injunction to extirpate all
heretics. The fury in Spain against the heretic-settlers in Florida
waxed hot; between two and three thousand persons, soldiers, sailors,
priests, Jesuits, etc., engaged in the expedition. Melendez, who
considered that “celerity was the secret of success,” lost no time in
any of his movements. Early in September he came in sight of Florida,
and discovering some French ships, gave them chase, but could not
overtake them. A few days later he reached a beautiful bay and river,
and as it happened to be the day of St. Augustine, he gave that name to
both. Soon after which, sailing northward, he discovered the French
ships at anchor.
The French demanded his name, and the purport of his voyage. “I am
Melendez of Spain,” replied he, “sent with strict orders from my king to
gibbet and behead all the protestants in these regions. The Frenchman,
who is a catholic, will I spare; every heretic shall die!”
The French ships not being prepared to fight, cut their cables and fled,
and the Spaniards, unable to overtake them, returned to the harbour of
St. Augustine. Here they took solemn possession of the continent in the
name of the bigoted Philip II., whom they proclaimed king of all North
America, and having performed mass, laid the foundations of St.
Augustine, the oldest town, by forty years, of any in America.
In a few days the French put out to sea, with the intention of attacking
the Spaniards within the harbour; but a furious storm overtook them,
which lasted for more than two weeks, and wrecked every vessel; the
Spaniards in the meantime lying in harbour comparatively safe. Melendez
now marched his troops across the country, and suddenly made an attack
upon the defenceless French settlement, putting to death all whom he
could seize, men, women, and children, the aged and the sick; some few
escaping, fled to the woods and afterwards took shelter on board the
only two ships which had been spared by the tempest. The Spaniards,
enraged that even a remnant had escaped, insulted and mangled the
corpses of the dead. After these scenes of horror were completed, mass
was performed, and the site of a church was selected on the very ground
yet crimson and sodden with the blood of the inoffensive inhabitants.
The few who had escaped to the ships were in the utmost want of every
necessary of life, worn out by fatigue, and destitute both of food and
water. Melendez, who was aware of their wretched condition, promised
them mercy if they would surrender themselves into his hands. Being men
of truth themselves, they believed his words and capitulated. As they
stepped on shore, however, their hands were at once tied behind them,
and they were marched as prisoners into St. Augustine. A signal was
given; and to the sound of drums and trumpets they were all massacred,
with the exception of a few catholics and a few mechanics, who were
reserved for slaves; and over their mangled remains was placed the
inscription, “This is done not as unto Frenchmen, but as unto heretics.”
Nine hundred true men, worshippers of God according to their protestant
faith, are supposed to have perished on those shores, victims of
bigotry.
The French government did not trouble itself about these things; the
Huguenots and the French nation, however, resented them keenly. A bold
soldier of Gascony, Dominic de Gourgues, a man whose life had been a
series of adventures and hardships, sold his property to acquire the
means of avenging the wrongs of his fellow-countrymen and believers.
With one hundred and fifty men and three ships he embarked for Florida;
they were but a handful against the Spanish power, but their object was
not conquest—it was retributive justice, if not revenge. Like Melendez
he came suddenly; and surprising two Spanish forts on St. John’s river,
took them at once, together with a still larger fort on the spot where
the unfortunate French settlement had stood. He executed summary
justice, hung his prisoners on the trees, with this inscription, “I do
this not as unto Spaniards or mariners, but as unto traitors, robbers,
and murderers.” And the Indians, who had been ill-used both by the
French and the Spaniards, looked on well pleased to see their enemies
preying one on another.
Dominic de Gourgues, having avenged his countrymen, again disappeared
with his ships, and France disavowing all cognisance of the
circumstance, relinquished any claim to Florida; and Spain remained in
possession. The Spanish dominion in America was magnificent. Cuba was
the centre of the West Indian possessions. “From the remotest
south-eastern cape of the Carribean,” says the historian. “along the
whole shore, to the Cape of Florida, and beyond it, all was hers. The
Gulf of Mexico lay embosomed within her territories.”
About the time when the impetuous Dominic de Gourgues returned to France
from his swoop of vengeance in Florida, Sir Walter Raleigh, one of the
most gallant spirits of the age, suddenly left his studies at Oxford to
take part with the Huguenots in their struggles against the catholics.
From his protestant friends he heard of the massacre which De Gourgues
had avenged, and from that brave man himself, and his associates, learnt
much also of the country where these scenes had occurred. The
imagination of Raleigh was inflamed; on his return to England he found
the same spirit afloat; a few of the unfortunate Huguenots had escaped
to England, and their tale of wrong had interested even Queen Elizabeth
herself. Hawkins, too, the slaver, who had relieved the famishing
settlement, had much to tell of the wonderful regions where these things
had been done; so had De Morgues, the landscape painter, who had
fortunately escaped with, many sketches of its scenery. The leading
minds of England were turned to Florida.
From the time of Cabot, England had never wholly given up her
intercourse with the New World. English mariners, as well as French,
frequented the fisheries of Newfoundland. Henry VIII. declared that he
considered the discovery of the North “to be his charge and duty;” and
Hakluyt records a wild sea-voyage, conducted by a man named Hore, in
which marvellous things are told far outdoing those of the Ancient
Mariner. The search for the north-western passage still continued; the
fleets of Willoughby and Chancellor set sail. In the north their ships
parted company. The fate of Willoughby was an early tragedy in those
mournful and fatal seas. After a winter of great hardship, the vessels
which went in search of him the following spring found him dead in his
cabin, his journal open before him, containing a record of the ship’s
sufferings to the very day of his death, and with his faithful crew
lying dead around him. Chancellor, on the contrary, was driven in a
north-eastern direction, and reached the harbour of Archangel, and thus
the Russian nation, like another New World, emerged, as it were, into
being. Joint-stock companies, for the discovery of unknown lands, were
first formed in 1555. The marriage of Mary with Philip of Spain brought
the magnificent discoveries and productions of that country into a
closer proximity with England, and a desire to emulate the successes of
Spain in the New World was excited.
The spirit of Elizabeth seconded that of her people. The nation had now
assumed a more determined and a prouder front in their resentment of the
attempt of Spain to render them an appendage to the Spanish crown, and
by the successful struggle of protestantism against catholicism. England
strengthened her navy; frequented the bays and banks of Newfoundland;
sent out adventurers to Russia and Africa; endeavoured to reach Persia
by land, and enlarged her commerce with the East, whilst her privateers
lay in wait at sea for the rich galleons of Spain. The study of
geography was universally cultivated, and books of travels and
adventures by land and sea were eagerly read. Frobisher, the boldest
mariner who ever crossed the ocean, set forth to discover the
long-sought-for north-western, passage, and Queen Elizabeth waved her
hand to him in token of favour, as he sailed down the Thames. Frobisher,
like all the rest of the world, hoped to find gold. If the Spaniards had
found gold in the south, England was confident of finding gold in the
north. Elizabeth entered enthusiastically into the scheme of planting a
colony among the wealthy mines of the polar regions, where gold, it was
said, lay on the surface of the ground. Frobisher was followed by a
second fleet, But they found only frost and icebergs.
Whilst Frobisher and his ships were thus vainly endeavouring to discover
an el Dorado in the north, Sir Francis Drake was acquiring immense
wealth as a freebooter on the Spanish main, and winning great glory by
circumnavigating the globe, after having explored the north-western
coast of America, as far north as the forty-third degree. Sir Humphrey
Gilbert, also, a man of sound judgment and deeply religious mind,
obtained a charter from Queen Elizabeth, in 1578, for the more rational
purposes of colonisation. He set sail with three vessels, accompanied by
his step-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh; but a series of disasters befell
them; the largest vessel was wrecked, and a hundred perished, among whom
was Parmenius, a Hungarian scholar, who had gone out as historian of the
expedition. On the homeward voyage they were overtaken by a great storm.
“We are as near to heaven on sea as on land,” said Sir Humphrey Gilbert,
sitting abaft with a book in his hand. And the same night his little
vessel went down, and all on board perished.
The brave spirit of Sir Walter Raleigh was not discouraged, though he
deeply deplored the loss of his noble step-brother. He resolved now to
secure to England those glorious countries where the poor French
protestants had suffered so deeply; and a patent was readily granted,
constituting him Lord Proprietary, with almost unlimited powers,
according to the Christian protestant faith, of all land which he might
discover between the 33rd and 40th degrees of north latitude. Under this
patent, Raleigh despatched, as avant-courier ships, two vessels under
the command of Philip Armidas and Arthur Barlow. In the month of July
they reached the coast of North America, having perceived while far out
at sea the fragrance as of a delicious garden, from the odoriferous
flowers of the shore. Finding, after some search, a convenient harbour,
they landed, and offering thanks to God for their safe arrival, took
formal possession in the name of the queen of England.
The spot on which they landed was the island of Wocoken. The shores of
this part of America are peculiar, inasmuch as, during one portion of
the year, they are exposed to furious tempests, against which the low
flat shore affords no defence of harbourage; in the summer season, on
the contrary, the sea and air are alike tranquil, the whole presenting
the most paradisaical aspect, whilst the vegetation is calculated to
strike the beholder with wonder and delight. The English strangers
beheld the country under its most favourable circumstances; the grapes
being so plentiful that the surge of the ocean, as it lazily rolled in
upon the shore, dashed its spray upon the clusters. “The forests formed
themselves into wonderfully beautiful bowers, frequented by multitudes
of birds. It was like a garden of Eden, and the gentle, friendly
inhabitants appeared in unison with the scene. On the island of Roanoke
they were received by the wife of the king, and entertained with
Arcadian hospitality.”
Charmed by all that they had seen, the English voyagers returned, after
a very short stay, having laden their ships with cedar, to which were
added skins and furs obtained from the Indians, and sassafras, which had
been introduced from Florida by the Spaniards, and was in great repute
as a panacea; besides all this they carried with them two natives of
this western paradise, Manteo and Wanchese. So glowing were the
descriptions which they gave of the country that Elizabeth, who regarded
it as an honour to her reign that during it these glorious lands had
been discovered, conferred upon them her favourite appellation of
Virginia.
The report brought by these heralds of discovery excited the utmost
enthusiasm, and Raleigh, who was now knighted, made active preparations
for a second expedition, which should consist of seven vessels, and take
out one hundred and fifty colonists. Sir Ralph Lane was appointed
governor of the colony, and Sir Richard Grenville, one of the bravest
men of the age, took the command of the fleet. They set sail on the 9th
of April, 1585, reckoning among their company many distinguished
men—Cavendish, afterwards the circumnavigator, and Hariot, the inventor
of the system of notation in modern algebra, being of the number. After
some few disasters and narrowly escaping shipwreck on the coast of
Florida, they reached Roanoke, where it was intended to found the
colony. Manteo, one of the Indians who had accompanied the former party
to England, and had now returned, being first sent on shore to announce
their intention to the natives. Immediately afterwards a circumstance
occurred which is to be regretted. Grenville, Lane, and others of the
principal adventurers, made an excursion up the country, being
everywhere well received by the natives. At one Indian town, however, a
silver cup was stolen, and not being immediately restored, Grenville
ordered the village to be set fire to, and the standing corn destroyed.
This naturally incensed the natives.
The colonists, however, landed, and soon afterwards the ships returned
to England; Grenville taking a rich Spanish prize by the way. Lane and
his colonists explored the country, and Lane wrote home: “It is the
goodliest soil under the cope of heaven; the most pleasing territory in
the world; the continent is of a huge and unknown greatness, and very
well peopled and towned, though savagely. The climate is so wholesome
that we have none sick. If Virginia had but horses and kine and were
inhabited by English, no realm in Christendom were comparable to it.”
Hariot’s observations were directed to “the natural inhabitants,” and to
the productions of the colony with reference to commerce; he observed
the culture of tabacco, used it himself, and had great faith in its
salutary qualities; he paid great attention to the maize and the
potatoe, “which when boiled he found to be good eating.” He carefully
studied the manners, customs, and faith of the Indians; exhibited to
them his mathematical instruments, guns, clocks, etc., exciting in their
minds the utmost respect and reverence for the English, as pupils and
favourites of heaven. He exhibited the Bible to them wherever he went,
and explained its truths, which affected them with profound regard and
awe. The fire-arms which killed at a distance filled them with
superstitious terror. Their wise men prophesied that “more of the
English generation would yet come, who would kill theirs and take their
places.”
In the meantime, the mass of the colonists, who were rabid for gold,
listened to wonderful tales invented by artful Indians, who wished to be
rid of these awe-inspiring strangers. The river Roanoke, they said,
gushed forth from a rock near the Pacific Ocean, that a nation dwelt on
its remote banks, skilful in refining gold, and that they occupied a
city the walls of which glittered with pearls. Even sir Richard Lane was
credulous enough to believe these tales, and ascended the river with a
party in order to reach this golden region. They advanced onward,
finding nothing, till they were reduced to the utmost extremity of
famine. The Indians, disappointed by their return, resolved to cultivate
no more corn, so that they might be driven from the country by want, and
the English, divining their views, having invited the chief to a
conference, fell upon him and slew him, with many of his followers. Lane
was unfit for his office. This act of treachery exasperated the Indians
to such a degree that they would no longer give him supplies. The colony
was about to perish by famine, as the Indians desired, when Sir Francis
Drake appeared outside the harbour with a fleet of twenty-three ships.
He was on his way from the West Indies, and was now come to visit his
friends. No visit could have been more opportune nor more welcome.
He supplied their wants; appropriated to them a vessel of seventy tons
with pinnaces and small boats. All that they could need for sustenance
or for the pursuit of discovery, he appointed for them. Strange however
to say, a sudden storm came on; there was no security for the fleet but
to weigh anchor and go out to sea; when the tempest was over, and Drake
returned to the shore, he found all his preparations for the colony
scattered as wrecks on the waves. The colonists were completely
disheartened; and at their entreaties Drake received them on board his
ships, and conveyed them back to England, after an absence of about
twelve months, during which time they had accustomed themselves to the
use of tobacco, which they now carried home with them.
They were gone; but scarcely had they left the shore, when a ship
despatched by Raleigh, who had not forgotten them, arrived with all
possible supplies, but which, finding the colony had vanished, set sail
again homeward; and scarcely had it left the shore, when Sir Richard
Grenville arrived with three ships, and he, too, after vainly searching
about for the missing colony, departed, leaving fifteen men on Roanoke
to keep possession for the English.
CHAPTER III.
DISCOVERIES CONTINUED.
Raleigh, spite of the ill-success which had attended his efforts at
colonisation, was not discouraged; and the report which Hariot made of
the capabilities and resources of the country strengthened the public
faith. Profiting by adversity, Raleigh now resolved to attempt an
agricultural colony; to send out families, men with wives and children,
so that the emigrant should take his home, as it were, with him. He
granted a charter of incorporation for the settlement, and established,
before it left the country, a municipal government for his projected
city of Raleigh; Captain John White being appointed governor. The
emigrants were embarked at the expense of Raleigh, Queen Elizabeth
declining to afford any aid. Women were now among them, and a
sufficiency of implements of husbandry seemed to give promise of
successful industry. They arrived at Roanoke in July, expecting to find
the fifteen men whom Grenville had left there; but the fort which had
been built was in ruins, the houses were deserted; wild deer were
feeding amid the rank vegetation of the gardens, and human bones lay
scattered everywhere. Spite of all these melancholy tokens, the
new-comers resolved here to build their city of Raleigh; here to
establish the seat of their future government.
Raleigh was again unfortunate in his choice of governor; Captain John
White was no better fitted for his post than Sir Richard Lane had been.
Aggressions on the Indians were the first acts of the colonists. The
mother and relatives of Manteo welcomed the English with the utmost
cordiality, but spite of this, a party of English seeing a company of
natives sitting by their fires at night, and fearing lest they might be
enemies, fell upon them, and after killing a considerable number
discovered that they were their friends. Manteo, however, remained
faithful, and by command of Sir Walter Raleigh received Christian
baptism and the rank of a feudal baron, as the Lord of Roanoke.
It was soon found that many things were yet needful for the comfort of
the emigrants, and the governor sailed for England to obtain them. A
gloom overspread the little colony as the ship was ready to depart, and
women as well as men besought of him to return speedily with
reinforcements and supplies. At this moment he would have remained with
them, and shared their sufferings and privations, but they compelled him
to go. Previous to his departure, his daughter, Eleanor Dare, the wife
of one of the emigrants, gave birth to a female child, the first
offspring of English parents born in America; the child was called
Virginia Dare.
When White reached England he found the whole nation absorbed by the
threats of a Spanish invasion; Raleigh, Grenville, and Lane, Frobisher,
Drake, and Hawkins, all were employed in devising measures of
resistance. It was twelve months before Raleigh, who had to depend
almost entirely upon his own means, was able to despatch White with
supplies; this he did in two vessels. White, who wished to profit by his
voyage, instead of at once returning without loss of time to his colony,
went in chase of Spanish prizes, until at length one of his ships was
overpowered, boarded, and rifled, and both compelled to return to
England. This delay was fatal. The great events of the Spanish Armada
took place, after which Sir Walter Raleigh found himself embarrassed
with such a fearful amount of debt, that it was no longer in his power
to attempt the colonisation of Virginia; nor was it until the following
year that White was able to return, and then also through the noble
efforts of Sir Walter Raleigh, to the unhappy colony Roanoke. Again the
island was a desert. An inscription on the bark of a tree indicated
Croatan; but the season of the year, and the danger of storms, furnished
an excuse to White for not going thither. What was the fate of the
colony never was known. It has been conjectured that through the
friendship of Manteo they had probably escaped to Croatan; perhaps had
been, when thus cruelly neglected by their countrymen, received into a
friendly tribe of Indians, and become a portion of the children of the
forest. The Indians had, at a later day, a tradition of this kind, and
it has been thought that the physical character of the Hatteras Indians
bore out the tradition.
The kind-hearted and noble Raleigh did not soon give up all hopes of his
little colony. Five different times he sent out at his own expense to
seek for them, but in vain. The mystery which veils the fate of the
colonists of Roanoke will never be solved in this world. “Roanoke,” says
Bancroft, “is now almost uninhabited; the intrepid pilot and the hardy
wrecker, rendered bold by their familiarity with the dangers of the
ocean, and unconscious of the associations by which they are surrounded,
are the only tenants of the spot, where the inquisitive stranger may
still discern the ruins of the fort, round which the cottages of the new
settlement were erected.”
Speaking of Raleigh and his many and rare virtues, Bancroft adds—“The
judgments of the tribunal of the Old World are often reversed at the bar
of public opinion in the New. The family of the chief author of early
colonisation in the United States was reduced to beggary by the
government of England, and he himself finally beheaded. After a lapse of
nearly two centuries the State of North Carolina, by a solemn act of
legislation, revived in its capital the CITY OF RALEIGH; and thus
expressed its confidence in the integrity, and a grateful respect for
the memory, of the extraordinary man, who united in himself as many
kinds of glory as were ever combined in one individual, and whose name
is indissolubly connected with the early period of American history.”
The fisheries of the north and the efforts of Sir Walter Raleigh at
colonisation had trained a race of men for discovery. One of these,
Bartholomew Gosnold, determined upon sailing direct from England to
America, without touching at the Canaries and the West Indies, as had
hitherto been the custom; and with the aid of Raleigh he “well nigh
secured to New England the honour of the first permanent English
colony.” He sailed in a small vessel directly across the ocean, and in
seven weeks reached the shore of Massachusetts, but not finding a good
harbour sailed southward, and discovered and landed on a promontory
which he called Cape Cod, which name it retains to this day. Sailing
thence, and still pursuing the coast, he discovered various islands, one
of which he called Elizabeth, after the Queen, and another Martha’s
Vineyard. The vegetation was rich; the land covered with magnificent
forests; and wild fruits and flowers burst from the earth in unimagined
luxuriance—the eglantine, the thorn, and the honeysuckle; the wild pea,
tansy, and young sassafras; strawberries, raspberries, and vines. In the
island was a little lake, and in the lake a rocky islet, and here the
colonists resolved to build their storehouse and fort, the nucleus of
the first New England colony. The natural features of the place, the
historian tells us, remain unchanged—the island, the little lake, and
the islet are all there; the forests are gone, while the flowers and
fruit are as abundant as ever. But no trace remains of the fort.
Friendly traffic with the natives of the mainland soon completed a
freight, which consisted of furs and sassafras, and Gosnold was about to
sail, when the hearts of the intending colonists failed them; they
dreaded the attack of Indians and the want of necessary supplies from
home. All, therefore, re-embarked, and in five weeks reached England.
Gosnold and his companions brought home such favourable reports of the
country and the shortness of the voyage, that the following year a
company of Bristol merchants despatched two small vessels, under the
command of Martin Pring, for the purpose of exploring the country and
commencing a trade with the natives. They carried out with them trinkets
and merchandise suited for such traffic, and their voyage was eminently
successful. They discovered some of the principal rivers of Maine, and
examined the coast of Massachusetts as far south as Martha’s Vineyard.
The whole voyage occupied but six months. Pring repeated his voyage in
1606, making still more accurate surveys of the country.
English enterprises for discovery were rapidly continued. An expedition,
promoted by the Earl of Southampton and Lord Arundel of Wardour, and
commanded by George Weymouth, having explored the coast of Labrador,
discovered the Penobscot River. It left England in March, and in six
weeks reached the American continent near Cape Cod.
We must, however, now return to the French and their colonies, of whom
we have lost sight for some time.
In 1598, the Marquis de la Roche received a commission from Henry IV. to
found a French empire in America. But his enterprise utterly failed. His
proposed colonists were the refuse of the jails; these he conveyed to
the desolate Sable Island, on the coast of Nova Scotia, where, after
languishing twelve years, they were allowed to return, and their
offences pardoned in consideration of their sufferings.
Five years later, in 1603, a company of merchants of Rouen resolved to
attempt a scheme of colonisation, and Samuel Champlain, a man
“marvellously delighting in such enterprises,” was placed at its head.
He proceeded to Canada, carefully studied the geography of the country
and the manners of the Indians, and selected Quebec as a commodious
situation for a settlement, near the place where, in 1541, Cartier had
passed the winter and erected a fort. Champlain returned to France, and
De Monts, an able patriot and an honest Calvinist, obtained a patent
from the French government, which conceded to him the sovereignty of
Acadia from the fortieth to the forty-sixth degree of latitude, that is,
from a degree south of New York city to one north of Montreal, with a
monopoly of the fur trade, control and government of the soil, and
freedom of religion for the Huguenots. Wealth and honour were expected
from the expedition. He set sail with two vessels in March 1604, reached
Nova Scotia in May, and spent the summer in trading with the natives and
examining the coasts preparatory to a settlement.
The early colonists seem to have had a remarkable preference for
islands; accordingly the company of De Monts selected an island near the
mouth of the river St. Croix, in New Brunswick; here they passed a
winter of intense suffering, and in the spring removed to a place in the
Bay of Fundy, where was formed the first permanent settlement of the
French in America, three years before a cabin had been erected in
Canada. The settlement was called Port Royal, and the whole country,
including New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the neighbouring islands,
received the name of Acadia.
De Monts was superseded by Pourtrincourt, one of his company. The
undertaking now assumed a religious character. The pope gave his
benediction to all who went thither to evangelise the heathen; Marie de
Medici contributed money, and the Marchioness de Guercheville gave her
support. Jesuits were sent over, and the order itself enriched by
imposts on the fishery and fur trade.
Jesuit priests commenced the conversion of the natives and the
exploration of the country at the same time. The Indians of the Canadian
territory, affected by the confiding humanity of the French priests,
listened reverently to their teachings of salvation. A French colony
within the United States was soon established, under the safeguard of
religion. “The conversion of the heathen,” says Bancroft, “was the
motive of the settlement; the natives venerated the Jesuit Biart as a
messenger from heaven, and beneath the summer sky, round a cross in the
centre of the hamlet, matins and vespers were regularly chanted. France
and the Roman religion had appropriated the soil of Maine.”
In 1608, the company of merchants of Dieppe and St. Malo, who had been
instrumental in depriving De Monts of his monopoly, founded Quebec, the
whole undertaking, nevertheless, originating with Samuel Champlain, in
concert with De Monts. Brick cottages were built, a few fields cleared,
a few gardens laid out; the city of Quebec was begun. The following
year, Champlain, attended by his two Europeans, joined an expedition of
Indians against the Iroquois, and advanced as far into the interior as
the lake which bears his name.
Seven years later, he once more advanced against his old enemies, the
Iroquois. Wounded and alone, he spent a winter with the Hurons, and thus
“a knight-errant in the forest, he carried his language, religion, and
influence even to the hamlets of Algonquins near Lake Nipissing.”
The presence of Jesuits and Calvinists led to contentions; religious
animosity and commercial jealousy checked for a time the progress of the
colony; nevertheless, the wisdom and good conduct of Champlain
established successfully the dominion of the French on the banks of the
St. Lawrence. He lies buried in the land which he colonised.
About the same time that the French adventurer Champlain advanced inland
to the lake which since then has borne his name, another discoverer, the
celebrated Henry Hudson, was penetrating in the same direction from an
opposite point. The great field for commercial enterprise which had been
opened by traffic with the East, and the immense profits thence
accruing, still kept alive the hope of a nearer passage than that by the
Cape of Good Hope. Almost every maritime power of Europe had sent out
ships in the vain hope of discovery, and so persevering was the quest,
that no sooner was one failure recorded, than another expedition set
forth.
It was on the failure of Denmark in this respect that a company of
London merchants contributed a large sum of money for another attempt,
under the command of Henry Hudson. Sailing to the north, with his only
son as his companion, he deliberated, while coasting Greenland, as to
whether he should circumnavigate that country or attempt to cross the
pole; he discovered Spitzbergen, however, and was then compelled to
return, from the immense icebergs which he encountered. The next year
found him again amid the horrors of the polar seas, cherishing the vain
hope of advancing across the pole into the warm, genial regions of
southern Asia.
These two unsuccessful expeditions, though they could not daunt the
courage of this bold navigator, quite discouraged the rich London
merchants, and Hudson, who seems to have had a passion for the northern
seas, hastened to Holland and offered his services to the Dutch East
India Company, to explore for them this much-desired passage. Hudson had
applied in the right quarter; the Dutch at that time took rank as one of
the most maritime and commercial nations of Europe. Commerce was the
breath of their lives, maritime adventure their occupation. The device
on the first Dutch coin was a ship labouring on a stormy sea, without
oar or sails. Speaking of the Republic of the United Netherlands, the
historian Bancroft says, “the rendezvous of its martyrs had been the
sea; the musters of its patriot emigrants had been on shipboard; they
had hunted their enemy, as the whale-ships pursue their game, in every
corner of the ocean.” Holland is but a peninsula, intersected by
navigable rivers, protruding itself into the sea. And Zealand is
composed of islands. Its inhabitants were nearly all fishermen; both
provinces were by nature a nursery of sailors; the principles of
navigation were imbibed from infancy; every house was a school for
mariners. They became affluent through commerce. They were the
connecting links between hemispheres. Their enterprising seamen
displayed the flag of the republic from Southern Africa to the Arctic
circle. The ships of the Dutch, said Raleigh, outnumber those of England
and the other kingdoms. Amsterdam, the depôt of the merchandise of
Europe and of the East, was esteemed, beyond dispute, the first
commercial city of the world.
England and Holland had been allies in the contest with Spain; both had
sent their ships to the Indian seas; they were both desirous of
obtaining settlements in America. The Dutch, like all other nations
connected either with the commerce of Asia or inquisitive with regard to
America, turned their efforts to the discovery of a north-west passage.
The unsuccessful attempts of the English mariners, Cabot, Frobisher,
Willoughby, and others, mattered nothing to them; with that perseverance
which, if it attain not to its object, generally wins some unlooked-for
good, they, too, had sought repeatedly for the north-west passage,
coasting for this purpose Nova Zembla and Muscovy. In 1596, one of their
ships in this quest advanced within ten degrees of the pole; during the
winter, when it was frozen in, on the shores of Nova Zembla, the
sufferings of the unfortunate crew have hardly their parallel in any
narrative of human endurance, misery, and terror at sea.
Hudson had, as we have said, offered his services in the right quarter.
A vessel of discovery, called the Crescent, was soon equipped for him,
and on the 4th of April, 1609, he set sail in search of the
north-western passage, accompanied again by his son.
Masses of ice prevented his sailing toward Nova Zembla; turning to the
south-west, therefore, and passing Greenland and Newfoundland, he ran
along the coast of Acadia, and entered Penobscot Bay, on the southern
coast of Maine, and so on southward to Cape Cod, which, supposing
himself to have first discovered, he called New Holland, and still
sailing southward, reached the entrance of Chesapeake Bay, where he
remembered that his countrymen had a settlement. From this point he
again turned northward, having discovered Delaware Bay; on the 3rd of
September, about five months from the time of his setting sail, he
anchored within Sandy Hook; the natives being attracted to the ship from
the neighbouring shores, which he described as crowned with “goodly
oaks.” After tarrying here a week, Hudson advanced up the Narrows, and
anchored in a safe harbour at the mouth of the river. Every object
around was worthy of admiration—the luxuriant grass, the trees, the
flowers, and the fragrance which was diffused over all. For ten days the
Crescent, the wonder of the Indians who congregated on the shore to
witness the marvellous apparition and to welcome the strangers, ascended
the river above the highlands, and some little distance beyond where the
city of Hudson now stands, and whence he took a boat forward as far as
the present city of Albany. He descended the stream rapidly, and on the
4th of October, set sail for Europe, “leaving,” says the eloquent
historian, “once more to its solitude the land that his imagination,
anticipating the future, described as the most beautiful in the world.”
A prosperous voyage returned Hudson to Europe. He landed at Dartmouth,
and sent a splendid report of his discoveries to his Dutch employers;
but he never revisited the country which he so much praised, nor the
river to which time has now given his name. The Dutch East India Company
declined, as he had failed to discover the north-western passage, to
employ him further.
The following spring, however, an English company was formed, and Hudson
was again abroad in search of a passage to the Pacific. He sailed
directly north, passing Iceland, and Greenland, and Frobisher Straits,
and advancing through the straits that now bear his name, and through
which Cabot had entered a century before, emerged into an immense gulf,
which he joyfully believed for some time to be the object of his search.
He was naturally very unwilling to believe it a bay. Backwards and
forwards he sailed; still hoping for success, and determining at all
hazards to winter there, that he might be ready in the spring to pursue
the important discovery. A horrible winter succeeded; the spring was
late; famine stared him in the face; Hudson divided the last bread with
his men, and wept as he gave it them, having consented to return. He
believed that he was now on the point of success—of success, where all
other nations had failed. With a heavy heart he commenced his homeward
voyage, on June the 18th, yet still amid fields of ice. Two days
afterwards the crew broke forth into mutiny; Hudson was seized, and,
with his son, and seven others, four of whom were sick, was put in an
open boat and turned adrift. Hudson, it is said by some, was a severe
commander, and that his stern and pitiless temper provoked his crew to
mutiny; one little circumstance, however, which is related of this
tragical event, seems to contradict the assertions, and we are willing
to believe its inference. The ship’s carpenter, Philip Staffe—his name
deserves to be remembered—seeing his commander thus exposed, insisted
upon sharing his fate. It was on Midsummer-day, and in a latitude where
the sun at that season scarcely sets, and morning and night meet in the
heavens, that this infamous deed was perpetrated. The fate of Hudson and
his companions never was known. But his name and his memory are
preserved in those dreary polar waters, which, seeming to have had a
wonderful fascination for him in life, became in death his tomb.
“Such,” says Bancroft, “were the men and the voyages which led the way
to the colonisation of the United States. The daring and skill of these
earliest adventurers on the ocean deserve the highest admiration. The
difficulties of crossing the Atlantic were new; the characters of the
prevalent winds and currents were unknown. The possibility of making a
direct passage was but gradually discovered. The ships at first employed
for discovery were generally of less than one hundred tons burden.
Frobisher sailed in a vessel of but twenty-five tons; two of those of
Columbus were without decks; and so perilous were voyages considered,
that the sailors were accustomed, before embarking, to perform acts of
solemn devotion.”
CHAPTER IV.
COLONISATION OF VIRGINIA.
At the commencement of the seventeenth century a considerable revolution
had taken place in the objects of American enterprise and discovery. As
the greatness and the immense resources of the new world opened before
the European mind, the grasp of mind itself and of human interests
widened in proportion. The vain hope of the new passage to the East
Indies, which prompted Columbus and others to sail first westward, was
now becoming a secondary motive. To this had succeeded the desire for
the acquisition of gold, a rabid appetite, whether a more bitter curse
to the aborigines or the European it is hard to say; the islands and
equatorial regions had also ministered to the luxury and indulgence of
the conqueror by all their affluence of tropical productions.
Selfishness and aggrandisement had prevailed; but gradually, as morning
will succeed to night, a nobler and better purpose had begun to operate,
and these new-found realms were regarded as a wide field on which to
found states and establish Christian colonies; they had already become
the refuge of the oppressed, they might be still more so: they had
already given an impulse to commercial enterprise, they would do so
still more.
England, of all European nations, was perhaps most fitted to profit by
this enlarged sphere of operation. She had even then, apparently, an
excess of population, and “the timid character of king James having
thrown out of employment the gallant men who had served under Elizabeth,
both by sea and land, no other choice was left to them but either to
engage in the quarrels of other nations, or incur the hazards of seeking
a new world.” The expeditions sent out by the intelligence of Sir Walter
Raleigh, had turned the public mind to Virginia. Gosnold, a bold seaman,
whose ship first sailed directly across the Atlantic, and who
entertained the highest opinion of the capabilities of the New World for
colonisation, had long endeavoured to persuade his friends to make trial
of it for that purpose. Schemes of this kind were revolving in the minds
of various people at the same time. Sir Ferdinand Gorges, who had
learned much regarding America from George Weymouth, entertained the
most favourable ideas on the subject; Sir John Popham, the lord chief
justice of England; the assignees of Sir Walter Raleigh, and Richard
Hakluyt, the historian of maritime adventure, all favoured the
establishment of a colony in the New World.
Gosnold at length induced three persons to engage with him in the
enterprise, Edward Maria Wingfield, a merchant of the west of England,
Robert Hunt, a clergyman, and the brave and energetic John Smith, a man
of singular perseverance, indomitable courage, and possessed of every
quality necessary for the successful adventurer. These, assisted by the
influence of Popham and Gorges, succeeded, in 1606, in obtaining from
James I. a patent for the establishment of a colony in Virginia.
The English monarch claimed the whole of that portion of North America
lying between the 34th and 45th degrees of north latitude, from Cape
Fear on the coast of North Carolina to Halifax in Nova Scotia. This
territory was now divided into two portions, North Virginia, extending
from the 41st to the 45th degree, and South Virginia, from the 34th to
the 38th degree.
The first was granted to a company of “knights, gentlemen and merchants
of the west of England, incorporated as the Plymouth Company;” the
second to a company of “noblemen, gentlemen and merchants, mostly
resident in London,” and which was called the London Company. The
intermediate district, included in neither patent, was open to both
companies, yet neither were permitted to extend their settlement within
a hundred miles of the other.
The conditions of the charter were homage and rent, the rent being
one-fifth of the net produce of gold and silver, and of copper
one-fifteenth. The supreme government was vested in a council residing
in England; local government alone was permitted to the colonists
themselves. The members of the supreme council were nominated by the
king, and even over the colonial councils the king preserved a control,
being able to nominate and remove according to his royal pleasure. In
all respects the king was the supreme head; the legislative and
executive power lay in his hands; the colonists had no power of
self-government. This first charter granted to an English-American
colony was merely a simple charter for commercial purposes. The English
government cherished through the whole scheme the hope of a considerable
revenue from its colonies in Virginia; a duty to be levied on vessels
trading to the harbours was to be applied to the use of the colony for
one and twenty years, after which time it should lapse to the king. The
code of laws also for the colony was drawn up by the king; religion was
strictly enjoined to be according to the teachings of the English
church; no emigrant might withdraw his allegiance from the king nor
dissent from the royal creed. Dangerous tumults and seditions were
punishable by death, as well as murder, manslaughter, and adultery. All
civil causes involving corporal punishment, fine or imprisonment, were
to be determined by the president and council, who were appointed by the
king. There was not an element of popular liberty in the whole
stipulated form of government. It was, however, worthy of the peddling,
narrow policy and kingcraft of the British Solomon. The only element of
enlightenment which it contained was the injunction of kindness to the
savage, and the employment of all proper means for his conversion.
The Plymouth company, on receiving their grant, despatched a vessel of
discovery, which, however, was taken by the Spaniards. A second went
out, and returning, made the most favourable report of the country; the
following year, therefore, 1607, a hundred colonists were despatched
under the command of George Popham. They landed at the mouth of Kennebec
River, west of the Penobscot, and about one hundred and thirty miles
north-east of where Boston now stands. Here they erected a few rude
huts, threw up slight fortifications, and built a storehouse. The
settlement was called St. George. They had landed in the autumn, and the
winter was intensely severe; their sufferings were extreme, not only
from the severity of the climate and the season, but from want of
provisions, their storehouse having been destroyed by fire. Their
president also died; and in the following year, disheartened by so
disastrous a beginning, they returned to England. This terminated the
efforts of the Plymouth company.
The London company despatched a little squadron of three ships, on the
19th of December, 1606, one hundred and nine years after the discovery
of this northern portion of the New World by Cabot. The largest vessel
did not exceed one hundred tons burden; and the number of colonists was
one hundred and five men. England was as yet new to the subject of
colonisation, and the party sent out were injudiciously selected; out of
the hundred and five persons emigrating to a wilderness where were no
homes and no cultivated land, there were only twelve labourers, very few
mechanics, and only four carpenters, the rest were gentlemen of fortune,
persons with no occupation, many of them of dissolute habits, who had
joined the expedition in the hope of gain. Neither were there any men
with families. King James had also commanded the names and instructions
of the future councillors of the government to be sealed up in a tin
box, to be opened only on their arrival in Virginia; none, therefore, on
the voyage were possessed of authority—envy and jealousy arose among
them, which produced dissension. Besides this, the voyage was long and
tedious, owing to Newport, the commander, adhering to the old route by
the Canaries and West India islands. The voyage was as long as a slow
voyage to Australia in these days. The intention of the colonists had
been to establish themselves at the old settlement of Raleigh, but a
severe storm fortunately prevented the execution of this design, and
drove them into the magnificent Bay of Chesapeake. The headlands at the
entrance of the bay were named Cape Henry and Cape Charles, after the
sons of the king, which appellation they still retain; and the ships
soon afterwards coming into deep water “put the emigrants,” says Smith’s
narrative, “into good comfort,” and that name was bestowed on the
northern point of a broad river near the estuary of which they lay. The
emigrants were greatly pleased by the aspect of the country around them.
“Heaven and earth,” says Smith, “seemed never to have agreed better to
frame a place for man’s commodious and delightful habitation.” They
entered the noble river, which they called after King James, and spent
seventeen days in exploring the banks, during which time they
encountered a company of hostile natives, and two of their number were
wounded. With another tribe of Indians they smoked the calumet of peace.
A fine situation, fifty miles above the mouth of the river, was selected
for their settlement, the place receiving the name of Jamestown. Here
was formed the first permanent English settlement in the New World.
The important sealed-box was opened, and the names of Wingfield,
Newport, Gosnold, Smith, and three others, were found nominated to the
council. But the dissensions and jealousies which had broken out on the
voyage here assumed a more determined aspect. Smith, almost the only man
amongst them of superior character and powers of mind, had become an
object of jealousy to his fellows, and the council having elected
Wingfield as their president, proceeded to exclude Smith from their
council, under pretence of his harbouring a design to murder the
council, and establish himself as king of Virginia. Smith, however, who
had a sincere friend in Robert Hunt, the clergyman, insisted on trial by
jury, which he had a right to demand, and was not only acquitted, but
restored to his station.
Whilst timber was being felled, wherewith to freight the ships for their
homeward voyage, Newport, Smith, and some others, ascended the river to
the falls, and were well received by Powhatan, the great Indian
chieftain, called “the emperor of the country,” whose residence, a
village of twelve wigwams, was near the present city of Richmond, the
capital of the present State of Virginia. Powhatan, “a tall, sour, and
athletic man, about sixty years old,” was from the first disposed to
favour the English. When his people murmured at the intrusion of the
strangers, he replied, “they hurt you not; they take but a little waste
land.” Powhatan evidently did not possess the prophetic gift of the wise
Indians who, twenty years before, on the very same shores, foretold that
“there were more of the English generation yet to come, to kill theirs
and take their places!”
Newport set sail for England in June, carrying with him a favourable
report; but scarcely was he gone, when a change came over the aspect of
all things. Disease broke out among the settlers; their provisions were
not abundant, the water was bad: the glorious country around them, in
the beauty of which they had at first rejoiced, became an appalling
wilderness; the rank luxuriance of the soil needed clearance before new
harvests could be expected, but the colonists were unused to and
disinclined for labour; discontent gave place to despair; distress of
mind added to disease of body, and within a fortnight after the
departure of the ships, it is related that scarcely ten men out of the
whole number were able to stand; the fortifications could scarcely be
completed, and no ground tilled. The fort by autumn was filled with the
groans of the sick, whose outcries night and day for six weeks rent the
hearts of those who could afford no relief. Frequently three or four
died in a night. Fifty had perished before the close of the autumn, and
among these the brave and excellent Bartholomew Gosnold, the projector
of the enterprise, and one of the few whose influence had preserved some
degree of concord in the council.
To add to the misery of the time, Wingfield, their president, a selfish,
unprincipled man, was found to have appropriated the best stores to his
own use, himself living luxuriously, whilst the others were starving. On
his detection, he attempted to escape to the West Indies, in a bark
which had been left for the use of the colonists, but was prevented and
expelled from the council. A new president was appointed, but one wholly
inadequate to the exigencies of the colony, and by a sort of law of
necessity, rather than by general consent, the management of all fell
into the hands of Smith, the only man whose wisdom and energy were
sufficient to retrieve their desperate affairs.
Smith was possessed of a spirit of heroic daring. He had set out on
brave adventures when a boy, and though not yet thirty, had been a
champion in the service of humanity and Christianity. In his youth he
had fought for the independence of the Batavian republic, in the wars of
the Low Countries. He had travelled through France, had visited Egypt,
and returned by Italy. Again, eager for action and glory, he had fought
against the followers of Mahomet on the borders of Hungary, and during
these combats had distinguished himself, both with the Christians and
infidels, by his magnanimity and bravery. His extraordinary courage had
attracted the notice and gained for him the favour of the unfortunate
Sigismund Bathori, Prince of Transylvania. At length, being overcome in
a sudden skirmish among the wild valleys of Wallachia, he was left on
the field of battle severely wounded. Being now taken captive he was
sold as a slave in Constantinople. But here his romantic fortune by no
means deserted him. A Turkish lady had compassion on his youth and
sufferings, and wishing to befriend him sent him to a fortress in the
Crimea. The intentions of his protectress were, however, defeated for
some time; he fell into the hands of a savage taskmaster, whom however
he killed, and then seizing a horse, gallopped away to freedom on the
confines of Russia. Here again, the kindness of woman aided him in his
extreme need; and thence, travelling across the country to Transylvania,
he bade farewell to his brothers in arms, resolving to return “to his
own country.” On his way home, however, tidings of civil war in northern
Africa drew his steps aside, and he had many a perilous adventure in the
realms of Morocco.
Reaching England, he heard of the projected colonisation of North
America, a scheme so entirely consonant with his nature, that he entered
into it at once, with all the energy and enthusiasm of his character.
And now here he was, as we have seen, in the autumn of 1607, the sole
hope and support of the infant colony of Virginia, which, without his
integrity and force of character, his cheerful temperament and sagacity,
must have miserably perished.
Smith was equal to the difficulties of his position; his was a mind
fruitful in resources, and his high principle rendered him not only
strict in the fulfilment of his own arduous duties, but enabled him to
enforce the fulfilment of duty in others. Under the former governors the
natives had become unfriendly, he, on the contrary, conciliated them;
“he was more anxious,” says the record of the colony, “to gather
provisions than to find gold;” and before the winter commenced, the
Indians brought in voluntary supplies. The colonists also, influenced by
his spirit, now laboured earnestly to complete their fortifications and
erect huts for the winter.
As soon as the new spirit of activity and hope had given a brighter
aspect to the affairs of the colony, Smith set out to accomplish one of
the strictly-enjoined purposes of the colonists; that, namely, of
seeking for a communication with the South Sea, by ascending some river
which flowed from the north-west. A little above Jamestown, a river
called Chickahominy, and which flowed into the James river, seemed to
answer this purpose, it being supposed that the continent of America was
narrow, and that some river unquestionably would be found to serve as a
connexion between the two seas. Smith, who was not as ignorant as his
employers, and who entertained no expectation of reaching the Pacific
Ocean by any such means, nevertheless was well pleased, having left the
colony in a comparative state of comfort and prosperity, with abundant
provisions for the winter, to diversify his life by new adventures.
Advancing therefore up the river Chickahominy, accompanied by two
Englishmen and two Indian guides, as far as was practicable by boat, he
struck into the interior with a single Indian guide, leaving the boat
under the guardianship of the two Englishmen. Scarcely, however, had he
set forth when the English, disregarding some of his injunctions, were
attacked and killed by the Indians, and he himself suddenly assailed by
a large party. Binding his Indian guide to his arm as a buckler, he
fought manfully, killing three of his assailants; unfortunately,
however, in stepping backwards, he found himself on the edge of a
morass; his feet sank, and he was taken prisoner. Accustomed to the
views and sentiments of savage hordes in his captivity in southern
Russia, he now availed himself of that knowledge, and acted in
accordance with it. He neither begged for his life from the Indians, nor
appeared cast down. They carried him away captive, but his
self-possession never forsook him; marching through the forest he took
out his pocket-compass and explained to them its use, and then from the
globe-like figure of that instrument, as he himself relates, instructed
them regarding the roundness of the earth, and how “the sun did chase
the night about the earth continually.” His captivity among this tribe
of Indians was a more wonderful and interesting event than any other
preserved in their traditions. He wrote to the colony at Jamestown, and
his letter increased the wonder of the savages at the miraculous power
which existed within him; he seemed to them to convey a magical
intelligence to the paper. His fame spread through all the kindred
tribes, and he was conveyed as an object of curiosity from the Indian
settlements on the Chickahominy, to those on the Rappahannock and the
Potomac, and so on to the residence of Opechancanough at Pamunky. Here,
for three days, the Indian priests or sorcerers practised incantations
and mystical ceremonies to ascertain the designs and character of their
extraordinary prisoner. He remained perfectly calm, as if regardless of
his fate or assured of his safety. The Indians were amazed and
confounded; they had never, unless among their bravest men, seen a
courage and equanimity equal to this, they treated him with hospitality
and reverence, as if to propitiate the superior powers that dwelt within
him.
[Illustration: POCAHONTAS INTERCEDING FOR JOHN SMITH.]
The decision of his fate was referred to Powhatan, then residing at some
little distance, and thither he was removed. The grim warriors of the
forest, arrayed in all the pomp of savage attire, received him in solemn
council. They deliberated and consulted among themselves, and feeling
him to be a superior, as well as overcome by their fears, doomed him to
death. His execution, however, was not immediate, and in the meantime he
employed himself in making hatchets and stringing beads, which he gave
to Pocahontas, the daughter of Powhatan, a girl of ten or twelve years
of age, who for beauty of countenance and spirit, combined with
gentleness, so far excelled all the maidens of her people that she was
called “the nonpareil of the country.” At length the day of his doom was
fixed; he was to die by the blows of the hatchet; the hour was come; he
knelt on the place of execution, and already the uplifted hatchet was
raised, but at the same moment Pocahontas, obeying an impulse of mercy,
sprang to his side, threw her arms round his neck, and laying her head
upon his, interposed herself between him and death. Her devotion and
entreaties spared his life. The Indians, whom his superiority had so
long awed, now resolved to make of him a friend and adopt him into their
nation. They offered him every temptation which lay in their power to
induce him to join them in attacking the white men who had settled at
Jamestown. His firmness in resisting their offers inspired them with
still higher respect, and they dismissed him with promises of
friendship. His captivity was of great advantage to the colony; he not
only had become acquainted with the country considerably inland, but
with the Indian language and character, and was the means of
establishing a friendly intercourse between the English colony and the
tribes of Powhatan.
Returned to the colony, he found its numbers reduced to forty, and all
disheartened and disunited, and the ablest among them so wearied by the
hardships of colonial life that they were about to desert in the
pinnace. Smith, at the hazard of his life, prevented this; by reason and
firmness he once more established order, and the wants of the colony
were relieved by the generous Pocahontas, who not satisfied with having
saved the great chief from death, came now every few days with her
companions, to bring baskets of corn for him and his people.
Newport was re-despatched, almost immediately on his return to the
colony, with supplies and one hundred and thirty fresh emigrants in two
vessels. The hope of the old colonists, which had revived at the sight
of their new associates, soon died away again; for this reinforcement
was only a repetition of the old disastrous elements. The new-comers
were vagabond gentlemen, refiners of gold, goldsmiths, and jewellers.
Smith, for the first time, was almost disheartened himself. They would
neither build nor cultivate, but fancying that they should discover
grains of gold in the micacious sands of a stream near Jamestown, they
set to work, and, as Smith himself records, “there was now no talk, no
hope, no work, but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, load gold.” The
whole colony was mad about gold; and Newport having remained fourteen
weeks in harbour, idling away his time and consuming with his crew the
provisions of the colony, which were already considerably diminished by
the accidental burning of the storehouse, sailed away, having laden his
ship with the glittering earth, and, contrary to the assertions of
Smith, believing that he was conveying home vast treasures. Wingfield
and some of his partisans sailed with him. The other ship was, by the
strenuous advice of Smith, laden with cedar, skins and furs, and
furnished the first valuable remittance from Virginia to the
mother-country.
Disgusted at the folly of the colonists, upon whom his better reason had
no influence, Smith left them for awhile to their own devices, and with
a few companions made two voyages during the summer months in an open
boat to explore the Bay of Chesapeake and its affluents: and in this
manner he accomplished about three thousand miles. He surveyed the Bay
of Chesapeake to the Susquehanna. He was the first to make known to the
English the fame of the Mohawks, who dwelt upon the great water, and had
many boats and many men, and who, according to the feebler Algonquin
tribes, made war upon the whole world. He discovered and explored the
Patapsco, and probably entered the harbour of Baltimore. He entered the
mighty Potomac, which at its outlet is seven miles broad, which he
ascended beyond the present Mount Vernon and Washington, as far as its
falls above Georgetown. Nor did he content himself with merely exploring
rivers; he penetrated into the country, and established friendly
relationships with various tribes of powerful Indians, many of them in
perpetual warfare one with another. On his second expedition he brought
back with him to Jamestown a cargo of corn. He prepared an account of
his voyage, with descriptions of the country and the natives,
accompanied by a map, which remains extant to this time, and which is
singularly correct.
Shortly after his return, Smith was made president of the colony.
Subordination and industry now began to prevail. The first corn of their
own planting was reaped. Again Newport arrived with fresh emigrants, two
of whom were women. There came also a few Poles and Germans to teach the
art of making pitch, tar, potash and glass. The company in London wrote
by this vessel in a very angry strain. They were greatly dissatisfied
that their heavy outlays produced no return, for, of course, the shining
earth which Newport carried back with him on his voyage was found to be
utterly worthless. They now required a lump of gold; the positive
discovery of a direct passage to the South Sea, or some of the lost
company planted on Roanoke! “If,” said they, “the colonists do not send
back valuable commodities to defray the expenses of the voyage,
amounting to £2,000, they shall henceforth be left to manage for
themselves, as banished men.”
Smith very justly wrote back, “I entreat you send me but thirty
carpenters, husbandmen, gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths, masons, and
diggers up of the roots of trees, well provided, rather than a thousand
of such as we now have.”
But for the wisdom and efficiency of this brave man, the colony must
have perished. Making the best of such as he had, the gentlemen, whom
necessity had taught the use of the axe, were employed in cutting down
timber to freight his ship. He obliged them to work six hours a day; “he
who will not work, shall not eat” was his law. Jamestown, by the close
of autumn, assumed a more habitable appearance, but as yet only between
thirty and forty acres of land had been brought into cultivation. Food
was still so scanty that they were obliged to seek for supplies from the
Indians. Smith went himself to Powhatan for this purpose, but found the
old chief unfriendly; nay, a scheme was even laid to take his life, and
again he was saved by Pocahontas, who came through a midnight storm to
warn him of his danger. Newport was despatched with a cargo of timber,
and specimens of tar, pitch, and potash, prepared by the Germans.
The corporate company in London boasted of the success of the
enterprise, spite of their angry letter and threats to the colony
itself, and powerful men became its adherents; among these was Cecil,
the inveterate enemy of Raleigh, who had first called public attention
to the colonisation of these very shores, and who now, at this time, was
a prisoner in the Tower of London. This body having thus become more
important at home, without any knowledge or sanction of the colony
itself, entirely changed its constitution. The territory was also
extended by a grant of all lands on the sea-coast, within the limits of
two hundred miles north, and two hundred miles south of old Point
Comfort.
A new charter was obtained, which transferred the power formerly vested
in the king to the company. The shareholders at home were now the
legislators. A governor, in whom was vested uncontrolled power, was to
be appointed by them. The lives, liberties, fortunes of the colonists
were to be all placed in the hands of this one man; to the colonists
themselves not a single privilege was conceded.
Lord De la Ware was appointed governor, with a lieutenant-governor,
admiral, vice-admiral, high-marshal, and other officers, with
high-sounding titles under him, all of whom were appointed for life. A
general enthusiasm was awakened at home towards this Virginian colony,
and 500 emigrants offered themselves and were accepted. Lord De la Ware,
not being able immediately to take possession of his new government,
Newport, now admiral, set sail in June, 1609, with a fleet of nine
vessels, Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers being sent out to
administer the government till Lord De la Ware’s arrival. The admiral
and the two deputy-governors sailing in the same vessel, disagreed on
the important subject of precedence, and in a violent storm off the
Bermudas were stranded on the rocks, and one vessel being lost, seven
only reached Virginia.
Smith found himself now in a difficult position. The old charter under
which he held authority was at an end; there was now, in the absence of
the stranded vessel, which had on board all the officials, no one in the
colony who could legally assume the government. The new emigrants were,
if possible, worse than any who had hitherto arrived. “Dissolute
gallants,” says the chronicle, “packed off to escape worse destinies at
home, broken tradesmen, rakes and libertines, men fitter to breed a riot
than form a colony.” “It was not the will of God,” says Bancroft
beautifully, “that the new state should be formed of these
materials—that such men should be the fathers of a progeny born on the
American soil, who were one day to assert American liberties by their
eloquence, and defend it by their valour.”
Smith, however, with his incomparable power of organisation and rule,
contrived for some little time to bring these turbulent elements under
control, and by devising new expeditions and settlements to give them
employment. At last the explosion of a bag of gunpowder in his boat
deprived the colony of his valuable services. He was severely injured;
and as the colony furnished no surgical aid, he was compelled to return
to England to seek it in one of the latelyarrived vessels, after having
delegated his authority to Percy, brother of the Earl of Northumberland.
He left about 500 persons in Virginia, well supplied with arms,
provisions, and goods for Indian traffic. There were about sixty
dwelling-houses in the town, besides a fort, a church, and a storehouse;
there was a good stock of goats, of hogs, sheep, and poultry, together
with a few horses; with about forty acres of land brought into
cultivation. He had weathered the storm of the early days of the colony;
in all the difficulties of his situation he had exhibited a courage and
perseverance, a coolness of judgment, a patience and wisdom, which have
scarcely ever been equalled. “He was,” says the historian, “accustomed
to lead, not to send his men into danger; he would suffer rather than
borrow, starve rather than not pay. He had nothing counterfeit in his
nature; but was open, honest, and sincere.” We have dwelt long on the
deeds and character of this brave, true man, because it is ever a
pleasure to find such an one.
No sooner was Smith gone than subordination, and industry were at an
end. The colonists abandoned themselves to idleness and indulgence; the
store of provisions was consumed. Percy, to whom Smith had delegated his
authority, had not the power to enforce it; no one regarded him. The
unoffending Indians being attacked and murdered by the settlers, now
became hostile, and refused to contribute any further supplies. The
horrors of absolute famine faced them; a company of thirty seized a
small vessel belonging to the colony, and sailed away as pirates. In the
traditions of Virginia this horrible season of winter, famine, and
crime, is known as the _starving time_. By the spring of the following
year, of the 490 persons whom Smith had left in health and comparative
comfort, only sixty remained, and these so reduced and dispirited that a
few days longer would have terminated their sufferings.
This terrible time, like the flood in the days of Noah, was one of the
wise judgments of God, sent to sweep away those who were unfit to live.
It was not the will of God that the state should be formed of such base
materials; we repeat the words, as true.
A few days would have ended the lives of the remnant that was left, but
help came within the time. The ship that had been wrecked on the
Bermudas arrived without loss of life. For nine months the shipwrecked
men had remained on an uninhabited but fertile island, where they had
been well sustained. From the wreck of their own ship and timber which
they felled, they constructed two vessels, and in these safely reached
their destination. They came expecting to be received by a prosperous
and happy colony; far different was the scene which presented itself—the
extremity of distress, death by starvation even for themselves if they
remained, was that which they found. Gates resolved at once to sail for
Newfoundland, and seek safety among the fishermen there. Four pinnaces
lay in the river belonging to the colonists, and in these they all
determined to embark; the colonists were anxious to leave for ever the
scene of their misery, determining, as a last act, to burn the town in
which they had suffered so much; this, however, Gates, who was the last
to leave the shore, prevented. They fell down the stream with the tide,
and “none,” says the chronicle, “dropped a tear, for none had enjoyed
there one day of happiness.” As they approached the mouth of the stream,
a boat was seen advancing towards them. It was the long-boat of Lord De
la Ware, now put off to land from one of the three ships with which he
had come from England, bringing new colonists and provisions! The hand
of God surely was in this. The disheartened fugitives bore up the helm,
and with a favouring wind entered once more the harbour of Jamestown. It
was well for them now that there were houses left to receive them.
It was on the 11th of June, and with solemn services of thanksgiving to
Heaven, the restored colonists took possession of their former place. A
deep sense of the infinite mercies of God now, for the first time,
impressed its character upon the colony. The remnant of the original
colonists who had been saved from famine, the remnant of the former
emigrants who had been saved from shipwreck, were now restored and
provided for as by a miracle, whilst they, the new-comers, who had
expected joy and prosperity, and found instead misery and want, were
evidently the angels of God’s providence. This was an occasion which
could not but deeply impress all. “It is,” said they, “the arm of the
Lord of Hosts, who would have his people pass the Red Sea and the
wilderness before they could possess the promised land.”
After solemn religious service, Lord De la Ware read his commission. A
consultation was held for the good of the colony; government was
organised with mildness but decision. The terrible crisis through which
the colony had passed, like the effect of severe fever on the human
frame, had left it at first weak perhaps, but renovated as by a new
principle of life; the disease—the moral disease—was gone from the
colony. The colonists now performed, with obedience and alacrity, their
duties in truth and piety, assembling every morning before commencing
the labours of the day in the little church, which was kept neatly
trimmed with the wild flowers of the country, after which they returned
home and received their allowance of food. Labour went on with
cheerfulness; the houses were made warm and home-like. Comfort and
prosperity returned to the colony.
In the dawn of this better day the health of the excellent Lord De la
Ware declined. His mild virtues had been as efficient in the milder
elements now composing the colony, as the higher character of Smith had
been on its more turbulent elements; and his loss at this time was very
great. He returned to England within less than a year of his arrival,
leaving Percy, as Smith had done before him, as his deputy. The colony
now consisted of 200 men, and the departure of their beloved governor
cast a gloom on all hearts.
Fortunately Sir Thomas Dale, a worthy and experienced soldier in the Low
Countries, had been already despatched from England with supplies; and
he arriving in the colony very soon after Lord De la Ware’s departure,
assumed the government, which he administered well, though with
severity, and more according to martial than civil law. Dale,
nevertheless, was a judicious governor; he saw the wants of the colony,
and he strenuously endeavoured to remedy them. As regarded the small
number and ill-provided condition of the colonists, he wrote home
entreating that these things should be cared for, assuring the company
that their purses and their endeavours would never open nor travel in a
more meritorious enterprise. “Take four of the best kingdoms of
Christendom,” says he, “and put all together, they may in no way compare
with this country, either for commodities or goodness of soil.” And Lord
De la Ware in England testified to the same effect. In consequence of
these representations, really efficient aid came. Sir Thomas Gates, now
appointed governor, conducted six ships to Virginia, with 300 emigrants,
100 head of cattle, and other liberal supplies. And as “to oblige
quickly is to oblige twice,” this aid was doubly welcome, because it was
promptly given. Dale wrote his letter in May, and on the last day of
August Sir Thomas Gates and his ships were seen advancing towards
Jamestown. The colonists, who least of all expected so ready a response
to their wishes, seeing what appeared a large fleet advancing, dreaded
that an enemy might be at hand. This was a new terror, a new misfortune.
As the fleet approached, however, they perceived, with unspeakable joy,
that they were friends.
Sir Thomas Gates assumed his government with an act of solemn
thanksgiving; and so deep was the sentiment of gratitude in the hearts
of the colonists for this real, and, as it seemed, generous aid, that
for a long time the morning and evening prayer of the colonists was,
“Lord, bless England, our sweet native country!”
The colony now numbered 700. New settlements were formed, one situated
up the river, called Henrico, after Prince Henry; and here, on the
frontiers of the Indians, Alexander Whitaker, the “Apostle of Virginia,”
preached the word of God to the natives. But perhaps the most efficient
change which occurred in the colony had reference to the now established
law of private property. To each man was allotted a few acres of land
for a garden and orchard. Hitherto the land had all been worked in
common, and the produce deposited in public stores. The excellent
results of the new arrangement were soon apparent in the increased
industry of all. To this shortly followed larger assignments of land,
and before long the mode of common labour in the common field, to fill
the public stores, was wholly abandoned. From this time the sanctity of
private property, at least as regarded the colonists, was recognised.
The colonists themselves still made free with the possessions of the
Indians; as regarded them, _might_, which was strong in their hands, was
_right_, as is too often the case where the civilised man deals with the
savage.
In March, 1612, a new charter was obtained by the London company for
Virginia, which produced an important change in the constitution of the
colony, and through which the first seed of democracy was introduced
into the government of Anglo-America. Hitherto, as we have seen, all
power had been vested in the council, which under the first charter was
appointed by the king; now the control of the company’s affairs was
removed from the council, and placed in the hands of the stockholders
themselves, who were empowered to convene meetings for the transaction
of the lesser business, whilst a great and general court was held once a
quarter for important business. This charter also allowed the company to
raise money by means of lotteries; but this liberty, after a few years,
was withdrawn as a public evil.
The powers of the company were increased by the new charter, and the
affairs of the colony assumed an aspect of stable prosperity. As in the
days of Smith, the Indians entered into treaties of alliance, nay, even
went beyond it, declaring themselves tributaries of the English.
A marriage now took place in the colony, which forms an important event
in its annals, and the details of which we must give somewhat at length.
Captain Argall, an adventurer, who had come to Virginia in a trading
ship, being on one occasion sent up the Potomac to trade for corn, fell
in with the young Indian girl, Pocahontas, who had at that time been
absent from the colony of Jamestown for two years. Aided by a chief of
the district, whom Argall had bribed with a brass kettle, Pocahontas was
induced to go on board his ship, when he carried her off to Jamestown.
Powhatan demanded the restoration of his daughter, which Argall refused
without ransom. The naturally indignant chief prepared for war, when a
deliverer appeared for the young Indian girl in the person of John
Rolfe, an honest and discreet young Englishman. I will give the
narrative in the words of Bancroft. “Rolfe was an amiable enthusiast,
who had emigrated to the forests of Virginia, daily, hourly, and as it
were in his very sleep, hearing a voice crying in his ears that he
should strive to make Pocahontas a Christian. With the solicitude of a
troubled soul, he reflected on the true end of his being. ‘The Holy
Spirit,’ such are his own expressions, ‘demanded of me why I was
created? and conscience whispered, that, rising above the censure of the
low-minded, I should lead the blind in the right paths.’ After a great
struggle of mind, and daily and believing prayers, he resolved to labour
for the conversion of the unregenerated maiden, and winning the favour
of Pocahontas herself, he desired her in marriage. Quick of
comprehension, the Indian girl received instruction readily, and soon,
in the little church of Jamestown, which rested on rough pine columns,
fresh from the forest, and was in a style of rugged architecture as
wild, if not as frail, as an Indian wigwam, she stood before the font
which had been hollowed from the trunk of a tree, and, renouncing her
country’s idolatry, professed the faith of Jesus Christ, and was
baptized.” The gaining of this one soul, the first-fruits of Virginian
conversion, was followed by her nuptials with Rolfe. In April, 1613, to
the joy of Sir Thomas Dale, with the approbation of her father and her
friends, Opachisco, her uncle, gave the bride away; and she stammered
before the altar her marriage-vows according to the rites of the English
church.
Every historian of Virginia commemorates the marriage of Rolfe to the
Indian Pocahontas with approbation. In the year 1616, the Indian wife,
instructed in the English language, and bearing the English name of
Rebecca, the very first Christian of her nation, in company with Dale,
who had resigned his office of governor, sailed with her husband for
England. The daughter of the wilderness possessed the mild elements of
female loveliness, rendered still more beautiful by the child-like
simplicity with which her education in the savannahs of the New World
had invested her. In London she had the pleasure of meeting with her old
friend, John Smith, and by him she was recommended to the notice of the
Queen. She was caressed at court, and admired in the city. Nevertheless,
so absurd were the prevailing notions at that time regarding royalty in
England, that Rolfe narrowly escaped being called to account, because
he, a commoner, had married a princess!
“As a wife and a young mother, Pocahontas was exemplary; she had been
able to contrast the magnificence of European life with the freedom of
the western forest, and now, as she was preparing to return to America,
at the age of twenty-two, she fell a victim to the English climate,
saved, as by the hand of mercy, from beholding the extermination of the
tribes whence she sprung; leaving a spotless name, and surviving in
memory under the form of perpetual youth.” The Bollands and the
Randolphs, two of the most distinguished families of Virginia, are proud
to trace their descent from this marriage.
The portrait of Pocahontas, which is still preserved among her
descendants, represents her in the costume which was worn by the higher
class of English in the time of Elizabeth; but the stiff Indian plaits
of hair which hang down her cheeks from beneath her head-dress betray
her descent. The countenance has an affecting expression of child-like
goodness and innocence, and the eyes have a melancholy charm. The
portrait was taken in 1616, and bears the inscription, _Matoakeals.
Rebecca potentiss. Princ. Powhatan Imp. Virginæ._
The consequence of this alliance was peace with the Indians, not alone
with the Powhatans, but with the powerful Chickahominies. The Indians
wished the two nations to blend in one, and proposed more general
intermarriage, but the English, who despised the Indians as savages, and
abhorred them as heathens, would not promote such union, and by degrees
the old animosities were revived.
The same year that Pocahontas was married, her bold abductor, Captain
Samuel Argall, who had the spirit of a pirate, sailing up the eastern
coast in an armed vessel, discovered that the French had established a
little settlement called St. Savieur, near Penobscot, on Mount Desert
Island. At once he cannonaded the intrenchments and speedily gained
possession. The poor settlers clung to the cross in the middle of the
village, while their houses, and their ship lying peacefully in harbour,
were pillaged; some of the colonists he sent off to France, others he
carried to Jamestown, and among these one of their Jesuit priests, the
other being killed.
The colonists of Virginia, jealous of any French settlement on their
coasts, despatched Argall again to the north, with the Jesuit prisoner
as his pilot; and on this expedition he dispersed the settlement at Port
Royal; the place itself, he burned, and the settlers took shelter in the
woods. On his return, he entered the harbour now called New York, and
compelled the Dutch settlement on the island of Manhattan to acknowledge
the English supremacy, and this, although England was then at peace with
France and Holland. No sooner, however, was Argall gone, than the French
returned to Port Royal, and the Dutch hoisted again their flag on
Manhattan.
The prosperity and the anticipated glories of Virginia were now themes
of exultation in England; and the theatre, which had formerly made the
colony a subject of derision, rang with its praises, and lauded King
James as the patron of colonies.
In 1614, Sir Thomas Gates left the colony, appointing Sir Thomas Dale
his successor. A few words must now be said regarding the land-law of
Virginia. The original grant had allowed all persons coming to Virginia,
or sending others, one hundred acres of land for each person so arriving
in the colony. This allowance was now reduced to fifty, and so it
remained as long as Virginia was a British colony; two shillings for
each hundred acres being paid annually as quit-rent. Such emigrants as
were sent out at the expense of the company were its servants, bound by
indenture to labour for the company, receiving three acres of land each,
and being allowed one month’s service for themselves, with a small
allowance of two bushels of corn from the public store; the rest of
their labour belonged to their employers. This class gradually wore out.
Others were tenants of the company, and paid two barrels and a half of
corn as an annual contribution to the public store, and gave one month’s
labour in the twelve to the public service; but this, however, neither
in seed time nor harvest. Other lands were granted as rewards of real or
pretended merit, none, however, to exceed two thousand acres to one
person. And here it may be mentioned, that to John Smith, the greatest
benefactor of the infant colony, not a single acre of land was ever
awarded, and he, whose unselfishness was only equal to his merit, never
demanded it. To the governor was appointed a plantation to be cultivated
for him by the company’s servants; and the other colonial officers were
remunerated in the same manner. Twelve pounds ten shillings paid into
the company’s treasury, gave a title also to one hundred acres, with a
reserved claim for as much more.
Such were the earliest land-laws of Virginia; and imperfect and unequal
as they were, they yet enabled the cultivator to become the proprietor
of the soil. The cultivation of corn in a few years had become so great,
that the colonists, from buyers of corn, had become sellers to the
Indians. Tobacco also was cultivated with great success; potash, soap,
glass, tar, all gave place now to tobacco. Seeking for gold was happily
at an end; fields and gardens, nay, even the public squares and streets
of Jamestown, grew tobacco. Tobacco, which was the life of Virginian
industry, became its staple produce and finally its currency.
In the midst of all this growing prosperity, the discontents of the
colony were justly raised by evils incident to their position under a
corporate body, through whom interested parties obtained posts for which
they were wholly unfitted, without the colony having a voice in the
appointment. Hence, in 1616, Sir Thomas Dale, an able though stern
governor, having returned to England, leaving George Yeardley
deputy-governor, the notorious Captain Samuel Argall, through the
influence of Lord Rich, afterwards Earl of Warwick, was sent out, not
only as deputy-governor, but admiral. A more unfit man could not have
been selected. Martial law was again the law of the colony. The return
of Lord De la Ware was petitioned for, and that excellent man embarked
to resume his office, but died on the voyage. Unlimited power was in the
rapacious hands of Argall; the labour of the colonists was enforced for
his benefit; even life itself was insecure against his capricious
passions. The colony appealed to the company on behalf of an innocent
man, who for merely speaking freely against his tyranny, was condemned
by him to death. Fortunately for the colony, Argall had also defrauded
the company; he was therefore deposed, and George Yeardley, a mild and
popular man, was appointed captain-general; Argall in the meantime,
disappeared from the colony, having fled with the fruits of his
peculation to the West Indies, and thence to England, where, strange to
say, his partisans, of whom he had many in the company, prevented his
being called to account.
Under the administration of Yeardley, who was now knighted, the colony
prospered greatly; martial law was abolished; the planters were released
from further service to the colony, and the first colonial assembly ever
held in Virginia took place at Jamestown, in June, 1619. The exactions
and abuses of Argall had led to the concession of law and justice by the
company. A great step was gained. This was the dawn of legislative
liberty in America. “The colonists, now become willing to regard
Virginia as their future home,” says the old chronicler, “fell to
building houses and planting corn.”
Fortunately, also, the treasurer of the company in London, Sir Edwin
Sandys, a man of great judgment and firmness, investigated the affairs
of the colony, and carried out the reform of many abuses. It was now
twelve years since the foundation of Jamestown, yet the colony consisted
but of six hundred persons, men, women, and children; and in this
present year of 1620, Sir Edward Sandys sent out twelve hundred and
sixty-one persons. The character of his emigration is also worthy of
consideration. Hitherto but few persons going to the colony had done so
with the intention of settling; their purpose had been to make money and
then return home; few women, therefore, had ventured across the
ocean;—now, however, everything was changed for the better; Virginia
offered a desirable home for families, therefore “ninety agreeable young
women, of incorrupt lives,” through the influence of Sandys, were sent
out at the expense of the company, sure of a cordial welcome in the
colony, but only to be married to men well able to support them, and who
would willingly pay the cost of their passage. This adventure answered
so well in every respect, that the next year sixty more “maids of
virtuous education, young, handsome, and well recommended,” went out;
and so great was the demand for them, that their price rose from one
hundred and twenty pounds weight of tobacco, to one hundred and fifty
each; and so much was the worth of a man increased by his being married,
that the company gave employment by preference to men with wives. The
result of this new element in the colony was great, but not more so than
was natural. Now commenced the existence of domestic life, and with it
virtuous sentiments and habits of thrift. Within three years, so greatly
had emigration increased under these circumstances, that 3,500 persons
landed in the colony, amongst whom were many Puritan refugees.
[Illustration: FIRST MEETING OF THE ASSEMBLY IN VIRGINIA.]
In 1621, Sir George Yeardley was succeeded as governor by Sir Edward
Wyatt, who carried out with him a _written constitution_, ratifying in
the main the form of government established by Yeardley. The form of
constitution prescribed was similar to that of England, and remained to
be the model of all other Anglo-American governments. Its purport was
declared to be “the greatest comfort and benefit to the people, and the
prevention of injustice, grievances, and oppression.” A more sound basis
than this for any government could not have been devised. A governor and
permanent council were to be appointed by the company; a general
assembly was to meet yearly, consisting of the members of the council,
and delegates chosen by the people as their representatives, two for
each borough, the colony being divided into eleven boroughs. All
enactments of the General Assembly, however, required, to become valid,
the ratification of the company in England. It was further ordained—and
this gave the greatest satisfaction perhaps of all—that after the
government of the colony had once become established, no orders of the
company in London should be valid unless ratified by the General
Assembly of the colony. The courts of justice were to be constituted
according to the laws and mode of trial established in England.
Representative government and trial by jury were established in America;
and the colonists, no longer depending on a commercial corporation, now
became enfranchised citizens. “Henceforth,” says Bancroft, “the supreme
power was held to reside in the hands of the colonial parliament, and of
the king, as king of Virginia. This ordinance was the basis on which
Virginia erected the superstructure of her liberties. Its influences
were wide and enduring, and can be traced through all following years of
the history of the colony. It constituted, in its infancy, a university
of freemen; and succeeding generations learned to cherish institutions
which were as old as the first period of the prosperity of their
fathers. The privileges which were now conceded could never be wrested
from the Virginians, and as new colonies arose at the south, their
proprietaries could hope to win emigrants only by bestowing franchises
as large as those enjoyed by their older rival.”
In the month of August, 1620, fourteen months before the sitting of the
first representative assembly in Virginia, about four months before the
landing of the pilgrim fathers in America, a century after the last
hereditary serfdom had been abolished in England, and six years after
the commons of France had petitioned for the emancipation of every serf
in any fief, a Dutch man-of-war entered James River, bringing in twenty
negroes for sale. The necessity for labourers seems to have been the
first cause of the introduction of negro slaves into Virginia, and the
Dutch were for many years the principal slave traders. The cultivation
of silk and of the vine had been introduced, but scarcity of labourers
caused these branches of cultivation to languish; cotton, on the other
hand, soon engaged attention. In 1621, the first seeds were sown as an
experiment, and their “plentiful coming up” promised the most successful
results.
Wyatt found the colony in a high degree of prosperity. The English had
extended their plantations considerably inland, along the banks of the
James River and the Potomac; wherever rich ground invited, there they
established themselves, no longer fearing the solitude of the forest,
because they no longer dreaded the power of the Indians. The Indians
were regarded with contempt or pity; a single mastiff would put many to
flight; seven hundred armed savages had on one occasion been routed by
fifteen armed men; no care was taken to conciliate their good will,
although in many cases their condition was improved by the introduction
of some of the arts of civilised life. Their simple, child-like state
may be exhibited by one small circumstance. A house had been built for
the great chief Opechancanough, successor of Powhatan, according to the
English style, and so delighted was he with the lock on the door, that
he locked and unlocked it a hundred times a day, and regarded it as a
triumph of skill.
So peaceful were all things, and so amicable appeared the relationship
with the natives, on the arrival of Wyatt, that the emigrants needed
fire-arms apparently merely for the destruction of game; and the old law
of the colony which had made it death to teach an Indian the use of
fire-arms, was now so much disregarded, that the Indians were employed
by the whites as their huntsmen. Enmity, however, was not extinct in the
heart of the savage. Powhatan, the father of Pocahontas, the firm friend
of the English, was dead, and his younger brother, his successor,
entertained different sentiments towards the strangers, whose rapidly
increasing numbers and widely extending settlements might justly awake
the fear and the jealousy of the primeval possessors of the soil. A deep
plan of extermination was laid. In open battle the Indian knew that he
had no chance, but by cunning and guile he could accomplish much. A
general attack was determined on by the Indians, but all preparations
concealed by impenetrable secrecy. The Indians appeared as amicably
disposed as heretofore. They visited the settlements of the English,
borrowed their boats, sat at their tables, and made professions of
friendship; “sooner,” said they, “shall the sky fall than our friendship
be broken by us!” and this on the very morning of the day which was to
destroy the whole race.
At mid-day on the 22nd of March, at one and the same moment, the Indians
fell upon the whole white population scattered in distant villages, one
hundred and forty miles along each side of the river! No suspicion of
such an intention had been excited;—men, women, and children, the
missionary who had taught them and laboured among them with unwearying
kindness; those from whom the Indian never received anything but
benefits, all were murdered, with every appalling circumstance of Indian
barbarity, and so great was their fury, that they even attacked the
dead, as if to murder them anew.
In one hour three hundred and forty-seven persons were destroyed. And
the whole of Virginia might have slept in one bloody grave, had not a
converted Indian, the night before the massacre, revealed the plot to an
Englishman, to whom he was much attached, and whose life he wished to
save. By this means Jamestown and the nearer settlements were fully
prepared. The larger portion of the colony was saved, but so universal
was the terror which this bloody massacre occasioned, that all public
works were interrupted, and the more remote settlements abandoned. The
cultivation of the land was almost at once given up, and of the eighty
flourishing, happy settlements which had so lately existed, now there
remained but eight. Some of the colonists fled in their terror to
England, and sickness broke out amongst those who remained.
The colonists rose up for vengeance, and in England so great was the
sympathy and compassion excited, that new supplies and arms were
immediately sent out; King James, for his part, ordering a quantity of
arms which had been thrown into the Tower as good for nothing to be sent
over, as they might be useful against the Indians! The city of London
and many private persons generously contributed aid; and the brave John
Smith, then in London, volunteered his services to defend the colonists
and chastise the Indians; but the company declared it had no funds, and
he was not rich enough to go out at his own cost.
A deep cloud rested on Virginia, which nothing but vengeance on the
Indians would dispel. The Indians, not having fully accomplished their
scheme, and now justly dreading a tenfold retaliation, fled far into the
forest. But their land was seized upon, their open fields and villages,
all planted on the pleasantest and most fertile sites, were soon in
secure possession of the English. To pursue the natives to the
fastnesses of the wilderness was impossible, therefore the English in
their turn practised guile. They assumed an aspect of forgiveness; the
savages, by degrees losing their fear, ventured forth again, and even
approaching their old haunts, resettled themselves in the neighbourhood
of their enemies. The aspect of peace and forbearance was, however, only
vengeance deferred.
In July of the following year, the Indians were attacked by an army
under commissioned officers; a similar attack was repeated the next
year, and for several years, it being now a colonial principle that no
peace should be concluded with the Indians.
Meantime great changes as regarded the relationships of the colony to
the mother-country were taking place. The colony of Virginia had not
been a lucrative enterprise for the London company; the shares at the
present time were as unproductive stock of little value; the holders
were numerous, and the meetings of the company in London had, instead of
being mere meetings of business, become scenes of political debate, in
which the supporters of liberty were arrayed against the supporters of
royal prerogative. Liberal opinions here found free play. The king was
displeased by this freedom of debate. Gondemar, the Spanish envoy,
warned James that “these Virginian courts were only a seminary to a
seditious parliament.” James, who abhorred freedom of opinion,
determined to nip it in the bud, by putting an end to the hot-bed which
fostered it. His first endeavour was to control the election of officers
by overawing their assemblies; and failing of that, he determined to
sequestrate their patent, and recover to himself the authority which he
had conceded to the company. Commissioners in the interest of the king
were appointed to examine into the affairs of the corporation, although
former charges against them had been satisfactorily answered, the
records were seized; the deputy-treasurer imprisoned, and private
letters from Virginia intercepted and examined. Smith was examined, and
his straightforward, honest answers exposed the bad management of the
company, and showed that the withdrawal of the charter would be a boon
to the colony. This surprised all; commissioners, who had been appointed
to examine the affairs of the corporation and the colony itself,
reported in favour of a change. The king did not hesitate; the London
company was dissolved, and Virginia once more became a royal government,
as under its first charter.
Whilst these things were going on in England, the Virginians were not
indifferent. When the commissioners arrived in the colony, the prayer of
the colonists was that the governors might not have absolute power; that
the liberty of popular assemblies might not be retrenched, “for
nothing,” said they, “can conduce more to public satisfaction and public
utility, than the free discussion of our own affairs.” That this subject
might be efficiently urged, an agent was sent for that purpose to
England, a tax of four pounds weight of the best tobacco being levied on
each male above the age of sixteen, and who had been a twelvemonth in
the colony, to defray the expenses. But this agent unfortunately died on
his voyage.
The spirit of liberty, however, had taken deep root on the Virginian
soil. Intimidation and promised advantage could not induce the colony to
pray for a repeal of the charter under which their first constitutional
liberty had been granted. On the contrary, the assembly met, and laid
down laws for itself. The governor said, “they shall not lay any taxes
or impositions on the colony, its lands or commodities, other way than
by the authority of the General Assembly, to be levied and employed as
the said assembly shall appoint.” Virginia, the Old Dominion, as it is
called, was the first to set an example of just and wise legislation as
regarded the use of the public money. Others imitated the example in due
time. Various governors had endeavoured by penal enactments to compel
the culture of corn; now it was said, “for the encouragement of men to
plant store of corn, the price shall not be stinted, but it shall be
free for any man to sell it as dear as he can.” Through the whole of
this disturbed period the Virginians showed themselves admirably capable
of popular government, proving how truly, with the aid of free
discussion, men become good legislators in their own concerns; wise
legislation being the enacting of proper laws at proper times, and no
criterion being so nearly infallible as the fair representation of the
interests to be affected. Among the laws which were at this time framed,
and which reflect the manners and spirit of the age, we may mention the
following. It was enacted “that there should be a room or house set
apart in every plantation for the worship of God, sequestered and set
apart for that purpose only;” also a place of burial “sequestered and
paled in.” Absence from public worship without allowable excuse, was
punished by the fine of a pound weight of tobacco, or fifty pounds
weight, if absence continued a month. Divine service was according to
the canons of the English church. The 22nd of March was added to the
church festivals, in commemoration of the escape from the Indian
massacre. Any minister absent from his parish above two months annually
forfeited half his salary. The falsely disparaging of a minister
rendered the offender liable to a fine of five hundred pounds weight of
tobacco, and publicly to ask pardon of the minister. Ministers’ salaries
were to be paid out of the first-gathered and best tobacco and corn.
Drunkenness and swearing were punishable offences. Three sufficient men
were to be sworn in each parish to see that every man cultivated corn
sufficient for his family. Every settler was to fence in a garden for
himself of one acre, for the planting of vines, roots, herbs, and
mulberry trees. Weights and measures were to be sealed. Every house was
to be palisadoed for defence, and people were not to go out in such
numbers as might leave their houses undefended and liable to attack.
Delinquent persons of quality, not fit to undergo corporal punishment,
might be imprisoned at discretion, or fined by the monthly courts. “At
the beginning of July, the inhabitants of every plantation were to fall
upon their neighbouring savages, as they did last year.” Every person
wounded in this service was to be cured at the public expense, and if
permanently lamed would have maintenance for life suitable to his
quality.
The London company was at an end. “It had,” says Bancroft, “fulfilled
its high destinies; it had confirmed the colonisation of Virginia, and
had conceded a liberal form of government to Englishmen in America. It
could accomplish no more.”
The term of five years was fixed as that of the period of representative
government. Sir Thomas Wyatt was confirmed in office for that term; and
the king himself was about to frame a code of fundamental laws for the
colony, when death fortunately put an end to his attempt.
Charles I. succeeded his father, March 27, 1625. As regarded Virginia,
he had no more interest in it than as the country producing tobacco, and
from which he hoped to derive a large revenue. His first act with
reference to the colony was an endeavour to obtain for himself the sole
monopoly of this trade. As to its constitutions and political rights, he
did not trouble himself about them, and they became established by his
very indifference.
In 1626, Wyatt having returned to Europe, Sir George Yeardley was
appointed his successor. The colony prospered; in 1627, one thousand
emigrants arrived in the country. The following year Yeardley died,
leaving behind him a memory cherished by the colony as the first
governor who had convened a representative assembly.
Again, the king offered to contract for the whole crop of tobacco,
desiring that an assembly might be called to consider his proposal. The
assembly returned a firm negative to the royal monopolist.
On the death of Yeardley, John Harvey, who had been for several years a
member of the council, and an extremely unpopular man, was nominated
governor by the king; but as he was not then in the colony, some time
elapsed before he appeared to assume his authority.
It was at this period that Lord Baltimore visited Virginia. He fled
hither as a persecuted man, and was hospitably received; nor must it be
forgotten that, as regarded the pilgrims of Plymouth rock, they were
invited to leave that sterile and inhospitable region, and plant
themselves in the milder regions of Delaware Bay. Puritanism was
evidently at that time not persecuted in Virginia, though “needless
novelties” in worship had been prohibited by law for some years.
In the autumn of 1629, Harvey, the new governor, arrived. He was
unwelcome from various causes; he belonged to the faction to which
Virginia ascribed her earliest sorrows; he had rendered himself
extremely unpopular as a member of the council; besides which, it had
been well pleasing to the colony that King James, on assuming supreme
authority, had entrusted the government to impartial agents; but now the
appointment of Harvey indicated a change of policy. His arrival among
them was naturally cause neither of satisfaction nor of rejoicing, nor
does he appear to have conciliated their favour. The older historians
charge him with arbitrary and tyrannical conduct; yet it may be
questionable whether he was quite deserving of the ill-will with which
he was regarded, as the revised code of laws, which was published with
consent of the governor and the council, neither abrogated nor abridged
any of the civil rights of the colonists.
His administration, however, was disturbed by disputes respecting
land-titles under the royal grants, and principally in consequence of
the grant of Maryland to Lord Baltimore, which caused the first European
blood to be shed by Europeans on the banks of the Chesapeake. Harvey not
seconding the claims of Virginia against the royal grant, was considered
by the colonists to have betrayed their interests; and full of
indignation against him, they “thrust him out of his government,” says
the old chronicle, and “appointed Captain John West governor in his
stead till the king’s pleasure should be known.” Harvey consented to go
to England to meet his accusers there, but, as might have been expected,
no accusations would be received there against the man who had been
merely acting according to royal instructions. The commission of
accusation could not even obtain a hearing. Harvey returned to occupy
his former post, and remained in office till 1639, when Sir Francis
Wyatt succeeded him. Two years afterwards, Sir William Berkeley was
appointed governor. The civil condition of Virginia was greatly
improved; the laws and customs of England still further introduced;
cruel punishments were abolished; old controversies adjusted; a more
equitable system of taxation was introduced; taxes being assessed not in
proportion to numbers, but “to men’s abilities and estates;” the rights
of property and the freedom of industry were secured, so that Virginia
enjoyed all the civil liberties which a more free form of government
could have conferred. The Virginians seem early to have understood the
true elements of political economy. In a petition addressed to England,
in 1642, they asserted the necessity of the freedom of trade, “for
freedom of trade,” say they, “is the blood and life of a commonwealth.”
And as regarded self-government, they argued with the force of truth,
“there is more likelihood that such as are acquainted with the clime and
its accidents may, upon better grounds, prescribe our advantages, than
such as sit at the helm in England.”
Spite of the liberality which had been exhibited in the colony towards
diversities of religious opinion, which had led the excellent Whitaker
to say, “let neither surplice nor subscription be spoken of here;” which
had caused an invitation to the pilgrims of New Hampshire to remove
within the precincts of Virginia; a spirit of intolerance was now
manifested by the legislative assembly, and it was ordained that “no
minister preach or teach except in conformity to the Church of England.”
Whilst puritanism and republicanism were working together for the
downfall of monarchy in England, Virginia showed the strongest
attachment to the cause of episcopacy and royalty.
The hostility of the settlers against the natives remained year by year
unabated. Twenty-one years after the massacre, it was enacted in the
assembly that no terms of peace should be entertained with the Indians.
Now, therefore, the Indians, hearing that troubles and dissensions were
arising in England, resolved once more on a general massacre, hoping,
that by destroying the corn-fields and cattle, they might cause any
remnant who remained to perish by famine. The eighteenth of April was
fixed upon as the fatal day; the attack commenced on the border
frontiers; but the Indians themselves, filled as it were by a
consciousness of their own weakness and dread of the consequences, had
scarcely begun to shed blood when they fled. The number of victims was
again about three hundred. The colonists roused themselves at once, and
war commenced again vigorously against the Indians. The aged
Opechancanough, the successor of Powhatan, was soon taken prisoner, and
with his death peace was secured to the English.
This fierce warrior, and implacable enemy of the whites, was now nearly
one hundred years of age, and his once stately form was wasted with the
fatigues of war and bent with the weight of years. Unable to walk, says
the historian of Virginia, he was carried from place to place by his
followers. His flesh was almost wasted away from his bones, and his
eyelids were so powerless, that he could only see when they were lifted
by his followers.
After a long and rapid march, Sir William Berkeley, with a party of
horse, surprised the aged warrior at some distance from his residence,
and took him prisoner to Jamestown, where he was exhibited as an object
of curiosity and of triumph to the victor. The old monarch of the
forest, retaining a spirit unbroken by the decrepitude of the body, bore
his calamities of fortune with a proud though melancholy mien. Hearing
footsteps in the room where he lay, he requested his eyelids to be
raised, when perceiving a crowd of spectators, he called for the
governor, and upon his appearance said with calm dignity, “Had it been
my fortune to have taken Sir William Berkeley prisoner, I would have
scorned to have made a show of _him_.”
About a fortnight after the noble old chiefs capture, one of his guards,
from private revenge, shot him in the back, and after languishing for
some time of his wound, the old man died.
The Indians were completely subdued, and a cession of land was the terms
on which peace was granted to the original possessors of the soil. The
red man began to pass away from the precincts of the white. Within a
short period, comparatively speaking, but few memorials of their former
existence remained, saving the euphonious or sonorous names of rivers
and mountains, the great imperishable features of nature, which thus
became their monuments.
Whilst civil war and political convulsions were agitating England to the
very centre of her being, peace and prosperity, security and quiet,
equal laws and general contentment, were at home in Virginia. The
population of the colony amounted to twenty thousand, and was still
increasing; the houses were filled with children, as the ports were with
ships and emigrants. At Christmas, 1648, two ships from London traded
with Virginia, two from Bristol, twelve from Holland, and seven from New
England.
The Virginians adhered faithfully to the royal cause, nor would they,
after the execution of the monarch, recognise the Commonwealth, but
still acknowledged Charles II. to be monarch, while yet a fugitive.
Virginia soon became filled with cavaliers, fugitives like their
sovereign. “Men of consideration among the nobility, gentry, and clergy,
struck with horror and despair at the execution of the king, and
desiring no reconciliation with the unrelenting rebels, made their way
to the shores of the Chesapeake, where every house was for them a
hostelry, and every planter a friend.” In the hospitable homes of
Virginia they often met to talk over their own and their country’s
sorrows, and to nourish loyalty and hope.
The Parliament, extremely displeased that this colony should thus become
the asylum and nursery of monarchical principles, sent, in 1652, a naval
force to reduce them to submission. Already, in 1650, foreign ships had
been forbidden to trade with the contumacious colony, and in 1651 the
celebrated Navigation Act was passed, which, having for its object the
protection of British shipping, and the acquisition to England of the
trade of the world, greatly shackled and restricted the commercial
prosperity of her colonies.
In March, 1652, the republican party in the mother-country determined on
obtaining the concession of obedience from Virginia. Commissioners
chosen from among the planters themselves were empowered to act as
pacificators with their country, the submission of which, if their
efforts failed, would be enforced by the severities of war. It was the
reconciliation of parent and child; the offended parent assumed an
attitude of displeasure and resentment; obedient submission was that
which was demanded, and which, if needful, would be enforced by
violence; yet, would but the child submit, the parent would concede
much; and the child, seeing the parent in earnest, yielded at once, and
obtained the offered concession. No sooner, therefore, had the
war-frigate of the Commonwealth anchored in the Chesapeake, than all
thoughts of resistance were laid aside. The colonists, however loyal
might be their inclinations, were more disposed to establish the freedom
of their own institutions than to assume a hostile attitude against the
mother-country, even on behalf of an exiled monarch.
There is something noble in the position which Virginia now assumed. It
was not to force that she surrendered, but by “a voluntary deed and
mutual compact; and in return she obtained, that her people should
possess all the liberties of free-born people of England; should manage
their business as formerly in their own assembly, and should have as
free-trade as the people of England. No taxes nor customs were to be
levied except by her own representatives, no forts erected nor garrisons
maintained but by her consent.”
These conditions, so favourable to liberty, worthy to be granted by the
champions of political and civil liberty in England, were a cause of
great satisfaction to Virginia; and so earnest was the spirit of her
submission and her desire to establish an amicable understanding with
the mother-country, that Richard Bennett, one of the commissioners of
the Parliament, a merchant and a Roundhead, was unanimously elected
governor in the place of Sir William Berkeley.
The spirit of democratic liberty, like a strong young tree, grew with
every change of season. Hitherto the governor and the council had sat in
the General Assembly; the propriety of this was now questioned, and only
retained by a concession which made the house of burgesses, a convention
of the people, virtually possessed of supreme authority. Nor were these
privileges at all interfered with by Cromwell. When Bennett two years
afterwards retired from office, Edward Diggs, a steadfast Commonwealth’s
man, was elected his successor, and after him the “worthy old Samuel
Matthews, a planter of forty years, a most deserving republican, who
kept a good house, lived bravely, and was a true lover of Virginia.”
Under his governorship a single instance of the determined spirit of
democracy occurred which still more strengthened and established it. The
governor and his council having come to issue with the burgesses on a
question of prerogative, the governor yielded, reserving a right of
appeal to Cromwell. The members of the Assembly, fearing through this an
infringement of their liberty, asserted their own sovereign authority,
and deposed the governor and council; re-electing Matthews, however, and
investing him “with all the just rights and privileges as governor and
captain-general of Virginia,” and Matthews submitted, as Virginia
herself had done in her quarrel with England, that by submission he
might conquer. He acknowledged the right of the burgesses to depose and
re-elect; took the oath; and thus was popular liberty still further
strengthened in the Old Dominion—an example to all other newer states.
In March, 1660, the very time when the resignation of Richard Cromwell
left England without a ruler, good old Samuel Matthews died, and
Virginia was in the same predicament. But the burgesses of Virginia,
unlike the people of England, stood fast by democratic principles, and,
enacting that the supreme power should still reside in the General
Assembly until there should arrive from England a commission, which the
Assembly itself should adjudge to be lawful, proceeded to elect Sir
William Berkeley as their governor; and he in his turn acknowledged the
validity of this act of the Assembly by assuming office, “for I am,”
said he, “but a servant of the Assembly.”
Virginia, in this case, however, it must be observed, recognised
covertly another authority higher than that of her own Assembly,
retaining, amid her spirit of democracy, a firm sentiment of loyalty.
She hoped at this time for the restoration of the Stuarts.
Virginia was composed of separate boroughs, and the government organised
on the basis of universal suffrage. Every freeman was possessed of a
vote. On an attempt to limit the right of voting to householders, it was
declared to be “hard and unagreeable to reason that every person shall
pay equal taxes and yet have no vote in the elections.”
During the Commonwealth, Virginia not only enjoyed the utmost political
liberty, but unlimited freedom of commerce also, while her own internal
state was that of peace and prosperity. “Tobacco, the great staple
product of the country, was the medium of exchange. Theft was hardly
known, and the spirit and administration of the criminal law was mild
and merciful; the cultivation of land was carried on very successfully;
and as regarded commerce, the navigation laws were a mere dead letter.
Virginia even traded with the Dutch during the period when the Protector
and Holland were desperately contesting the sovereignty of the seas. The
Virginians were the early advocates of free trade, and invited the Dutch
and all foreigners to trade with them on the payment of no higher duty
than that which was levied on such English vessels as were bound for a
foreign port.” Proposals of peace were discussed between New
Netherlands, the Dutch colony on the North American shore, and Virginia.
During this period, also, considerable advance was made in religious
liberty, although the Quakers were banished from the colony.
At the period of the Restoration, Virginia possessed, among the
privileges which she had won for herself, freedom of commerce with the
whole world, and the universal elective franchise. The population
amounted now to 30,000, and it was esteemed an honour to be a born
Virginian. Numbers of the emigrants of late years had been, as we have
seen, royalist officers, men of family and education, and these, though
they still retained their loyalty, offered no impediment to the free
exercise of independent principles in Virginia, and finally the
newly-adopted country superseded the old, and the interests and
liberties of Virginia became to them dearer even than the monarchical
principles of which they had been the supporters in England, and for
their adherence to which they had been exiles.
“God Almighty,” says their statute-book of this time, “hath vouchsafed
myriads of children to this colony.” Young Virginians were growing up
throughout the length and breadth of the land. Virginia was becoming the
home of patriots.
“Labour,” adds Bancroft, summing up the advantages and prosperity of the
colony, “was valuable; land was cheap; competence promptly followed
industry. There was no need of a scramble; abundance gushed from the
earth for all. It was the best poor man’s country in the world. Yet, as
the shadow-side of this bright picture, it must be conceded that plenty
encouraged indolence; everything was imported from England. The chief
branch of industry, for the purpose of exchanges, was tobacco planting,
and the spirit of invention was enfeebled by the uniformity of pursuit.”
CHAPTER V.
COLONISATION OF MARYLAND.
The second charter granted to the London company embraced an extent of
country 200 miles north of old Point Comfort, thus including the whole
of the present state of Maryland. The country round the head of the
Chesapeake was early explored, and a commercial relationship established
with the natives whom Smith had been the first to visit. The hope of a
good trade in furs continued to animate adventurers into these remote
parts, and in 1631, William Clayborne, a man of a resolute and
enterprising spirit, who was destined to exercise a long-continued and
disturbing influence on the colony, obtained a royal license to trade
with the Indians, and to form a settlement on Kent Island.
Clayborne had been in the first instance sent out by the London company
as a surveyor to make a map of the country, and afterwards was appointed
by King James a member of the council, which appointment was confirmed
by Charles I. From 1627 to 1629 he was employed by the governor of
Virginia to explore the source of the Bay of Chesapeake with the
adjacent country, from the 34th to the 41st degree of latitude. By this
means he became familiar with the resources of the country and the
opportunities which it afforded for traffic; and in consequence of these
representations a company was formed in England for trading with the
natives, the royal license being granted in Clayborne’s name.
By virtue of this royal license, which was confirmed by the colonial
commission, Clayborne established a trading settlement on the island of
Kent, in the very heart of Maryland, and another near the mouth of
Susquehannah. Virginia anticipated that, as commander of the Bay of
Chesapeake and possessor of the soil on both banks of the Potomac, she
should secure immense commercial prosperity without the interference of
a rival. But while she was thus anticipating a brilliant future, the
territory on which her hopes were founded was snatched from her, and a
new government erected on her very threshold.
It has been the happy fortune of North America, that her states,
severally founded by men of various religious opinions, origin, and
purposes, have ever been the asylums of the persecuted. Men of truth and
high principle, suffering at home from the narrowness of state policy
and the bigotry of creeds, fled hither, and here, according as their
views approximated more nearly or more remotely with the broad spirit of
Christianity, succeeded in establishing that freedom of action and
opinion after which they had vainly sighed in the old countries.
Among the enlightened men of the age who suffered from the spirit of
religious animosity at that time prevailing in England, was Sir George
Calvert, a graduate of Oxford, a man whose mind had been enlarged by
travel, a member of Parliament for York, his native county, and who was
even advanced by his sovereign to the honour of secretary-of-state. All
historians are agreed in commending his knowledge of business, his
industry, and his uprightness of character. Disgusted and distressed by
the divisions and contentions of the protestant church, he
conscientiously adopted the catholic faith, and on the open avowal of
his conversion resigned the emoluments of office. King James, who was at
that time on the throne, and who was never bitter against Catholics,
retained him, however, in the Privy Council, and advanced him to the
dignity of the Irish peerage under the title of Lord Baltimore.
Lord Baltimore, who even while secretary-of-state was a member of the
Virginia company and a powerful advocate of American colonisation, had
obtained in his own name a patent for colonising the southern promontory
of Newfoundland, hoping there to establish a refuge for the persecuted
Catholics of his native country. This settlement, which was called
Avalon, on which he expended a large amount of his own private property,
and which he visited twice in person, was finally abandoned, owing to
the many difficulties against which it had to contend, partly from the
severity of the climate and the sterility of the soil, and partly from
the hostile attacks of the French, who were possessed of the surrounding
country.
Lord Baltimore now turned his thoughts to Virginia, where the climate
was mild, the land fertile, and the country beyond the Potomac as yet
unoccupied. In 1632, therefore, on the dissolution of the London
company, and the royal resumption of prerogative, it was not difficult
for him, a favourite with the monarch, to obtain a charter for domains
in that colony, which was no doubt all the more readily granted, as the
Dutch, the Swedes, and the French were prepared to occupy the country.
This charter, according to internal evidence and concurrent opinion, was
drawn up by Lord Baltimore himself, but owing to his death before it
received the royal assent, was ultimately made out in the name of his
son Cecil. The territory thus granted was comprised between the ocean
and the 40th degree of latitude. The meridian of the western fountains
of the Potomac, the river itself from its source to its mouth, and a
line drawn due east from Watkin’s Point to the ocean, were the
boundaries of this grant, which was erected into a separate province,
under the name of Maryland, from Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I. The
country thus bestowed on Lord Baltimore, his heirs and assigns, as
absolute lord and proprietary, was to be held by the tenure of fealty
only, paying a yearly rent of two Indian arrows and a fifth of all gold
and silver which it might yield; and the charter, unlike any which had
hitherto obtained the royal assent, secured to the colonists equality in
religious and civil rights, and an independent share in the legislation
of the province. The laws of the colony were to be established with the
advice and approval of a majority of the freemen or their deputies; nor
could the authority of the absolute proprietary extend to the life,
freehold, or estate of any emigrant. “These,” says Bancroft, “were the
features which endeared the proprietary government to the people of
Maryland;” and he adds, “it is a singular fact, that the only
proprietary charters productive of considerable emolument to their
owners were those which conceded popular liberty. Lord Baltimore was a
Roman Catholic; yet, far from guarding his territory against any but
those of his own persuasion, as he had taken from himself and his
successors all arbitrary power by establishing the legislative
franchises of the people, so he took from them the means of being
intolerant in religion, inasmuch as, while Christianity was made the law
of the land, no preference whatever should be given to sect or party.”
To avoid dispute on the subject of the fisheries, all claim to these was
expressly renounced by the charter; Maryland was also carefully
separated from Virginia, the necessity of which Lord Baltimore had
clearly foreseen from his former visit to Virginia, when the oaths of
supremacy and allegiance were tendered to him in a form which he, as a
Catholic, could not subscribe; now, therefore, when about to establish
his colony within the jurisdiction of Virginia, he provided against
every possible cause of contention with the neighbour state. He also
provided, as far as was in his power, against any future aggressions of
the English monarch, who covenanted in the charter, by an express
stipulation, “that neither he, nor his heirs, nor successors, should
ever set any imposition, custom, or tax whatever, upon the inhabitants
of the province.” Maryland was by this means exempted from English
taxation for ever.
“Calvert, Lord Baltimore,” says the historian, “deserves to be ranked
among the most wise and benevolent lawgivers of all ages. He was the
first in the history of the Christian world to seek for religious
security and peace by the practice of justice and not by the exercise of
power; to plan the establishment of popular institutions with the
enjoyment of liberty of conscience; to advance the career of
civilisation by recognising the rightful equality of all Christian
sects. The asylum of Papists was the spot where, in a remote quarter of
the world, on the banks of rivers which as yet had hardly been explored,
the mild forbearance of a proprietary adopted religious freedom as the
basis of the state.”
Lord Baltimore having died, as we have said, before the charter had
passed the royal seal, his son Cecil Calvert, who succeeded not only to
his father’s title and honours, but to his liberal views and enlightened
opinions, soon succeeded in enlisting a sufficient number of emigrants
for the commencement of the colony, and these were soon joined by
gentlemen of fortune and enterprise. The second Lord Baltimore, however,
having, for reasons which are now unknown, abandoned his original
intention of going out in person with the emigrants, appointed his
brother, Leonard Calvert, as his lieutenant.
On Friday, the 22nd of November, in the year 1633, Leonard Calvert set
sail with about 200 persons, mostly Roman Catholic gentlemen and their
servants, in a ship of large burden called the Ark and the Dove,
together with a pinnace. They sailed by way of the West Indies, and in
the early spring arrived at Point Comfort in Virginia, where, by the
express orders of King Charles, they were courteously received by
Harvey, the governor. There also they were met by Clayborne, who had
already done all in his power, through persons of influence in England,
to prevent the granting of the charter, foreseeing that it might
interfere with his settlements on Kent Island and elsewhere. He now
presented himself as a prophet of evil, foretelling the hostility of the
natives, which he had already secretly fomented.
Disregarding all evil augury, the Ark and Dove, attended by the pinnace,
ascended the Potomac. Landing on an island, Calvert planted a cross,
claiming the country for Christ and England, and having proceeded about
150 miles, arrived at an Indian village on the eastern bank of the
river, called Piscataqua, the chief of which would neither bid him go
nor stay, but told him he might do as he liked. Calvert, however,
decided to establish his first settlement lower down the Potomac, which
he descended, and entering a river now called St. Mary’s, above ten
miles from its junction with the Potomac, purchased the little Indian
town of Yoacomoco from the natives, who having suffered from the
superior tribe of Susquehannahs were now about to desert it. Calvert
considered this a good situation for a settlement, and by presents of
cloth, axes, hose, and knives, secured the confidence and friendship of
the natives, with whom a treaty was entered into, by which the English
immediately obtained possession of one-half of the town, the whole of
which was surrendered to them after the getting in of harvest. Good
faith was maintained on both sides. On the 27th of March, the Catholics
came into peaceful possession; and now, at the humble village of St.
Mary, religious liberty found its first real home, its only safe home in
the whole world.
The Ark and Dove, fit emblems of their mission, anchored in the harbour.
The native chiefs came down to see the new emigrants and to establish
leagues of amity with them; all was peace and security. The Indian women
taught the wives of the English strangers to make bread of maize corn,
and the warriors of the tribes instructed the men in the mysteries of
the chase. Corn-fields and gardens were ready for cultivation; no
sufferings had to be endured, no want was apprehended; it seemed as if
the colony of Maryland was founded on a blessing. Within six months it
had increased greatly both in wealth and population.
Memorable as was the commencement of Maryland, still more so was the
spirit of her institutions. She was the first asserter of religious
toleration in the New World, and whilst religious persecution had even
been carried across the seas to their places of refuge by the Puritans,
the very men who had fled thither to escape from it in their native
country, Maryland bound her governor, by his oath of office, “neither by
himself nor by any other, directly or indirectly, to molest any person
professing to believe in Jesus Christ for or in respect of religion.”
Under these mild institutions and the liberal expenditure of Lord
Baltimore, who in the first two years of the settlement expended no less
a sum than £40,000 in advancing its interests, the colony prospered
wonderfully. Roman Catholics, oppressed by the laws of England, fled
hither as to their natural asylum, and hither also came suffering
Protestants, fleeing from the intolerance of their Protestant brethren.
For some time harmony, peace, and prosperity prevailed. The mild and
wise institutions of the proprietary were conducive to the interests of
the colonists, and won in return their attachment and gratitude. Every
heart, excepting Clayborne’s, was satisfied, and desired that things
should remain as they were. Clayborne from the first had rejected the
claim of Lord Baltimore, and refused to submit to it. Accordingly, in
the sitting of the first Legislative Assembly of Maryland, in February,
1635, at St. Mary’s, the jurisdiction of the state was vindicated, in
opposition to the claims of Clayborne. Nothing, however, daunted by this
measure, he determined to make good his claims by force of arms. A
bloody skirmish took place on one of the rivers of Maryland; several
lives were lost; Clayborne’s men were defeated and taken prisoners, and
he himself fled to Virginia, whence, to escape being given up to the
governor of Maryland, he was sent by Harvey, the governor of Virginia,
to England for trial.
The colony was well rid of this troublesome member, at least for a
while; he was declared by the Assembly guilty of treason, not only by
endeavouring to overthrow the government of the proprietary, but by
exciting the jealousies of the Indians against the settlers; and his
property on Kent Island was confiscated. In England he won at first a
favourable hearing from the king, Charles I.; but on the merits of the
case being more thoroughly investigated, it was decided that the charter
of Lord Baltimore superseded all earlier licences of traffic. Clayborne
was again defeated, and the claims of Lord Baltimore fully confirmed.
Men of strong intellect, ardent champions of popular liberty, were, as
we have seen, the founders of the early American states, hence we
universally find them not more jealous for the possession and
maintenance of territory, than for the establishment of principles of
democratic liberty. In 1639, therefore, the third annual General
Assembly was convened for the purpose of establishing “a more convenient
form of representative government,” and the people were allowed to send
as many delegates to the General Assembly as they should deem proper. A
declaration of rights was also drawn up; allegiance was declared to the
English sovereign, Lord Baltimore’s prerogatives as proprietary were
defined, and the liberties of Englishmen confirmed to the inhabitants of
Maryland. “There was as yet,” says our historian, “no jealousy of power,
no strife for place. Yet,” adds he, “while these laws prepared a frame
of government for future generations, we are reminded of the feebleness
and poverty of the state, when the whole people were at that very period
obliged to contribute to the setting up of a water-mill.”
In the year 1642, the inhabitants of Maryland, from a grateful sense of
Lord Baltimore’s “great charge and solicitude in maintaining the
government, and protecting them in their persons, rights, and liberties,
freely granted such a subsidy as the young and poor estate could bear.”
This was a subsidy of fifteen pounds weight of tobacco for every person
above twelve years of age.
In the same year the peace and prosperity of the colony was again
interrupted; firstly, by the bordering Indian tribes, who, alarmed at
the rapid spread of the colonists, and embittered towards them by the
suspicions with which the artful Clayborne had poisoned their minds,
made divers warlike incursions, causing the death of some and the alarm
of all. A fort was built on the Patuxent as a defence against the
Susquehannahs, and peace at length re-established on the usual terms of
Indian submission. A more formidable and annoying enemy in the meantime
made his appearance, this being no other than the contumacious
Clayborne. Clayborne, on the breaking out of civil war in England, had
allied himself with the popular party, and now, in the absence of
Calvert, the governor, who was then in England, and in connexion with
one Ingle, already convicted of treason in the colony, took the
opportunity of re-asserting his claims and exciting insubordination
among the disaffected. It may appear strange, that, under a form of
government so wise and liberal as that of Lord Baltimore, disaffection
should exist; but it must be borne in mind that the religious
contentions of England had been transported to America, and not even in
the Old World did papacy and puritanism come to closer quarters than on
the soil of Maryland. Whilst England herself was convulsed with the
birth of liberty, and whilst the popular will was standing in stout
array against the power of the monarch, it was not to be expected that
the men of America, who had fled from their native land in the very
spirit of this conflict, would abate one jot of it here. Besides this,
the demand of puritanism was fierce dogmatism, which not even the noble
toleration of Lord Baltimore’s government could appease, nay, which it
was even a virtue to oppose.
England had too much to do at home to care at this time about its
colonies beyond the Atlantic, and New England and Virginia legislated
for themselves almost without reference to the mother-country; and with
the Puritans the same independent spirit had entered Maryland. Whilst
England defied her king, Maryland began to question what were the rights
of any human proprietary, who was in fact but a sort of petty sovereign;
and this question once admitted into the heart of the colony, served as
the leaven of disaffection.
Not even the virtues of Lord Baltimore could insure his authority and
his rights against Puritanism and the spirit of democratic liberty.
Clayborne and Ingle appeared in arms, and gained possession of the Isle
of Kent, which was then held by Giles Brent, in whose hands the
administration had been placed by Calvert on his departure. For twelve
months anarchy prevailed throughout the colony, and the records, being
seized by Clayborne and Ingle, were destroyed. At length Calvert
returned, and by means of an armed force from Virginia subdued the
insurgents, though not without considerable loss. Peace and order were
re-established, and by a wise clemency of the government, an act of
amnesty was passed, which, by cancelling offences, allayed the
irritation of rebellion.
The power of the proprietary was once more confirmed, whilst in the
mother-country monarchy was overthrown and Puritanism was predominant.
At this crisis the Roman Catholic government of Maryland, with that
sagacious spirit of Christian moderation which marked all its
proceedings, resolved to meet any approaching danger by still further
strengthening the law of toleration. A second act for religious freedom
was placed on their statute-books in the following words: “And whereas
the enforcing of the conscience in matters of religion hath frequently
fallen out to be of dangerous consequences in those commonwealths where
it has been practised, and for the more quiet and peaceable government
of this province, and the better to preserve mutual love and amity among
the inhabitants, no person within this province professing to believe in
Jesus Christ shall be in any way troubled, molested, or discountenanced
for his or her religion, or in the free exercise thereof.” Noble words,
noble spirit of religious liberty, worthy to be spoken by the genius of
the New World!
Years afterwards, when on some occasion it was necessary to defend the
measures of Lord Baltimore, it was declared that no person in Maryland
had ever been persecuted for religion, and that the colonists ever
enjoyed freedom of conscience no less than freedom of person and estate.
The persecuted both of Massachusetts and Virginia were welcomed to equal
liberty of conscience and equal political rights in the Catholic
province of Maryland.
In 1650 the legislative body was divided into an upper and lower house,
the former consisting of the governor and council, the latter of
representatives chosen by the people. The strength of the proprietary,
it was declared in the General Assembly, reposed “in the affections of
his people,” and all taxes were forbidden, unless granted by vote of the
deputies of the freemen of the province.
In the meantime Virginia, as we have already said in the account of that
state, having asserted its adherence to Charles II. on the execution of
his father, parliament sent out commissioners to enforce the obedience
of the colonies bordering on the Chesapeake to the commonwealth, the
troublesome Clayborne being one of these very commissioners. Maryland,
which had, though Catholic, already given in her allegiance to the
commonwealth, of course was not included among the disaffected, and
Virginia, as we already know, yielded without a blow being struck. The
opportunity, however, was too good to be lost. Clayborne, glad of any
plea to carry arms into Maryland, again put forth his claims to Kent
Island, and Virginia, which had never relished so fine a portion of her
territory being taken from her, revived also her claims to jurisdiction
beyond the Potomac; whilst Charles II., angry with Lord Baltimore for
his adhesion to the party of the commonwealth and for his religious
toleration, appointed Sir William Davenant, the dramatist, governor in
place of Stone, the deputy of Lord Baltimore. Again anarchy prevailed;
Clayborne and his commissioners assumed authority; the governor Stone
and his officers were deposed, and only reinstated on their submission.
As to Sir William Davenant, he set sail with a body of refugee loyalists
from France, but being met shortly after by the parliamentary fleet, was
taken prisoner and earned to London, where he owed his liberation to the
friendly mediation of Milton, then in high favour with the republican
party. On the dissolution of the Long Parliament, from which Clayborne
and the commissioners had derived their power, Stone reasserted the full
authority of the proprietary, which alarming the commission then in
Virginia, Clayborne appeared once more in Maryland, and by the help of
the Puritans of Ann Arundel county again compelled Stone to resign. One
William Fuller was appointed governor, and a new council and assembly
convened. The spirit of religious asperity and bigotry prevailed; and
imitating Cromwell’s measures in England, all were disfranchised by the
assembly who differed from them in religious opinion; Catholics were
excluded not only from participation in government, but were declared
not entitled to the protection of the laws of Maryland.
In January of the following year, Stone, receiving a reprimand from Lord
Baltimore for so easily yielding to Clayborne and his party, appeared in
arms with, a considerable force, and marched to “Mr. Preston’s house on
the Patuxent,” where the records of the colony were kept, which he
seized, and so proceeded on to Providence, as Ann Arundel was now
called, where he found the Puritan party fully prepared for their
reception. On March 25th a battle was fought, the Catholics advancing
with the cry of “Hey for St. Mary’s!” which was the seat of the Catholic
government, and the Puritans, whose numbers were inferior to those of
their enemies, shouting, “In the name of God, fall on! God is our
strength!”
The Catholics were completely defeated, about fifty were killed or
wounded, and the rest taken prisoners; of the Puritans but very few
fell. “God did appear wonderful in the field and in the hearts of his
people; all confessing him to be the only worker of this victory and
deliverance,” wrote the Puritan Leonard Strong.
Stone and his officers were tried by court-martial, and he and ten
others condemned to death. His life, however, was spared by the prayers
of the enemies’ own soldiers and by the petitions of the women, says
Mrs. Stone, in her letter to Lord Baltimore on this sad occasion; four,
however, were shot in cold blood, “which, by all relations that ever I
did hear of,” says she, “the like barbarous act was never done among
Christians.” The Puritan party was now dominant throughout the province.
In this miserable state of affairs, Cromwell was appealed to, that he
“would condescend to settle the country by declaring his determinate
will.” But Cromwell, though still acknowledging Lord Baltimore’s claim,
was unwilling to dispute the act of his own political party. Josiah
Fendall, who, with the approbation of Cromwell, was appointed governor
by Lord Baltimore, was immediately arrested by the Puritan party, and
thus Maryland lay for nearly two years the prey of two contending
factions.
On the death of Cromwell, in 1658, the republican party, uncertain of
the turn which affairs might take in England, agreed to a compromise,
and the government of the province was surrendered to Fendall. The
terms, however, of their resignation show their power in the colony.
These were, the possession of their arms, an indemnity for arrears,
confirmation of the acts and orders of the late Puritan assemblies, and,
strange enough, they especially demanded that the proprietary should
maintain the act of toleration by which they had gained a settlement in
the colony, but which they had so signally disregarded while themselves
in power.
The dissensions in the colony being thus adjusted by compromise, a
circumstance occurred which proved that the democratic leaven had
leavened the whole lump. On the 12th of March, 1660, the very day before
the burgesses of Virginia asserted their right to independent
legislation, the representatives of Maryland met in the house of one
Robert Slye, and declared themselves a lawful assembly independent of
any other power, refusing even to acknowledge the rights of the upper
house; and Fendall, on this occasion acting in the spirit of Berkeley in
Virginia, bowed to the supremacy of the people; and the supreme people,
hoping thus to secure a long tranquillity, passed an act making it
felony to disturb the order which they had established. Nor was the
order disturbed. On the Restoration, Lord Baltimore’s claims were fully
confirmed, and Philip Calvert was appointed governor. Fendall was tried
for treason, and found guilty, but with that clemency which had on
former occasions been evinced by Lord Baltimore, a general pardon was
proclaimed to him and all other political offenders, and mercy and peace
once more restored to Maryland their wonted blessings.
Spite of all her internal sorrows and dissensions, Maryland had grown
and prospered. In 1660 her population amounted to about 10,000; a strong
patriotic sentiment was alive in the hearts of all—Maryland was their
country, the country and the home of their children.
CHAPTER VI.
COLONISATION OF MASSACHUSETTS.
The early unsuccessful attempts of the Plymouth company to obtain a
settlement in what was then called North Virginia, have already been
related. In the first instance, in 1606, the Spaniards captured the
vessel which they had sent out; in the second, the hardships of a severe
winter, with a few trying though by no means extraordinary casualties,
discouraged the colonists so far that Popham, their president, being
dead, and Gilbert having by the decease of his brother become heir to
his property, they determined to return to England with what speed they
could, and accordingly the ships, which the following year visited the
infant colony with supplies, carried them back. Returned thus to
England, they reported very unfavourably of the country, and exaggerated
their own sufferings to furnish an excuse for their want of courage and
perseverance. The Plymouth company, though much dissatisfied, especially
as the American fisheries and fur trade were now carried on with great
success, many ships annually visiting those northern coasts, and
occasionally even wintering there, were unable, after these failures, to
excite any further public interest in their schemes.
In 1614 Captain John Smith, whom we have known already so favourably in
Virginia, and who had long asserted, with a sagacity unusual in that
age, that colonisation was the true policy of England, entered this
abandoned field of enterprise, and with two ships, the private venture
of himself and four merchants of London, set sail for the northern coast
of the lands included in the Virginia patent. “Captain John Smith,” says
the early chronicle of Charlestown, in Massachusetts, “having made a
discovery of some parts of America, lighted, amongst other places, upon
the opening betwixt Cape Cod and Cape Ann, situate in 71° of west
longitude and 42° 20′ of north latitude; where by sounding and making up
he fell in amongst the islands, and advanced up into the Massachusetts
Bay, till he came up into the river between Mishawum, afterwards called
Charlestown, and Shawmutt, afterwards called Boston, and having made
discovery of the land, rivers, coves, and creeks in the said bay, and
also taken some observations of the manners, dispositions, and sundry
customs of the numerous Indians, or nations inhabiting the same, he
returned to England, where on his arrival he presented a map of the
Massachusetts Bay to the king; and the prince, afterwards King Charles
I., called the river Charles River.” The name of New England, which
Smith gave to the country, was also confirmed by the monarch, but the
northern promontory of Massachusetts Bay, which he had called
Tragabigzanda, in remembrance of the Turkish lady whose slave he had
been at Constantinople, was changed by Prince Charles into Cape Ann,
from regard to his mother, and by this appellation it is still known;
the name of the Three Turks’ Heads which he gave to three islands at the
entrance of the Bay, has also been changed, and a cluster of islands
which he had called after himself is now known as the Isle of Shoals.
Smith having successfully accomplished the purposes of his voyage, set
sail homeward, leaving the second ship, commanded by one Thomas Hunt, to
complete its lading and follow; but, as had been so often the case
before, no sooner was Smith gone than mischief befell. Hunt, under
pretence of trade, decoyed four-and-twenty Indians on board, and carried
them away to Malaga, where he sold most of them for £20 a man as slaves,
and would have sold them all, had not, says Cotton Mather, “the friars
in those parts, learning whence they came, took away the rest of them,
that so they might nurture them in the Christian religion.” This base
action so incensed the natives, that for some time it was dangerous to
the English to touch upon the shore; nevertheless, God, who frequently
allows good to be produced from evil, overruled this outrage to the
subsequent benefit of his people. Squanto, one of the poor Indians,
escaping from bondage, fled to London; and after five years being
restored to his country, became useful to the colonists as an
interpreter.
Encouraged by the commercial success of his voyage, Smith was sent out
in the following year, still in the employment of the Plymouth company,
to establish a colony in New England; but through the violence of
tempests he was compelled to give up the endeavour. Again he went out,
but his crew mutinied, and he was finally captured by French pirates and
carried into France. But the spirit of this brave man never forsook him;
he escaped alone from Rochelle in an open boat, and arrived in England,
where he devoted himself with all that ardour which was natural to his
character to excite an enthusiasm towards his favourite scheme of the
colonisation of New England. He published a map and description of the
country, and visited in person the gentry and merchants of the West of
England, suiting his promises of success to the character of the classes
whom he addressed; to the merchant he proposed commercial enterprise and
the establishment of cities, to the nobleman vast and wealthy dominion,
and to the lover of leisure and indulgence presented pictures of an
Arcadian life, with the pleasures of “angling and crossing the sweet
air,” as he himself words it, “from isle to isle, over the silent
streams of a calm sea;” but from all, with a blameable want of candour,
he concealed dangers and difficulties.
He succeeded in arousing a spirit of enterprise. New plans of
colonisation were formed, and Smith was appointed admiral of the country
for life. So far was comparatively easy; great difficulties, however,
arose in the obtaining a charter for the new undertaking. The London
company, jealous of a rival, threw difficulties and impediments in the
way. It was not till two years had passed that a charter could be
obtained. In November, 1620, King James granted what is distinguished
among the New England historians as the “Great Patent,” by which the
whole of North America, from the 40th to the 48th degree of north
latitude, “excepting such places as were already possessed by any other
Christian prince or people,” was granted wholly and entirely, with full
rights of jurisdiction, traffic and settlement, to forty noblemen and
merchants, incorporated as “The Council established at Plymouth, in the
county of Devon, for the planting, ruling, ordering and governing of New
England, in America.” Such a grant, which was intended to comprise
everything, and secure and hasten colonisation, defeated its own object,
and led to nothing but disputes. The English nation itself remonstrated,
through its members in the House of Commons, on such an exercise of
royal prerogative for the benefit of private individuals; and the
French, who had already for seventeen years had possession of various
trading stations on the coast, ridiculed and defied this wholesale
appropriation.
God, however, in his marvellous providence, had other purposes in view
for New England than the profit of the merchant or the aggrandisement of
the nobleman. As he had sifted out the baser elements by suffering,
death and much sorrow before the colonisation of Virginia was permitted
to take deep root and flourish, so now, more memorably in the case of
New England, was his arm stretched forth to prevent and counteract its
appropriation by any but those for whom it was intended, and who there
might remain for ages to become a purer and better people;—for those
who, though they had not yet attained to the glorious accomplishment of
Christianity in its perfect law of love, were yet the great and shining
lights of God’s truth at that time. Whilst therefore the national and
the private companies were disputing about the objects and spirit of the
new charter, the people of God, persecuted and trodden down as they had
been for ages, were following the guidance of a new voice sounding from
the wilderness, and, without charter or royal licence, were taking
permanent possession of the soil. The Puritans were the true colonisers
of New England.
But before the Pilgrims land on Plymouth Rock we must take a summary
view of the growth of puritanism in England.
Henry VIII., when resolved to obtain his divorce from Catharine of
Arragon, denied the supremacy of the Pope, and insisted on his clergy
doing the same, and in this measure puritanism had its rise. A door was
opened by the king for the admission of the principles of the
Reformation; and though he himself was never anything but a Catholic in
spirit, yet his marriage with Anne Boleyn and his quarrel with the Pope
gave the more intelligent portion of the English people liberty to think
and judge for themselves. The Bible was no longer a sealed book
constituting merely a portion of the church ceremonial; Henry VIII. had
caused it to circulate in its English translation among the people. It
was read by all classes with eagerness, and the more it was read the
more was undermined the mere traditional teaching of religion. The human
mind began to think and to ask important questions, and amid this
questioning, the rottenness and insufficiency of old systems became more
and more apparent. With a new heart and a new life, a new and simpler
mode of religious instruction was requisite; this was what the Bible
taught them to seek for, and bold in the spirit of the Bible, it was not
long before it was demanded. But it was not in Henry’s spirit to grant
what the Bible dictated; the reformed English Church retained a
hierarchical constitution and nearly the whole Romish ceremonial. Henry
in his latter years forbade the general reading of the Scriptures,
limiting the privilege to noblemen and merchants, and died a Catholic in
heart. But light had been let in—the light of divine truth and
knowledge—and no human power could henceforth wholly obscure it.
The accession of Edward VI. favoured the establishment of protestantism
in England. He died. With Mary papacy was restored, and all the more
virulently in consequence of the hold which protestantism had taken in
the nation. John Rogers and Bishop Hooper, both Puritans, and many other
pious and enlightened men, suffered martyrdom. Burleigh asserts that
nearly 400 persons perished by imprisonment and at the stake. The
earnest, steadfast, uncompromising spirit of puritanism showed itself
early. Whilst Cranmer and others sought by recantations and prayers to
escape the pangs of martyrdom, the Puritan made no concession, asked no
favour, but died rejoicing to be accounted worthy to suffer for Christ’s
sake. Multitudes of the married clergy and others fled, during this
terrible storm of persecution, to the continent of Europe, as many
others had already done in the previous reigns; and carrying abroad with
them their spirit of inquiry and controversy, they differed in some
points, and became split into the two sects of Lutherans and Calvinists.
At Frankfort the two parties had a public quarrel; and when the death of
Mary allowed the protestant exiles—most of whom during her reign had
taken up their abode among the Calvinists of Geneva—to return to their
native land, they brought home the bitterness of their contention.
With Elizabeth, the Reformation, which had commenced in the reign of
Edward VI., was in some measure re-established. Many exiled Puritans
returned full of hope, and with yet more inveterate abhorrence of papacy
and papistical vestures and ceremonial, to discover, however, that the
great queen, the champion of protestantism, was herself only half
reformed, and that every bias of her character and inclination was in
favour of royal prerogative and established authority. A true daughter
of Henry VIII., Elizabeth regarded herself as head of the church, and
ruled it with a despotic will.
In January, 1563, a convocation of the clergy drew up the Thirty-nine
Articles; which, however, were not confirmed by act of parliament till
nine years later. But the measure for the continuance of the ceremonies,
and of the square cap and the surplice, of which the queen was a
resolute supporter, was carried by one vote. The bishops urged the
clergy to subscribe the liturgy and the ceremonies as well as the
articles; Coverdale, Fox, Gilpin, and others refused, and this was the
commencement of Nonconformity.
A great number of conscientious and excellent ministers were thus
excluded from their pulpits. To them these requirements of the law were
rank papacy, and they would not conform. Some in consequence became
physicians; some were received into private families, holding views
similar to their own, as chaplains; many fled to Scotland or the
continent, and many others with their families were reduced to beggary.
“The churches,” says an historian, “were shut; the public mind was
inflamed; 600 persons repaired to a church in London to receive the
sacrament; the doors were closed, no minister would officiate. The cries
of the people reached the throne; but the throne was inexorable, and the
archbishop preferred that his flock should perish rather than dispense
with the clerical robes of the Church of Rome.”
The violence of persecution aroused the spirit of the persecuted
tenfold; the press was resorted to as a means of defence, as well as for
the propagation of opinion, but to little purpose. Any book or pamphlet
reflecting on the present state of affairs was seized and burnt, and the
author subjected to a fine and imprisonment. On this the suspended
ministers and their party resolved on openly seceding from the church,
believing that as they were not permitted to preach nor to officiate
“without idolatrous geare, it was their duty to break off from the
public church and to assemble in private houses and elsewhere.” They did
so; they held their meetings in private houses and in fields and woods.
One congregation was broken up in London, and as many as could be seized
were hurried to prison. In 1575, ten men and one woman were condemned to
the stake; the woman recanted; eight of the ten were banished, and two
were burnt; and two others were put to death, after long and severe
imprisonment, for circulating the tracts of the Brownists.
The prisons were full of Nonconformists; “died,” says their historian,
“in their dungeons, like rotten sheep,” from hunger, cold and the
noisome state of the prisons; and three of their ministers, Barrow,
Greenwood, and Penry, were executed at Tyburn with peculiar
circumstances of cruelty. Nothing but the preserving power of God could
have left a remnant alive.
Still, though silenced by law and forbidden to preach or circulate their
opinions, their views operated as leaven through the whole mass of
society. Prohibitions, fines, imprisonments, ignominy, loss of property,
nay, even of life, could not extinguish their zeal. Their works,
produced at secret printing-presses, were diffused through the whole of
the land as by invisible agency. The human mind had now risen up to do
battle manfully for truth for conscience-sake, with the weapons of
powerful argument and the keen arrows of sarcasm and wit, and no might
of human oppression could overcome it.
In 1583, Grindall was succeeded by Whitgift, and with such prelates as
Whitgift and Bancroft, Elizabeth, as she grew old, grew more and more
intolerant. Whitgift, one of the fiercest of persecutors, used to go
down on his knees before the queen to implore her not to show the
slightest favour to the Nonconformists, lest it should invalidate her
own infallibility. Under his guidance she refused to listen to the
milder councils of her ministers; and the terrible Star Chamber and High
Commission Court exercised a power almost equal to the Inquisition in
Spain. Every one was compelled to answer on oath any question proposed
either against others or themselves. The whole country groaned together;
and Burleigh, remonstrating but in vain, declared that not even the
Inquisition of Spain used so many questions to entrap their victims.
Finally a law was enacted, that whoever above the age of sixteen refused
to go to church, attended a conventicle, or denied the queen’s
supremacy, should be imprisoned without trial till they conformed and
signed an article of recantation. Refusing to sign this, they should be
banished for life, or if refusing to quit the nation, or returning
without royal licence, should be put to death without benefit of clergy.
But not even this terrible law could wholly effect its purpose, whatever
ruin and misery it might occasion. There were already, in the counties
round London alone, 20,000 stiff-necked frequenters of conventicles, who
would not bow down to the Baal of conformity. Great numbers again fled
to Holland.
The persecutions of the Puritans, however, somewhat abated before the
death of Elizabeth, as a change of policy towards them was looked for on
the accession of James, from whom the puritan party might even expect
favour. But a very short time sufficed to prove how mistaken were these
hopes. James, though brought up in the strictest accordance with the
Calvinistic doctrines of the Scottish kirk, and though he had thanked
God, while in Scotland, that he was at the head of the best and purest
church in the world, by which he would stand to the death, and who
abused the English establishment, “with its ill-sung mass,” as “wanting
nothing of popery but the liftings;” yet no sooner had he arrived in
England, and was met by the servile obeisance of bishops, who knelt
before him and offered the most abject flattery, than he thanked God
that he was now the head of a church where the bishops knew how to
reverence a king. The bishops rejoiced; they had dreaded that in James,
England would have had a presbyterian monarch; they found him a shallow
boaster, whom their flatteries could make the tool of their will. Within
nine months of his accession his key-note was “No bishop, no king;” and
at the desire of his favourite bishops, he called a conference between
them and the Puritans, when on the Puritans requesting permission to
hold their assemblies for worship, the king interrupted them: “You are
aiming,” said he, “at a Scotch presbytery; there Jack, and Tom, and
Will, and Dick shall meet, and at their pleasure censure me and my
council, and all our proceedings. Then Will shall stand up and say ‘it
must be;’ then Dick shall reply, ‘nay, marry, but we will have it thus.’
And therefore I repeat my former speech, and say, the king alone shall
decide.” “I will have one doctrine,” said he, “and one discipline; one
religion in substance and in ceremony;” adding, “that he had lived among
such sort of men as the Puritans were since he was ten years old, but
might say of himself as Christ said, ‘though I lived among them, I was
none of them;’ nor did anything make me more detest their courses than
that they disallowed of all things which had been used in popery.” Then,
turning to his bishops, he declared that, “by his soul he believed
Ecclesiasticus was a bishop, and that a Scottish presbytery agreed as
well with monarchy as God and the devil.” And of the Puritans he said,
“I will make them conform, or I will harry them out of the land, or else
worse—only hang them, that’s all!”
Bishop Bancroft fell on his knees, and exclaimed, “I protest my heart
melteth for joy, that Almighty God, of his singular mercy, has given
such a king as has not been since the time of Christ!”
The king closed the conference by declaring “that if any would not be
quiet and show their obedience, they were worthy to be hanged.” Bancroft
was made archbishop of Canterbury. The canons of the church now in force
were revised and enlarged, and it was enacted that whoever should speak
against the Thirty-nine Articles, or the established church, should be
excommunicated, put beyond the benefit of law, and subjected to all
kinds of injury and injustice. This law was enforced with bitter
cruelty; 300 nonconformist ministers, many of whom had been pastors of
their congregations for twenty or thirty years, were very soon silenced,
while hundreds of brave and conscientious men were imprisoned, fined,
and driven into exile. Among those who sought refuge in Holland was the
well-known John Robinson, who is generally considered to be the father
of the Puritans in New England, and thus the royal bigot and persecutor
James became, through the overruling of God’s providence, the means of
establishing puritanism on the broad, free soil of America.
Through all the oppression and bigotry of this and the preceding reigns,
the general intelligence had, however, greatly increased; the struggle
between established authority and the growing spirit of popular liberty
was becoming more and more determined. “The Bible,” says the author of
the “History of Priestcraft,” “had been secretly making a mighty
revolution in the popular mind. In the troubles and sufferings which
kings and priests had inflicted, it had been the secret and precious
companion; its poetry the most magnificent, its maxims the most
profound, its promises the most momentous in the world, were not lost on
the human heart; its doctrines became more clearly understood, and the
spirit of man rose with its dignifying knowledge.” Enlightened,
enfranchised, ennobled by the glorious teachings of this divine book,
the victims of persecution became the unflinching promulgators of the
truth and the liberty for which they suffered. Oppression, imprisonment,
fines, spoiling of goods, and death, all were made the means of still
further creating in the human soul a necessity for the liberty which was
born through the Gospel.
CHAPTER VII.
THE PILGRIM FATHERS.
Holland, which had exhibited a republican character in its conflict with
catholic Spain, and the reformed church of which inclined to the
opinions of Calvin, offered a desirable retreat for the persecuted
Puritans of England; “and hither, in the fall of the year 1608,” says
Thomas Prince, the worthy chronicler of New England, “fled divers of Mr.
Robinson’s church from the north of England, which had been extremely
harassed; some cast into prison, some burnt in their houses, some forced
to leave their farms and families;” thither they fled accordingly, for
the purity of worship and liberty of conscience.
And now leaving England, we must attach ourselves to the history of our
puritan exiles, thus commencing their momentous pilgrimage; and wherever
it is possible so to do, we will take the worthy old Thomas Prince as
our guide, who, like the chronicler of a second Acts of the Apostles,
puts down all in good faith, even to the contentions in the church
itself. “This spring” (1608), says he, “more of Mr. Robinson’s church,
through great difficulties from their pursuers, got over to Holland; and
afterwards the rest, with Mr. Robinson and Mr. Brewster, who are of the
last, having tarried to help the weakest over before them. They first
settle at Amsterdam, and stay there a year, where Mr. Smith (another
minister from England) and his church had gotten before them.
“1609. Mr. Robinson’s church having staid at Amsterdam about a year, and
seeing that Mr. Smith and his church was fallen into contention, and
that the flames there were likely to break out in that ancient church
itself, they think it best to remove in time, before they were any way
engaged with the same; and valuing peace and spiritual comfort above
other riches, they, with Mr. Robinson, remove to Leyden, choose Mr.
Brewster assistant to him, and live in great love and harmony both among
themselves and their neighbours for above eleven years.”
In 1617 the church in Leyden began to think of removing to America, for
several weighty reasons; the principal of which were “the licentiousness
and temptations of the place; many of their children having left their
parents to become soldiers, others taking to foreign voyages, and others
to courses leading to the danger of their souls, to the great grief of
their parents, and the fear that religion might die among them; and also
from an inward zeal and great hope of laying some foundation for the
kingdom of Christ in the remote ends of the earth, though they should be
but as stepping-stones to others.” The Dutch, hearing of their
intention, made them large offers to emigrate to their colonies; but
they, preferring to go under the English government, after humble
prayers to God, decided on so doing, and to settle in a distinct body
under the general government in Virginia.
Robinson, in the name of the congregation, stated to the Virginia
company the wishes and feelings of the proposed emigrants, to which they
all subscribed their names. This letter comprised the whole spirit of
the Pilgrim Fathers. “1st (said they), We verily believe and trust the
Lord is with us; to whom, and to whose service, we have given ourselves
in many trials, and that he will graciously prosper our endeavours,
according to the simplicity of our hearts. 2nd, We are weaned from the
delicate milk of our mother-country, and inured to the difficulties of a
strange land. 3rd, The people are, for the body of them, as industrious
and frugal, we think we may say, as any company of people in the world.
4th, We are knit together as a body in a most strict and sacred bond and
covenant of the Lord, of the violation of which we make great
conscience, and by virtue whereof we hold ourselves straitly tied to all
care of each other’s good, and of the whole. 5th and lastly, It is not
with us, as with other men, whom small things can discourage, or small
discontentments cause to wish ourselves at home again.”
The Virginia company saw, as well it might, that these were men in whom
was the bone and sinew of steadfast enterprise, and they replied that
“their desire should be forwarded in the best sort, that might be for
their own and the public good.”
Another letter was also written, stating faithfully their religious
views, which was intended to be laid before the king and privy council,
praying for the royal consent to their liberty of conscience beyond the
seas. Sir John Worstenholme, to whom the letter was sent, reported “very
good news; for the king’s majesty and the bishops have consented; but,”
says he, “for your letter I would not show it at any hand, lest it
should spoil all.” Still, spite of Sir John Worstenholme’s very good
news, the chronicler records that they found it a harder piece of work
than they expected, to obtain their writ of the king for liberty in
religion; he would only consent “to connive at them, and not molest
them, provided they would carry themselves peaceably; but to tolerate
them by the public authority of his seal, that he would not do.”
Nearly a year after this it is recorded that, “notwithstanding the great
discouragement they met with from the king and bishops, yet casting
themselves on the care of Providence, they resolve to venture,” and
accordingly two agents were sent to London, to arrange all things for
their departure.
Many difficulties still remained to be overcome, factions and
disturbances having in the meantime occurred in the Virginia company. At
length, after long attendance, a patent was granted and confirmed under
the Virginia company’s seal, being made out to Mr. John Wincob, “a
religious gentleman, belonging to the Countess of Lincoln, who intended
at that time to go out; but Providence ordained it otherwise.” The
patent was sent over to Holland, together with proposals for their
transmigration from friends and merchants in London, who were willing
either to go or to adventure with them. “On receiving these,” says the
chronicler, “they first kept a day of solemn prayer, Mr. Robinson
preaching a very suitable sermon, strengthening them against their
fears, and encouraging them in their resolutions; and then they decided
how many, and who should go first, for all who were willing could not be
got ready quickly. The greater number remaining required their beloved
pastor to remain with them; their elder, Mr. Brewster, accompanying
those who should depart.”
And now, on June 10th, 1620, a ship of nine score tons being hired in
London, and the ship in Holland being ready, they spent a day in solemn
prayer, for with the Pilgrim every important act of life was an act of
religion, and their beloved pastor, anticipating their high destiny, and
the sublime doctrines of liberty that would grow out of the principles
on which their religious tenets were established, gave them a farewell
address, breathing a freedom of opinion and an independence of
authority, such as then was hardly known in the world.[1]
“I charge you,” said he, “before God and his blessed angels, that you
follow me no further than you have seen me follow the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lord has yet more truths to break forth out of his holy word. I
cannot sufficiently bewail the condition of the reformed churches, who
are come to a period in religion, and will go no further than the
instruments of their reformation. Luther and Calvin were great and
shining lights in their times, yet they penetrated not into the whole
council of God. I beseech you, remember it; ’tis an article of your
church covenant—that you be ready to receive whatever truth shall be
made known to you, from the written word of God.”
On the 21st of July, the Pilgrims left Leyden, being accompanied by
their brethren as far as Delft harbour, where many met them from
Amsterdam, to take leave and see them depart; and early the next
morning, “after a night spent in friendly and pleasant Christian
converse, the wind being fair, they went on board, their friends
accompanying them, and Robinson and they who were with him falling down
on their knees, he commended them with watery cheeks and most fervent
prayer to God; then with mutual embraces and many tears they took their
leave, and with a prosperous wind arrived at Southampton, where they
found the larger ship from London, with the rest of their company,
waiting for them.”
On the 5th of August, the two ships, the Speedwell and Mayflower, set
sail from Southampton, but had not proceeded far before the smaller
vessel, belying her name, proved leaky, and both returned to Dartmouth
for her repair. Again they weighed anchor, and having advanced about one
hundred leagues beyond the Land’s-End, the captain of the Speedwell,
either having lost courage or the ship being really unseaworthy,
declared that they must return or sink. They returned to Plymouth, and
however grievous and discouraging it was, determined to part with the
ship and all those whose hearts failed them, and taking in the rest,
with such provisions as they could well stow in the larger vessel,
resolved to proceed on the voyage alone.
After another sad parting the Mayflower again set sail, having on board
101 souls, not alone resolute men, but brave-hearted women, their wives,
some far advanced in pregnancy, children and infants. A richer freight,
fraught with more momentous consequences to humanity, never crossed the
ocean.
Midway on the Atlantic they encountered fierce storms, which so much
damaged the ship, that their arrival on the other side seemed hardly
possible. “But a passenger having brought a great iron screw from
Holland, they with it raised the beam into its place, and then,
committing themselves to the Divine will, proceeded.”
On the 10th of November, after a voyage of sixty-three days, they
entered the harbour of Cape Cod, when, falling on their knees they
blessed God for having brought them safely across the great waters.
Far-seeing and prudent as well as religious in all their actions, and in
order to avoid any after dissatisfaction, they did not leave the ship
until they had formed themselves into a body-politic, by a solemn
contract, to which they set their hands. “In the name of God, amen,”
says this remarkable document, the register of the birth of popular,
constitutional liberty in the New World, “we, whose names are
underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign King James,
having undertaken, for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian
faith, and honour of our king and country, a voyage, to plant the first
colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do, by these presents,
solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one of another,
covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body-politic, for
our better ordering and preservation, and furthering of the ends
aforesaid; and by virtue hereof, to enact, constitute and frame, such
just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices, from
time to time, as shall be thought most convenient for the general good
of the colony. Unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.”
This instrument being signed by forty-one persons as representatives of
their families and descendants, John Carver, “a pious and well-approved
gentleman,” was chosen their governor for the first year.
It was the original intention of the emigrants to establish themselves
in the district of Virginia, but stress of weather, or the ignorance of
the pilot, or as some say the treachery of the captain of the Mayflower,
who was bribed by the Dutch to take the vessel north of their
plantation, or more probably the overruling hand of Providence, they now
found themselves, at the commencement of winter, on a bleak, barren and
unknown coast, which the inclement season forbade them to leave.
On Saturday, the 13th of November, the “people went ashore to refresh
themselves, the whales playing round about them; and they being obliged
to wade a bowshot or two to get to land, which was covered with snow,
and the weather being freezing, many took grievous colds and coughs
which ere long caused their death. Death was their welcome to this
dreary coast, which thus was early hallowed by the graves of their
friends. After resting on the sabbath-day, sixteen of their company
again went on shore, well armed, to search for a convenient place of
settlement. Many days were thus spent to no purpose, during which they
suffered greatly, lodging in the woods and travelling over dreary
country among Indian graves, into which they dug, and finding several
baskets full of Indian corn, carried them away with them, and this
served as seed-corn for the next harvest.”
On the 27th they proceeded into Cape Cod Bay; again landed, but it blew,
snowed and froze all day and night; the ground was hard frozen and
covered many inches deep with snow; they were tired with travelling up
and down the steep hills and valleys; they dug in divers places, “but
found no more corn, nor any thing else but graves.” What an omen this
for the superstitious, if there were any such among them! Two Indian
wigwams they saw, but no natives; and thus, with nothing comfortable to
relate, they returned on the 1st of December to their ship. In the midst
of these dreary prospects it is recorded that Mrs. Susanna White was
delivered of a son, the first-born of European parentage in New England.
He was called Peregrine, and lived to be eighty-four. In the meantime
death was busy in the little company, and the next entry after this
birth records four deaths.
On the 6th of December the shallop was again sent out, with ten of their
principal men, to sail round the bay and discover, if possible, a better
place for a settlement. “The weather was still intensely cold, and the
spray of the sea froze on them till their clothes looked as if they were
glazed, and felt like coats of iron.” Reaching the bottom of the bay,
they saw at night the smoke of Indian fires at four or five miles
distance. The next day some of their number landed, travelled along the
shore, and again found graves and deserted wigwams, but neither saw any
natives nor yet any place that they liked. The next morning they rose
betimes, and their prayers being ended, day dawning and the tide high,
they heard “a great and strange cry,” the Indian war-whoop, which was
followed by a flight of arrows; on the discharge of their muskets,
however, the Indians fled, after which, returning thanks to God, they
entered their shallop and pursued their course. In the afternoon a
fearful tempest overtook them, which increased as the day wore on, and
their pilot having mistaken his course, “they were nearly cast away,
when the providence of God showed a fair sound before them, and though
it was very dark and rained hard, they lay to, part went on shore, spite
of danger from the savages, and after much difficulty kindled a fire.”
As the morning dawned, the place was found to be a small secure island.
“And this being the last day of the week, they here dried their stuff,
fixed their pieces, rested, and returned thanks to God for their many
deliverances; and on the following day kept here their Christian
sabbath.”
Early on Monday morning they landed, their faith fixed on the Rock of
Ages, and crossed the rocky threshold of that great land which was to
receive from them an imperishable impress. And long as America stands
will its people regard the rock which then received their footsteps as
the altar and bulwark of religion and liberty. Man is often unconscious
of the sublimity of his actions; so was it now. God had guided the
Pilgrims thither; their home was not to be in the milder climate of
Virginia, where the affluent shores, laughing with the abundance of
fruit and flowers, might welcome them in the glory of summer; they were
carried northward, in the inclemency of winter, to an iron-bound coast;
their landing was on a barren rock, and the very harvests of their
future years were reaped from corn dug out of Indian graves. They were
to be the forefathers of a race pure in life, steadfast in principle,
sincere in religion; their human virtues were here called forth by their
mutual sufferings; their courage and perseverance tested by the severest
hardships; their faith in God assured by the overruling of his
providence and the continuance of his mercies. Such and so high was the
destination of the Pilgrims, who now marching inland, found divers
corn-fields and running brooks, and who, eight days later, the Mayflower
being safely harboured, still further examined the coast, again finding
“neither wigwam, Indian, nor navigable river, but brooks of sweet, fresh
water running into the sea, with choice land formerly possessed and
planted.”
On the 20th, after still further examination, they decided to settle “on
the mainland on a high ground facing the bay, where corn had been
planted three or four years before, a sweet brook running under the
hill, with many delicate springs.” Here they commenced building,
frequently interrupted by storms of wind and rain, many of them “ill of
grievous colds and the great and many hardships they had endured, and
amid death and terror of the Indians. And here on the last day of the
year, being Lord’s-Day, the Sabbath was kept for the first time in the
place of their building, and the name of Plymouth given to the
settlement, in grateful memory of the Christian friends they found at
Plymouth in England the last time they left their native land.”
In March, it is recorded that “a south wind brought fine weather, and
that the birds sang in the woods most pleasantly;” but the sun shone and
the birds sang above many graves. Of the forty-one who signed the
“solemn compact” before-mentioned on board the Mayflower, twenty alone
survived; the living were scarcely sufficient to bury the dead; the hale
to attend to the sick. Among those who died thus early, were some of the
most distinguished men; the excellent John Carver, whom they had by
mutual consent appointed to be their governor, had on his first landing
lost a son, and soon after the Mayflower took her departure for England,
he himself was carried off suddenly, and his wife, broken-hearted, did
not long survive.
As spring advanced and the general sickness abated, the hardships of
want had yet to be encountered. In the autumn of the following year
their numbers were increased by fresh emigrants, who came unprovided
with supplies, and the colony for six months had to subsist on half
allowance. “I have seen men,” says Winslow, “stagger by reason of
faintness for want of food.” In the next July we hear that their number
was about one hundred persons, all in health, “that is to say, free from
sickness, though not weakness;” they had nearly sixty acres of corn
planted, besides well-furnished gardens. Unfortunately, however, a
number of emigrants who stayed some time with them, proved to be “an
unruly company, who exceedingly wasted and stole their corn, and
secretly reviled them,” and their crop proving scanty, a famine would
have ensued but for “an unexpected Providence” which sent a ship into
their harbour, from which they bought knives and beads, and thus were
able to trade with the Indians for corn and beaver. Nor were their
sufferings from want of short duration. In the third year of their
settlement, their want of food was so great that they “knew not at night
where to find a bit in the morning,” and for three or four months
together had neither bread nor corn, and having but one boat left, six
or seven of their company took it by turns to go out and fish, never
returning without a supply, though they might remain five or six days
out; and when the supply was short, the remainder dug shell-fish from
the sands for sustenance. And thus they lived through the summer, now
and then getting a deer from the woods, and in the winter helping out
with fowl and ground-nuts. In the midst of this season of want arrived a
ship from England, bringing out many of their old friends and various of
the wives and children of those who already were here, “and the best
dish,” writes the simple chronicler, “that we could present them with,
was a lobster or piece of fish, without bread or anything else but a cup
of fair water.” When these passengers, says he, “saw our poor and low
condition, they were dismayed and full of sadness,” adding that the
“long continuance of our spare diet, and our labours abroad, had
somewhat abated the freshness of our complexion.” Yet through all their
sufferings, their faith in the providence of God never failed them.
At the risk of prolonging this portion of our history too far, we must
be allowed to make two further extracts from their chronicle. Spite of
their hopes of a good harvest from the promising appearance of their
sixty acres of corn-land in May, by the month of July the corn had
withered in the blade and stalk; “their hopes were overthrown, and their
joy turned into mourning, besides which a ship, which was expected with
supplies from England, after long waiting for, was a wreck far out at
sea.” The most courageous were now disheartened, and by public
authority, a day was appointed for humiliation and prayer, and the
seeking of the Lord in their distress. And a speedy answer, say they,
“was given, to our own and the Indians’ admiration. For though in the
former part of the day it was very close and hot, without a cloud or
sign of rain, yet towards evening, before the exercise was over, clouds
gathered, and the next morning distilled such soft and gentle showers as
gave cause of joy and praise to God. Softly fell the rain, without wind
or violence for fourteen days, and the corn and other fruits revived so
as was wonderful to see, and the Indians were astonished to behold; and
there was a joyful prospect of abundant harvest.”
Similar in spirit to this is the record in the “Charlestown Chronicle,”
seven years later. “Now, as the winter came on, provisions began to be
very scarce, and the people were necessitated to live upon shell-fish,
and ground-nuts, and acorns, and these got with much difficulty in the
winter time. Upon which people were very much tried and discouraged,
especially when they heard that the governor himself had the last batch
of bread in the oven; and it was believed that the ship sent to Ireland
for provisions was cast away or taken by pirates. But God, who delights
to appear in great straits, did work marvellously at this time; for
before the very day appointed to seek the Lord by prayer and fasting in
the month of February, the ship came in laden with provisions.” Mather
relates of this incident, “that Winthrop, the governor, was distributing
the last handful of meal to a poor man, distressed by the wolf at the
door, when at that instant they espied a ship at the mouth of the
harbour, laden with provisions for all. Upon which occasion the day of
fast was changed, and ordered to be kept as a day of thanksgiving.” It
is in beautiful commemoration of some such remarkable incident as this
that Thanksgiving Day is still held annually throughout the New England
States.
The system of common property, which had at first been established in
the colony, not being found to work well, was discontinued; and in the
spring of 1624, a little land was apportioned to each settler, which was
soon well cultivated; for “now even women and children worked in the
field;” corn, therefore, so far from being scarce, formed, in a short
time, a profitable article of commerce with the Indians, who bartering
their beaver and other skins with the colonists for corn, furnished them
with the means of lucrative traffic with the mother-country.
The spot to which Divine Providence guided the Pilgrims had, as if in
preparation for them, been depopulated by pestilence only a few years
before; the land had the advantage of former cultivation, and there were
no inhabitants to dispute with them possession. The distant smoke of
their fires, and occasional hostile demonstrations, indicated that
Indians were in the vicinity; and in order to be prepared for whatever
danger might occur, the settlers very soon assumed a military
organisation; Miles Standish, one of the bravest of their company, being
appointed their captain. The Indians, however, were by no means
hostilely disposed.
On the contrary, in the month of March, three months only after their
settlement, an Indian marched boldly into their little town of Plymouth,
and astonished them by exclaiming, “Welcome, Englishmen! Welcome!” He
was Samosit, chief of the tribe of Wampanoags, who inhabited the country
at about five days’ journey from the coast, and who had learned a few
words of English from English fishermen who frequented it; and now in
the name of his nation he bade them welcome to the soil which there were
no Indian occupants to claim. Samosit was hospitably treated, and again
returned accompanied by Squanto the Indian, who, having in 1614 been
kidnapped by Hunt, had escaped from Spain to England, where he lived
some years. An amicable and easy intercourse was thus established with
the Indians. From him they learned that Masassoit, the greatest of the
Indian sachems or kings, was at that very time advancing with his
brother and a great company to visit them.
Preparations were made to receive this great Indian chief, with such
respect as the state of the colony permitted. Two knives, a copper
chain, with a jewel in it, were presented to him; and to his brother a
knife and a jewel, with a pot of strong water, some biscuit and butter.
Speeches were mutually made, refreshments partaken of, and finally a
league of amity formed, which was inviolably observed for above fifty
years.
The first marriage in the colony was solemnised on the 12th of May.
Bradford, who on the death of Carver had been appointed governor of the
colony, shortly after the visit of Masassoit, sent two of the colonists,
Winslow and Hopkins, with Squanto as their guide, to explore the country
and confirm the league of amity. They found the country still almost
depopulated; they passed through fine old corn-fields and meadows, but
there were neither cattle nor inhabitants; heaps of bones lay where had
dwelt and died the former inhabitants. They were kindly received by
Masassoit, at his residence at Pokanoket, forty miles from Plymouth.
The English having thus secured the friendship of Masassoit, other
sachems sought their alliance also, and a powerful chief, who threatened
them with hostilities, was compelled to sue for peace.
In 1622, a colony of sixty persons, the “unruly company” already
mentioned, having finally settled at Weymouth, the first colony in
Boston harbour, were soon reduced to great want; and having excited the
Indians by their injustice and violence, a plot was formed utterly to
destroy them. The execution of this was, however, prevented by
Masassoit, who being ill, and as was reported at the point of death,
recovered in consequence of medicines administered by Winslow, who had
been sent from Plymouth to visit him. In gratitude for this kind
service, he revealed the plot of the Massachusetts Indians against the
Weymouth colony; and governor Bradford sent out Standish with eight men,
to apprise them of their danger, and to aid them in opposing it. The
colony, saved by the intrepidity of Standish, was, after this, soon
dispersed, some joining the people of Plymouth, and the rest returning
to London. The victory of Standish was very decisive, and inspired the
Indians with great terror. As a peace-offering they afterwards
despatched a small boat, laden with presents, to the governor of
Plymouth, but it was wrecked and three of its crew drowned, which still
further impressed the minds of the savages. They recalled the prediction
of one of their older chiefs, and declared that the God of the English
was angry with them, and that the destruction of their nation was at
hand. When the good pastor Robinson heard of this slaughter of the
Indians, he wrote to his friends in great sorrow: “Oh how happy a thing
it would have been if you had converted some before you killed any.”
The settlement of Plymouth proving but a poor investment of capital to
the London merchants, who had embarked in it as a mercantile
speculation, was soon not only disregarded by them, but a trading vessel
was sent out to their shore, the object of which was to compete with
them in their trade with the Indians. On this, Winslow was sent over to
London, to purchase for himself and seven others the entire shares of
the London adventurers. The purchase was made, and six years’ monopoly
of trade with the Indians freed the colony of its burdens.
Plymouth now began to flourish; the land was equitably divided; each man
laboured for himself and his family, burdened neither by debt to foreign
usurers, nor having to provide for “quarter-day.” Their government was a
pure democracy; each male inhabitant had a vote, the governor had two.
Admirable and loyal as was the conduct of the Plymouth colony, and deep
root as it had immediately taken in the soil to which the Indians
themselves had made them welcome, they found it impossible to obtain a
charter from King James. They possessed, therefore, according to English
law, no right to assume a separate jurisdiction. “It was,” says
Bancroft, “the virtues of the colonists alone which gave them
stability.”
The progress of population was slow, nevertheless their enterprise took
a wide range. They were soon possessed of Cape Ann; they had an
extensive domain on the Kennebec, and a settlement on the Connecticut.
Numbers of their brethren followed them from Leyden; but their excellent
pastor Robinson, like Moses himself, was not permitted to enter the land
of promise. He died at Leyden in 1625, to the great grief of the
Pilgrims, who had not appointed a minister for their church, Elder
Brewster merely officiating until he should arrive and assume the
ministry. His wife and children, with others, afterwards emigrated.
Ten years from its first establishment, New Plymouth was possessed of
only 300 inhabitants. It had grown like the oak and the teak tree,
slowly, but it was firm as iron to the very core. Religious liberty was
the purpose of the first settlers, and they desired no increase but of
men like-minded with themselves. “Out of small beginnings,” said
Governor Bradford, “great things have been produced; and as one small
candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone to
many, yea to our whole nation.”
CHAPTER VIII.
MASSACHUSETTS-BAY COLONY.
Whilst the Pilgrims were taking deep root and extending their borders,
various attempts were being made, under grants derived from the Great
Patent, to colonise the coast. Sir Ferdinando Gorges, whose name is
already familiar to our readers, a friend of Sir Walter Raleigh and a
steadfast advocate of colonisation, obtained a grant of territory on the
north-west side of Massachusetts Bay, for his son Robert, who was sent
over by the English patentees as lieutenant of New England, accompanied
by an episcopalian clergyman as superintendent of ecclesiastical
affairs; but no success attended him; and instead of establishing a seat
of government, he was shortly compelled to retire to Weymouth, already
deserted by the “unruly company” of Weston’s men, which he in an equally
short time also abandoned. The same year Sir Ferdinando Gorges and John
Mason obtained a grant of the whole extent of country included between
the sea, the St. Lawrence, the Merrimac and the Kennebec rivers, and
great mercantile settlements were projected on the banks of the
Piscataqua; but again these attempts failed of success. The soil of New
England was evidently not intended for the mere trader or adventurer. In
1628, Mason, alarmed at the progress already made by the Puritan
settlers, obtained a new patent for the country between the Merrimac and
the Piscataqua, which, without reference to any rights of the natives,
was ceded at once to him. This was the patent under which New Hampshire
was established. The town of Portsmouth was founded, but neither town
nor colony flourished greatly; several years afterwards the town
consisted but of about sixty families. In 1635 Mason died, and after his
death New Hampshire was left to take care of itself.
From the year 1606, when Martin Pring and Weymouth first discovered the
northern bays of New England, the ships of fishermen had visited their
coasts, and by degrees had settled upon them permanent stations. In
1616, Gorges sent to these northern shores a colonising party under
Richard Vines, who arrived in the country at the time when that
pestilence was raging among the natives which depopulated so great an
extent of territory, and which was regarded by the later pious settlers
as an interposition of God, who thus “made way for his people by
removing the heathen.” Vines and his company marched to the interior,
holding familiar intercourse with the dying natives without themselves
taking the infection, and finally settled at the mouth of the Saco
river, the place being called by them Winter Harbour. The colonists
pursued agriculture and fishing: the husbandmen taking up tracts of one
hundred acres on long leases from Thomas Vines. It is said that farms
are held to this day under these old leases, written in Latin, the
tenure being very light—five shillings a year, perhaps, a few days’ work
and a fat goose. Nevertheless colonisation was slow, spite of the
attractive and poetical accounts of the beauty and desirableness of the
country to emigrants, which were circulated in Old England. In 1636,
when the first duly organised court was held within the State of Maine,
the total number of inhabitants in the five different provinces,
including the islands, amounted to about 1,500.
The first settlement of Nova Scotia was about contemporaneous with that
of Maine. Gorges, who was jealous of the French becoming the ultimate
possessors of these northern regions, invited over a number of Scottish
emigrants, King James being favourable to the design, and these were
planted in Nova Scotia.
Having thus slightly reviewed the efforts made to colonise the northern
portion of New England, we will return to the colonies of Massachusetts
Bay, which, instinct with the element of life, advanced at once into
well-organised and flourishing states.
Persecution continuing in England, voluntary exiles for conscience-sake
still cast their eyes beyond the great waters for the land of refuge.
Among these was Roger Conant, who by the aid and advice of his friend, a
puritan minister of Dorchester, named White, left England with a small
company, and who, having endeavoured, but in vain, to establish
themselves on Cape Ann, after incredible sufferings removed to Salem, on
the Bay of Massachusetts. The scheme of this colony was in the meantime
still further perfecting itself in the mother-country. Down in the
south-west of England, and among the fens of Lincolnshire, the suffering
for conscience-sake not only discussed it among themselves, but
communicating together on the subject, determined to purchase from the
unscrupulous council for New England a grant of territory. This was soon
accommodated, and a portion of the land already conveyed to Gorges and
Mason was assigned to them; and John Endicott, whose name alone seems to
personify the stern spirit of puritanism, was, as “a fit instrument for
this wilderness-work,” chosen leader of a company which embraced within
its ranks some of the most distinguished men of the colony.
Endicott, with whom came his wife and family, settled down with his
company, as Conant had done, in the dreary wilderness around Salem.
Within a short time of their landing, three brothers of the name of
Sprague, and four others, penetrated the forest, to a place called by
the Indians Mishawum, where they found an Englishman, a smith, living,
and here they settled, calling the place Charlestown. Tidings having
reached England of the safe arrival of this company, “the men of Boston,
and others,” decided on following their example; and the next year,
“after much labour and great expense,” the patent of the council of
Plymouth was confirmed by the king, Charles I., and the powers of
government conveyed to them under the name of the Governor and Company
of Massachusetts Bay, in New England. It is a singular circumstance in
this charter, that the government, while invested with all necessary
powers of legislation, yet required no assent of the monarch to render
its acts valid. Charles regarded it merely as a trading company, whose
affairs were indifferent to the crown. Legislative and executive
authority resided with the corporation in London. The freemen of
Massachusetts, like the Virginians, were left without one valuable
franchise, at the mercy of a corporation beyond the seas. “The history
of Massachusetts,” says Bancroft, “is the counterpart to that of
Virginia; the latter obtained its greatest liberty by the abrogation of
the charter of its company. The former by a transfer of its charter, and
a daring construction of its powers by the successors of the original
patentees.”
Another remarkable fact in this patent was the strict injunction given
to Endicott, the governor, to treat with the natives for the equitable
purchase of their lands. “If any of the savages,” it is said, “pretend
right of inheritance, we pray you endeavour to purchase their title;
that no wrong or injury be done to the natives.”
This company of emigrants, amounting to about 300 persons, in five
ships, with good store of cattle, horses and all necessaries, were
accompanied by the excellent Francis Higginson, a nonconformist
preacher, whose account of the voyage and the country, immediately sent
over to England, excited a still greater enthusiasm for emigration. The
seal of the infant colony was an Indian erect, with an arrow in his
right hand, and the words, “Come over and help us!”
“Farewell, dear England!” said the minister, with his friends and
children standing round him, as they lost sight of their native land;
“farewell, the church of God in England, and all Christian friends
there! We go not to New England as separatists from the church of
England, but from her corruptions; we go to practise church reformation,
and to propagate the Gospel in America.”
At the end of June they reached Salem, where they found about eight or
ten mud cabins, with a larger one for the governor, and a few cultivated
fields. “There are in all,” says Higginson, “of old and new planters
about three hundred; two hundred of whom are settled at Salem, and the
rest have planted themselves at Charlestown. We at Salem make what haste
we can to build houses, so that shortly we shall have a fair town.”
This church of God in the wilderness, which had come hither to practise
reformation, soon found members within its bosom who clung to the old
forms and ceremonies; and the return of the ships which had brought them
out carried back the leaders of this faction—cast out by the church,
which would not allow them to remain within her borders, and by
Endicott, the governor, that there might not be “spies in the camp.”
The following winter brought with it many hardships. Before the next
spring nearly half the emigrants, the enthusiastic Higginson among the
rest, were removed by death. But not even these misfortunes, nor yet the
evil report of intolerance and persecution, which the expelled friends
of episcopacy carried back with them to England, could damp the ardour
for colonisation which filled the hearts of the English Puritans; to
them the Indian from the wilderness appealed, “Come over and help us;”
and the report of Higginson, though now dead, testified to them of a
land abundant as that of Canaan.
Emigration on a more comprehensive scale than had before been thought of
was decided upon. Men of influence and fortune embarked in it,
determining, however, to form “a peculiar government, and to colonise
only with the best.” To carry out their views fully, it was necessary to
obtain a transfer of the charter from the council in England to the
freemen now emigrating, and others inhabiting the colony. Bold as this
scheme was, it was accomplished. The patent and the government were
legally transferred to the emigrants themselves, and the excellent John
Winthrop was chosen governor before leaving England. The calm firmness
of Winthrop sustained many timid spirits who were alarmed at the
unexampled boldness of their undertaking; others again shrank back at
the last moment; there was a winnowing out among them, and literally
“the best” only went. Years afterwards it was said of this great and
good governor, that he was as a mother to the infant colony,
“parent-like, distributing his goods and gladly bearing the infirmities
of the weak, yet ever maintaining the figure and honour of his place
with the spirit of a true gentleman.” Of him Bancroft says, “his
character marks the transition of the Reformation into avowed
republicanism; when the sentiment of loyalty, still sacredly cherished,
was gradually yielding to the irresistible spirit of civil freedom.”
Eight hundred persons, all Puritans, inclining to the Calvinistic
doctrines, accompanied Winthrop. In the course of the year, seventeen
vessels brought over 1,500 persons. It was, however, no garden of Eden,
no land of Canaan to which they had come. “Arriving here in June and
July,” says Dudley, in his letter to the Countess of Lincoln, who, with
her family, was deeply concerned in this emigration, “we found the
colony in a sad and unexpected condition, above eighty of them being
dead the winter before, and many of those alive, sick and weak; all the
bread and corn among them hardly sufficient to feed them a fortnight,
insomuch that nearly 200 servants whom we had sent over at great cost,
received their liberty, we being wholly unable to feed them.”
Salem, at which they had arrived, not wholly pleasing the new-comers,
some time was spent in searching the coast for localities more to their
mind, and finally some of them settled at Charlestown, others at a short
distance where was an excellent spring, and to which they gave the name
of BOSTON; some on the Mistic at Medford; others at Watertown and
Rocksbury; “others again upon the Saugus at Lynn, between Salem and
Charlestown, and the western men four miles south of Boston, at a place
they called Dorchester; several of these settlements being now suburbs
of Boston.”
This dispersion was a great grief to the company, but it was only as the
beginning of sorrows. “They who had health,” says Dudley, “fell to
building, wherein many were interrupted by sickness and death. Deaths
were for some time of almost daily occurrence. Dissatisfaction prevailed
in many minds, and when the ships returned to England, about a hundred
returned with them; thus was the company again winnowed of the faithless
and faint-hearted. The ships being gone,” continues Dudley, “victuals
wasting, and mortality increasing, we held divers fasts in our several
congregations. But the Lord would not be deprecated; and among many
other deaths, on the 30th of September died Mr. Johnson, the Lady
Arabella, his wife, being dead a month before. This gentleman was a
prince amongst us, zealous for religion, and the greatest furtherer of
this plantation.” The deaths of these two excellent people caused, say
some of their fellow-sufferers, “not only weeping eyes but fainting
hearts, fearing the fall of the present work.” Johnson was buried at the
upper end of his lot of land, in the faith of his rising in it. This
ground became the first burial-place in Boston, others desiring to be
laid round his grave. The Lady Arabella was daughter of the third Earl
of Lincoln; “she came,” says Hubbard, “from a paradise of plenty and
pleasure into a wilderness of wants;” “and,” adds Cotton Mather,
quaintly, “she took New England in her way to heaven.” One of the ships
who conveyed over this company of emigrants was called, in honour of
her, the Arabella. She was buried at Salem, the place of her interment
being still respected; and a girls’ grammar-school in Boston now bears
her name. Of those who came from England in April, 200, at least, had
died by December. Governor Winthrop, whose son was drowned the very day
of his landing, writing to his wife, says, “I have lost twelve of my
family; the Lord’s hand hath been heavy upon me;” yet he assures her, “I
would not have altered my course though I had foreseen all these
afflictions; I never had more content of mind.” They who survived were
not discouraged, but bearing God’s corrections with humility, and
trusting in his mercies, they bore in mind “how after a lower ebb God
had raised up their neighbours at Plymouth.” Through all their
afflictions and sufferings, these steadfast men and women, who saw the
hand of God in all things, never omitted the sacred duties of the
Sabbath, though they had to assemble in the open fields or beneath the
forest trees—God was ever present with them; and little children in the
hour of death became transfigured, as it were, and testifying of their
faith and their assurance of immortality, were a marvel to all.
In the midst of their sorrows and sufferings the purpose of their coming
hither to establish a pure church in the wilderness was not forgotten.
The first measure of the Court of Assistants was to provide for the
administration of the gospel. Within two years of their landing, seven
churches were firmly established and provided with devout ministers.
Their second object was the settlement of a government which was to
secure their beloved popular liberties. Their charter provided that laws
were to be enacted in the assembly of all the freemen of the colony, but
a fear soon crept in of this being susceptible of too wide an
interpretation; already above a hundred old planters and members of no
church “were freemen equally with themselves.” The stem, uncompromising
spirit of the religionist awoke. “Late in May, after the corn was set,”
a general court ordained that while the governor, deputy-governor, and
assistants, should be chosen by the freemen, none should be admitted to
the freedom of the body-politic but such as were members of some church
within the limits of the colony.
Thus was the door opened to bigotry and intolerance! A species of
theocratic government was established; God was the head of his people;
his people were they who constituted the elect, and whose names were
registered in the book of eternal life. “An aristocracy,” adds Bancroft,
“was founded, but not of wealth. A servant, a bondman, might be a member
of the church and therefore a freeman of the company. The Calvinists of
Massachusetts, scrupulously refusing to the clergy the least shadow of
political favour, established the reign of a visible church or
commonwealth of the chosen people in covenant with God.”
Sincerely religious themselves, this was nevertheless a dangerous
principle to introduce into their government, and one totally subversive
of the spirit of true religion and democratic liberty.
Among the early records, we will mention, that “the governor, in
consideration of the inconveniences which had grown in England by
drinking one to another, restrained it at his table, and wished others
to do the like.” And that the first baptisms registered in Boston Church
are those of “Joy and Recompense, daughters of brother John Miles; and
Pity, daughter of our brother William Balstone.”
Whilst a satisfactory form of government was being established, the
colony received friendly visits from the principal surrounding Indian
chiefs. The sagamore of the Mohegans from the banks of the Connecticut,
invited the English to settle in his country; the Nipmucks besought aid
against their enemies the Mohawks; the son of the old Canonicus sent
presents; Miantonomoh, the grand warrior of the Narragansetts, the
associate sachem with Canonicus, visited the governor, and attended with
him divine service; and lastly from the river of the Pequods came the
wily Uncas, who declared to the authorities that “his heart was not his
own but theirs.”
In the second year of the colony, Governor Winthrop and Wilson, the
minister of Boston, made a journey on foot to visit the brethren of the
older colony at New Plymouth. There is something apostolic in the
narrative of this visit. They arrived at Plymouth in the evening. “Mr.
William Bradford, the governor, a grave and discreet man, with Mr.
Brewster, the ruling elder, went forth to meet them outside the town,
and conducted them to the governor’s house, where they were well
entertained for several days. On Lord’s-day they partook of the
sacrament, and in the afternoon a question was propounded by Roger
Williams, which was spoken to by the pastor; then the preacher
prophesied, and after that the governor of Plymouth, who was skilled in
Hebrew and antiquities, spoke to the question, and after him the elder,
a learned man, and others. Then Governor Winthrop and Mr. Wilson were
asked to speak, which they did, and so the service of the Sabbath ended
to the edification of all. On the following Wednesday, before daybreak,
Governor Winthrop and his company left Plymouth, being accompanied by
the governor of Plymouth, the minister and divers others, near half a
mile out of the town in the dark.”
About the same time the colony of Virginia, now flourishing, sent a rich
cargo of corn to Boston, and trade was commenced with the Dutch on the
Hudson. The news of this increasing prosperity reached England, where
persecution remained unabated, and renewed emigration was the
consequence. The Griffin, after a long voyage, brought hither “a noble
freight, of two hundred, amongst whom were the fathers of Connecticut,
Hooker and Haynes, the latter a man of a heavenly mind, and the pious
and learned Cotton.” The congregation to whom Hooker had ministered in
England had already preceded him, and now thronged to meet and welcome
him. “Now I live,” exclaimed he, embracing them, “if ye stand fast in
the Lord.”
Spite of the growing prosperity of the colony, serious apprehensions
were caused regarding its safety in consequence of reports made to the
English government, by persons who at various times, for discordant
sentiments or misconduct, had been expelled. The colonists were
threatened by the privy council, strengthened by Laud, with the
revocation of their charter. They resolved to defend themselves by force
of arms if necessary, and fortifications were at once commenced in
Boston harbour, at Charlestown, and Dorchester. Thus early were they
prepared to assert their own independence.
In 1634, the settlement of Massachusetts having become much more
numerous, extending thirty miles from Boston, it was found inconvenient
for all the freemen to attend the general court; hence a change was made
which altered their form of government from simple democratic to
representative. The electors of each town chose two or three deputies to
confer on public business and attend the court, vested with the full
power of the freemen whom they represented. The mode of voting was also
changed from show of hands to ballot. The whole body of freemen were,
however, to elect the magistrates, and to these, and the deputies sent
by each town, the legislative power was confided. A law against
arbitrary taxation followed. “With the exception of the principle of
universal suffrage,” says Bancroft, “the representative democracy was as
perfect two centuries ago as at the present day.” The criminal code was
based on the Mosaic laws. The meeting-house at Boston was at this time
its house of representatives. Religion and government were kindred.
In 1635, no less than 3,000 persons suffering under the despotism of
Charles emigrated to Massachusetts. “Godly people in England,” we are
told, “beginning to apprehend a special hand of Providence in raising up
this plantation, their hearts were stirred to go over.” The wilderness
was planted with Christian churches; the forest rang with the sound of
their psalms; “the poorest of the children of God in the whole world
were resolved to excel in holiness.”
Among the new-comers of 1635 was Henry Vane the younger, a man of a pure
and noble mind, and an ardent friend of religious liberty. The year
after his arrival, so much had the youthful suavity and grace of his
manner, his religious attainments and his political sagacity, wrought
upon the people of Massachusetts, that he was elected governor in place
of the excellent and long-tried Winthrop, a preference which they
afterwards found cause to regret.
CHAPTER IX.
RHODE ISLAND; ROGER WILLIAMS AND ANNE HUTCHINSON.
On the 5th of February, 1631, the very ship which came like the herald
of God’s mercy to the famishing people, changing their solemn fast and
humiliation into a day of thanksgiving, brought with its other freight
“a young minister, godly and zealous, having precious gifts,” a better
freight even than bread to the famishing, but which at the same time
might be regarded as its type. This was Roger Williams, one of the
noblest spirits of an age which abounded in great men.
Roger Williams possessed one of those rarely-gifted minds which
perceives truth at a glance. Looking beyond the advancement of his age,
he stood forth as the firm advocate and prophet of that diviner
knowledge which is compassed by Christianity, but which the highest
Christian professors, except in very rare instances, comprehend only
piecemeal.
Like the rest of his suffering brethren, Roger Williams was a Puritan,
and fled to America to escape persecution. Unlike them, however, amid
the afflictions of persecution he had attained to a profound knowledge,
either through the grasp of a great intellect, or the single-mindedness
of a child-like spirit, both of which were portions of his character. He
saw that the office of civil magistrate was to restrain crime, not to
control opinion; to punish guilt, not to violate the freedom of the
human soul.
Arrived in Massachusetts, he found the churches there not free as the
gospel would make them; and great was the excitement produced by the
doctrines which he promulgated—“the ill-egg of toleration,” as it was
now termed. Nevertheless the people of Salem invited him to become their
minister, at which the court of Boston “marvelled,” and before long his
friends at Salem were required to give him up. He then withdrew to
Plymouth, whence after two years he was recalled to Salem by those who
could never forget his mild virtues and his great doctrines.
Controversy on controversy succeeded; the magistrates asserted their
laws of intolerance, insisted on the presence of every man at public
worship, in the very spirit of that intolerant and legislative religion
which had driven them from their native land. Williams stood forth as
the unflinching champion of religious liberty, of the sanctity of
opinion and the freedom of the human mind, and as the bold assailant of
soul-oppression, “the removal of which yoke,” said he, “will prove an
act of righteousness to the enslaved nations.” Besides these doctrines,
he so steadfastly maintained the original right of the Indians to their
land, that he even questioned the validity of any grant of their
territory from an English monarch to his subjects.
The teachings of this apostle of liberty were considered subversive of
all good government; the ministers in a body declared “any one worthy of
banishment” who should assert, as Williams had done, that magistrates
ought not to interfere even to stop a church from heresy, or that an
English royal grant was wanting in moral validity. A committee of
divines was sent to Salem “to deal with him and the church in a church
way,” and a tract of land to which the people of Salem laid claim was
withheld from them as a punishment. Williams, seeing his townspeople
thus suffering on his account, wrote a letter to all the churches of
which these magistrates were members, asking that they might be
admonished of their injustice. This was the finishing stroke to his
offending. The general court proceeded to disfranchise Salem until
apology should be made for the letter. All now yielded to the storm; not
a voice in Salem was raised in his behalf; even his wife reproached him
as an evil-doer. But Christ, his great master, had been deserted by all,
even by the beloved disciple. Williams could not forget this trial of
his prototype; and declared to the court before which he was arraigned
that “he was ready to be bound and banished, nay, even to die in New
England, rather than renounce the opinions which had dawned upon him in
the clearness of light.”
The court, influenced by Cotton, pronounced against him the sentence of
exile, but as winter was at hand, he was allowed to remain till spring.
This reprieve gave time for the affection of his friends to revive;
throngs collected to hear the beloved pastor so soon to be removed from
them. Twofold value seemed now to attach to his opinions; his views
began to spread; his enemies were alarmed; and it was resolved at once
to remove him on board a pinnace and ship him off to England. But he was
already gone. It was now the depth of winter; for fourteen weeks, he
says, he was sorely tossed in a bitter season, not knowing what bread or
bed meant; often in a stormy night he had neither food, fire, nor
company, nor better lodging than a hollow tree. But God was with him
through all, and cared for him; he was fed in the wilderness as the
prophet had been of old. The Indians were his friends; already while
residing at Plymouth he had become acquainted with their principal
sachems, and studied their language until he was able to converse with
them freely. Their simple hearts had opened to his apostolic virtues;
the cruel chiefs of the forest declared that they loved him as their
son.
And now, his flight being in the winter, he came to the Indians. Alone,
and on foot, he arrived at Seekonk on the Pawtucket river, and was
kindly received by Massasoit, the sachem. Seekonk lay, however, within
the Plymouth grant, and this was not to be his abiding place. God,
rather than man, willed not that he should remain here. In a short time
he received a letter from Winslow, the governor of Plymouth, an
excellent man, who was secretly his friend, “lovingly advising him,
since he was fallen into the edge of their bounds, to remove to the
other side of the water, where the country would be all free before
him.”
[Illustration: ROGER WILLIAMS’ DEPARTURE FROM SALEM.]
Williams received this friendly advice as the council of God, and
directed his course to Narragansett Bay. In the month of June, he, and
five of his friends who had followed him into exile, landed from a frail
Indian canoe on a spot near the mouth of the Moshassuck river. Tradition
has hallowed the spot as being near a spring of clear water, which
remains to this day. Here he took up his abode, calling the place
Providence, in grateful commemoration of God’s merciful providence to
him in his distress. He had landed within the territory of the
Narragansett Indians, the sachems of whom were the aged Canonicus and
his nephew, the bold Miantonomoh, who received him kindly and granted
him a settlement on their borders. Here for two years he lived,
labouring not alone as a preacher of the gospel, though his daily life
was a gospel sermon, but, as he himself says, “day and night, at home
and abroad, on the land and the water, at the hoe and the oar for
bread.” During this time he was joined by many others, and probably,
also, by his wife and family. In March, 1638, he received a free gift of
territory from the associate chiefs “in consideration,” say they, “of
the many kindnesses and services he hath continually done for us, we do
freely give unto him all that land” which is then primitively indicated
by the boundary of rivers and great hills, “with its grass and meadows
and fresh waters.”
The exile Williams, like Joseph of old, was now a prince among his
brethren, but instead of assuming in his own person lordship and
dominion, this simple-minded follower of Christ divided the land into
twelve parts, one of which he gave to each of the friends who were with
him, reserving for himself only an equal portion with them, his
allotment, containing two fields, which he had on his first coming
purchased from the Indians and planted with his own hands; one of which
fields he called “What-cheer,” which being words learned from the
English, was the first Indian salutation he received in the land of his
exile; and the other, “Saxifrax Hill.” He had not come thither to seek
his own aggrandisement, but, as he says, “his soul’s desire was to do
the nation good;” and now that God had given him an opportunity to test
and establish his principles, he firmly commenced his work, determining
to “found a commonwealth, where a pure democracy should prevail, and the
magistrate should rule only in civil things.” He desired, as he himself
says, that it might be a shelter for persons distressed for conscience;
and so it in truth became.
From whatever side the character of Roger Williams is viewed, it is
equally admirable; suffering from persecution, he himself never was a
persecutor, and no sentiment of revenge found a place in his heart; like
the Great Master, whose true disciple he was, he pitied and forgave his
enemies, and sought only to do them good: so much so, indeed, that we
shall presently find him endangering his own life to insure their
safety. “Many hearts,” it is related, “seeing the steadfast nobility of
his conduct, were touched with relentings.” Winslow, who had always been
his secret friend, visited him on one occasion, and being affected by
the poverty which surrounded him, left a piece of gold for the supply of
himself and family; even his enemies confessed “that he had the root of
the matter in him;” and his friends declare him to have been “one of the
most disinterested of men, a most pious and heavenly-minded soul.”
Thus was established the province of Rhode Island, which was confirmed
by free charter, granted by the parliament, in 1651, to Roger Williams
and his twelve friends under the title of “Providence Plantation, in the
Narragansett Bay in New England.” A still more liberal charter was
granted to them by Charles II., which empowered them to “rule
themselves, and such as should inhabit within their bounds, by such a
form of civil government as by the voluntary agreement of the greater
number should be found most serviceable, and to make suitable and
agreeable to the laws of England so far as the nation and constitution
of the place would admit.” In a letter from Roger Williams to Captain
John Mason we read, “our grant is crowned with the king’s extraordinary
favour to this colony, as being a banished one, in which his majesty
declared himself that he would experiment whether civil government could
consist with such liberty of conscience. This, his majesty’s grant,
startled his majesty’s high officers of state who were to view it, in
course, before the sealing, but fearing the lion’s roaring, they
crouched against their wills in obedience to his majesty’s pleasure.
“Some of yours, as I lately heard,” continues he, “told tales to the
Archbishop of Canterbury, that we are a profane people, and do not keep
the Sabbath, but some do plough, etc. But first you told him not how we
suffer freely all other persuasions, yea the Common Prayer, which you
yourselves will not suffer.”
But leaving Roger Williams established now at the head of a province, we
will return to the year after his banishment, when, as he says, “the
Lord drew the bow of the Pequod warriors against the country.” The
English had at this time extended themselves into Connecticut, which was
inhabited by Pequods, a fierce tribe which could muster at least 700
warriors. In 1634, the Pequods murdered the crew of a small trading
vessel on the Connecticut river, but pleading self-defence as their
excuse, and making submission, the government of Massachusetts passed
over the offence, and a league of amity was formed between them, the
Pequods being at the same time reconciled with their old enemies, the
Narragansetts. The Pequods, however, were no sooner relieved from fear
of the Narragansetts, than, naturally false and treacherous, they
resolved to attack the English, and accordingly murdered a man with
horrible circumstances of cruelty. This outrage and breach of faith were
only inadequately punished, and the Pequods, emboldened by what seemed
the feebleness of the English, determined on forming an alliance with
the Narragansetts and Mohegans for the complete extermination of the
English. This became known to Roger Williams, then a banished man among
the Narragansetts, and with a noble Christian spirit he informed his
persecutors of the dangers which impended. A universal terror prevailed,
and there was none to help them but Roger Williams. The governor and
council of Boston wrote beseeching him to use his speediest endeavours
with his friends, the Mohegans and Narragansetts, to prevent their
league of destruction with the bloody Pequods. “And the Lord,” says he,
“helped me to put my life into my hands;” and scarcely acquainting his
wife, he embarked, all alone, in a poor canoe, and through a violent
storm reached the dwelling of the sachem. Here he found the Pequod
ambassadors reeking as it seemed with blood; and for three days and
three nights the tardy business of mediation kept him among them whose
bloody knives he expected each night at his own throat. The
Narragansetts and Mohegans wavered, but God was with the messenger of
peace, and “wondrously preserved and helped him.” The terrible league
was broken, and the Narragansetts and Mohegans were induced by Williams
to become allies of the English. A braver, nobler action never was
performed. The banished man had heaped coals of fire on the heads of his
persecutors. After this generous act of interference on their behalf,
some of the leading men of Massachusetts wished that, at least, the
sentence of banishment against him should be revoked; but the fear of
his principles and his influence overcame the sense of gratitude, and he
remained a banished man.
The same year that Roger Williams was expelled from Massachusetts, Anne
Hutchinson, a woman of deep religious experience and great powers of
mind, arrived with her husband and family from England. Religious
discussion was at this time one of the occupations of the Puritans of
Boston; twice, or oftener, in the week, they met to canvass the sermons
of the preceding Sabbath, in order that the religious life might be kept
active. Men, however, were only admitted on these occasions, and this,
to the masculine intellect and large spirit of Anne Hutchinson, seemed
like doing the divine work only by halves. She therefore opened similar
meetings in her own house, to which her own sex were invited. Twice in
the week were these meetings held, and soon attracted great numbers of
the principal women of the place. Henry Vane, the once popular governor,
who had, by this time, been discovered to hold heretical opinions,
favoured her greatly; her views were supported by her brother-in-law,
John Wheelwright, a highly respected and learned minister, and even by
the orthodox Cotton. Nevertheless, it was soon noised abroad that this
eloquent and able woman was promulgating all kinds of new and
unthought-of heresies. Her views, it was said, threatened destruction to
church and state. The utmost excitement prevailed; sermons were
preached, public discussions were held, and finally a synod was
convened, which ended by banishing her and her friends. Vane, in the
meantime, had returned to England, and Cotton, afraid of the storm,
attached himself to the persecuting party.
Anne Hutchinson’s opinions were Antinomian; among other heretical
opinions which are charged upon her by Winthrop, are these—_that the
Sabbath is but as other days, and that there is no resurrection of the
body_: and as an instance of her hardened state, he records, that “after
she was excommunicated, her spirit, which seemed before to be somewhat
dejected, revived, and she gloried in her sufferings, saying, ‘that they
were the greatest happiness next to Christ that ever befell her.’” Noble
spirit this of the true martyr, which the persecutor never understands.
As in Roger Williams’s case, the sentence of banishment was pronounced
on her at the commencement of winter, and with a faint sentiment of
mercy, she was allowed to remain close prisoner in a private house till
the inclement season should be over. In the meantime, her husband and
others of her party left Boston to seek for a new place of settlement,
and finding one to their mind on the remote borders of the Plymouth
grant, applied for it; but, says Winthrop, “the magistrates knowing
their spirit, gave them a denial.”
Before the month of January was over, a warrant was sent to Anne
Hutchinson, to order her departure. In the meantime, those of her family
and friends who had set out to the south, intending to plant themselves
in Delaware Bay, had been welcomed on their journey by Roger Williams,
who induced them to remain in his neighbourhood; and by his influence,
Miantonomoh conferred on them the beautiful island of Aquetneck, called
by them, from an imagined resemblance to Rhodes, Rhode Island, in
Narragansett Bay, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the Providence
settlement. Here, says Winthrop, “Anne Hutchinson broached new heresies
every year.”
The enlightened historian of the present day,[2] reviewing the past in
the calm spirit of philosophy and Christianity, speaks thus: “The spirit
of the institutions established by this band of voluntary exiles—for the
number was considerable which followed this noble woman into
banishment—on the soil which they owed to the benevolence of the native,
was derived from natural justice: by a social compact, signed by all,
the government was based on the general consent; the forms of
administration were borrowed from the Jews. Coddington was elected
judge, and three elders were chosen assistants. The colony rested on the
principle of intellectual liberty. The settlement prospered, and in 1641
its constitution was framed. It was ordained therefore by the whole body
of freemen, ‘that the government be a democracy, or popular government,
viz., It is in the power of the body of freemen orderly assembled, or
the major part of them, to make or constitute just laws by which they
will be regulated, and to depute from among themselves such ministers as
will see them faithfully executed between man and man.’ It was further
ordained that _none be accounted a delinquent for doctrine_. The little
community was held together by affection and freedom of opinion. The
seal of the state was a sheaf of arrows, and the motto AMOR VINCIT
OMNIA. The same year a patent was obtained from England through their
friend, the now powerful Henry Vane.”
John Wheelwright, with other of Anne Hutchinson’s disciples, went to the
north, where he purchased, in the valley of the Piscataqua, a tract of
land from a celebrated Indian sorcerer, the chief of the Pennicook
Indians, and founded the town of Exeter.
Of the remarkable woman, the head of this intellectual movement, which
still survives in America, we have but little to relate, and that is sad
as the last act of a tragedy. Leaving the state from which she was
thrust out, she travelled by land through the wilderness to Providence,
and thence joined her family and friends on their island settlement.
Banishment had not, however, destroyed her influence in Massachusetts;
she continued to draw after her such numbers that the wise men of
Massachusetts suspected her of witchcraft. Her son and her son-in-law,
both preachers, who had been in Barbadoes, returning thence to Boston,
were heavily fined and imprisoned for preaching. Anne Hutchinson was now
a widow, and as not even Rhode Island seemed a refuge from persecution,
she and her family, the following year, removed still further south, to
the borders of the Dutch settlements. Unfortunately, the Indians were at
that time in a state of exasperation against the Dutch, and not
discriminating between nations, set fire to the house of Anne
Hutchinson, and, sorrowful to relate, she and all her family, with the
exception of one child, sixteen persons in number, perished at midnight
either by the flames or the cruel weapons of the Indians.
CHAPTER X.
SETTLEMENT OF CONNECTICUT.
The Connecticut river was discovered about the same time both by the
Dutch and the English, who both claim the honour, which is supposed by
some writers to be due to the Dutch; the English, however, were the
first settlers on its banks. In 1651, Wahquimacut, the sachem of one of
the Indian tribes which inhabited the Connecticut valley, being pressed
by his enemies the Pequods on the east, and the Mohawks on the west,
made his appearance in Boston, and afterwards in Plymouth, to invite a
settlement in his country, the beauty and fertility of which he
described in glowing colours. The Plymouth colony, which had declined
the invitation of Lord Baltimore into the milder region of Maryland,
listened more willingly to that of the Indian sachem, and Governor
Winslow himself visited the valley, and found it no less attractive than
had been represented.
The report of this new and delightful region, lying on a river which
offered every facility for an advantageous trade with the Indians, soon
reached England, and the council for New England granted a patent of the
Connecticut valley to the Earl of Warwick, a puritan nobleman and a
friend and disciple of Hooker, who had already emigrated. This grant,
however, was soon after transferred to Lord Say and Seal, Lord Brooke
and others; and John Winthrop, son of Governor Winthrop of
Massachusetts, a man whose excellent endowments, high religious
character and great learning, made him universally loved and respected,
being at that time in England on the business of Massachusetts, returned
to the New World, as agent of the noble patentees and their friends,
with a commission to build a fort at the mouth of the Connecticut,
together with houses suitable not only for emigrants in general, but for
persons of wealth and condition. This grant included the whole extent of
the country “from the Narragansett river, 120 miles in a straight line
near the shore, towards the south-west, as the coast lies towards
Virginia, from the Atlantic Ocean _to the South Sea_;” it being still
supposed that the continent of America was narrow, and that the South,
or Pacific Sea, was easily attainable from the Atlantic shore.
But before Winthrop reached America with his commission, settlements had
already been made on the Connecticut. The people of Plymouth, following
the advice of the friendly sachem, built a trading house at a place
called Windsor, and commenced a traffic with the Indians in furs; and
the Dutch, jealous of the English, had sent a colony from Manhattan, and
established what they called the House of Good Hope somewhat lower down
the river. A more important movement, however, than either of these had
set in towards the valley of the Connecticut, of which we must speak
more in detail.
Vast numbers of the persecuted still continuing to pour in from England,
the older settlements were presently found to be too narrow for their
occupants, and, as in the full hive at midsummer, a spirit of diffusion
urged them abroad. The people of Dorchester, New Town and Watertown felt
the first impulse, and lured by the intelligence of fine pasture land on
the banks of the Connecticut, many of them determined to remove thither.
In the month of October, 1635, a company of sixty persons, men, women
and children, set out on a second pilgrimage through the forests, which
were yet pathless save to the Indians, driving their cattle before them,
and taking with them merely provisions for the journey, further
supplies, together with their household possessions, having been sent
forward by sea. The American autumn is generally fine and steady, and,
late as it was in the season, no danger was apprehended. But dangers and
difficulties met them; the winter set in unusually early and with
unexampled severity; and to add to their misfortunes, the vessels which
were to supply them with necessaries were, some delayed by storms, and
others wrecked. The history of their suffering is appalling; a few
weathered out the terrible season, sustained by mast and acorns, and
others reached the sea-shore, where, finding a vessel, they returned to
Massachusetts. Their cattle fared as hardly as themselves, numbers of
them perished, and the remainder picked up a scanty subsistence in the
woods. It was a fearful beginning; but the Pilgrims, inured to
hardships, were not daunted by that which would have quailed the courage
of ordinary men. The next spring, they who had escaped with their lives
to Massachusetts were ready to return to Connecticut, only to be
followed by a much larger and more important emigration.
In the meantime Winthrop, who had arrived from England with his
commission, commenced to build the projected fort at the mouth of the
Connecticut, when a Dutch vessel appeared to take possession, but, as in
the case of the first settlement of the English at Windsor, the place
had been held in defiance of the Dutch, so now, having two pieces of
cannon, Winthrop prevented their landing, and completed the fort without
further molestation, which he named Saybrooke, after the two noble
patentees.
And now, but not without great dissatisfaction to the colony of
Massachusetts, the great emigration commenced to the attractive valley
of Connecticut. The whole narrative reads like a chapter of patriarchal
life or a beautiful Arcadian poem. “In the month of June,” says
Bancroft, “the principal caravan began its march, led by Thomas Hooker,
‘the light of the western churches.’ There were of the company about one
hundred souls; many of them were persons accustomed to affluence and the
ease of European life. They drove before them numerous herds of cattle;
and thus they traversed on foot the pathless forests of Massachusetts,
Mrs. Hooker, who was at the time in delicate health, being borne in a
litter; advancing merely ten miles a day through the tangled woods,
across swamps and numerous streams and over the highlands that separated
the several intervening valleys; subsisting, as they slowly wandered
along, on the milk of the kine which browsed on the fresh leaves and
early shoots; having no guide through the nearly untrodden wilderness
but the compass, and no pillow for their nightly rest but heaps of
stones. How did the hills echo to the unwonted lowing of the herds; how
were the forests enlivened by the loud and fervent piety of Hooker.
Never again was there such a pilgrimage from the sea-side to the
delightful banks of the Connecticut.” Well might Massachusetts oppose
this “severing of the commonwealth;” well might she remind them that
“the removing of a candlestick was a great judgment in the church;” for
this hand of Pilgrims which was leaving her infant towns “was gathered
from among the most valued citizens, the earliest settlers and the
oldest churches of the bay.” There was John Haynes, who had been
governor of Massachusetts, and “Hooker, who had no rival in the public
estimation as a preacher, excepting Cotton, whom he far surpassed in
character, together with many others. They were in fact the civil and
religious fathers of Massachusetts who were now leaving her.” Hooker, it
is said, immediately on his arrival in the New World, where he was
welcomed by his flock, who had preceded him from England, determined on
removing them to a new ground. There were yet numbers of his persecuted
friends ready to come over for his sake, and he wished for these, as
well as for himself, more room than the older colony could afford him.
The affluent and beautiful valley of the Connecticut promised him all
that he required.
The Pilgrims reached the place of their destination in safety, and fixed
upon the locality for their town, which they called Hartford. At once
they began to build and to cultivate. The miseries of the former year
had to be guarded against, houses to be built, and the forest felled
before the land could be planted; and through that summer and the whole
of the year their labours were arduous and unremitting. The fatigues and
hardships of labour were not, however, all that they had to contend
against. They had enemies in the Dutch, who saw with jealousy and hatred
the steady advance of the English on their borders; the country, unlike
Massachusetts, was thickly populated by native tribes of a fierce and
warlike character. The Pequods, occupying the country to the eastward,
mustered 700 warriors, whilst the settlers themselves scarcely amounted
to 200. It was by this bold and relentless tribe that that league of
extermination with the Mohegans and Narragansetts was formed, which, as
we have related, was revealed and prevented by Roger Williams. But
although the Narragansetts and Mohegans gave in their adherence to the
English, the Pequods remained not the less inveterate. Injuries and
murders were of daily occurrence, and at length the settlers of the
three colonies agreed to unite together to suppress the common enemy.
Uncas, sachem of the Mohegans, was their ally, and after solemn prayer
and religious exercises, the command was given to John Mason, an old
soldier of the Netherlands, who conducted himself so much to the
satisfaction of all, that “an inheritance was given to him in that part
of the country as a reward of his faithful service.” “After nearly a
whole night,” says Bancroft, “spent at the request of the soldiers in
importunate prayer, by the very learned and godly Stone, who accompanied
them as chaplain, about sixty men, one-third of the whole colony, aided
by John Underhill and twenty gallant recruits, whom the forethought of
Vane had sent from Massachusetts, sailed up the Pequod river, now called
the Thames, on the banks of which dwelt the enemy; and designing to
reach the Pequod fort unobserved, entered a harbour in Narragansett Bay.
The next day was the Sabbath, sacred to religion and rest.” Religion was
mixed up in every circumstance of life among the New England settlers,
even when, to our view, the very circumstances lacked somewhat of the
Christian spirit; as, for instance, it is recorded, probably on a
Sabbath, that while Stone was earnestly praying for some token of love
which might confirm to them the fidelity of their Indian allies, of whom
they had doubts, these allies came in with five Pequod scalps and a
prisoner, which was considered as Heaven’s answer to their prayer.
On Monday the captains of the expedition repaired to the court of
Canonicus, the patriarch and ruler of the Narragansetts, where the young
and fiery Miantonomoh, with the chief men of the tribe, about 200 in
number, were solemnly assembled for consultation. The English informed
them, “that God assisting, they were going to revenge the blood shed by
their mutual enemies.” “Your design,” said Miantonomoh, “is good, but
your numbers are too weak to brave the Pequods, who have mighty
chieftains, and are skilful in battle.”
On the Tuesday they began their march toward the Pequod country,
accompanied by a considerable number of Indian allies, 200 being
furnished by Miantonomoh, who all boasted of their bravery, despising
the English as “men who would not dare to look a Pequod in the face.”
Approaching, under the guidance of a Pequod deserter, a ford in the
river where it was said these terrible Indians came to fish, a panic
fear overcame the boastful Narragansetts, and they fled; Uncas, however,
and his Indians stood true.
The Pequods had two strongholds, both of which the English wished to
attack at the same time, but on account of the distance between them and
their own small force it was found impracticable. They encamped,
therefore, between two little hills, much wearied with hard travel,
keeping deep silence, lest the Indians in the nearest fort should
perceive their approach. “The night was still and moonlight, and though
the rocks were their pillows,” says Mason, in his quaint narrative,
“their rest was pleasant.” In the night they heard the Indians singing
at their fort, and exulting over the English, who, having been seen to
sail past them a few days before, they believed to be afraid of them.
Long before daybreak the soldiers of Connecticut put themselves in
motion, having first commended themselves and their undertaking to God;
and as the light of morning began to dawn, they made their attack on the
principal fort, which stood in a strong position on the summit of a
hill. “Then, commending themselves to God, they divided their men, there
being two entrances into the fort which they intended to enter at the
same moment, when Mason, leading up to that on the north-east side, a
dog was heard to bark, and an Indian cried out ‘Owannox! Owannox!’ (the
English! the English!)” The assailants leaped within the fort, and the
Indians, thus suddenly awoke from profound sleep, fought desperately.
The Indians were greatly superior in number, and for a moment victory
was dubious, when Mason, exclaiming “We must burn them!” seized a
flaming brand, which he held to the mats of the Indian wigwams. The fire
commenced to the windward, and soon all the wigwams were in flames.
Destruction was now inevitable; the assailants withdrew, and encompassed
the burning village, and shot or cut down with their broadswords all who
attempted to escape. Six hundred men, women, and children, within little
more than one hour’s space, perished in that horrible conflagration and
slaughter. Of the English, two only were killed, and about twenty
wounded.
This is a horrible and lamentable story, the second blot on the noble
page of the history of the puritan settlement in New England; the first
being the spirit of bigotry and intolerance, which introduced
persecution into the haven of rest and peace which God had given them
when the despotism of persecution made them exiles from their native
land. But deploring that bloody stains have darkened what would
otherwise have been a pure and glorious passage in the history of
humanity, we must continue this sad story of the destruction of a whole
race.
In the full light of morning 300 or more Pequod warriors were seen in
the distance advancing from the second village, anticipating the
triumphs of their people. Proudly they advanced, when at once beholding
the terrible scene, they made a stand, tore their hair, stamped on the
ground in a transport of rage, “and then,” says Mason, “came in full
career against us, who, as soon as they were within reach, fired upon
them, many being shot, and the rest, maddened with rage and despair,
kept running to and fro and shooting their arrows at random.”
After this wholesale slaughter a portion of the troops hastened back to
the settlements to be ready for defence in case of a sudden attack, and
the rest made their way to Saybrooke, where they were received with
great triumph. The troops which had been promised by Massachusetts to
aid in this war arrived a few days after it was over, having been
detained in consequence of the excitement which just then prevailed in
the colony regarding Anne Hutchinson and her so-called heresy. Wilson, a
celebrated minister of Boston, attended the troops, who now joining
their friends completed the war of extermination. The feeble remains of
the Pequod nation were hunted from their hiding-places, every wigwam was
burned, and every settlement destroyed.
Sassacus, the chief, being reproached by his people for the misfortunes
which had come upon them, fled to the Mohawks, where he was slain, and
his scalp sent to the English. The last remnants of this once fierce and
formidable race were killed in a dismal swamp, whither they had fled for
safety at nightfall, and into which some of their pursuers plunged also
in their over-haste of slaughter. Horrible was the struggle around the
midnight bog; the old narrative reads like a dreadful nightmare dream.
But we will not relate its horrors. The colonists, as Underhill, the
leader of the Massachusetts forces, declares, “were bereaved of pity and
without compassion,” and the race of the Pequods were annihilated as a
people. Vain had been the prayer of Roger Williams and the advice of old
Canonicus, that the women and children, at least, should be spared. Of
those who yielded, about 200 in number, many were sent to the Bermudas,
and, with grief and shame we write it, were sold into slavery; of the
remainder some were distributed to the English settlements, and the rest
incorporated among the Narragansetts and Mohegans. The lands of the
Pequods were declared to be won by conquest, and the tribe to be extinct
for ever.
The determined spirit of vengeance which had been displayed in this war
filled the natives both with terror and respect, and a long season of
peace ensued. A general day of solemn thanksgiving was held throughout
all New England, to commemorate this event.
Peace being established, and prosperity prevailing through the infant
settlements of Connecticut, the first act of the year 1639 was to form
themselves into a body-politic and frame a constitution. “This
constitution,” says Bancroft, “was of unexampled liberality.” The
elective franchise belonged to all the members of the towns who had
taken the oath of allegiance to the commonwealth, irrespective of church
membership, which was only insisted upon in the case of the governor.
The magistrates and legislature were chosen annually by ballot, and the
representatives were proportioned to the amount of population. So wise
and judicious was the constitution then framed, that, spite of the
advance which the human mind and the social condition have made since
then, there has been no reason found to alter materially the frame of
government then formed. No jurisdiction of England or the English
monarch was acknowledged; it was a simple body-politic, formed by
voluntary association; the principle of which was, “to maintain the
purity of the gospel, the discipline of the churches, and in all civil
affairs to be governed by the constitution which should be adopted.” The
legislators of Connecticut were Hooker and Haynes.
A second puritan colony had already sprung up in Connecticut, equally
independent with that of Hartford.
In 1637, two friends, “the Moses and Aaron of New Haven,” as they have
been called, with a number of puritan associates all of the strictly
Calvinistic form, arrived at Boston. These were Theophilus Eaton and
John Davenport; the former a man of wealth, who had been English
ambassador in Denmark, and son-in-law to the Bishop of Chester; the
latter, an eminent minister of London. Davenport, a friend of Cotton,
who had already emigrated to Massachusetts, and who had by him been
converted to puritanism, believing that the Reformation in England had
only half accomplished its purpose, and that “it was impossible to
reform an imperfect reformation,” earnestly desired to establish a
perfectly organised church. When Cotton, therefore, wrote to him from
New England that the order there established “brought to his mind the
new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness,” he
resolved also to remove to the New World, where an opportunity might be
afforded him of accomplishing his long-desired purpose.
In all his plans and hopes, Davenport associated his friend Eaton; and
the two, now accompanied by a number of persons like-minded with
themselves, many of them being of the congregation of Davenport, arrived
in Massachusetts. This was an advent very welcome to the churches there;
but the new-comers, like Hooker and his party, required more space. They
had large views of a commercial station, as well as of a select church;
and after carefully exploring the coast southward, they fixed upon
Quinnipiack, afterwards called New Haven, south of the settlement of
Saybrooke, where they removed the following year. A strict sense of
justice regulated the conduct of this excellent colony as regarded the
Indians. Wishing to form a large settlement, and to maintain peace with
the natives, the land was purchased by treaty with them, the new-comers
covenanting to protect them against their enemies the Mohawks.
A day or two after their arrival, they celebrated their first Sabbath
under a large, spreading oak. It was on the 18th of April; nature had
not yet arrayed the forests in verdure, and the preacher, suiting his
sermon to the circumstances of his hearers, took for his subject the
temptations of Christ in the wilderness.[3]
Spite of the provision which the colonists had made for their early
wants, the sufferings and anxieties for several months were great. The
winter was long and severe, and the early corn rotted in the ground, so
that the process of sowing had to be repeated several times. They were
alarmed by fears of famine; at length the warm season came on, and the
rapid and exuberant vegetation seemed like the visible blessing of God
in answer to their prayers.
“Soon after their arrival at Quinnipiack, at the close of a day of
fasting and prayer, they entered into what they termed a plantation
covenant. By this they solemnly bound themselves ‘that, as in matters
that concerned the gathering and ordering of a church, so also in all
public offices which concerned civil order, they would all be governed
by the rules which the Scriptures held forth to them.’”
A committee of twelve persons was appointed, who chose seven men of
piety to organise the government. Eaton, Davenport, and five others,
constituted the seven pillars of the House of Wisdom; church members
were alone allowed to exercise the elective franchise; their first
constituent assembly was held in a barn.
These settlers of New Haven were the most opulent company which had
arrived in New England. Eaton had been deputy-governor of the East India
Company, and had himself been in the East, as well as English ambassador
to Denmark, and brought over with him much money; tradition to this day
speaks of his great amount of valuable plate, and of a ewer and basin
weighing sixty pounds, double gilt and curiously wrought in gold, with
which the East India Company had presented his wife.
Thus affluent, and favoured by Providence from the commencement of the
settlement, towns sprung up around them and along the shore, “each
being, like the parent New Haven, a House of Wisdom resting on its seven
pillars, and aspiring to be illuminated by the Eternal Light.”
CHAPTER XI.
THE NEW ENGLAND UNION.
The establishment and progress of the New England states were watched
with deep interest in the mother-country, where the colonists themselves
had so many remaining ties, and where persecution still continuing
unabated, prepared thousands to fellow, and to become heroes and
adventurers for Christ’s sake. A letter from New England in those days,
we are told, was regarded “as a sacred script, or as the writing of some
holy prophet, and was carried many miles, when divers came to hear it,
and to such it became the prophecy of hope.” At the time that to
thousands of the nation at large these colonies were subjects of intense
interest, the government disregarded them as too feeble and
insignificant for notice, and by this disregard the salvation of the
liberties of the infant states was confirmed. By degrees, however, the
importance of the emigration which they occasioned, and the report of
dissatisfied persons, or those who for various causes “had been thrust
out” by the too exclusive and intolerant government of Massachusetts,
forced themselves upon the attention of the ruling party at home.
In vain did the friends of Massachusetts in England—and she had able and
powerful friends—obtain from the monarch an assurance that the people
should not be interfered with; the complainants ceased not to clamour,
and the high-church party was glad enough to listen. “Proofs were
produced of marriages celebrated by civil magistrates, of the
prohibition of the English liturgy, of a form of church discipline quite
at variance with the established law in England; nay, even that the
colony was about to disavow its allegiance to the English crown, and
assume itself the sovereign power.”
Alarm and dissatisfaction were excited, and it was determined to bring
the colony to obedience. In February, 1634, therefore, Archbishop Laud
was made the head of a commission vested with both civil and
ecclesiastical power over the American colonies, by which punishment
might be inflicted, and even any charter revoked which he might deem
derogatory to the royal prerogative. Sir Ferdinando Gorges was appointed
governor-general. We have already stated the spirit in which these
measures of the home government were viewed by Massachusetts. Poor as
the colony yet was, it resolved to maintain, at any cost, those
liberties which were dear to each individual as life; and £600 were
immediately raised for fortifications.
Restraints were now put upon emigration in England; a law was passed, in
1634, that no one above the rank of a serving-man should leave the
country without leave from the commission, and even those should first
be compelled to take the oaths of supremacy and allegiance. Besides the
jealousy of the supreme power in England, other causes were now
operating against the colony at home. The grand council of Plymouth
having long since made grants of all the lands included in their
charter, and that two or three times over in some cases, and unable any
longer to derive benefit from it, resigned their charter, and as a final
act divided the whole coast, “from Acadia to beyond the Hudson,” into
lots, which were distributed among the members of the defunct
corporation. To divide the land by lots on paper was easy; to gain
possession, was quite a different thing. A second strong power was,
however, by this means raised up in England against the American
colonies.
“Now was the season,” says Bancroft, “of greatest peril to the rising
liberties of New England. The king and council, fearing the unbridled
spirits of the Americans, the Court of King’s Bench issued a writ, in
Trinity term, 1635, against the Massachusetts Bay Company; and the
following term judgment was pronounced against such of the members as
residing in England made their appearance, and they and the rest of the
patentees were outlawed.” At this moment Mason, the proprietary of New
Hampshire, as we have mentioned, and one of the prime movers in these
unjust proceedings, suddenly died, and they went no further.
From 1635 to 1637 was an awful time of persecution in England. Fines,
imprisonments, the bloody cruelties of the lash and the shears, the
pillory, the red-hot firebrand and the gallows reigned triumphant; and
the suffering were impelled “by heaps to leave their native country.”
“Nothing,” says Milton, “but the wide ocean and the savage deserts of
America could hide and shelter them from the fury of the bishops.” But
even this last resource was attempted to be taken from them; and in 1637
the king again issued a proclamation against emigration, and the
following year a squadron of eight ships, about to embark for New
England, was forbidden to leave the Thames. It was on board some of
these ships, tradition says, that Oliver Cromwell and Hampden were when
this arbitrary prohibition compelled them to remain in England, where a
greater work awaited them. This squadron was, however, allowed to sail
after all, on a petition to the crown from the owners and passengers.
Whilst we are on the subject of emigration, it may be mentioned, as
evidencing the discriminating and uncompromising spirit of liberty in
the New World, that when in 1635 several puritan noblemen, especially
the Earl of Warwick and the Lords Brooke and Say and Seal, were
contemplating a removal thither, they endeavoured to induce the colonies
to establish hereditary nobility, and to make the magistracy perpetual
to certain privileged families. To this proposal Cotton, in the name of
the court of Massachusetts, very pertinently replied: “When God blesseth
any branch of a noble or generous family with gifts fit for government,
it would be taking God’s name in vain to put such a talent under a
bushel, and a sin against the honour of the magistracy to neglect such
in our public elections. But if God should not delight to furnish such
of their posterity with gifts fit for magistracy, we should expose them
rather to reproach and prejudice, and the commonwealth with them, than
exalt them to honour, if we should call them forth whom God does not to
public authority.” By these conclusive arguments New England preserved
itself from any privileged class, and the English nobility remained at
home.
But now to return to Massachusetts with the whole power of the English
government arrayed against her. In 1638, the lords of the council wrote
to Winthrop, demanding from him, by virtue of the writ already issued,
the return of the patent, threatening that in case of refusal the king
would immediately assume the government himself. Winthrop wrote back
calmly, that the colony demanded a fair trial before condemnation. It
was a cool, manly letter, and contained some remonstrance and some
suggestions, but under all there was a tone of determined resistance.
But before this letter reached England, the cruel Laud and his royal
master had more serious business in hand than the subjection of a
contumacious colony. The people of England, no doubt considerably
influenced by the spirit which pervaded America, had now risen in
opposition to the government; civil war raged; the Solemn League and
Covenant expressed the universal sentiment in Scotland. Liberty
overpowered despotism; public opinion was mightier than ecclesiastical
oppression; Laud in his turn was imprisoned, and a new era was at hand.
The monarch, whose throne was endangered, had now no thoughts to spare
for New England; nor if he had, need he any longer have prohibited
emigration. The tide was turned every way, and numbers—among the rest
Vane and Peters, the tragic deaths of whom are familiar to the reader of
English history, who had fled for refuge to America—now returned to
become actors in the great drama of events.
A change had taken place in the affairs of New England with the triumph
of puritanism in the mother-country. The Long Parliament, in which were
many members favourable to the New England settlements, “sought rather
to honour than humble them.” Yet so jealous were the colonists of their
precious liberties, that they refused any, even friendly interference in
their affairs; and when in 1642 the Westminster Assembly of Divines
invited over deputies in the persons of Hooker, Davenport, and Cotton,
they declined, Hooker in particular, who stated that he saw “no
sufficient excuse to leave their flocks in the wilderness.”
The states of New England, now freed from any anxiety from the home
government, resolved on forming a union or confederacy among themselves,
the reasons for which were, “the dispersed state of the colonies; the
dangers to be apprehended from the Dutch, the French and the Indians;
the commencement of civil discord in England; and the difficulty of
obtaining aid thence in any emergency.” This confederacy included
Massachusetts, Connecticut, Plymouth, and New Haven, Maine and Rhode
Island being rejected, the former because “its people ran a different
course both in religion and government, and the latter not only for the
same reason, but because it refused to become a portion of the
jurisdiction of Plymouth;” and under the name of the United Colonies
this league existed for upwards of forty years. The terms of this union
assured to each colony its separate existence, but each was bound to
contribute its proportion, both of men and money, for the common
defence. All matters relating to the common interests were to be decided
in an annual assembly, composed of two delegates from each colony; which
was to hold its meetings by rotation in each state, Massachusetts merely
having a double privilege. This measure of colonial legislation was in
fact an assumption of sovereign authority; it was the forerunner of
American independence.
The main object of the union was the security of the colonies against
the natives, who becoming now acquainted with some of the arts of
civilised life, were more and more formidable as antagonists. The
destruction of the Pequods had not secured peace to the colonies.
Unfortunately by this time, too, an idea was becoming prevalent in New
England that the Indians were of the accursed race of Ham, and fit only
to be rooted out; and hence a spirit of vengeance prevailed against
them. In vain the milder-tempered settlers of Connecticut and Rhode
Island combated such a doctrine; their pity for the heathen was only
regarded as of a piece with their heretical notions. In proportion as
the English became vindictive towards the Indian, his savage nature
became excited. To be the allies of the hated English drew down upon the
feebler tribes the vengeance of their Indian enemies. The bold
Miantonomoh hated the Mohegans for this cause. He had been taken to
Boston as a criminal on the accusation of Uncas, the Mohegan chief, and
now he thirsted for vengeance. Accordingly, at the head of 1000
warriors, and in defiance of a treaty with the English, he suddenly fell
upon the Mohegans. He was defeated and taken prisoner, and by the laws
of Indian warfare death was his doom. Samuel Gorton, however, and some
other heretical English settlers, on the lands of Miantonomoh,
interceded for him, and his life was spared. The unfortunate and haughty
chief, being conducted a prisoner to Hartford, his fate was referred to
the court of Boston, the cruel Uncas, who charged him with an attempt to
bewitch and assassinate him, being his accuser; the good services of the
forest chief to the colonists, and the aid he had given in the Pequod
war, were all forgotten. Murder was one of the crimes punished by death
among the Puritans, and as they themselves had on one occasion put to
death two of their own people for the murder of one Indian, Miantonomoh,
against whom it was easy to found such an accusation, to say nothing of
his having in spite of the league of amity commenced a bloody war, was
condemned to death as a murderer. He was again given up to his enemy
Uncas, the conditions simply being that he should be executed beyond the
English boundaries, and that no torture should accompany his death.
Uncas conveyed him back to the place whence he was taken, and then one
of his men marching behind him clove his head with a hatchet, and he
fell dead with the blow. Such was the hard fate of one of the noblest
chiefs of the wilderness, “the fast friend of the exiles of
Massachusetts, the fathers of Rhode Island.” Later and more enlightened
times have attempted in some measure to evince respect to this bold and
ill-used chief; Cooper has written of him, and a block of granite
inscribed with his name now marks the spot where he fell. It was about
this time, and in consequence of the unquiet state of the Indians, that
a law was passed, requiring all towns to be well provided with powder,
“and hence,” says Hildreth, “the origin of those powder-houses, perched
on some lonely hill, which formed in past years marked objects in the
New England landscape.”
Whilst the confederate colonies were thus strengthening themselves, the
people of Rhode Island resolved to obtain from the mother-country an
acknowledgment as a separate state. We have already mentioned that Roger
Williams succeeded in this important object, through his powerful friend
Henry Vane. But Williams, independent of any political partizanship, was
already favourably known in England from his printed work on the Indian
language, “the like whereof was not extant in any part of America.”
This, and his merits as a missionary, induced both houses of parliament
to grant to him and his friends, “a free and absolute charter of civil
government for those parts of his abode. The places of refuge for
soul-liberty on the Narragansett Bay were thus incorporated with full
power and authority to rule themselves.”
Williams returned triumphantly to New England, now landing in Boston,
whence he had not been allowed to sail, with letters from the
parliament, which demanded his safety and good reception. “As he
approached Seekonk the water was covered with boats; all the people of
Providence had come out to meet him. Receiving their successful
ambassador, the group of boats started for the opposite shore, and as
they paddled across the stream, Roger Williams, placed in the centre of
his grateful fellow-citizens and glowing with the purest joy, was
elevated and transported out of himself.” It is pleasant to record such
an incident in the life of a good and great man.
Again, in a moment of danger to the little state, Williams was sent to
London to negotiate for its safety, which he again did successfully.
And now came a trial of his virtue in a new form. The General Assembly,
grateful to Roger Williams for the services which he had ever rendered
the state of which he was the founder, desired that he should obtain
from England an appointment of governor of the colony. But “he refused
to sanction a measure which would have furnished a dangerous precedent,
and was content with the honour of doing good.” The government of Rhode
Island remained a pure democracy, ever anxious, to use the words of its
own records, “not to prove an anarchy, and so a common tyranny.” To the
orthodox states of New England, Rhode Island appeared as an anarchy, and
nothing but destruction was foretold for it; the towns, it was said,
“were full of Anabaptists, Antinomians and infidels, so that, if a man
chance to lose his religious creed, he may be sure of finding it again
in some village of Rhode Island.” But all went well in the end; “good
men, independent of creeds, were chosen to administer the government,
and the spirit of mercy, liberality, and wisdom was impressed on its
legislation.”
As the laws and customs of a people infallibly reflect its life,
character, and circumstances, we will here give a few examples from the
legislative books of New England. “A fundamental law of Massachusetts
enacted that all strangers professing the Christian religion and fleeing
thither should be supported at the public charge till other provision
could be made for them.” This law, however, did not apply to Jesuits or
popish priests, who were subjected to banishment, and death in case of
their return. Defensive war only was considered allowable; blasphemy,
idolatry and witchcraft, like murder, were capital offences; gaming was
prohibited; intemperance and all immorality was severely punished;
interest was forbidden on money lent, as well as the wearing of
expensive apparel; parents were commanded to instruct and catechise
their children and servants; and the Bible, wherever legal enactments
were insufficient, was made the ultimate tribunal of appeal. Regarding
themselves as similar in circumstances to the children of Israel who
journeyed in the wilderness, they governed themselves in many respects
by the Jewish law; as for instance, the Sabbath with them, as with the
Jews, commenced on the preceding evening, sunset being regarded as the
commencement of the day. From the same cause arose the prevalence of
Scriptural and significant names in baptism. We have already mentioned
such in the earliest recorded baptisms. Even to this day we believe that
the Christian virtues, as among their forefathers, furnish prevalent
names throughout New England. One unfortunate result of their adherence
to the Mosaic code must be mentioned from the important consequences to
which in some measure it led. It was provided by their law “that there
should be no bond-slavery, villanage, nor captivity among them,
excepting of lawful captives taken in war, and such strangers as
voluntarily sell themselves for service: none being exempted from
servitude who shall be judged thereto by authority.” Hence, Indian
captives and negroes might be held in perpetual slavery by the laws of
New England, and this before the statutes either of Virginia or Maryland
sanctioned the same. Again, the union of Church and State in
Massachusetts produced all the ill effects of such a union—bigotry and
intolerance. “Orthodoxy” and “piety,” so called, were the rocks upon
which the liberty and true greatness of Massachusetts suffered
shipwreck. We shall see more of this anon.
Having thus brought down the affairs of the New England States to the
sitting of the Long Parliament, we will hastily glance at their
condition. “The change,” say their writers, “which had been wrought
through their industry in the wilderness was the wonder of the world.”
Plenty prevailed everywhere. The wigwams and hovels, which furnished the
first shelter to the settlers, were replaced by substantial houses. The
number of persons who had already emigrated amounted to 21,200. “In
little more than ten years, fifty towns and villages had been planted;
between thirty and forty churches built; and strangers as they gazed
could not but acknowledge God’s blessing on the planters. Affluence was
already following in the train of industry; furs, timber, and fish were
exported; and grain carried to the West Indies.” Ship-building, in which
the Americans of the present day excel so greatly, was early commenced,
the great promoter of this branch of art being Hugh Peters, the
successor of Roger Williams in the church of Salem. Vessels of 400 tons
were built before 1640, which traded to Madeira, the Canaries, and
Spain, touching frequently, we regret to confess, on the African coast,
and bringing away cargoes of negroes, who were sold in the West Indies,
there being, it is said, but small demand for them at home.
In many respects the present New Englanders are the genuine and
praiseworthy descendants of the early colonists, and in none more so
than as regards education. It was ever the custom, and soon became the
law, of puritan New England, that “none of the brethren should suffer so
much barbarism in their families as not to teach their children and
apprentices so much learning as may enable them perfectly to read the
English tongue.” That learning might not be hidden, as they said, in the
graves of their forefathers, it was ordered that as soon as any township
contained fifty householders, a person should be “appointed to teach all
the children to read and write, and that after the number amounted to
100, a grammar-school should be established, in which the youth should
be instructed so far as to be fitted for the university.” In 1636, a sum
equal to a year’s rate of the whole colony was voted for the erection of
a college at New Town, the name of which was changed to Cambridge, in
commemoration of the seat of learning where most of the Massachusetts
divines were educated; and two years later, John Harvard, a man of
wealth and learning, arriving in the country only to die, nobly
bequeathed one-half of his property and his library to the infant
institution. This college was hailed as welcome by all the states; the
rent of a ferry was devoted to it as an annual revenue by Massachusetts;
and Connecticut, Plymouth and other places, were not behindhand in its
support, whilst each individual family was rated twelvepence, or a peck
of corn, for the same purpose. “This college,” says Bancroft, “exerted a
powerful influence in forming the early character of the country. In the
laws requiring the establishment of common schools lies the secret of
the success and character of New England. Every child, as it was born
into the world, was lifted from the earth by the genius of its country,
and, in the statutes of the land, received as its birthright a pledge of
the public care for its morals and its mind.” And as it began, so has it
continued; and New England to this day is the seat of the intellectual
strength of the New World, and from New England proceed over all the
Union teachers, both men and women, of the highest character.
The first printing-press in Massachusetts arrived in 1638. It was
purchased in England by Jesse Glover, a worthy nonconformist minister,
who was about to emigrate with his family, but who unfortunately died on
the passage. The press was welcome in the colony, and was worked by
Stephen Daye, the printer whom Glover had engaged and taken out with
him. It began to work in January, 1639, and it is characteristic of the
colony that the first works which it produced, were the Freeman Oath and
a metrical version of the Psalms. The first newspaper was published
upwards of half a century later.
In 1641, the settlements of New Hampshire, on the banks of the
Merrimack, feeling themselves in a weak and insecure condition,
petitioned the now powerful Massachusetts to take them into its
jurisdiction. The general court granted their request, and they became
incorporated with that colony.
Although we do not hear of Massachusetts exploring beyond her own
immediate boundaries, yet this was not wholly the case with regard to
New Hampshire and Maine. In 1642, Darby Field, an Irishman, with two
Indian guides, penetrated as far as the White Mountains, the glistening
peaks of which had long been the landmark of the mariner. And Thomas
Gorges, the governor of Maine, the same year, with an exploring party,
paddled up the Saco, in birch-bark canoes, to the same remarkable
mountains, and ascending their summits, beheld the sources of the
Connecticut, the Andrascoggen, the Merrimack, and the Saco rivers.
The colony of Connecticut, which was not included in the Massachusetts
States Union, continued to increase. The town of Southampton, on Long
Island, acknowledged her jurisdiction, as did also Fort Saybrooke, which
had been an independent colony until 1643, when Fenwick, who purchased
the grant from the original patentees, returning to England, where he
entered the parliamentary army, sold his interest in it to Connecticut.
Massachusetts, with all her steadfast virtues and her sterling
qualities, had, as we have seen, many sins of oppression and intolerance
to answer for; Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson were not the only
victims, even before her more wholesale persecution began. Samuel
Gorton, who seems to have been an early transcendentalist, was banished
from Plymouth, like the other two apostles of liberty, in the winter
season, in the midst of a snow-storm, with his wife and sick child. Like
all other heretics, he took refuge at Providence, whence, after much
trouble, he and his adherents, having purchased a tract of land called
Shawomet from Miantonomoh, commenced a settlement. Whether really
Miantonomoh sold land which was not his, or whatever the cause might be,
two sachems appeared at Boston complaining that they were wrongfully
dispossessed of their land. Massachusetts took the matter up warmly; the
sachems submitted themselves and their territory to her power, and
promised obedience to the ten commandments. The disputed land having
thus come into the possession of Massachusetts, Gorton was summoned to
Boston to answer to the charge brought against him by the sachems; he
refused to obey, and an armed force was then sent to compel him. In
terror the women and children fled to the woods, and Gorton and his men
prepared to resist force by force. The people of Providence mediated,
and in the end, Gorton and his friends agreed to go to Boston, provided
they were treated “as free men and neighbours.” But though the promise
was given, it was not kept; as prisoners of war they were marched
between soldiers to the governor. By him they were treated as criminals,
and condemned to the common prison, great rejoicing being held in Boston
that “the Lord had delivered them into their hands.” After a month’s
imprisonment, they were tried on the charge of blasphemy and as enemies
of civil and religious government, and Gorton and seven others were
found guilty. Many advocated putting Gorton to death, but finally the
seven culprits were banished to seven different towns, there to be kept
to hard labour, in irons, under pain of death if they attempted to
broach “their abominable and blasphemous heresies.” Their cattle were
seized to pay expenses. Spite of the threat of death, it was soon found
that they made many converts, and they were then banished, on pain of
death, from Massachusetts or Shawomet. Gorton now sailed from Manhattan
to London, where the “mystic eloquence” of his preaching won for him
many friends among the Independents, and his complaints obtained a
hearing.
All this, however, spite of its arbitrariness and injustice, tended in
the end to the still further establishment of the liberties of New
England. Two years after Gorton’s removal to England, one of his friends
returned, bringing letters of safe conduct for himself, from the
parliamentary commission, and an order that Gorton’s people should be
allowed quiet possession of Shawomet. The government of Massachusetts
perceived at once the dangerous position in which this order placed
them. Independent of their disinclination to receive again the banished
heretics, such an order implied that the parliament had a right to
reverse their decisions; and to admit this was a blow at the very life
of the commonwealth. A general court was summoned to deliberate, with
closed doors, on the present critical emergency, and the decision was,
that “allegiance was due to England, also a tenth part of all gold and
silver ore,” but that the management of their own local affairs must be
kept in their own hands. “If parliament be less inclinable to us,” was
their final resolve, in which a threat was implied, “we must wait upon
Providence for the preservation of our just liberties.” Winslow was sent
over as agent from Massachusetts to the parliament, in which he and
Massachusetts had many influential friends; and so well did he
negotiate, that the end was an assurance from parliament to this effect:
“We encourage no appeals from your justice. We leave you with all the
freedom and latitude that may in any respect be duly claimed by you.”
Thus did all things work together for the advantage and furtherance of
Massachusetts. It is a curious fact that Massachusetts, thus nobly
determined in the cause of her liberty and independence, was
nevertheless, at this very time, so poor in money, that it was with
difficulty that £100 was raised for Winslow’s outfit.
In 1648, a synod was held at Cambridge, for the drawing up of a
confession of faith, when a little circumstance occurred which is worth
mentioning. A sermon opened the business of the assembly, during which
“a snake came into the seat where many of the elders sat. Divers shifted
from it, but Mr. Thompson of Braintree, a man of much faith, trod upon
its head, and so held it with foot and staff till it was killed. ‘This
being so remarkable,’ says Winthrop in his diary, ‘and nothing falling
out but by Divine Providence, it is out of doubt the Lord discovered
some of his mind in it. The serpent is the devil;’” a type, Winthrop
probably thought, of the Rhode Island and Providence heresies, “‘the
synod the representative of the churches of Christ in New England.’ The
devil had formerly and lately attempted their disturbance and
dissolution, but their faith in the seed of the woman overcame him and
crushed his head.” The following year, Winthrop, who was then in his
tenth term of office of governor, died, and Endicott succeeded him.
In 1651, Cromwell, after his successes in Ireland, wishing to show his
good will and regard for New England, offered any of its people who
chose to emigrate, estates and settlements in the conquered island. But
his offers were declined, “for the emigrants already loved their land of
refuge, where their own courage and toils had established the liberties
of the gospel, and created the peaceful abundance of thriving
republics.” When, also, four years later, he conquered Jamaica, he
offered it as a free gift to his favourites, the people of New England.
The war between England and Holland hardly disturbed the tranquillity of
the colonies. The western settlements, who would have suffered extreme
misery from a combined attack of the Dutch and Indians, wished to reduce
New Amsterdam; but Massachusetts, which could deliberate more coolly and
wisely, answered, that “the wars of Europe ought not to destroy the
happiness of America;” and peaceful intercourse was still preserved with
Manhattan.
“The European republics had composed their strife before the fleet which
was destined to take possession of the Dutch settlements reached
America; and though peace then prevailed between England and France, the
English forces, apparently unwilling to return without conquest in one
quarter or another, turned northward and took possession of Acadia—an
acquisition which no remonstrance or complaint would induce Cromwell to
restore, perhaps because he knew that New England would be benefited by
its possession.”
We have seen the intolerance of Massachusetts in various cases of
unorthodox opinions. Neither sincerity nor purity of life could save the
heretical believer from the merciless cruelty of her bigotry. In 1657,
Clark, a “pure and tolerant baptist of Rhode Island, was fined, with his
companion Holmes, for preaching in Lynn; and Holmes, refusing to pay his
fine, was unmercifully whipped. The persecution from which the Pilgrims
had fled in England was no whit behind that which now commenced in
Massachusetts. Blasphemy was the highest crime in their calendar, and
doubt of their faith was blasphemy. To deny that any single book of the
Old or New Testament was the infallible word of God, subjected to fines
and stripes, and in case of obstinacy, exile or death. Absence from the
ministry of the word was punishable by fine.” With reference to this
strict observance of the Sabbath, we may give an extract from Winthrop’s
journal, on an occasion when a French deputation from Acadia arrived at
Boston. “The Lord’s-day they were here,” says Winthrop, “the governor
acquainted them with our manner, that all men either come to our public
worship or keep themselves quiet in their houses; and finding the place
where they were not convenient for them, invited them to his own house,
where they continued private until sunset, and made use of such Latin
and French books as they had, with the liberty of a private walk in his
garden, and so gave no offence.” As we are on the subject of this French
embassy, which was of considerable interest to the people of Boston, we
may as well mention that Winthrop sent back by them, as a present to M.
D’Aulney, governor of Acadia, a sedan chair, which had been given to him
a few months before by a munificent freebooter, one Captain Cromwell,
who having been, the former year, driven by stress of weather into
Plymouth, came the next to Boston; “he and all his men having much money
and great store of plate and jewels of great value.” We may suppose that
buccaneering was not offensive to the consciences of the good people of
Boston, for we find that, having taken up his lodging in a poor thatched
house, he was offered the best in the town, which he refused, alleging
that “in his mean state that poor man entertained him when others would
not, and therefore he would not desert him now, when he might do him
good.” On leaving the place, however, he presented Winthrop with the
sedan chair we have mentioned, which had been originally designed as a
present from the viceroy of Mexico to his sister.
But to return to the persecutions of Massachusetts. “The union of church
and state,” says Bancroft justly, “was fast corrupting both; it mingled
base ambition with the former; it gave a false direction to the
legislation of the latter. The creation of a national, uncompromising
church led the congregationalists of Massachusetts to the indulgence of
the passions which had disgraced their English persecutors. Laud was
justified by the men whom he had wronged.”
If Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, whose views and opinions were
comparatively calm and conventional, called forth the vehemence of
reprobation from the churches of Massachusetts, what mercy or
forbearance could be expected for the fanatical, early Quakers, whose
zeal almost approached to insanity? None.
In July, 1656, two quaker preachers, whose names, to use their own
phraseology, “according to the flesh,” were Mary Fisher and Ann Austin,
arrived at Boston. No law as yet existed against the Quakers; but under
the statutes of heresy their trunks were searched, and “though no token
could be found on them, but of innocence,” their books were burned by
the hangman and their persons examined for signs of witchcraft. After
five weeks’ close imprisonment, they were thrust out of the colony;
together with eight others who arrived during the year. Mary Fisher,
nothing daunted by her reception among the Christians, turned her views
toward the Turks, and proceeded alone to Adrianople, where she delivered
to the grand Sultan the message which she believed entrusted to her by
heaven. The Turks, more Christian than the New England Christians,
deemed her insane, and she went through their army “without hurt or
scoff.”
A law was now passed forbidding the entrance of Quakers into the colony;
but such a law rather invited than deterred men and women who, believing
themselves the especial messengers of God, feared neither the power nor
the wrath of the arm of flesh. The Quakers came, and the horrors of
persecution began in earnest. One woman, who had come to London
purposely to warn the magistrates against persecution, was whipped with
twenty stripes. Some who had been banished, returned only to be
imprisoned, fined, whipped and sent away under penalty of severe
punishment if they returned; a fine of forty shillings was imposed for
every hour’s entertainment of any “of the accursed sect,” and a Quaker,
if a man, after the first conviction was to lose one ear, after the
second the other, and after the third, his tongue was to be bored with a
red-hot iron. If a woman, she was to be whipped with stripes
proportioned to the repetition of the offence. Plymouth, Connecticut,
and New Haven adopted similar laws. The colony, however, was soon
ashamed of the statute of mutilation, and it was repealed; but, as was
sure to be the case, New England was soon all the more actively visited
by Quakers. The following year, therefore, by the advice of the
commissioners of the united colonies, the younger Winthrop alone
dissenting, a law was passed banishing them on pain of death. In the
province of Rhode Island alone were the Quakers safe, favoured by the
great principle of toleration. Again and again the united colonies
remonstrated on the privileges which they here enjoyed, and in reply to
one of their remonstrances, the more sensible Rhode Islanders said, “in
those places where these people are most of all suffered to declare
themselves freely, and are openly opposed by argument in discourse, they
least desire to come, so that they begin to loathe this place for that
they are not opposed by the civil authority, but with all patience and
meekness are suffered to say over their pretended revelations.” But
Massachusetts could neither see nor understand the policy of
forbearance; the very fines imposed on those who attended their meetings
acted only as a whet to curiosity; and spite of finings, whippings,
brandings and cropping of ears, the Quakers came and came again, and
Boston of all places, the laws there being the severest, was the most
attractive to them.
In October, 1659, under the law which made it a capital offence for a
Quaker to return to the colony, Marmaduke Stevenson of Yorkshire, who
related of himself that, while he was at plough at Skipton, a voice
called to him saying, “I have ordained thee to be a prophet to the
nations;” William Robinson of London, who had already been whipped, and
Mary Dyer, the widow of the late recorder of Providence, and a friend of
Anne Hutchinson, were all found guilty of “rebellion, sedition, and
presumptuously obtruding themselves into the colony after banishment on
pain of death.” Mary Dyer was carried to the gallows with the rope round
her neck, where she witnessed the execution of her friends, after which
she was reprieved; but the reprieve was hardly welcome; “Let me suffer
as my brethren,” said she, “unless you will annul your wicked law!” The
government of Massachusetts, in excuse for these extreme measures,
asserted, that “they sought not the death but the absence of the
Quakers;” and when, some months later, Mary Dyer, “impelled,” as she
said, “by the Spirit,” returned to testify against “the bloody town of
Boston,” they thought it necessary to vindicate their authority by
hanging her as they had done the others.
Vain were all these barbarities to put down quakerism, or to keep “the
accursed sect” out of the puritan borders; for as Wendlock
Christopherson, who having returned in defiance of the sentence of
death, now standing face to face with his stern and pitiless judges,
said: “for the last man that was put to death there are five come in his
room; and if you have power to take my life from me, God can raise up
the same principle of life in ten of his servants, and send them among
you in my room, that you may have torment upon torment.” Whether it was
the fear of this Hydra-headed quakerism, or whether God prevented them
from taking his life, he too was reprieved after sentence of death, and
finally set at liberty. Little mercy, however, prevailed generally; the
prisons were full of Quakers, men, women, and even children, as in the
case of Patience Scott, a girl of eleven, and the hangman’s whip seemed
never to have done its work. At length the compassion of the people
generally was so much excited, that night and day such crowds gathered
round the prison to condole with and to hear the Quakers, who preached
through the bars, that a guard was placed round its walls to keep the
people off.
The last Quaker that suffered death was William Ledra; he too had
returned after sentence of banishment; and being again offered his life,
on condition of his leaving the country, replied that he was willing to
die; and, accordingly, in March 1660, he was executed. Imprisonment went
on, and whipping at the cart’s-tail began, but the poor Quakers were as
determined as ever; and in proportion as the magistrates were more
cruel, they became more infatuated. Strange that the rulers did not see
that the one excess was the result of the other! They entered the
congregations during the time of worship, and denounced the preaching to
be an abomination to the Lord. They went through the streets crying out
that the day of the Lord’s vengeance was at hand; and one woman even,
otherwise decorous, forgot the natural modesty and self-respect of her
sex so far as to appear naked in the streets. To what extent this mad
zeal might have gone on the one hand, and the bigotry of punishment and
persecution on the other, there is no saying. But the one died gradually
and naturally away, when the other ceased, in consequence of an order
from Charles II. in 1661, the report of these atrocities having reached
England, when it was ordered that a stop should be put to all capital or
corporeal punishment of the people called “Quakers.”
While persecution was thus outraging the spirit of Christianity, a noble
apostle of Christ was labouring in the divine spirit of his Great
Master, and to him we will now turn, glad to leave so hideous an aspect
of religion for another beautiful in the love of Christ. We refer to
John Eliot, the missionary of the Indians.
The first colonists hoped to have incorporated the Indians into their
own commonwealth, and their charters provided for assignments of land to
any such Indians as might become civilised. The pilgrims entertained the
wish to Christianise the natives. “Alas!” said the good Robinson, when
he heard of the first slaughter of the Indians, “that you had not
converted some before you killed any!” Unfortunately, however, the
Puritans, as we have said, regarding themselves as typified by the
chosen Israelites, soon began to regard the natives as equally typified
by the native tribes of Canaan; and a spirit of pride taking place of
the former spirit of love, it was suggested “that the Indians might be,
naturally as well as figuratively, the children of the devil,” and by
degrees, they were treated as such with contempt and abhorrence. Before,
however, this evil fruit loaded a once goodly tree, John Eliot, the
minister of Roxbury, distinguished himself by his Christian labours
among these children of the wilderness. Eliot began to preach to the
Indians in 1646, when he was about forty years of age. “His
benevolence,” says Bancroft, “almost amounted to genius. An Indian
grammar was a pledge of his earnestness; the pledge was redeemed by his
preparing and publishing a translation of the whole Bible into the
Massachusetts dialect. His actions, his thoughts, his desires, all wore
the hues of disinterested love.
[Illustration: JOHN ELIOT PREACHING TO THE INDIANS.]
“Eliot mixed with the Indians; he spoke to them of God, and of the soul,
and explained the virtues of self-denial. He became their lawgiver. He
taught the women to spin, the men to dig the ground. He established for
them simple forms of government; and in spite of menaces from their
priests and chieftains, he successfully imparted to them his own
religious faith. Groups of Indians used to gather round him as a father;
and now that their minds were awakened to reflection, often perplexed
him with questions similar to those which have perplexed the profoundest
intellects of the world, and which none are profound enough to solve,
nor was the good missionary ever tired with the importunity of their
inquiring minds.”
The fame of Eliot’s pious and unremitting labours reached England, where
a society was formed for aiding and supporting them. Funds by this means
were sent over, which enabled him to educate his five sons at college,
all of whom, with the exception of one, who died young, became preachers
among the Indians; as well as to support various Indian youths at
college, one of whom took a bachelor’s degree; and to allow small
salaries to Indian preachers.
Turning again to Bancroft, whose page seems to glow whenever it
chronicles a great or noble action, he tells us that “the spirit of
humanity sustained Eliot to the last; his zeal was not wearied by the
hereditary idleness of the race; and his simplicity of life and manners
and evangelical sweetness of temper, won for him all hearts, whether in
the villages of the emigrants or the smoky cells of the natives.
“Nor was Eliot alone. In the islands round Massachusetts, and within the
limits of the Plymouth patent, missionary zeal and charity were active;
and that New England scholar, the young Mayhew, forgetting the pride of
learning, endeavoured to win the natives to a new religion. At a later
day he took passage to England, but the ship in which he sailed was
never more heard of. Such, however, had been the force of his example,
that his father, though bowed down by the weight of seventy years,
assumed the office of the son whom he had lost, and until beyond the age
of fourscore and twelve continued to instruct the natives of the isles
with the happiest results. The Indians within his influence, though
twenty times more numerous than the whites in their neighbourhood,
preserved an immutable friendship with Massachusetts.
“Villages of ‘praying Indians,’ as the converted natives were called,
were established. Christianity, however, scarcely spread beyond the
Indians on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and the seven
villages round Boston. The powerful Narragansetts, situate between
Connecticut and Plymouth, retained their old belief; and Philip of
Pokanoket, the fierce son of old Massasoit, the early friend of the
Pilgrims, maintained with pride the faith of his fathers.”
CHAPTER XII.
NEW NETHERLANDS; NEW SWEDEN.
We have already related how, in the year of our Lord 1609, Henry Hudson,
on his second voyage of discovery, coasted America from Acadia to
Delaware Bay; and how, on the 3rd of September, he anchored within Sandy
Hook; after which, passing the Narrows, he entered New York Bay, and
leaving the island of Manhattan, proceeded up the great river. His ship
entering Sandy Hook Bay, the first European vessel which had ploughed
those waters, was a wonderful object of curiosity to the natives, who
assembled on the shore. Hudson ascended the river, still the same cause
of wonder to the natives, who treated him well, and are reported by him
to be “a very loving people.” Arriving at shallows in the river on the
19th, Hudson anchored at Schenectadea, now called Albany, and received
pumpkins and grapes, as well as otter and beaver-skins, from the
Indians, to whom, in return, he presented hatchets, beads and knives. On
this occasion, too, they tasted for the first time the fatal fire-water,
which was destined to have so disastrous an effect on the downfall of
their kindred tribes over the whole continent of America.
The Iroquois Indians retain to this day the tradition of this wonderful
event, although they differ as to the locality, some placing it at
Albany, others at New York; but the substance of the incident occurred,
not only at these two places, but wherever the white man set his foot.
“A long time ago,” say they, “before men with white skins had ever been
seen, some Indians, fishing at a place where the sea widens, espied
something at a distance moving on the water. They hurried ashore, called
together their neighbours, and all stood to watch this wonderful
apparition. They could not tell what it was; some thought it was a large
fish, others a large wigwam floating. As it appeared to approach the
land, runners were sent in all directions with the news to their
scattered chiefs, that they might send off for their warriors and wise
men. In a short time all were there, and the conclusion was, that it was
the Manitou, or Great Spirit, who was about to visit them. They were not
afraid that the Great Spirit would hurt them; nevertheless a great awe
fell upon them.
“The chiefs assembled to consult how Manitou could be best received, and
meat was prepared for sacrifice. The women, in the meantime, prepared
the best of victuals, and the conjurers tried all their arts to discover
what the marvel portended. The idols were put in order, and a grand
dance was held, which, in case he might be angry, it was hoped would
please him.
“Whilst all this was going on, other runners arrived, who had also
perceived the strange apparition, and now thronged to that part of the
shore at which it appeared to be aiming. As it neared the shore, it was
declared to be a great canoe, full of living creatures, and all were now
convinced that it was indeed Manitou, ‘bringing some new kind of game.’
“The vessel, now within ear-shot of the shore, hails the natives in a
language they had never heard before; and they answer by a yell and a
shout. The great canoe stops; a smaller canoe comes on shore, bearing a
man clothed in red, who had been observed standing on the great canoe;
the chiefs and the wise men form a circle, and the red man and two
attendants approach. He salutes them with a friendly countenance, and
they return his salutation in the same manner. They are amazed at his
appearance, and believe all the more that it is the Great Manitou,
though the white skin is a sign which they had not expected.
“The servants of the supposed Manitou produced a large bottle, and a
liquor was poured into a small glass, which the Manitou emptied, and
which, on its being refilled, he handed to the chief nearest to him. The
chief took it, smelt it, and passed it on to the next, who did the same;
and so it went round the circle, and was about to be returned to the
Great Manitou in red, when one of their great warriors, feeling it was a
mark of disrespect, took the glass, saying to the Indians, that such
conduct might provoke the stranger, who meant kindly by them, and that
if no one else would, he would drink it himself, happen what might.
“He smelled again at the liquor, bade his friends adieu, and drank it
off, all eyes being fixed on him. Scarcely had he swallowed it when he
began to stagger; the women cried; he rolled on the ground, and all
bemoaned him as dying; he fell asleep, and they would have thought him
dead, but that they perceived him still to breathe. He awoke, jumped up,
declared he never felt so happy before, asked for more, and the whole
company now being eager to drink, drank, and all became drunk.
“In the meantime the white men went to their vessel, and the next day
the man in red returned, and gave them beads, axes, hoes, and stockings.
They were soon all very good friends. They conversed by signs, and the
strangers made them understand, that the next year they would return,
and bring them more presents, but, as they could not live without
eating, they should then want a little land, on which to grow herbs for
their broth.
“The next year they came back, and they were very glad to see each
other; but the white men laughed when they saw the axes and hoes
hanging, like ornaments, round their necks, and the stockings used as
tobacco-pouches. The whites now put handles in the axes, and cut down
trees before their eyes, and showed them the use of stockings. The
strangers asked for land, and the Indians gave it, being amazed at the
cunning manner in which they obtained more land than was expected. The
white strangers and the red men lived contentedly together for a long
time, but the former were constantly asking for more, and still more,
land, which the Indians gave them. And in this way, they gradually
advanced up the Mahicannittuck, or Hudson river, until they began to
believe that they would want all their country, which proved true in the
end.”
Hudson descended the glorious river which bears his name, and, on the
4th of October, set sail on his return to Europe. The report which he
carried back of the land he had discovered, though of the most brilliant
description, did not, as we have already said, immediately induce the
Dutch either to found a settlement or to pursue the discovery. Hudson
never returned to these beautiful shores, but the following year
perished miserably, in the ice-bound seas of a higher latitude, as we
have already related.
Although the country around the Hudson was claimed by the Dutch by right
of Hudson’s discovery, still several years elapsed before they took
formal possession; nevertheless, in 1610, a company of merchants of
Amsterdam sent out a ship laden with merchandise, to trade with the
natives, of whom Hudson had reported so favourably; and this first
speculation proving lucrative, a regular traffic was established, and a
few huts and trading-houses erected on Manhattan, the promontory on
which New York stands. It was this early Dutch settlement which Captain
Argall, the kidnapper of Pocahontas, compelled to acknowledge the
authority of the English, when he returned from his piratical expedition
against the French at Port Royal, and the Dutch, too weak to offer
resistance, submitted, but hoisted again their flag as soon as he had
disappeared.
Unlike the early colonists of New England, the first Dutch settlers kept
no records of their movements, so that it is impossible to follow them
with any accuracy. All that is known is, that in 1614, the
States-General volunteered to any adventurous company four years’
monopoly of traffic with all newly-discovered lands; on which a number
of merchants fitted out five ships for trade and exploration. The head
of this expedition was Hendrik Christiaanse, who with three vessels went
northward as far as Cape Cod, and the other two, commanded by Adrian
Blok, advanced to New York Bay. Here his ship accidentally taking fire,
he built a yacht, and sailing through East River, discovered the insular
position of Long Island, giving his name to an island east of the Sound,
which it still retains. Blok is supposed to have discovered the
Housatonic and Connecticut rivers, and to have explored the Narragansett
Bay, after which, meeting with Christiaanse, they returned to New York
harbour, and in the autumn of the same year, probably, a small rude fort
was erected on the southern point of Manhattan.
While Christiaanse and Blok were thus engaged, May steered southward,
and exploring the Delaware Bay, conferred his own name on the southern
cape of the present State of New Jersey. The following year Hendrikson
ascended the Schuylkill in the yacht built by Blok; a small fort was
built at Albany on the Hudson, and Jacob Elkins, formerly a merchant’s
clerk, received from Christiaanse the appointment of commissary of these
fortified trading establishments.
Colonisation was here a slow operation. The Dutch as yet appeared in
America merely as traders, and even in 1620 the United Provinces had put
forth no claim to territory. In 1617 a treaty was concluded between the
Dutch and the Iroquois, in which, the Delawares and Mohegans were also
parties. This was the treaty with the Five Nations, which was maintained
with good faith for many years, and by opposing a barrier of friendly
Indians between themselves and the French, prevented the encroachments
of the latter.
We are now arrived at the period of the emigration of the Pilgrim
Fathers from Holland to New England; yet, although at this very time
religious controversy ran high in Holland, and liberty was outraged in
the persons of her best and noblest citizens, Grotius and Olden
Barneveld, the former of whom was imprisoned for life, and the latter an
old man of threescore and twelve, perished on the scaffold, we do not
find that any great impetus, as in England, was given to emigration. The
Dutch were traders, and nothing short of trade could make them move. As
yet their American settlements had been formed under the auspices of the
Dutch East India Company; but in 1621 a Dutch West India Company was
incorporated, which held a charter for four-and-twenty years, conferring
upon it the exclusive privilege of trafficking and planting colonies
“from the straits of Magellan to the remotest north.” There was here
scope wide enough to satisfy the most enterprising adventurers. All who
now were disposed to leave Holland, from whatever cause it might be, had
an opportunity, and accordingly emigration began on a more systematic
plan than formerly. In 1623, a number of settlers went out under the
command of Cornelius May, who not only visited Manhattan, but entering
the Bay of Delaware, ascended the river of that name, which was then
called South River. May took possession of the country for the Dutch,
built Fort Nassau in the present State of New Jersey, and being strictly
just to the natives, left a memory behind him which was long respected
by them. The country from the southern shore of the Delaware to Cape Cod
was now designated New Netherlands. A colony was established on
Manhattan, called New Amsterdam; the Dutch had now homes in the New
World, and in 1625, the first child of Dutch parentage was born here.
In 1625, Peter Minuits arrived at Manhattan as governor of New
Netherlands, which office he held for six years. It must not be
imagined, however, that these settlers, like those of New England,
brought with them an inborn spirit of political organisation; all power
remained in the hands of the company, and this colony was for many years
merely an establishment of trade, where European goods were exchanged
for the peltries of the Indian.
In 1627, the governor of the infant Dutch plantation, wishing to be on
friendly terms with the Pilgrim settlers of New Plymouth, who had by
that time established themselves firmly and were extending their
borders, wrote a letter of congratulation to them, on “their prosperity,
praiseworthy undertakings, and the government of their colony; offering
them good will and service in all friendly kindness, and good
neighbourhood;” and very characteristically closing the letter by an
offer of “any of their goods for any wares which they might be pleased
to deal for.” In return, the Pilgrims expressed their thankful sense of
the kindnesses they had received in Holland, and their grateful
acceptance of this offered friendship. The following year, therefore, De
Rasier, the second in command, arrived at a trading establishment which
the Plymouth people had built for their convenience, twenty miles south
of Cape Cod, bringing with him divers commodities; and a boat was sent
to fetch him to the old colony, where he came “honourably attended by a
noise of trumpeters.” A league of friendship and commerce was proposed;
but the New England settlers, who doubted the right of the Dutch to the
territory they held, which was claimed by England by right of Cabot’s
previous discovery, demurred, recommending rather that a treaty should
be entered into by their respective nations. Still the utmost harmony
prevailed; De Rasier offered the aid of troops, if necessary, against
the French; and advised them to leave the barren soil of Plymouth for
the fine pasture land on the banks of the Connecticut. When he departed,
a number of the colonists accompanied him to his vessel and made
considerable purchases from him; and the New England chronicle records
that they traded together for several years, to their great mutual
benefit. The greatest benefit, however, being, that the Dutch taught the
English settlers the value of the trade in wampum: “they told us,” says
this old record, “how vendible it is at their fort Orania, and assure us
we shall find it so at Kennebeck;” for the Plymouth people had already a
trading station on that river: and so in the end it proved, they very
soon being hardly able to supply the demand, making great profit by it.
The Pilgrims seem to have been very plain-spoken on this occasion, and
even while expressing all kind of good wishes for the prosperity of
their friends the Dutch, they requested that their ships might not
interfere with their trade for beaver-skins in Narragansett Bay.
In 1629, the West India Company being desirous of promoting
colonisation, a charter was obtained by what was styled “the College of
Nineteen,” which offered to any one who would emigrate as much land as
he could cultivate; and any person who should within four years plant a
colony of fifty souls, to become lord of the manor, or patron, with
absolute possession of all land so colonised, to the extent of sixteen
miles, or if on a river, eight miles on each bank, and as far interior
as the situation might require; all lands, however, were to be purchased
from the Indians; towns and cities were to depend upon the patron for
the form of government; yet it was recommended that a schoolmaster and
minister should be provided. No manufactures of linen, woollen, or
cotton, were permitted, lest the mother-country should suffer. The
company, as a sort of boon, engaged to furnish the manors with negroes,
provided—stipulated the wary traders—that the “traffic should prove
lucrative.”
This charter favoured the appropriation of the best situations for trade
by speculative individuals, rather than colonisation. Nevertheless, one
of the patrons having purchased the southern portion of the present
state of Delaware, a colony was taken out by De Vries, the historian of
the voyage, and settled on Staten Island. The Dutch now occupied
Delaware, and their claim extended from Cape Henlopen to Cape Cod. After
a year’s residence, De Vries returned to Holland, leaving Osset as his
deputy; but the new commandant having excited the resentment of the
Algonquins, De Vries, on his return, found the fort deserted, the
scattered bones of his murdered countrymen testifying of Indian
vengeance; and De Vries himself would have perished, had not an Indian
woman warned him of his danger. Delaware was once more in the hands of
the natives, and before the Dutch could re-assert their claim, they
found a competitor in Lord Baltimore, who claimed it under his patent.
De Vries, leaving the melancholy scene of his former labours and hopes,
proceeded to Virginia for provisions, and the following spring, on
arriving at New Amsterdam, found Peter Minuits, in consequence of
quarrels which had broken out, superseded as governor by Wouter van
Twiller. A few months before the arrival of Van Twiller, the Dutch had
purchased land from the natives on the Connecticut, and as we have
already mentioned, established there their trading station of the House
of Good Hope. The English, however, claiming the country, colonists from
New England poured in, and in defiance of the Dutch, settled themselves
down at Windsor and Hartford. The Dutch company retained for many years
a feeble hold on the Connecticut, but finally were overwhelmed by the
New Englanders, who, carrying with them the very principles of
organisation, took forcible and natural root wherever they planted
themselves. And now another competitor was within their borders.
As early as the year 1624, the great Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, the
hero of his age, and the champion of the Protestant faith in Europe,
entertained a design of extended colonisation in the New World. A
commercial company, under the patronage of the king, was incorporated in
Sweden, the monarch himself pledging 400,000 dollars of the royal
treasure for the purposes of its advancement. “Men of every rank were
invited to engage in the enterprise, and colonists from all countries of
Europe.” Perfectly comprehending the soundest principles of
colonisation, the scheme of this emigration rejected slaves, “which,”
said they, “cost a great deal, labour with reluctance, and soon perish
from hard usage. The Swedish nation, on the contrary, is laborious and
intelligent, and we shall gain more by a free people with wives and
children.” The thirty years war was then raging, and the great
protestant hero looked forward to his proposed colony becoming an
“asylum for the wives and daughters of those whom wars and bigotry had
made fugitives; a blessing to the common man throughout the whole
protestant world.” This noble plan occupied almost the last thoughts of
Gustavus; shortly before his death, at the battle of Lutzen, he
recommended it to the people of Germany.
When protestantism and humanity lost at Lutzen one of their greatest
ornaments, the scheme from which he had hoped so much was not allowed to
perish. The great and good Oxenstiern extending, as his master had
desired, its benefits to Germany, the charter was confirmed by deputies
from the four upper circles at Frankfort.
In 1637, Peter Minuits, the former governor of New Amsterdam having
offered his services and his experience to Sweden, conveyed over from
that country a company of Swedes and Finns in two vessels, the Key of
Calmar and the Griffin, furnished by government with a religious
teacher, provisions and merchandise for traffic with the natives. Early
the following spring they arrived in Delaware Bay; and so beautiful did
the country appear to these natives of a rigid clime, that they called
the southern cape Paradise Point. From this cape to the falls of the
Delaware near Trenton, the whole territory was purchased from the
natives, and called New Sweden; and Christiana Fort, so designated from
the youthful queen of their native land, was built.
The Dutch, by no means well pleased to see this new settlement of
strangers on a coast which had so lately been in their own possession,
asserted their claim, and might have proceeded to enforce it, but that
the fame of Swedish valour in Europe was yet too great for them to
venture more than a protest. The happy Scandinavians sent to their
northern friends such attractive reports of the beautiful land, with its
fine pasture grounds and affluent rivers, which was now the home of
their adoption, that the desire for emigration was kindled on all hands,
especially among the agricultural population of Sweden and Finland.
Settlement after settlement extended itself; and finally, in order to
maintain their ascendancy over the Dutch, who, to restrict their
advance, had rebuilt their fort of Nassau on the Delaware, the Swedish
governor, Printz, established himself, and built a fort on Trinicum
island, a few miles below Philadelphia. Europeans had now planted
themselves on the soil of Pennsylvania. The whole extent of the Delaware
banks from the falls to the sea formed the province of New Sweden; and
such emigrants from New England as had already penetrated thus far,
either were driven out or submitted to the Swedish jurisdiction.
Sir William Kieft was now and had been for two years, governor of New
Netherlands, but the country did not flourish under him any more than it
had done under his predecessor. On all hands difficulties surrounded
him, and he was not of a character to overcome them. On the north, the
English were gradually and steadily advancing; they had usurped
Connecticut, till the Dutch alone could claim thirty acres round their
trading station; the Swedes were on the south, and even Long Island was
now occupied under a grant from an English earl. In vain did Kieft
remonstrate and threaten; nobody seemed either to regard him or to
respect the province of which he was the ruler—nay, even on one
occasion, the arms of the Dutch were overthrown, and, in a spirit of
derision, a fool’s head was placed in their stead.
Meantime a tempest of another and more formidable kind was brooding and
gathering strength over the fated New Netherlands. Quarrels had
repeatedly occurred between unprincipled Dutch traders and intoxicated
Indians. The vengeance of the Algonquins had, as we have seen,
annihilated the little settlement on Staten Island, and now it was
gathering its might for a feller swoop. An Indian boy of the Raritan
tribe, who had witnessed the murder and robbery of his uncle by one of
Peter Minuit’s people, vowed to avenge his death when he grew to man’s
estate. And now he was a man grown, and thirsted to accomplish his vow.
In 1641, the first onslaught was made, but with little effect; the
Raritans were outlawed, and ten fathoms of wampum offered for every
scalp.
Kieft summoned the people to deliberate on the public danger. Twelve men
were chosen, De Vries being at their head, but recommending lenient
measures, which not being in accordance with the governor’s ideas, were
disregarded. At this juncture, the son of a chief having been made drunk
and then robbed, shot, in revenge, the first Dutchman he met. Alarmed at
this untoward incident, a deputation of chiefs immediately waited on
Kieft, and offered, as a fine and indemnity, two hundred fathoms of
wampum; urging with great reason, “You yourselves are the cause of this
evil; you ought not to craze the young Indians with brandy. Your own
people, when drunk, fight with knives and do foolish things; and you
cannot prevent mischief till you cease to sell strong drink to the
Indians.”
Reasonable as was the remonstrance, Kieft would not listen to it;
nothing but the surrender of the young man would satisfy him, and that
the chiefs refused. Whilst this question was pending, a small armed
party of Mohawks, allies of the Dutch, came down from the neighbourhood
of Fort Orange, and claimed the Raritans as their tributaries. At the
approach of these formidable enemies, the weaker, though more numerous,
Raritans threw themselves at once on the mercy of the Dutch. Kieft,
considering this opportunity too favourable to be lost, spite of the
remonstrances and entreaties of De Vries and many of the more
influential inhabitants of New Amsterdam, determined on a general
massacre.
In the dead of the night on the 25th of February, 1643, two armed
parties, accompanied by an Indian guide, crossed the Hudson, and fell
upon the Indian encampments, when not the slightest suspicion of the
Dutch existed. Taken thus by surprise, amid the repose of night,
scarcely any resistance was made; the noise of musketry and the cries of
the murdered reached Manhattan. By daybreak above a hundred were slain,
nor then did the slaughter cease. No mercy was shown—men, women, and
children all perished alike. “Infants, bound in their bark-cradles, were
flung into the icy river; and the poor frantic mothers, who had plunged
into the water to their rescue, were mercilessly forced back from the
shore, and both were drowned. This fearful massacre continued through
the day.”
Kieft gloried in this detestable slaughter, and welcomed back his troops
as from a great victory; the colonists, however, with sentiments of
common humanity, held it in abhorrence, and finally deposed their
governor, and sent him back to Holland. But before they performed this
act of justice, the consequences of his barbarity had fallen terribly on
the colony. As soon as it was perceived that the midnight slaughter was
not caused by the Mohawks, but by the Dutch, every Algonquin tribe
around Manhattan joined in a league of vengeance. They thronged in from
all sides; and, making swamps their hiding-places, rushed forth for
sudden attacks, equally remorseless and wholesale as that of the Dutch
had been. Every village was destroyed; every plantation laid waste; men
and women murdered, and children carried off captive. Long Island was a
desert; “from the shores of the Jersey to the boundaries of Connecticut
not a bowery (farm) was safe.” It was in this awful Indian war of
reprisals that that noble woman, Anne Hutchinson and her family,
perished. Total ruin threatened New Netherlands. Numbers fled. “Mine
eyes,” says Roger Williams, “saw the flames of their towns, the frights
and hurries of men, women, and children, and the present removal of all
who could to Holland.”
Kieft, who was a coward as well as a ruffian, threw the blame of this
Indian massacre on an old freebooter named Adriensen, and he, enraged at
the accusation, drew his cutlass and would have killed the governor, but
that he was disarmed and sent prisoner to Holland. The remains of the
colonists were enrolled into service, and a solemn fast was appointed.
Happily for them the vengeance of the tribes was satisfied, and a
deputation of the Dutch, headed by De Vries, met a convention of sixteen
sachems in the woods of Rockaway, on the 5th of March, to treat of
peace. De Vries was led into the centre of the group, when one of the
chiefs arose, and holding in one hand a bundle of sticks, thus addressed
him: “When you first arrived on our shores, you were destitute of food;
we gave you our beans and our corn; we fed you with oysters and fish;
and now for our recompence you murder our people.” This was his first
accusation, and laying down one stick he proceeded: “The traders whom
your first ships left upon our shore to traffic till your return, were
cherished by us as the apple of our eye; we gave them our daughters for
their wives; among those whom you murdered were children of your own
blood.” Here he laid down a second stick, and so continued his
accusations till the whole bundle was exhausted.
A truce was finally agreed upon; but it is doubtful if this could have
been arranged but for the fortunate presence of Roger Williams, then on
his way to England, and who not being permitted to sail from Boston, was
now at Manhattan for that purpose. Beloved and respected by all the
Indian tribes, his mediation was accepted, and a covenant of peace with
the Dutch was entered into by all the River Indians.
But peace was only of short duration. As the Indians saw the vacant
places in their wigwams, and as one counted up his father or mother
slain, and another his sons, or when but one member was left to deplore
all the rest gone, an old chief spoke only the voice of a whole tribe,
when he said that the price of blood had not yet been paid.
In the autumn the war broke out afresh, and John Underhill, a veteran
soldier, the leader of the Massachusetts force in the Pequod war, though
now a fugitive from New England, was appointed commander of the Dutch
forces. But now as regards Underhill we must say a few words, though we
delay the course of the narrative, as to the cause of his leaving
Boston, which was so singularly characteristic of puritan manners.
Underhill had not only the courage, but somewhat of the lax morality of
the old soldier of those days, and this latter circumstance brought him
into trouble. Spite of the good service which he had rendered to
Massachusetts in his martial character, he was compelled “to make his
appearance before the whole congregation of Boston on lecture day, at
the close of the sermon, and standing on a form in his worst clothes—he
who was so fond of brave apparel—without a band, and with a linen cap
pulled over his eyes, to do penance for his wicked courses, and with
sighs and tears and tokens of sorrow of heart, beseech the compassion of
the congregation for one who, like him, had yielded to the temptations
of Satan.” Having thus satisfied the offended morals of Boston, he
removed to New Netherlands, of which, at the head of 120 men, he now
became the protector. The war continued for two years, and then the
Indians sued for peace, which the Dutch—who had suffered equally with
themselves, and in which their European neighbours, unwilling to embroil
themselves, refused to aid them—were no less willing to grant.
The Mohawks, who were friendly to the Dutch, sent an ambassador to
Manhattan to negotiate peace, and on the 30th of August, 1645, according
to the custom of the Indians, the delegates of both parties met in the
open air; and in front of New Amsterdam, the sachems of the various
tribes of River Indians, the Mohegans, and those of Long Island, with
the chiefs of the Five Nations as witnesses, and the director and
council, and the whole population of New Netherlands standing round,
signed a solemn treaty of peace; or, to use the figurative and beautiful
language of the Indians, “there, in presence of the sun and the ocean,
planted the tree of peace and buried the tomahawk beneath its shade.”
CHAPTER XIII.
NEW YORK; NEW SWEDEN.
The treaty with the Mohawks caused the utmost joy throughout the
settlements of New Netherlands. In May 1646, the brave and good Peter
Stuyvesant arrived as governor, and the same year Kieft sailed for
Europe, he being expelled the colony as the author of so much misery,
the West India company also resenting his barbarous measures. But the
vengeance of Heaven seemed to follow him on the sea, as the execrations
of the Dutch had followed him from land. The large and richly laden ship
in which he embarked was wrecked on the coast of Wales, and he and
eighty others perished in the remorseless waves.
Stuyvesant, a man of good education, as well as a truehearted, brave old
soldier, who had lost a leg in the wars, introduced a much milder line
of policy into the government of New Netherlands as regarded the
natives. In comparison with the New England settlements, New Netherlands
could not be said to have flourished, nor even had they, in a pecuniary
point of view, with all their trading engagements, proved a lucrative
speculation to the Dutch West India company; the truth was, they lacked
that element of freedom, both politically and commercially, on which
true prosperity is based. Manhattan did not flourish until its merchants
“obtained freedom to follow out their own impulses.” The merchants of
Amsterdam, at that time the first commercial city of the world, knew
this when, addressing their brethren at Manhattan, they said, “when your
commerce has become established, and your ships ride on every part of
the ocean, throngs that look towards you with eager eyes will be allured
to embark for your island.” But these words, though prophetic, as the
historian remarks, of the future destiny of that port, were fated not to
be fulfilled by the enterprise of Dutch merchants.
At the time of Stuyvesant’s assumption of office, the settlers in New
Netherlands amounted but to about 6,000. A few huts were gathered round
Fort Orange or Beaverswyk, as the present town of Albany was then
called; Long Island was still almost wholly uncleared forest, and “the
land there was of so little account, that Stuyvesant thought it no wrong
to his employers to purchase of them, at a small price, an extensive
bowery just beyond the coppices, among which browsed the goats and kine
of the village.” Nor was New Amsterdam, the seat of government, anything
more than a rude village of huts, protected by palisades, while the fort
itself could scarcely be considered a place of defence.
A colony so feeble could hardly be expected to preserve its borders from
the invasion of neighbours as vigorous and of as expansive a character
as those of New England, more especially as the puritan colonists never
scrupled to question the right of their weaker neighbours to any
territory at all. One of the first duties which the new governor,
therefore, undertook, was an adjustment of this disputed question of
boundary. It was a very difficult one. Restricted from war by the West
India company, he bent his efforts to negotiation; and going himself in
person to Hartford, a treaty was concluded on the 11th of November,
1650, by which the Dutch relinquished their claim to Connecticut, and
the New Englanders consented to their retaining possession of one-half
of Long Island. Poor as these conditions appear for the Dutch, the West
India company ratified the treaty, which the English never would do.
Well might the Dutch say, “the New England people are too powerful for
us.”
In 1651, war broke out between England and Holland. We have already seen
the good sense of Massachusetts in refusing to take part in it against
their Dutch neighbours; but we have not mentioned that Roger Williams,
then in England, was the means of delaying an armament against New
Netherlands. The Dutch, on their part, not expecting this magnanimity
from their powerful neighbours, and aware of their own incapacity for
the contest, endeavoured to purchase the aid of the Narragansetts in
case of attack; but Mixam, one of the chiefs, replied nobly; “I am poor,
but no presents of goods or of guns, or of powder and shot, shall draw
me into a conspiracy against my friends the English.” Fortunately, as we
have already related, peace was soon established between the two
European states, and the fleet which Cromwell had sent out against New
Netherlands directed its energies against another power.
But the New England colonists were not the only cause of anxiety to the
governor of New Netherlands; on the banks of the Delaware, the colony of
New Sweden was becoming an important rival in the tobacco trade with
Virginia., and for the beaver of the Schuylkill. Stuyvesant, therefore,
built Fort Casimir, near the mouth of the Brandywine River, as a
protection of Dutch commerce in that quarter. This fort being only five
miles from Fort Christiana, was regarded as an encroachment by the
Dutch; and Rising, the Swedish governor, making use of an unworthy
stratagem, overpowered the garrison and took possession. This was a
fatal deed. Stuyvesant received orders from the Dutch West India company
to make reprisals, and in September, 1655, sailed from New Amsterdam
with a force of 600, and entering the Delaware, found his career of
conquest so easy that it was almost inglorious. One fort after another
yielded; it seemed incredible that these men were of the race who, with
Gustavus at their head, had filled Europe with the renown of their arms.
But so it was; Rising capitulated on honourable terms, and the whole
Swedish colony—600 only in number, it must, however, be
remembered—acknowledged the jurisdiction of the Dutch; and, as a
separate state, New Sweden was at an end.
Of the colony thus absorbed—the colony that connects America with the
age as well as with the noble mind of Gustavus Adolphus—we must say yet
a few words, and these shall be from Fredrika Bremer, who, with natural
patriotism, visited the site of this Swedish settlement, and saw the few
relics which remain to this day. She says: “I was invited to meet at the
house of the present minister, an American, all the descendants of the
earliest Swedish settlers whom he knew. It was a company of from fifty
to sixty; there was, however, nothing Swedish about them but their
family names. No traditions of their emigration hither remain; language,
appearance, all have entirely merged into that of the now prevailing
Anglo-Saxon race. The church clock alone had something Swedish about it,
something of the character of the peasant’s clock. In the church, also,
was a large book placed upon a tall stand, on the page of which might be
read in large letters, “The people who dwelt in darkness have seen a
great light.” This inscription, together with the old church at
Willington in Delaware, and a few family names, are all that remain of
this early Swedish colony on the eastern shores of the New World. Yet
no, not all. A noble, peaceful memory of its life continues to exist on
the page of history, like a lovely episode of Idyllian purity and
freshness. The pilgrims of New England stained its soil with blood by
their injustice and cruelty to the Indians. The Swedish pilgrims, in
their treatment of the natives, were so just and wise, that during the
whole time of Swedish dominion, not one drop of Indian blood was shed by
them; the Indians loved them and called them ‘our own people.’ ‘The
Swedes are a God-fearing people,’ said William Penn; ‘they are
industrious and contented, and much attached to the customs and manners
of the mother-country. They live by agriculture, and the breeding of
cattle; the women are good housewives, spin and weave, take care of
their families, and bring up their children well.’” All historians agree
that the Swedes who thus became amalgamated into the general population
introduced into it a sound element of moral life, by which it has been
improved.
The dominion of the Dutch seemed now firmly established in the New
World; and the worth of such a colony began to be appreciated at home;
its great extent—from New England to Maryland, from the sea to the great
river of Canada and the remote north-western wilderness—was a subject of
boast. Emigration to the banks of the Hudson was encouraged. Merchants
now were beginning to be allured to Manhattan, and all presented an
aspect of promise for the future. Stuyvesant, who, seeming to have a
high idea of the prerogatives of governor, was inclined to rule with an
arbitrary hand, was kept under control by the directors at home; who,
when he took it upon himself to inspect the merchants’ books, checked
him with the reproof that “it was an unprecedented act in Christendom,
and that he must behave well to the merchants;” and when—himself a
violent Calvinist—he inclined to persecute the Lutherans, and imitating
Massachusetts, began to imprison and banish “the abominable sect of
Quakers,” he received the injunction, “Let every peaceful citizen enjoy
freedom of conscience; this maxim has made our city the asylum for
fugitives from every land; tread in its steps, and you shall be
blessed.”
And, treading in its steps, New Netherlands became the asylum and chosen
home of the oppressed, the persecuted and the enterprising of every
European nation. Jews and Christians all crowded over, all were united
to help in building up the colony; and troops of orphans, made so by war
and persecution, were shipped to the New World; and “a free passage was
offered to mechanics, farmers and labourers, foreigners and exiles—men
inured to toil and penury.” New York was even then laying its
cosmopolitan foundations; “its settlers were relics of the first-fruits
of the Reformation, from the Belgic provinces, from England, from
France; Protestants who had escaped from the massacre of St.
Bartholomew’s-eve, from Bohemia, from Germany and Switzerland, from
Piedmont and the Italian Alps.”[4] Even Africa had her representatives
in this home of all people, though her sons were not there by their own
voluntary choice. Among the other commercial speculations of the West
India company was the traffic in slaves; they had their trading stations
on the coast of Guinea, whence cargoes of negroes were shipped to
Manhattan. Stuyvesant was required by his employers to advance the sale
of negro slaves as much as lay in his power; these slaves were sold at
public auctions, the average price being about £12 per man. When the
demand was not great at Manhattan, they were sent on to the puritan
colonies. Slaves who continued the property of the company were, after a
certain time of bondage, settled on small farms, for which they paid a
stipulated amount of produce.
“The colony increased,” says Bancroft; “the villages were full of
children; the new year and the month of May were welcomed in with merry
frolics; New Netherlands was not an ascetic colony, like those of New
England; May-poles and dancing were allowed; the vine and the mulberry
were cultivated; the whale was pursued off the coast; flocks and herds
multiplied, and the tile, so long imported from Holland, began to be
manufactured near Fort Orange. New Amsterdam could, in a few years,
boast of stately buildings, and vied with Boston. ‘This happily situated
province,’ said its inhabitants, ‘may become the granary of our
fatherland; by God’s blessing we shall in a few years become a mighty
people.’”
With all these new elements of vitality, a bolder and freer spirit had
entered the colony. The people demanded a share of political power. They
were infected by the liberties of New England, and nothing less would
satisfy them. They assembled, and a petition, drawn up by George Baxter,
was presented by their delegates, requiring “that no laws should be
enacted without the consent of the people; that none should be appointed
to office but with the approbation of the people.”
This was an unheard-of measure; Stuyvesant was indignant; he had no
faith, he said, in the wavering multitude; and then he taunted them
because a New England man had drawn up their petition. “If the people
chose their own officers, he said, then the thief would vote for the
thief, the smuggler for the smuggler, and fraud and vice would become
privileged. No! he and the directors would never make themselves
responsible to subjects.” The delegates attempted to reason, and the
wilful old governor dissolved the assembly on pain of punishment.
The directors sanctioned the conduct of Stuyvesant. “Have no regard to
the consent of the people,” wrote they to him; “let them no longer
indulge the visionary dream that taxes can be imposed only by their
consent.” But the people obstinately indulged such dreams, and refused
to pay obnoxious taxes; and, even more than that, in the determination
to enjoy English liberties, saw with no unwillingness the possibility of
English jurisdiction extending even over New Netherlands.
A tempest was again brooding. Although the Dutch still kept possession
of the country as far south as Cape Henlopen, yet their claims were
disputed by Lord Baltimore, the proprietary of Maryland; and in 1659,
that nobleman’s rights being established, Fendall, then governor, laid
formal claim to Delaware; the College of Nineteen of the West India
company firmly disavowed it; and Fendall, being equally determined, the
directors declared their resolve to defend their rights, “even to the
spilling of blood.” Nor was the aspect of affairs more pacific on the
north. Massachusetts, as well as
New Netherlands, claimed the territory adjoining the upper waters of the
Hudson, and thence westerly as far as she pleased; whilst Connecticut,
which had just then obtained a charter, put forth her claim to territory
which the Dutch had hitherto held unquestioned.
“Where, then,” demanded the Dutch, with reference to all these absorbing
claims,—“where, then, is New Netherlands?” And the people of
Connecticut, speaking as if for all, replied, “We do not know.”
A homely proverb may seem inconsistent with the gravity of history, but
it may nevertheless be applicable on some occasions, as in the Dutch
settlements at this juncture, when misfortune seemed not only to _rain_,
but to _pour_. These contentions with regard to territory were carried
on during a renewed Indian war, which laid waste a village on the banks
of the Esopus, many of the inhabitants being murdered or carried into
captivity. The approach of winter alone put a stop to these horrors; and
that which added still more to the misery of the time, was the fact that
New Netherlands stood alone: none of its more powerful and fortunate
neighbours came to its rescue; it had no friends but the Mohawks, who
said, “The Dutch are our brethren. We keep with them but one council
fire; we are united by a covenant chain.” And not only were their
neighbours unwilling to help them, but there was no patriotism, no
public spirit, as yet within the heart of the state itself; New
Netherlands could neither help herself, nor would the council at home
advance either men or money for her defence. Alarmed and perplexed in
this crisis, Stuyvesant was ready to concede those privileges to the
people which he had hitherto refused. In 1663, a popular assembly was
convened. In the spring of the following year it met again, but by that
time new troubles were at hand. Rumours of an English invasion filled
the colony; and the representatives, seeing the paucity of means of
defence, contemplated very coolly the necessity of submission to this
new enemy. “If you cannot defend us,” said they, addressing the
governor, “to whom shall we turn?” And the governor, wishing to rouse a
spirit of patriotism in their souls, proposed that “every third man
should enlist for the defence of their adopted country, as had once been
done in the Fatherland.” But the people would not adopt his proposal. In
vain was a witty libeller of the magistrates fastened to a stake with a
bridle in his mouth; people _would_ talk rather than act. In the autumn
of 1664, “Long Island had revolted, the settlements on the Esopus
wavered, and the Connecticut men had possessed themselves by purchase
from the Indians of the whole sea-coast as far as North River.”
Stuyvesant wrote these alarming tidings to Holland.
Whilst England and Holland were yet at peace, three ships, with one
hundred men, were despatched from England to take possession of New
Netherlands in the name of the Duke of York, afterwards James II., to
whom his brother, Charles II., disregarding all previous chartered
claims, had granted a vast extent of territory, called New York,
including the country between the St. Croix and the Pemaquid, and on the
east the region between the Connecticut and the Delaware, with all the
islands south and west of Cape Cod, completely swallowing up New
Netherlands, and encroaching on Massachusetts and Connecticut. Under the
conduct of Sir Richard Nichols, groom of the bedchamber to the Duke of
York, the English squadron, having first touched at Boston, where they
demanded a levy of forces for their expedition, anchored before New
Amsterdam, which was totally unprepared for defence. In vain Stuyvesant
endeavoured to rouse a spirit of resistance in the inhabitants; the town
was at the mercy of the English, and the people were prepared for
nothing but surrender. It would have been madness to have striven
against such odds. Winthrop, now governor of Connecticut, and a true
friend of the Dutch, was on board the English fleet, and acted as
mediator. Stuyvesant, almost heart-broken, pleaded that “a surrender
would be reproved in the Fatherland;” and when the principal
inhabitants, who had assembled in the town-hall, demanded to see the
letter which the English commander had sent, he indignantly tore it to
pieces; the burghers, angry at this, drew up a protest against the
governor.
The next day, a deputation waited on Nichols, but he declined the
conference, informing them that on the morrow he should be at Manhattan,
and would see them there; and on a slight show of dissatisfaction added,
“raise the white flag of peace, for I shall come with ships of war and
soldiers!”
The flag of peace was hoisted; and on September 8th, the life, liberty,
religion and property of the inhabitants being secured, New Amsterdam
surrendered, and the people and the magistrates being all agreed,
Stuyvesant reluctantly ratified the capitulation.
New Amsterdam was no more; the Dutch dominion in America was overthrown
by a flagrant act of injustice, and yet the change seemed to produce in
the colony itself great satisfaction. Very few of the settlers removed
to Holland, and their wounded national pride found its consolation in
the enjoyment of English privileges and liberties. On the submission of
the capital, Fort Orange, now called Albany, from the Scottish title of
the Duke of York, quietly surrendered, and the Dutch and the Swedes of
Delaware shortly afterwards. The league with the Five Nations was
renewed. The whole extent of coast, from Acadia to Florida, was now in
possession of the English.
Three years afterwards, when a treaty of peace was signed between
England and Holland, the colony of Surinam, in Guiana, which the Dutch
had captured during the war, was left in their possession as a
compensation for New Netherlands. About the same time, the province of
Acadia was restored by treaty to France, greatly to the vexation of the
people of New England.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE RESTORATION.
In the month of May, 1660, England was almost mad with joy because
Charles II. was restored to the throne. In London, “groups of
royalists,” we are told, “gathered round buckets of wine in the streets,
and drank the king’s health on their knees. The bells of every steeple
rang, and bonfires were so numerous that the city seemed surrounded by a
halo; men shouted, women scattered flowers, and with loud thanks to
Heaven, as if he had been an angel sent down from God, Charles II. was
received at Whitehall, where so lately the tragedy of fallen royality
had been enacted.”
Republicanism was at an end; and the stern virtues of puritanism gone
quite out of fashion. The season of violent reaction was come; and again
the noblest blood in England, _noblest_ in the truest sense of the word,
flowed from the hands of the executioner. Amongst the earliest victims
was Hugh Peters, the successor of Roger Williams as minister at Salem.
His arraignment, trial, and execution were scenes of wanton cruelty. Any
trial indeed was a mockery, because his death was already decreed. “Go
home to New England, and trust God there,” were his last words to his
daughter, the wife of the younger Winthrop. At the gallows he was
compelled to wait while his friend Cooke, who had just been executed,
was cut down. “How do you like this?” asked the savage hangman,
exultingly. “I thank God,” replied Peters, “that I am not terrified at
it. You may do your worst;” and turning to his friends he said, with a
smile, “Weep not for me; my heart is full of comfort.” Several of the
regicides perished about the same time, with equal calmness and
resignation, their faith in the principles which brought them to the
scaffold no whit abated. Three of the regicide judges, however, Whalley,
Goffe, and Dixwell, of whom we shall speak presently, fled to New
England. Nor did the thirst of English vengeance satisfy itself with the
execution of the living; it wreaked itself on the dead. The corpses of
Cromwell, Bradshaw and Ireton were disinterred, dragged on hurdles to
Tyburn, and hanged on three separate gallows, after which they were cut
down and beheaded! The whole horrible and disgusting scene being
considered one of great merriment.
In June, 1662, perished also on the scaffold the noblest of the
advocates of liberty in the New World, Sir Henry Vane, the former
governor of Massachusetts, the firm friend of Rhode Island, and the
supporter of liberty under all circumstances, whether religious or
political. One of the first and fastest friends of republicanism in
England, he had resisted the aggressions of Cromwell, and Cromwell for
this cause had imprisoned him. The trial of Vane has become a noble
passage in history. Though a man of a nervous temperament, he stood
before his judges with an undaunted courage which amazed all, and there
pleaded “for the liberties of England, for the interest of all posterity
in time to come.” Counsel was not allowed him, and he stood, “not
afraid,” as he said, “in that great presence, to bear witness to the
glorious cause, nor to seal it with his blood.”
“Sir Henry Vane is too dangerous a man to let live, if we can honestly
put him out of the way,” wrote the king to his counsel; and though they
could not _honestly_ put him out of the way, yet they sentenced him to
the block, while others were hanged.
When, on the day before his execution, his friends were admitted to
visit him, they found him so serene and cheerful, that he, not they,
administered consolation, “reasoning calmly on death and immortality.”
Reviewing his political career from the day when he had defended in New
England the unitarianism of Anne Hutchinson, to his last struggle for
English liberty, he said, “I feel not the least recoil in my heart for
what I have done.” When his children gathered round him weeping, he
said, kissing and embracing them, “The Lord will be a better father to
you than I have been. Be not troubled, for I am going home to my
father;” and his last words to them were, “Suffer anything rather than
sin against God.” To his friends he said, “I leave my life as a seal to
the justness of that quarrel. Ten thousand deaths rather than defile the
chastity of my conscience; nor would I for a thousand worlds resign the
peace and satisfaction which I have in my heart!”
As he went to execution, prayers and tears accompanied him. So great was
the public sympathy, that people cried, “God be with you!” On the
scaffold it was his wish to address the vast multitude assembled to
witness his death, but trumpets overpowered his voice, and finding it
vain to make the attempt, he turned to his friends, reminding them that
he had foretold the dark clouds which were coming thicker and thicker
for a season, but that a better day would dawn in the clouds; and baring
his neck for the axe, he exclaimed: “Blessed be God, I have kept a
conscience void of offence; to this day I have not deserted the
righteous cause for which I suffer.” Thus perished Sir Henry Vane; his
death establishing the great principle of popular liberty, even more
than his life had done. The blood of the martyr never flows in vain.
The ship that conveyed to Boston, in July, the first news of the
Restoration, brought with it Whalley and Goffe, two of the regicide
judges of Charles II., who now naturally fled to the only portion of the
English territories where republicanism might still be tolerated. They
were well received by Endicott, the governor, and the tidings which they
brought being hardly credited, excited but little attention. Nor was it
till the month of November that official information of this great event
arrived; of the act of indemnity for all except such as were concerned
in the death of Charles I.; of the execution of Peters, and the
imprisonment of Vane, together with the information that many complaints
of persecution and misdemeanours against the colony were received by
parliament and the crown.
More unwelcome tidings could hardly have reached Massachusetts; and yet,
a general court being summoned, addresses were prepared to the restored
monarch very little creditable to the independence and manliness of the
colony. They spoke of the execution of Charles very vaguely, and
apologetically represented themselves as “his present majesty’s poor
Mephibosheths, by reason of lameness in respect of distance, not until
now appearing in his presence, kneeling with the rest of his subjects
before his majesty as their restored king. They prayed for a
continuance, however, of civil and religious liberties; and as regarded
the complaints which had been brought against them, they besought the
king that he would not hear men’s words, for that his servants were true
men, fearing God and the king.” At the same time that this cringing
address, and another in the same spirit to parliament, were sent,
letters were written to the now aged Lord Say and Seal, and other
puritan noblemen who might be supposed to have interest with the new
government, to bespeak their favour.
Much more creditable than these addresses was the conduct of New England
with regard to the fugitive regicides. Before a royal order for their
arrest reached Boston, by the hands of a party of royalists, which
Massachusetts was required to execute, the offenders had escaped to New
Haven. The magistrates assumed an appearance of assiduity, and published
a proclamation against them, but no intention existed of giving them up.
They were safe, and shortly afterwards were joined by Dixwell, another
of the regicide judges; and, spite of all the efforts that were made to
arrest them, all three finished their days in New England. Dixwell lived
openly, under a feigned name, at New Haven; and the other two in
concealment, sometimes in Massachusetts, at other times in Connecticut.
It was not long before New England perceived that they had no reason to
congratulate themselves on the altered government in the mother-country.
The commercial restrictions from which they had been exempt during the
Commonwealth were now renewed; and with some return to their former
independence, the general court and elders drew up a clear declaration
of what they considered to be their rights. These they asserted to be,
“to choose their own governor, deputy-governor, and representatives; to
admit freemen on terms to be prescribed at their own pleasure; to set up
all sorts of officers, superior and inferior, with such powers and
duties as they might appoint; to exercise, by their annually-elected
magistrates and deputies, all authority legislative, executive and
judicial; to defend themselves by force of arms against any aggression;
and to reject any and every imposition which they might judge
prejudicial to the colony, and contrary to any just act of colonial
legislation.”
This declaration, which left but small prerogative to the crown, and
which asserted the navigation act to be an infringement of their
charter, was drawn up before Charles II. was publicly proclaimed in New
England, nearly twelve months after the news had first reached them, and
then all demonstrations of extravagant joy were prohibited; the king’s
health was not even allowed to be drunk. The colonies of Plymouth,
Hartford, New Haven and Rhode Island, had, on the contrary, immediately
proclaimed the king.
Connecticut, in the person of the younger Winthrop, then in London,
applied for and obtained a favourable charter; the colonists having
beforehand carefully drawn up the document, which they desired the king
to ratify, claiming the land by purchase from the natives—by conquest
from the Pequods, who had made on them a war of extermination—and by the
sweat of their own brows, which had changed the wilderness into a
garden. Their petition for this charter was not only seconded by the
aged Lord Say and Seal, who obtained for it also the co-operation of the
Earl of Manchester, but Winthrop, himself a man of the noblest
endowments, at once a scholar, a gentleman and a Christian, won for it
general good will by his merits alone. The son-in-law of Hugh Peters,
whose execution had so lately taken place, “God gave him, nevertheless,
favour,” as his own father Governor Winthrop, truly observed, “in the
eyes of all with whom he had to do;” and in his interviews with Charles,
whether it was by the charm of his conversation, his descriptions of
Indian warfare, and the adventurous life in the wilderness; or whether,
really, as was said, Winthrop presented a ring to the monarch, which had
been given, under peculiar circumstances, by Charles I. to Winthrop’s
grandfather, which constituted a claim on the house of Stuart, is not
known; this, however, is a fact, the charter was obtained. Clarendon was
full of good will, and certain courtiers, having themselves, it is
believed, interested views, recommended no limitations. This charter
embraced as one colony New Haven and Hartford, the limits of the latter
being extended from the Narragansett river to the Pacific Ocean. On the
colonists it conferred unqualified power to govern themselves; to elect
their own officers; to enact their own laws; to administer justice; to
exercise all power deliberative and executive, without appeal to
England, or without reference to England under any circumstances.
Connecticut was independent in everything but name.
“After his successful negociation and efficient concert in founding the
Royal Society,” says Bancroft, “Winthrop returned to America, bringing
with him a name which England honoured, and which his country should
never forget, and resumed his tranquil life in rural retirement.” Some
little trouble he at first met with from the two colonies being
amalgamated, without the consent of New Haven to such a measure being
first obtained. New Haven, which seemed thus compelled to sink its own
existence in that of the stronger sister-colony, very naturally made
some opposition, but the wisdom and firm gentleness of Winthrop effected
a reconciliation; the colonies were united as by a happy marriage, and
thenceforth but one interest swayed the two. Connecticut showed her
respect and affection for Winthrop, by annually electing him for
fourteen consecutive years as her governor.
The result of this ample charter, this liberty of self-government, was a
social condition so nearly approaching to the Utopia of philosophers,
and the golden age of the poets, that we must be allowed to dwell
somewhat at length upon the beautiful and refreshing picture. It stands
almost alone in the history of man. The institutions of Connecticut
being almost perfected by this charter, nearly a century elapsed before
any event took place which demands the historian’s notice. But its
progress during this time was of healthy increase, its population
doubled every twenty years, and its history was a picture of colonial
happiness and prosperity. “To describe its condition,” says Bancroft,
“is but to enumerate the blessings of self-government by a community of
farmers who have leisure to reflect, who cherish education, and who have
neither a nobility nor a populace. Could Charles II. have looked back
upon earth, and seen what security his gift of a charter had conferred,
he might have gloried in an act which redeemed his life from the charge
of having been unproductive of public happiness. The contentment of
Connecticut was full to the brim.”
Connecticut and Rhode Island were examples of what a truly Christian
commonwealth may become; greater than the Pilgrim states, because they
understood and practised the milder Christian virtues of forbearance and
love. Persecution had no home in these states. Roger Williams was ever a
welcome guest at Hartford, and “that heavenly man,” John Haynes, at
Providence. “I think, Mr. Williams,” said this modern St. John,
addressing his Christian brother, “that the most wise God hath provided
and cut out this part of the world as a refuge and receptacle for all
sorts of consciences.” Happy Connecticut! “No enemy,” we are told, “was
within her borders, tranquillity was within her gates, and the fear of
God within her heart.” Nor was this a mere poetical image; for many
years the public security was so great, that locks and bolts were
unknown; the best house had no firmer fastening to its doors than a
simple latch.
At the risk of dwelling, perhaps, a little too long on this portion of
our history, we must give a picture of life which is as quaint and
beautiful as any Arcadian poem that ever was written.
“There were neither rich nor poor in the land, but all had enough. There
was venison on the hills, abundant fish in the rivers, and sugar was
gathered from the maple of the forest. The soil was originally justly
divided, or held faithfully in trust for the public, and for new-comers.
Happiness was enjoyed unconsciously; like sound health, it was the
condition of a pure and simple life. There was for a long time hardly a
lawyer in the land. The husbandman who held his own plough, and fed his
own cattle, was the great man of the age; nor was any one superior to
the matron, who, with her busy daughters, kept the hum of the wheel
incessantly alive, spinning and weaving every article of dress. Fashion
was confined within narrow limits; and pride, which aimed at no grander
equipage than a pillion, exulted only in the common splendour of the
blue and white linen gown with sleeves reaching to the elbow, and the
snow-white flaxen apron, which, primly starched and ironed, was worn on
public days by every woman of the land. The time of sowing and the time
of reaping marked the progress of the year; and the plain dress of the
working day and the more trim attire of the Sabbath, the progress of the
week.
“Every family was taught to look up to God, as the fountain of all good.
Yet life was not sombre; the spirit of frolic mingled with innocence;
religion itself assumed a garb of gaiety, and the annual thanksgiving
was as joyous as it was sincere. Frugality was the rule of life, both
private and public. Half a century after the concession of the charter,
the annual expenses of government did not exceed £800.
“Education was always regarded as an object of deepest concern, and
common schools existed from the first. A small college was early
established, and Yale owes its birth to ten worthy fathers, who in 1700
assembled at Branford, and each one laying a few volumes on a table,
said, ‘I give these books for the founding of a college in this colony.’
“Political education was a natural consequence of the constitution.
Every inhabitant was a citizen, and every citizen, irrespective of
wealth, condition, or any other circumstance, was possessed of the
franchise. When, therefore, the progress of society and of events
furnished a wider field of action than mere local politics afforded, the
public mind was found equal to its circumstances; emerging then from the
quiet of its origin into scenes where a new political world was to be
created, the sagacity which had regulated the affairs of the village,
gained admiration in the field and the council.”[5]
Rhode Island, as well as Connecticut, received a charter of the most
liberal character from Charles. Ever the advocate of the enfranchisement
of the mind, they had pleaded, in 1658, with the English Commonwealth,
“that they might not be compelled to exercise any civil power over men’s
consciences, which,” urged they, “we judge no less than a point of
absolute cruelty;” and again, addressing the restored monarch, they
besought that they might be enabled “to hold forth a lively experiment
that a most flourishing civil state may stand, and best be maintained,
with a full liberty of religious concernments.” And Charles listened to
their request; and Clarendon himself seconded it, and that noble
charter, more liberal even than that of Connecticut, was granted, which
Roger Williams says, “startled his majesty’s high officers of state,
who, against their will, signed it, fearing the lion’s roaring.” And
Rhode Island, as Roger Williams had prayed might be the case, became a
secure home for liberty of conscience. “No person within the said
colony,” it was enacted, “at any time hereafter shall be anywise
molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question for any
differences in opinion in matters of religion; but that all and every
person may at all times hereafter freely and fully have and enjoy his
and their own judgments and consciences, in matters of religious
concernments.” There was no restriction here as regarded Jesuits or
Pagans; the spirit of this charter was broader even than that of
Maryland, which, disregarding distinction of sect and party, still
required belief in Christ. It is a grand lesson to the narrowsouled
religionist, whether he be Episcopalian or Calvinist, who deals
damnation freely to all who differ from him, that in two states, the one
founded by a Catholic, the other by the holders of every kind of heresy,
the noblest principles of Christianity, _forbearance_ and _love_, were
alone acknowledged as the true foundations of religion.
[Illustration: BAXTER PRESENTING THE CHARTER OF RHODE ISLAND.]
The liberty thus granted, spite of the assertion that quakerism fled
from the Rhode Island colony because it was tolerated there, caused
quakerism to have there its first home in the New World. Governor
Coddington joined the society and died a member of it. The yearly
meeting of the Quakers was held at his house till his death; and the
first meeting-house of that body was built at Newport, on Rhode Island.
George Fox himself, in 1672, visited his “Friends” there, and committed
to them “the firm support of the good of the people.” The creative power
of good in the colony he declared to be the instruction of all the
people in their rights; “you are the unworthiest men upon earth,” added
he, “if you do lose the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free in
life and glory,”—for he and his early Friends regarded Christianity,
taken in its own broad and catholic spirit, as the great emancipator of
the human race.
The joy of the colonists, on receiving their noble charter, was extreme.
George Baxter—could it be the same who was so active among the
revolutionists of New Amsterdam?—arrived with it on the 24th of
November, 1663, and the whole body of the people gathered together for
its solemn reception. “The letters of the agent were opened, and read
with good delivery and attention; then the charter was taken forth, from
the precious box that held it, and was read by Baxter, in the audience
and view of all the people; and the letters, with his Majesty’s royal
stamp and broad seal, with much becoming gravity were held up on high,
and presented to the perfect view of the people.”
When the gifted sons and daughters of America begin to express their
patriotism and national pride by means of the fine arts, this noble
incident will inspire a patriot artist. The scene itself, on the shores
of a beautiful island; the great sea beyond; and the congregated people,
“a very great meeting and assembly,” men, women, and children beholding,
with deep emotion, the upheld charter, with the broad seals, that
insured to them those sacred liberties which were dear to them as life.
A more beautiful subject could scarcely be found; and yet American
history abounds with many such. One day they must of necessity become
eloquent through the arts.
As regards the other states, the effect of the Restoration was not so
favourable. In Maryland, as we already know, the claim of Lord Baltimore
being confirmed, a temporary tranquillity was established throughout the
state. Virginia was less fortunate, though she had been the most loyal
of all the states; and though her homes had opened themselves to the
exiled royalists, many of whom were now established on her soil. In
April, 1661, Sir William Berkeley, the governor, embarked for England as
agent for Virginia to obtain relief from the Navigation Act, which
office he very unworthily performed. Instead of favour, instead of the
repeal of onerous laws imposed by the Commonwealth, commercial
restrictions were multiplied, and the reward of loyalty was
dismemberment among greedy courtiers. But to this we shall return in the
order of date.
As regards New Hampshire and Maine, we have already stated that Charles
conferred upon his brother, the Duke of York, the country between the
Pemaquid and the St. Croix; yet the proprietary claims of these
provinces were revived with the intention of obtaining them for the Duke
of Monmouth, and the fine extent of country from Connecticut River to
Delaware Bay, then partly in possession of the Dutch, and partly
included in Winthrop’s patent, was also given to the Duke of York. We
now return to Massachusetts.
CHAPTER XV.
MASSACHUSETTS UNDER CHARLES II.
Having drawn up what the people of Massachusetts considered a
declaration of their chartered liberties, and thus indemnified
themselves, as it were, by the assertion of democratic principles, John
Norton, “a fine scholar and rigid Puritan,” and the excellent Simon
Bradstreet, were sent over to convince the king of the loyalty of
Massachusetts, and to obtain from him a confirmation of her charter;
letters being at the same time sent to such English statesmen as might
be supposed to be favourable, bespeaking their co-operation.
Charles, though fully aware of the contumacious spirit of Massachusetts,
received, her envoys courteously, and confirmed the charter, burdening
it, however, with restrictions which had no place in those granted to
Connecticut and Rhode Island. He retained for himself “a right to
interfere in the domestic policy of the colony; he demanded a repeal of
all laws derogatory to his authority; the administration of the oath of
allegiance was required; justice was to be administered in his name;
complete toleration given to the Church of England; and the elective
franchise conceded to every inhabitant possessing a competent estate.”
A struggle now commenced between Massachusetts and the government at
home. Instead of obeying the royal requisitions, they resolved only to
adopt measures “conducive to the glory of God and the felicity of his
people,” and these of course were the maintenance of their religious and
democratic independence. The news of this opposition to authority did
not tend to promote a better feeling towards them. It was even reported
that Whalley and Goffe were at the head of an army of the four united
provinces of New England, which were about to throw off their allegiance
to the mother-country. Clarendon wrote, assuring them of “his true love
and friendship, and that they should receive no prejudice in privileges,
charter, government or church discipline;” and yet, before long, ships
of war anchored in Boston harbour, bringing commissioners appointed “to
regulate the affairs of the country according to royal authority and
their own discretion.”
Massachusetts had prepared for their coming. Her charter was entrusted
to the safe keeping of four of her citizens; and a day of solemn fasting
and prayer was appointed, as a means of propitiating Heaven in this
fearful emergency.
The commissioners were Nichols, Carr and Cartwright, together with
Samuel Maverick, a Massachusetts man, son of the first minister of
Dorchester, and who appearing now in this character, was regarded as a
traitor. They came out in the small fleet which we have already
mentioned as destined to the attack of the Dutch possessions in New
Netherlands. At first, Massachusetts objected to take part in this
aggression on the Dutch, but on second thoughts, considering the
position in which they stood with regard to the king, a levy of 200 men
was raised, which, as it happened, was not wanted, New Netherlands
yielding without force of arms.
Taking but little notice of their cold reception at Boston, the
commissioners proceeded with the fleet, touching at Connecticut, where,
the province having obtained in its charter all it desired, they were
well received; and Winthrop, the governor, proceeded with them to New
Amsterdam. New Netherlands having submitted, and Nichols being left
there as governor, the remaining commissioners returned to Boston, after
settling the boundaries of Connecticut and New York.
In the meantime the people of Massachusetts had resolved upon their line
of conduct, which was manly and straightforward. A remonstrance was
drawn up to the king, and even this some of the sturdy democrats thought
more than necessary, their compact being, it was argued, merely
one-fifth of all gold and silver ore; “which was an obligation, any
notice of the king beyond which was only by way of civility.” This
remonstrance stated to the king that the first planters of the colony
obtained a patent which empowered them to govern themselves by men
chosen from themselves, and according to such laws as they should enact.
“A royal donation,” said they, “under the great seal, is the greatest
security that may be had in human affairs;” having, therefore, now for
more than thirty years enjoyed the privilege of government within
themselves, as their undoubted right in the sight of God and man, they
required that the same should be left to them.
As regarded the appointment of a commission, one member of which was a
professed enemy, with power to receive and decide complaints according
to their will and pleasure, the remonstrants state, “that if these
things are to go on, his majesty’s subjects will either be forced to
seek new dwellings, or will sink under intolerable burdens, which would
be a loss to the king in the customs of exported and imported goods.”
And fearing, reasonably enough, that Charles’s rapacious courtiers might
be casting longing looks towards the now prosperous colony, they very
sagaciously observe: “If the aim should be to gratify some particular
gentlemen by livings and revenues here, that will also fail, because of
the poverty of the people. If all the charges of the whole government by
the year were put together, and then doubled or trebled, it would not be
counted by one of these gentlemen a considerable accommodation.
“God knows,” pursue they, “our greatest ambition is to have a quiet life
in a corner of the world. We came not into this wilderness to seek great
things to ourselves; and if any come after us to seek them here, they
will be disappointed. We keep ourselves within our line; a just
dependence upon and subjection to your majesty, according to our
charter, it is far from our hearts to disacknowledge. We would gladly do
anything within our power to purchase the continuance of your favourable
aspect. But it is a great unhappiness to have no testimony of our
loyalty offered but this, to yield up our liberties, which are far
dearer to us than our lives, and for which we have willingly ventured
our lives, and passed through many deaths to obtain.”
The conclusion is characteristic: “It was Job’s excellency, when he sat
as king among his people, that he was a father to the poor. A poor
people, destitute of outward favour, wealth and power, now cry unto
their lord the king. May your majesty regard their cause and maintain
their right; it will stand among the marks of lasting honour to after
generations.”
This remonstrance was not well received in England. The commission was
justified and submission recommended. But the sturdy magistrates would
not yield; and the commissioners, perfect jacks-in-office, were pompous
and over-bearing. Each day increased the mutual dislike of the two
parties. In the interval, however, between the remonstrance being sent
and the answer returned, the commissioners visited Plymouth and Rhode
Island. In Rhode Island all went smoothly. Plymouth, the weakest of all
the colonies, was offered the bribe of an independent charter, for which
she had long been urgent, if she would set an example of compliance, and
allow the king to nominate the governor. But Plymouth was nobly true to
the great principle of democratic liberty; and, to the sound of the
trumpet, to give emphasis to their decision, the representatives
declared, in the face of the commissioners, that, “by authority of the
charter, and in observance of their duty to God, to the king, and their
constituents, they would not suffer any to abet his majesty’s honoured
commissioners in their proceedings.”
“Since you will misconstrue our endeavours,” said the angry
commissioners, “we will lose no more of our labours upon you!” And
leaving Plymouth, they proceeded to the north, to establish the
boundaries and re-assert proprietary claims in New Hampshire and Maine;
and here again they came to issue with Massachusetts, which at once
forbade the towns on the Piscataqua, which had put themselves under her
jurisdiction, to obey the commissioners on their peril.
In Maine a strong party existed favourable to episcopacy and royalty,
and for some little time the commissioners had the ascendancy there; the
officers appointed by Massachusetts, under the jurisdiction of which
Maine was at this time governed, were deposed, and others, selected by
the commissioners, appointed in their stead. Two violent parties were
thus created in the province, which caused after troubles. Leaving
Maine, the commissioners returned to Boston, where they were formally
accused by the inflexible magistrates of having fomented disturbances in
Maine, and their prolonged stay in this contumacious city became
anything but agreeable. They were accustomed to hold every Saturday
evening a social party at a tavern, and this species of entertainment,
on that evening of the week which the strict Puritans regarded as the
commencement of the Sabbath, being contrary to their law, it was
resolved to put an end to. Accordingly a constable was sent to break up
the first which was now held. The constable, however, was soundly beaten
and driven off by Sir Robert Carr and his servant. Another and much more
determined constable, named Mason, now made his appearance, but the
party had in the meantime adjourned to a house over the way, whither he
followed them, and, entering the room where they sate, reproached them
for not setting a better example, and for beating a constable, saying,
it was well for them that they had changed their quarters, otherwise he
would have arrested every one of them. “What!” cried Carr, “arrest the
king’s commissioners!” “Yes,” replied Mason, “the king himself had he
been there.” “Treason! treason!” shouted Maverick; “knave, thou shalt
presently hang for this.”
The next day the commissioners accused the second constable of treason,
and the governor informed Sir Robert Carr that the first constable had
lodged a complaint against him for assault and battery. The affair was
brought before the court, but very little came of the accusations either
way. In the meantime, the commissioners having sent to England a report
of their general proceedings received their recall, together with his
Majesty’s approval of their conduct, and of the conduct of all the
colonies, with the exception of Massachusetts, which was ordered to send
over Bellingham, the governor, Hawthorne, a magistrate of great
influence, and three others, to answer for the charges which were
brought against the colony.
A general court was convened to deliberate on the letter of the king;
the next day was spent in prayer and religious exercises; and on the
third they again met for deliberation, the end of which was a refusal to
comply. “We have already,” replied the court, with dignity, “furnished
our views in writing, so that the ablest persons amongst us could not
declare our case more fully.” Therefore they declined to send over
deputies.
Willing, however, to evince their loyalty, they sent provisions to the
English fleet in the West Indies, and a cargo of masts as a present to
the English navy; “a blessing,” says Pepys, in his diary, “mighty
unexpected, and but for which we must have failed the next year.”
Massachusetts thus in part made her peace with the mother-country;
besides which, England was not just then in a state to compel obedience;
the war with Holland was pressing heavily on the country; and the great
fire and the plague which had just ravaged and depopulated London
brought subjects of serious thought much nearer home, which threw
Massachusetts for several years completely into the background. In the
meantime she prospered.
In 1670, Sir Joshua Child, in his discourse on trade, reported of
Massachusetts, that it is “the most prejudicial plantation of Great
Britain; the frugality, industry and temperance of its people, and the
happiness of their laws and institutions, promise them long life and a
wonderful increase of people, riches, and power.” And the promise was
fulfilled. The navigation act, which pressed so heavily on Virginia, and
which was intended to be enforced with equal severity in Massachusetts,
was disregarded; not a single custom-house was established; on the
contrary, Massachusetts enjoyed all the advantages of free-trade,
“acting as carrier to most of the colonies, sending her ships to various
parts of the world, while ships from Spain, Italy, France and Holland,
might all be seen in Boston harbour. Villages extended; prosperity was
universal; beggary was unknown; theft was rare.”
Such was the condition of Massachusetts in 1670. One internal trouble,
however, she still had, and that was, the growth of schismatics within
her borders. The Baptists, spite of all opposition, were not only
numerous, but had built themselves a meeting-house in Boston; and the
“abominable Quakers” still came, spite of flogging from town to town out
of the colony.
Half a century had now passed since the pilgrim fathers first landed in
the New World, and many of the “old worthies” had departed on a still
further pilgrimage. “Wilson, the sincere though persecuting minister,
who had mounted into a tree in his zeal to preach against Anne
Hutchinson; the mild John Davenport, the founder of New Haven;
Willoughby, the advocate of toleration; Bellingham, and many other
patriarchs, were no more; having closed their lives but with one
regret—that they had not been permitted to witness the fulness of New
England’s glory.”
In the midst of this growing prosperity, a sudden tempest of blood and
misery broke over New England. The colonies were gradually extending
themselves; “yet the entire white population,” says Hildreth, “did not
yet exceed 60,000, occupying the sea-coast, and the lands of the Lower
Connecticut. Lancaster, about forty miles from Boston, was the frontier
town of the Bay settlements; Brookfield, some thirty miles from the
river, was the most eastern town in the Connecticut valley. There
intervened between these townships a great space of rugged country,
wholly unsettled, and occupied by a few straggling Indian tribes.”
Excepting in the instance of the Pequods, the native tribes of New
England remained very much undiminished. The Pocanokets still occupied
the eastern, and the Narragansetts the western, side of Narragansett
Bay. In Connecticut but few natives remained, as the various tribes had
mostly ceded their land to the new-comers. Uncas, the celebrated Mohegan
chief, was now an old man. The Penacooks still occupied the falls of the
Merrimac and the heads of the Piscataqua, their aged sachem,
Passaconaway, having great respect for the whites. “The Indians of Maine
and the region eastward possessed their ancient haunts undisturbed; but
their intercourse was principally with the French settlers. Acadia was
again given up. The New England Indians were occasionally harassed by
war-parties of Mohawks, but by the intervention of Massachusetts peace
had recently been established.”
Earnest endeavours were being made to convert the Indians to
Christianity; Eliot and his devoted coadjutors were labouring to bring
these forlorn children of the forest into the fold of Christ, and
already, as we have related, civilisation and Christianity had been
accepted by considerable numbers. Still those remained who proudly
resisted their influence, among which were the Narragansetts and
Pocanokets already mentioned, lying in the very midst of the English
settlements. These tribes, who boasted of the glory and power of their
forefathers, of their great numbers and vast extent of territory, had
been galled by the gradual and irresistible advance of the white
intruders in their boundaries, until at length they found themselves
confined to the peninsulas formed by the northern and eastern branches
of Narragansett Bay, and began to dread that they should be driven into
the very sea itself.
None felt these humiliating circumstances more painfully than Pometacom,
or king Philip of Mount Hope, as he was called by the colonists, chief
of the Pocanokets, and son of that Massasoit who had welcomed the
pilgrim fathers, and ever shown himself their firm friend. Already, in
1670, suspected of hostile intentions, he had been compelled to give up
his fire-arms, to pay a heavy fine, and acknowledge the supremacy of the
English. By some writers it has been asserted, that Philip had for
several years been labouring to effect a union of the tribes for the
purpose of a war of extermination on the English; but this was never
proved. Others say, so far from having hostile designs, that he received
the news of the first Englishman who was slain with a sorrow which
forced tears from his eyes; and that the ardour of his young men alone
compelled him into the war against his own judgment. Be this as it may,
however, a converted Indian, who, on account of some misdemeanour, had
fled to Philip, returned after a while to his former friends, and
perhaps to ingratiate himself, accused Philip of a murderous plot. In
June of the following year, 1675, this man was killed, and three
Indians, taken up and tried on suspicion of the murder by a jury half
English and half Indians, were condemned and executed. This roused the
whole tribe, and Philip sending away the women and children for
protection to the Narragansetts, the chief of whom was Canonchet, the
son of Miantonomoh, who was burning yet to revenge the death of his
father, plundered some houses near Mount Hope, and shortly after made an
attack on Swanzey, where several people were killed.
Speaking of this war, Bancroft very justly says: “Frenzy prompted the
rising of the Indians. It was but the storm in which the ancient
inhabitants of the land were to vanish away. They rose without hope, and
they fought without mercy. For them as a nation there was no to-morrow.”
The whole country was in a state of alarm, and the troops of Plymouth
and Boston marched into the enemies’ country, and advancing to Mount
Hope, the residence of Philip, who had retreated with his warriors or
their approach, several Indians were killed. As yet, the Narragansetts
were quiet; but it being suspected that they favoured the designs of
Philip, the English forces proceeded into their territory and compelled
Canonchet to sign a treaty of peace.
And not alone was the public mind agitated by fears of the Indians;
other causes of terror prevailed. The aurora borealis lit up the
midnight sky; the moon was eclipsed; strange and awful sights were seen
in the heavens; Indian bows, and scalps and armies careering with
lightning speed; the moaning of the wind and the howling of the wolves
became also prophetic of dire calamity. The awe-stricken people thought
of the “signs in the sun, and the moon, and the stars; and upon earth
distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring;
men’s hearts failing them for fear and for looking after those things
which are coming on the earth.”
The approaching war, of which these signs were supposed to be the
prognostics, caused the austere Puritans to consult through their elders
as to the sins for which these calamities were the judgment; and a long
list was drawn up, among others, “neglect in the religious training of
their children; pride in dress; long and curled hair worn by the men;
the uncovered bosoms of the women and the wearing of superfluous
ribbons; toleration of the Quakers; hurry in leaving the meeting-houses;
cursing, swearing and drinking; and the riding from town to town of
unmarried men and women, on pretence of attending lectures”—these, and
other such things, were considered to be the cause of God’s anger, and
still greater austerity of life was required. Meantime, the Pocanokets
driven from Mount Hope, Philip and his warriors were fugitives among the
Nipmucks, a tribe in the interior of Massachusetts; the tribes in
Connecticut remained faithful, and the Narragansetts were quiet;
nevertheless, the colonists were on the alert, and in November a
combined force of 1,500 men was raised to carry on the war against the
Indians, which was now pronounced to be “just and necessary.”
“The war on the part of the Indians,” says Bancroft, “was one of
ambushes and surprises. They never once met the English in open field.
They were secret as beasts of prey, skilful marksmen and in part
provided with fire-arms, fleet of foot, conversant with all the paths of
the forest, patient of fatigue and burning for vengeance on an enemy
whom at the same time they feared and hated. By the rapidity of their
descent, they seemed omnipresent among the scattered villages, which
they ravaged like a passing storm. The forest that protected their
ambush secured their retreat; they hung upon the skirts of the English
villages ‘like the lightning on the edge of the cloud.’”
The English, unwilling that Philip should be sheltered among the
Nipmucks, whom they regarded as their allies, sent a force into their
territory to remonstrate with them; but the Indians, lying in ambush,
fell upon them near the appointed place, and killed most of them. The
remainder fled to the village of Brookfield, where a house was hastily
fortified, and they stood a siege for two days, when the Indians set
fire to the house; but the flames were extinguished by violent and
sudden rain, and soon after a party coming to the relief of the besieged
the Indians fled. A few days later the village of Deerfield was burned;
and on the same day, “it being Sunday, the town of Hadley was attacked
at the time of public worship, and the people thrown into the utmost
confusion, when on a sudden there appeared in the midst of the
affrighted inhabitants a man of venerable aspect, who put himself at
their head, and led them to the onset.” The army was completely routed,
but the stranger, who was almost supposed to be an angel from heaven,
had disappeared. It was the regicide General Goffe, who was at that time
concealed in the town. About the same time, Captain Beers and his
company were cut off at Deerfield by a brook, which, running red with
their blood, is called to this day “the Bloody Brook.” Deerfield was a
devoted place; the harvests were gathered in under force of arms, and,
says the old narrative, “on September 18th, that most fatal day, the
saddest that ever befell New England, as the company under Captain
Lathrop were marching along with the carts, they were suddenly set upon,
and ninety of them killed, not above seven or eight escaping;” and thus
fell “that choice company of young men, the very flower of the county of
Essex; all culled out of the towns belonging to that county; their dear
relations at home mourning for them, like Rachel for her children.” The
village of Springfield was burned; the more distant settlements were
deserted, and all “the pleasant residences which had been won by hard
toil in the desert, the stations of civilisation in the wilderness, were
laid waste.”
A quick alarm ran through those sylvan bowers,
All the wild tumult of approaching war:
And in the deep hush of the midnight hours
The dismal war-whoop sounded from afar,
Rousing the slumberers up with its unearthly jar.
And with the morning’s light was sadly traced,
Where those wild dwellers of the woods had gone;
Behind them lay a black and smoking waste,
As carrying fire and terror they went on.
Winter was now at hand and that season was unfavourable to Indian
warfare, the leafless trees affording them no longer ambush, while the
hardened surface of the swamps, which were the strongholds of the
savage, rendered them accessible to their enemies. It was now resolved
to include the Narragansetts in the list of enemies, and accordingly,
just before Christmas, 1,000 men, headed by Josiah Winslow, entered the
Narragansett country, then covered with deep snow. At length they
reached one of the ancient fastnesses of the Indians, where the town of
South Kingstone now stands. “It was built on a rising ground,” says
Hildreth, “in the morass, a sort of island of five or six acres,
fortified by a palisade, and surrounded by a close hedge. There was but
one entrance, quite narrow, defended by a tree thrown across it, with a
block-house of logs in front and another at the back. It was Lord’s-day,
but that did not hinder the attack.” Desperate was the onset, and
equally desperate the defence; victory for some time was doubtful, but
at length, after many lives were lost on both sides, the English became
masters of the fort. The wigwams, amounting to 600 in number, were
fired, and “all the horrors of the Pequod massacre renewed.” “Most of
their provisions, as well as their dwellings, were consumed with fire,”
says the old narrative, “and those that were left alive were forced to
hide themselves in a cedar swamp not far off, where they had nothing to
defend themselves from the cold but boughs of spruce and pine-trees.”
The English were masters of the place, and after burning all they could
set fire to, they retired with their dead and wounded, amounting to
between 200 and 300. This terrible contest is known as the “Swamp
Fight.”
“Our victory,” continues the chronicle, which reads like the history of
some wholesale slaughter of the heathen by the children of Israel, “was
more considerable than we at first expected. The enemy lost many of
their principal fighting men, their provisions also by the burning of
their wigwams and stores, so that it was the cause of their total ruin,
they being driven away from their habitations, and put by from planting
for the next year. Seven hundred fighting men of the Indians died that
day, besides 300 that died of their wounds. The number of old men, women
and children that perished either by fire, or that were starved with
hunger and cold, none can tell.”
“Now, indeed,” may we say with Bancroft, “was the cup of misery full for
the red men. Without shelter and without food, they hid themselves in
the cedar swamp. They prowled the forests and pawed up the snow for
ground-nuts and acorns; they ate the remnants of horse-flesh; they sunk
down and died from feebleness and want of food.
“The spirit of Canonchet did not droop under the disasters of his tribe.
‘We will fight to the last man,’ said he, ‘rather than become servants
to the English.’ In April, however, he was taken. His life was offered
him if he would procure a treaty of peace. He refused with disdain; and
being condemned to death, remarked, ‘I like it well; I shall die before
my heart grows soft—before I speak anything unworthy of myself.’” Two
Indians, in the employ of the English, shot him, and his head was sent
to Hartford.
The scattered remains of the Indians in the meantime pursued the work of
vengeance. “We will fight,” said they, “these twenty years; you have
houses, barns and corn; we have nothing to lose.” And Lancaster was
burned, and forty of its inhabitants killed and taken prisoners, among
the rest Mary Rolandson, the wife of the minister, whose narrative of
the fearful event is still preserved. The towns of Medfield, Groton,
Marlborough and Weymouth, only eighteen miles from Boston, were all laid
in ashes; the neighbourhood of the Narragansett country was deserted:
the towns of Rhode Island, though they had taken no part in the war,
suffered; Warwick was burned, and Providence partially destroyed. Roger
Williams, now an aged man, whose influence had formerly been so great
with the Narragansetts, accepted a captain’s commission for the defence
of Providence, and another governor was chosen in the place of
Coddington, whose peaceable Quaker principles would not allow him to
fight even in a war of defence.
The attack on the Narragansetts, who had always been faithful allies of
the English, was as unjustifiable as it was impolitic. The whole country
was now filled with hostile Indians; security was at an end; every
forest-path was an ambush for the day-light assault, and the silence of
night was broken by the fearful war-whoop, which was followed by murder
and fire. The sufferings of the Indians, also, were extreme; they had no
provisions, and their ammunition was exhausted. Vain were all their
attempts now to retrieve their circumstances; the English attacked them
even while attempting to plant corn, or to fish for a subsistence.
The English pursued the war with unabated determination, and, in the
spring of 1676, were in most cases victorious. Jealousies had also
arisen among the tribes themselves, and many submitted, while others
fled to the north. Philip was like a hunted wild beast; he fled from one
tribe to another, endeavouring still to rouse them against the whites.
In vain had the Mohawks urged upon him submission; he gave the warrior
his death-blow who spoke of peace; and now, twelve months after the war
broke out, he returned to Mount Hope, which was still held by him, by
his relative Witamo, the squaw-sachem of Pocasset. Philip was watched
narrowly by Captain Church, who at length surprised his camp, killed a
considerable number of his people, and took captive his wife and son.
The elders deliberated long on the fate of this child, the youngest
branch of the family of the friendly Massasoit; many were for putting
him to death, but finally he was sold as a slave in Bermuda, which was
the hapless fate of many another noble son of the forest. Witamo shared
the calamities of Philip; her people were killed, and she herself
drowned while crossing a river. Her body, however, was recovered, and
the head, being cut off, was set upon a pole, “amid the scoffs and jeers
of the soldiers, and the tears and lamentations of the Indians.”
Philip still lurked in the swamps, where he was now beset on all hands,
and at length, when endeavouring to make his escape, was shot through
the heart by one of his own nation who had deserted to the English. His
dead body was beheaded and quartered. One of his hands was given to the
Indian who shot him, and five days afterwards, on the day appointed to
be kept as “a solemn thanksgiving to God,” his head was carried in
triumph to Plymouth.
Through this terrible war the Mohegans had remained faithful to the
English, and no blood had been shed in happy Connecticut. The war was at
an end, but vengeance was not yet appeased. Many chiefs, noted warriors
of their respective tribes, were executed at Boston and Plymouth; 200
Indians, who had on one occasion come to treat of peace, were
treacherously taken prisoners and carried to Boston, where some were
hanged, and others sold as slaves. A bloodthirsty and remorseless spirit
governed the whole colony. The captives who fell to the share of the
Rhode Islanders were treated with somewhat more mercy; they were
distributed among the different families as servants or slaves. To Roger
Williams a boy was thus apportioned.
The losses of the English are thus estimated: twelve or thirteen towns
destroyed; 600 men, chiefly young men, killed; 600 houses burned. Of the
able-bodied men of the colony one in twenty had fallen, and one family
in twenty had been burnt out. Scarcely a family existed which had not
lost a member. Peace, however, was now generally established; though in
Maine and New Hampshire the tribes remained hostile for yet two years.
The Pocanokets and the Narragansetts had shared the fate of the Pequods;
the country of the Pocanokets was annexed to Plymouth, though sixty
years afterwards it was transferred to Rhode Island; the Narragansett
territory was for long a disputed possession. The few Indians of these
tribes who still remained, removed to the west and north. They were no
longer a nation.
After this the work of conversion went on with renewed vigour. A second
edition of the Indian Old Testament, which, as if an evidence of the
spirit which influenced the whites towards them, was more in request
than the New, was published; but at this day not an individual remains
to whom it can be useful.
The converted or praying Indians, as they were called, suffered much; by
their forest brethren they were hated as Christians, by the Christians
suspected as Indians. Four only, of their fourteen towns, remained to
them; but Eliot continued to be the “faithful shepherd of these, his
poor, despised flock in the wilderness,” and braved many dangers and
hardships on their account.
Various romantic incidents occurred in this war, two of which we will
relate. The escape of Anne Brackett, the grand-daughter of George
Cleves, the first settler of Portland, was the marvel of that day. “Her
family had been taken captive at the sack of Falmouth. When her captors
hastened forward to further ravages on the Kennebec, she was able to
loiter behind, and, discovering the wreck of a birchen bark, she
repaired it by means of needle and thread, which she found in a deserted
house. Then with her husband, a negro servant and her infant child, she
confided herself to the sea in this frail bark, which was like a feather
on the waves. And thus she crossed Casco Bay and arrived at Black Point,
where she feared to find Indians. Indians however there were none, but
to her joy a vessel from Piscataqua, on board which she was received,
together with those so dear to her, whose lives she had saved.”
Again, on one occasion, “some fugitive Indians who had taken refuge in
Canada descended the Connecticut, and falling upon a party assembled at
Hadley, at a house-raising, carried off twenty persons. The husbands of
two of the female captives proceeded to Canada, by way of Albany and
Lakes George and Champlain, guided by a Mohawk Indian—the first recorded
journey made in this direction—and by the intervention of the French
government the captives were redeemed.”
CHAPTER XVI.
THE CHARTER OF MASSACHUSETTS ANNULLED.
But with the conclusion of the Indian war the troubles of Massachusetts
were not at an end. The merchants of London, jealous of the rising
commercial power of New England, complained of her total disregard of
the laws of trade, and the Navigation Act was attempted to be enforced
with renewed vigour.
In 1677, the controversy which had been so long pending between
Massachusetts and the heirs of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, relative to Maine,
was decided by Massachusetts purchasing their claim through the agency
of a wealthy Boston merchant, from the said heirs, for £1,200; and thus,
spite of Charles II.’s wish to obtain it as an appanage for the Duke of
Monmouth, Maine became a province of the State of Massachusetts. The
extent of the province, however, was not equal to that which constitutes
the present State of Maine. France occupied the district from St. Croix
to the Penobscot, and New York that between the Penobscot and the
Kennebec.
New Hampshire had now for some years submitted to the jurisdiction of
Massachusetts, under which it was greatly content; but Mason’s claims,
which had long lain dormant, having been again revived in England, were
only decided to be valid with respect to unappropriated land; and the
government, wishful to humble and mortify Massachusetts, pronounced the
towns on the Piscataqua not to be within her limits, and, in 1679,
proceeded formally to separate New Hampshire from her jurisdiction. New
Hampshire was now erected into a royal province, the assembly to be
chosen by the people, the president and council to be appointed by the
crown. This change was extremely unwelcome to the people of New
Hampshire, and the following year the General Assembly sorrowfully
addressed the friends from whom they were severed in these words:—“We
thankfully acknowledge your kindness while we dwelt under your shadow,
avowing ourselves deeply obliged that, on our earnest request, you took
us under your government and ruled us well. If there be opportunity for
us to be in anywise serviceable to you, we shall show you how ready we
are to embrace it. Wishing the presence of God to be with you, we crave
the benefit of your prayers on us who are separated from our brethren.”
The colony, now a royal province, endeavoured nevertheless still to
maintain the principles of democratic liberty in the new code which was
drawn up by the General Assembly, but which was utterly disapproved and
rejected when sent to England. Mason also found it next to impossible to
establish his claims even to unappropriated lands, and returning to
England, sent over one Cranfield, a needy adventurer, as his agent and
as governor of the province, with a mortgage on the whole for twenty-one
years, the crown being a party to the arrangement and receiving from
Mason one-fifth of all quit-rents for the support of the government,
which revenue was allowed to Cranfield as his salary. Full of the hope
of speedily making a large fortune, Cranfield arrived in the province,
but only to find that he had to deal with men of a determined and
patriotic spirit, ready in every way to oppose his aggressions under
whatever form they might appear. The people were vexed with lawsuits and
the imposition of fines from one end of the province to the other. In
vain the governor made use of every subterfuge to raise money and to
intimidate; now on the pretence of invasion, now by prosecutions
regarding church discipline, now by the terror of an approaching Indian
war. It was to no purpose; he had to deal with a people firm as the
granite mountains of their land, and from their steadfastness, rather
than from the character of these bulwarks of nature, New Hampshire to
this day retains the appellation of the Granite State.
It was impossible to gather the illegal taxes which Cranfield imposed.
Associations were formed to resist their collection. At one town the
sheriff was driven away with clubs, and his officer threatened with
spits and scalding water by the irate and determined farmers’ wives,
whose household goods he was about to distrain upon; in another place he
was despoiled of his signs of office, and with a rope round his neck,
conveyed out of the province. Cranfield was soon as glad to withdraw
from “these unreasonable people,” as he termed them, as Mason had been
before him.
Returning now to Massachusetts, against whom not only the Tory party,
now in power, but the commercial interests of England were placed in
such hostile array, we find a question started which was calculated to
shake her to the very centre. Seeing it was impossible to bring her to
obedience by any measure which had hitherto been tried, a question was
started “as to the legal entity of her charter;” and the crown not being
able to deny the validity of the patent, a writ of _quo warranto_,
before which the cities and boroughs of England had just yielded, was
proposed. The colony beheld the gloomy aspect of the future with
sentiments of deep emotion, and again a religious fervour, almost
superstitious, possessed all hearts. The most solemn religious
observances were adopted; the elders took it again into serious
deliberation as to what were the sins of New England for which Heaven
visited her with such signal judgments. As before, in the terror of the
Indians, the pardonable sins of youthful levity and love of pleasure
were looked upon as offensive to God, and still greater austerity of
life was imposed. They forgot what, in truth, were the crying sins of
the colony—spiritual pride, bigotry and intolerance—the want of charity
and mercy, whether to Anabaptists, Quakers, or Indians. The colony, like
some sinful city of old, again humbled itself as in sackcloth and ashes,
but “the anger of the Lord was not turned aside.”
English enactments, in 1678, began to be in force; high treason became a
capital offence; the oath of allegiance was required, and the king’s
arms were erected in the court-house. The colony, however, wishful to
save its charter, was willing to make some concessions; therefore
resorting to an expedient which might save their honour, the general
court gave validity to the long opposed Navigation Laws by an act of its
own. Massachusetts asserted thus the right to govern herself; and
Charles, still more exasperated, resolved on her humiliation. A struggle
ensued, during which Edward Randolph was twice sent from England to
assist in bringing the stiff-necked colony into order.
[Illustration: EJECTMENT OF THE SHERIFF BY THE PEOPLE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE.]
At length, in February, 1682, affairs growing more and more desperate,
two agents, fully empowered to act for the colony, were sent over from
New England, the prayers of the whole commonwealth accompanying them,
not only for their safety, but for the safety of the patent—their great
charter of liberty. But they were unsuccessful; perhaps because, to use
the phraseology of those times, “the anger of the Lord was against
them,” they having, as it appears to us, unworthily, in imitation of
France and the whole spirit of the English court, gone with a bribe in
their hands.
But bribes or concessions were equally unavailing; there was no hope for
the charter. In vain was Massachusetts moved, from one boundary to
another, as by a public calamity, in which every household, every
individual suffered; in vain it was spoken of everywhere; in vain
deplored; in vain was it the subject of household prayer and of the
Sabbath sermon; the charter was doomed, and the unsuccessful agents
returned. Again the hated Randolph arrived in a royal frigate, bringing
with him a writ of _quo warranto_, which was served by himself on the
magistrates. But the king was willing to be gracious, and would
Massachusetts only submit, “as few innovations should be made as
possible, consistent with a royal government;” such was the message of
irritated majesty received by the democratic state.
Again was there a deep deliberation throughout Massachusetts; and from
that day two parties existed in the state, “the patriots who defended
the rights of the colonies, and the prerogative men who were in favour
of complete submission to the royal authority.” For a whole fortnight,
the question was debated; “the civil liberties of New England,” argued
they nobly, “are part of the inheritance of our fathers; shall we give
that inheritance away? It is objected that we shall be exposed to great
sufferings. Better suffer than sin. It is better to trust the God of our
fathers than to put confidence in princes. If we suffer because we dare
not comply with the wills of men against the will of God, we suffer in a
good cause, and shall be accounted martyrs in the next generation, and
at the great day.”
The decision was recorded, that “the deputies consent not, but adhere to
their former bills.” Agents again were sent to the king to entreat his
forbearance; but the charter was already annulled. On July 2nd, 1685, a
copy of the judgment was received in Boston and sorrow and humiliation
overspread the colony.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SETTLEMENT OF CAROLINA.
We must now leave for the present the States of New England, austere
alike in character and clime, and turn to those summer realms of the
South which excited the cupidity of the early French and Spanish
adventurers. We must become more intimately acquainted with the region
where De Soto wandered in search of the land of gold; where the good
Coligny planted his settlements of persecuted Huguenots; where catholic
bigotry dyed the soil with their blood; and where, also, the brave
Raleigh planned magnificent schemes of colonisation, and reaped only the
fruits of disappointment and sorrow.
The vast territory of North America was, for half a century after the
English began to colonise it, divided into two districts, called North
and South Virginia; “all lands lying towards the river St. Lawrence,
from the northern boundaries of the province now called Virginia,
belonged to the northern, and all those to the southward, as far as the
Gulf of Florida, to the southern district.”
The French colonists first gave the name of CAROLINA to the country
which is still so designated, in honour of their worthless monarch,
Charles IX. In 1630, Charles I. of England granted a tract of land south
of Chesapeake Bay to Sir Robert Heath, his attorney-general, under the
name of Carolana; but owing to the political agitations in England, the
projected colonisation of this country was never carried out. With the
Restoration, the English reasserted their claim to that portion of
America which had been known under the designation of South Virginia,
and the fertility and desirableness of which was now an established
fact. Somewhat before the time, therefore, when the restored monarch
made a grant to his brother of the Dutch possessions of New Netherlands,
he conferred the vast territory comprised between Albemarle Sound,
southward to the river St. John, under the name of Carolina, upon eight
proprietors, among whom were some of his principal courtiers; that is to
say, Clarendon, the prime minister; General Monk, now Duke of Albemarle;
Lord Craven, the supposed husband of the Queen of Bohemia; Lord Ashley
Cooper, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury; Sir John Colleton, Lord John
Berkeley, his brother, Sir William, governor of Virginia, and Sir George
Carteret. The grant made to these proprietaries constituted them
absolute sovereigns of the country. Their right, however, was
immediately disputed both by the Spaniards—whose fort of St. Augustine
was considered to establish actual possession—and by the assigns of Sir
Robert Heath; but neither claimants could stand before the new and more
powerful patentees. Besides these, other parties of a much more sturdy
and unmanageable character had already established themselves on its
coasts. New England, which possessed within itself not only an expansive
principle, but one which took deep root on any soil which it touched,
had planted not only a little settlement on Cape Fear, which had been
fostered in its distresses by the mother-colony, but had sown the seeds
of democratic liberty, from which, in part, must be traced the resolute
spirit which distinguished the colony of North Carolina in the long
struggle through which it had to pass.
Virginia, too, was “the mother of colonies;” and in 1622, “the
adventurous Porey, then secretary of Virginia, travelled overland to the
banks of the Chowan, or South River, reporting on his return most
favourably of the kindness of the natives, the fertility of the country,
and the happy climate, which yielded two harvests in the year.” During
the succeeding forty years, his explorations were followed up, and when
religious persecution took place in Virginia, dissenters emigrated
largely. The country around Albemarle Sound was established by
Nonconformists, who had purchased a right to their lands from the
aborigines. These settlements were claimed by the new proprietaries of
Carolina, and Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia and one of the
joint proprietors, was ordered by his colleagues to assume jurisdiction
over them in their name.
Berkeley, however, who knew too well the character of these
pioneer-settlers, did not venture to enforce his orders too strictly.
Instead of this, he appointed William Drummond, one of the settlers, “a
man of prudence and popularity,” to be the governor; and instituting a
simple form of government, a council of six members, and an easy tenure
of land, left the colony to take care of itself, to enjoy liberty of
conscience and the management of its own affairs. “Such,” says Bancroft,
“was the origin of fixed settlements in North Carolina. The child of
ecclesiastical oppression was swathed in independence.”
Besides these settlements of New England and Virginia, several planters
of Barbadoes had purchased from the Indians a tract of land thirty-two
miles square on Cape Fear River, where the New Englanders had first
settled themselves, and now applied to the new proprietaries for a
confirmation of their purchase and a charter of government. All their
wishes were not granted, but Sir John Yeamans, a cavalier and the head
of these Barbadoes planters, was appointed governor, with a jurisdiction
extending from Cape Fear to the St. Matheo, the country being called
Clarendon. This settlement absorbed that of the New Englanders, who,
however, were so far respected that Yeamans was instructed to be “very
tender” towards them, to “make things easy to the people of New England,
that others might be attracted there.” The colony immediately applied
itself to the preparation of boards, shingles and staves, to be shipped
to the West Indies, and the same continues to this day to be the staple
of that region of pine forests and sterile plains.
The proprietaries in the meantime having ascertained the character of
their territory, and become better acquainted with its geography,
obtained, in 1665, a second charter, in total disregard of all other
claims, and this time their grant was extended half a degree further
north, so as to include the settlements on the Chowan, and a degree and
a half further south, including the Spanish colony of St. Augustine and
part of Florida, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. This vast
grant in fact comprised all the present territory of North and South
Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas,
a considerable portion of Florida and Missouri, nearly all Texas and a
large part of Mexico. Nor was this all; an additional grant shortly
afterwards added the group of the Bahama Isles, then famous as the
resort of buccaneers, to the vast realms which their charter already
included.
The infant settlement of Albemarle continued to receive accessions from
Virginia and New England; and from Bermuda, already famous for the
building of fast-sailing ships, came a colony of ship-builders. In 1669,
the first laws were enacted by an assembly composed of the governor
Stevens, who had succeeded Drummond, a council of six, and twelve
delegates chosen by the people. According to the laws of Virginia, land
was offered to all new-comers, and immigrant debtors were protected for
five years, against any suit for debt contracted beyond the colony. The
governor and court constituted a court of justice, and were entitled to
a fee of thirty pounds of tobacco on every suit; and the colony, being
without any minister of religion, marriage became a civil rite. Three
years afterwards the proprietaries solemnly confirmed the settlers in
possession of their lands, and granted to them the right of nominating
six councillors in addition to the six nominated by the patentees. The
right of self-government was thus established on the soil of North
Carolina.
In the meantime the ambition of the proprietaries, extending with the
extent of their charter, a magnificent scheme of sovereignty was
conceived, which was intended not only to give them the wealth of
empires but the fame of legislators. All that philosophic intellect and
worldly sagacity could do to frame a model government was now done. The
Earl of Shaftesbury was deputed by his fellow-proprietaries to frame for
this infant empire a constitution commensurate with its intended
greatness; and he employed his friend and _protégé_ John Locke,
afterwards so well known for his philosophical writings, as his agent
for this purpose.
Locke commenced his labours on the principle that “compact is the true
basis of government, and the protection of property its great end.” Cold
and calculating, with no generous enthusiasm of soul, no sympathetic and
aspiring impulses, guided alone by intellect and conventionality, it is
no wonder that the “Grand Model,” as the constitution of Carolina was
called, failed of practical application, and was, finally, after the
vain attempt of many years to enforce it, abandoned as totally
inapplicable to its purpose.
It has been well remarked that “the formation of political institutions
in the United States was not effected by giant minds or nobles after the
flesh. Their truly great legislators became as little children.”
But, futile as was this Grand Model constitution, we must give some idea
of it to our readers, to show how little intellect merely and political
wisdom can comprehend the principles of successful government or the
basis of a prosperous and happy social state.
“The interests of the proprietaries, a government most agreeable to
monarchy, and a careful avoidance of a numerous democracy,” are the
avowed threefold objects of the Carolina constitution. The
proprietaries, eight in number, were never to be increased or
diminished; their dignity was hereditary. The vast extent of territory
was to be divided into counties, each containing about seven hundred and
fifty square miles; to each county appertained two orders of nobility, a
landgrave or earl, and two caciques or barons; the land was to be
divided into five equal parts, one of which became the inalienable right
of the proprietaries, another equally inalienably the property of the
nobility, and the remaining three-fifths were reserved for the people,
and might be held by lords of manors who were not hereditary
legislators, but, like the nobility, exercised judicial powers in their
baronial courts. The number of three nobles for each county was to
remain unalterable; after the current century no transfer of lands could
take place. Each county being divided into twenty-four parts, called
colonies, were to be cultivated by a race of hereditary leetmen, or
tenants, attached to the soil, each holding ten acres of land at a fixed
rent; these tenants not being possessed of any political franchise, but
being “adscripts of the soil under the jurisdiction of their lord,
without any appeal;” and it was added that “all the children of leetmen
shall be leetmen, and so to all generations.”
The political rights of the great body of the people being thus disposed
of, and a legislative barrier placed, as it were, against progressive
popular improvement and enlightenment, a very complicated system of
government was framed for the benefit of the privileged classes.
“Besides the Court of Proprietors, invested with supreme executive
authority, the president of which was the oldest proprietor, with the
title of Palatine, there were seven other courts, presided over by the
remaining seven proprietors, with the titles respectively of Admiral,
Chamberlain, Chancellor, Chief Justice, High Steward, and Treasurer;
besides the president, each of these courts had six councillors
appointed for life, two-thirds, at least, of whom must be nobles.” There
is something almost childish and ludicrous in the business of some of
these supreme and pompous dignitaries of an infant settlement, the
inhabitants of which lived in log cabins scattered through the
wilderness. The Court of the Admiral had cognisance of shipping and
trade; the Chamberlain’s, of pedigrees, festivals, sports, and
ceremonies; the Chancellor’s, of state affairs and license of printing;
the Constable’s, of war; the Chief Justice’s, of ordinary judicial
questions; the High Steward’s, of public works; the Treasurer’s, of
finance.
“All these courts united,” says the excellent historian Hildreth, “were
to compose a grand council of fifty members, in whom was vested
exclusively the right of proposing laws, which required, however, the
approval of a parliament of four estates, proprietors, landgraves,
caciques, and commoners, to render them valid.
“The four estates composing the parliament were to sit in one chamber,
each landgrave and cacique being entitled to a seat, but the
proprietors, if they chose, to sit by deputy. Four commoners for each
county were the representatives of the commons; the possession of five
hundred acres being, however, requisite to qualify for a seat, and fifty
acres of land to give an elective vote. The proprietaries in their
separate courts had a veto on all acts.”
The people had thus no share whatever in the executive, judicial, or
legislative authority.
“The four-and-twenty colonies of each county were divided into four
precincts, each precinct having a local court, whence appeals were to
lie to the court of Chief Justice. Juries were to decide by majority.”
To plead for money or reward in any court was denounced as “base and
vile,” an enactment little in accordance with the interests of the
lawyer.
“None could be freemen who did not acknowledge God and the obligation of
public worship. The Church of England—against the wishes of Locke, who
wished to put all sects on the same footing—was to be supported by the
state. Any seven freemen might, however, form a church or religious
society, provided its members admitted the rightfulness of oaths—which
clause at once excluded the Quakers. By another provision, every freeman
of Carolina, of whatsoever opinion or religion, possessed absolute power
and authority over his negro slaves.”
This “Grand Model Constitution,” which was extravagantly praised in
England, was signed in March, 1670, and Monk, Duke of Albemarle, as the
oldest of the proprietaries, was appointed Palatine.
Whilst this pompous scheme of legislature was occupying the wisest heads
in England, three vessels conveyed out emigrants, at the expense of
£12,000 to the proprietaries, under the command of William Sayle, who
established themselves on the old site of Port Royal.
The grand aristocratical constitution was sent over in due form to
Carolina, but neither was it found more suitable at Albemarle, in the
north, than by Sayle’s colony in the south. The character of the people
of Albemarle rendered its introduction impossible; “those sturdy
dwellers in scattered log cabins of the wilderness could not be
noblemen, and would not be serfs.” This unfortunate constitution, which
made John Locke a landgrave, and the noble proprietaries in succession
palatines, led to a long and fruitless struggle of its founders to force
upon the settlers a form of government incompatible with their
circumstances, and from which they had nothing to gain, but everything
to lose. The contest continued for three-and-twenty years, when the
Grand Model, baseless as a fabric of mist, was formally abrogated.
About the time when the new constitution was first exciting the derision
and abhorrence of the sturdy Nonconformists of Albemarle, distinguished
ministers among the Quakers travelled from Virginia into North Carolina,
and were received “tenderly” by a people naturally religious, but among
whom, at that time, was no minister of Christ. Unlike the Puritans of
Massachusetts, they warmly welcomed these later apostles of religious
and civil liberty; and whilst they sturdily rejected a form of
government which was at variance with all their principles of social and
political life, received gladly “the authority of truth,” and so the
“Society of Friends” were the first to organise a religious government
in this portion of America.
In the autumn of 1672, George Fox himself visited Carolina, travelling
across “the great bogs” of the Dismal Swamp, “commonly, as he relates,
wet to the knees, and lying abroad at nights in the woods by a fire,
until reaching a house where the woman had the sense of God upon her, he
was indulged in the luxury of a mat to lie upon by the fireside.”
Carolina, like Rhode Island, was a place of refuge for schismatics of
all kinds, who now “lived lonely in the woods, with great dogs to guard
their houses;” men and women of thoughtful minds “open to the conviction
of truth,” and who received the preachings and teachings of George Fox
and his brethren with great joy; and not only they of the poorer sort,
but the richer and more influential inhabitants of the province, heard
him gladly and received him as an honoured guest to their houses.
The plantations of that day, we are told, lay along the bay and the
rivers that flow into it, and these and the inlets were the highways of
Carolina; therefore we find George Fox and his friends taken, on one
occasion, in a boat lent them by a kind-hearted man, a captain of the
country, to the house of the governor, who, with his wife, received them
very lovingly, and the next morning accompanied them courteously two
miles through the woods to the water’s edge, and so on to the house of
Joseph Scot, one of the representatives of the county, where they had “a
sound and precious meeting, and the people were very tender.” Again, he
was at the house of the secretary, to arrive at which, however, they had
“much ado, for the water was shallow and the boat could not come ashore,
but the secretary’s wife, he being from home, seeing their strait, put
out in her little canoe and brought them to land.” These little touches
of life and character are worth pages of laboured description; they show
the spirit of the people; they show the joy with which Fox and his
friends were welcomed, when the wife of the chief secretary herself
paddled her little canoe to bring them safely on shore. It is a genuine
picture of simple primeval life. And not alone did George Fox preach to
the white settlers of “the light of the Spirit of God which is in every
one,” but to the natives of the wilderness also, who approved of what he
said, and “received the truth lovingly; the Indian priests themselves
sitting soberly among the people listening to the words that were
spoken.”
Willing disciples of George Fox, as the people of North Carolina proved
themselves to be, were sure to protest against and oppose a constitution
like that of Shaftesbury and Locke. The introduction of it was not only
difficult, but was soon rendered impossible, by the accession of
dissenters from England, and so-called “runaways, rogues, and rebels”
from Virginia, who, on the suppression of an insurrection there, of
which we shall speak anon, fled daily to Carolina as their common place
of refuge. Another cause of dissatisfaction with the English government,
and of constant irritation, was the enforcement of the Navigation Laws.
The population of the whole state as yet, in 1677, amounted to little
more than 4,000; “a few fat cattle, a little maize, and 800 hogsheads of
tobacco, formed all their exports,” and the few foreign articles which
they required were brought to them by the traders of Boston. Yet, small
as this traffic was, it was envied by the English merchants; the
Navigation Law was ordered to be strictly enforced, the New England
trader was driven from their harbour by unreasonable duties, and the
Carolinians themselves had no other free market for their few exports
than England. Miller, a man who had already become extremely unpopular,
returned from England to Carolina, as chief magistrate and collector of
the royal customs, empowered to levy one penny on every pound weight of
tobacco exported to New England. But spite of this, and spite of
attempts to excite ill-feeling between the two colonies, Carolina
continued to trade with Boston, and the traffic grew in defiance of
imposts, which only served to render both colonies more determined and
more averse to the parent state.
The attempts at enforcing the Navigation Laws hastened an insurrection,
which was fostered by the refugees from Virginia and the men of New
England, and which justified itself by the publication of the first
American manifesto. The threefold grievances of the colony were stated
herein to be—excessive taxation; the abridgment of political liberty by
the altered form of government, with the denial of a free election of an
assembly; and the unwise interruption of the natural channels of
commerce. The head of this insurrection was John Culpepper, a man
stigmatised by the English party as one “who deserved hanging, for
endeavouring to set the poor to plunder the rich.” The whole body of the
settlers was insurgent; Miller, the chief object of their hatred, and
seven proprietary deputies, were arrested and imprisoned, courts of
justice established and a parliament called. With a popular government,
anarchy was at an end; though, when the new governor Eastchurch arrived,
none would acknowledge his authority. The following year, Culpepper and
another were sent to England, to negotiate a compromise with the
proprietaries and to obtain the recal of Miller.
Miller, however, and his companions having escaped from prison, met the
deputies in England, and as the supporters of the Navigation Laws were
sustained by a powerful interest there, Culpepper when about to embark
for America was arrested in his turn on the charge of interrupting the
collection of duties and their embezzlement. He demanded his trial in
Carolina, where the act was committed. “Let no favour be shown,” cried
the adverse party; and he was brought to trial. Shaftesbury, however,
then in the zenith of his popularity, appeared on his behalf, declaring,
“that there never had been a regular government in Albermarle; that its
disorders were only feuds among the planters, which could not amount to
treason,”—and he was acquitted.
On the acquittal of Culpepper, the proprietaries found themselves in a
difficult position. After looking at the question in every point of
view, excepting that which was simple and straightforward, “they
resolved,” says Chalmers, in his “Political Annals of Carolina,” “to
govern in future according to that portion of obedience which the
insurgents should be disposed to yield.” The wise exclaiming, in the
language of prediction, that a government actuated by such principles
cannot possibly be of long continuance.
Means were now employed to heal former disorders; and upon members of
the insurgent party high offices in the state were conferred. The
proprietaries bade them “settle order among themselves,” and they did
so, by establishing “a wise moderation in government,” though some
charge, it is true, stands against them, of a persecuting spirit towards
their political opponents.
Mild as had appeared the temper of the proprietaries, it seemed,
however, as if they had determined severely to punish the offending
colony, when in 1683 they sent over Seth Sothel as governor. Sothel,
like Cranfield in New Hampshire, was an adventurer, whose aim being the
acquisition of wealth, he had no conscience as to the means by which it
was acquired. He appears, by the report of all parties, to have been of
that scoundrel class by which human nature is degraded. He was himself
one of the eight proprietaries, and he accepted office merely for sordid
purposes. “The annals of delegated authority,” says Chalmers, “have not
recorded a name so deserving of infamy as that of Sothel. Bribery,
extortion, injustice, rapacity, with breach of trust and disobedience of
orders, are the crimes of which he was accused during the five years
that he misruled this unhappy colony. Driven almost to despair, the
inhabitants at length seized his person, in 1688, in order to send him
to England to answer their complaints.” On his entreaties, however, with
a moderation which is highly creditable to their Christian power of
forbearance, he was permitted to meet their accusations at the next
assembly. Sothel fled, fearing less to face the men whom he had injured,
than they whose interests he had betrayed. The assembly gave judgment
against him in all the above particulars, and compelled him to abjure
the country for twelve months and the government for ever. The
proprietaries, though they heard with indignation of the sufferings
which Sothel had inflicted on the colony, were yet displeased that the
colony through its assembly had assumed supreme power, which act was
regarded as “prejudicial to the prerogative of the crown, and to the
honour of the proprietaries.”
Well, however, was it for North Carolina that she thus took the law into
her own hands; tranquillity was restored. Mighty changes were in the
meantime taking place in England; the Revolution of 1688 was overturning
not only political parties, but the very constitution itself. But
neither the strife of parties; nor the removal of the crown from one
royal head to another, mattered in North Carolina; where, at length,
peace and prosperity were established. “The settlers of North Carolina,”
we are told, “began now to enjoy to their hearts’ content liberty of
conscience and personal independence, the freedom of the forest and the
river. The country of itself was of the most agreeable character. From
almost every plantation they enjoyed the noble prospect of spacious
rivers, of pleasant meadows, of primeval forests, where the loftiest
branches of the tulip-tree or magnolia were wreathed with jessamines and
honeysuckles. For them the wild bee stored its honey in hollow trees;
for them, unnumbered swine fattened on the fruits of the forest, or the
heaps of peaches; for them, spite of their careless lives and imperfect
husbandry, cattle multiplied on the pleasant savannahs; and they desired
no greater happiness than they enjoyed. North Carolina was settled by
the freest of the free; they were not so much caged in the woods as
scattered in lonely granges. There was neither city nor township; there
was hardly even a hamlet, or one house within sight of another; nor were
there roads, except as the paths from house to house were distinguished
by notches on the trees. The settlers were gentle in their tempers, of
serene minds, enemies to violence and bloodshed. Not all the successive
revolutions had kindled vindictive feelings; the charities of life were
scattered at their feet like the flowers on their meadows; and the
spirit of humanity maintained its influence in the Arcadia, as royalist
writers will have it, of rogues and rebels in the paradise of
Quakers.”[6]
We have already related how, in 1670, the year in which the Grand Model
Constitution was signed, a company of emigrants were sent out, at the
expense of £12,000 to the proprietaries, under the command of William
Sayle, a military officer and Presbyterian, who, twenty years before,
had attempted to plant a colony in the Bahama Isles, under the somewhat
unintelligible title of an Eleutheria, and who, mere latterly, had been
employed by the proprietaries in exploring the coasts of their province.
These emigrants were accompanied by Joseph West, as commercial agent of
the proprietaries, authorised to supply the settlers with provisions,
cattle, implements and all other necessaries; a trade being commenced
for this purpose with Virginia, Bermuda and Barbadoes.
The vessels containing the infant colony, which was intended to be
constituted according to the Grand Model, entered the harbour of Port
Royal, on the shores of which, a century before, the Huguenots had
erected their fort—the early Carolina—and of which even yet, some traces
remained. The country around Port Royal, like that occupied by the early
New England settlers, was in a great measure depopulated of natives,
partly by an epidemic, and partly by sanguinary wars among themselves;
therefore but little apprehension was entertained from this quarter;
besides which, the good will of the neighbouring tribes was secured by
presents. Each settler was to receive 150 acres of land, and the
district thus taken possession of was called Carteret County.
It was soon discovered, as was to be expected, that the Grand Model was
far too complex a system of government even for this settlement sent out
by the proprietaries themselves; “yet, desiring to come as nigh to it as
possible,” says Chalmers, “five persons were immediately elected by the
freeholders, and five others chosen by the proprietaries, who were to
form a grand council, and these, with the governor and twenty delegates
elected by the people, composed a parliament which was invested with
legislative power. Such was the government which South Carolina chose
for herself, coming as nigh to the prescribed rules laid down for her as
she saw convenient and fitting.”
Scarcely had Sayle thus far fulfilled his office, when he fell a victim
to the effects of the climate, and died. Sir John Yeamans succeeded him,
and Clarendon county, in consequence, was annexed to Carteret. The same
year, 1671, the settlement removed from Port Royal to the banks of the
Ashley River, “for the convenience of pasturage and tillage,” and upon
the neck of the peninsula then called Oyster Point, between that river
and the Cooper—both thus called in honour of Shaftesbury—the foundation
of CHARLESTON, destined to be the capital of the Southern States, was
laid by the settlement there of a few graziers’ cabins. The situation
thus chosen, though full of natural beauty—the primeval forest, as we
are told, sweeping down to the river’s edge, laden with yellow
jessamine, the perfume of which filled the air—was not salubrious. The
place for many years indeed was considered so unhealthy during the hot
months of the year, that people fled from it at that time as from the
pestilence. But the clearing away of the woods, probably, and the
draining of the soil, so far altered its character in this respect, that
it is now rather singularly healthy than otherwise.
Spite of the shortcomings of the settlement as regarded the Grand Model,
Governor Yeamans was created landgrave, and Albemarle being dead, Lord
Berkeley had become palatine. Yeamans introduced negro slavery, bringing
with him a cargo of slaves from Barbadoes. The heat of the climate
rendered labour difficult to the whites, and from its first settlement,
South Carolina was a slave state; besides which, these settlers seem to
have been somewhat an improvident and shiftless set of people, deriving
their supplies for several years from the proprietaries, for which,
though obtained as purchases, they appear never to have paid;
complaining bitterly when the proprietaries, objecting naturally enough
to supply them on these terms, declared that “they would no longer
continue to feed and to clothe them.” To such men it would soon become
an object to possess negro slaves, without which, it was early said, “a
planter can never do any great matter.” The climate of South Carolina
was not only congenial to the negro, but, as we have seen, the temper of
the people made them willingly avail themselves of slave-labour, and
very soon the slave population far outnumbered the whites.
The management of Sir John, or Landgrave Yeamans not being by any means
satisfactory to the proprietaries, nor yet to the colony, he was
recalled in 1674, and Joseph West, whose conduct had been perfectly so
to all parties, was appointed governor and created landgrave, and to him
the proprietaries made over as salary their outstanding claims against
the colony—the surest means of trying his popularity. Nevertheless, we
find, at the end of ten years, that “he received the whole product of
his traffic, as the reward of his services, without any impeachment of
his morals.”
The proprietaries, seeing the character of the emigrants they had sent
over, encouraged settlers from the New England and the northern
colonies; and with a desire to promote the advantage of the industrious,
sent over further supplies, informing the colony, however, that they
must be paid, being determined “to make no more desperate debts.”
The fame of the beautiful land of South Carolina, “the region where
every month had its succession of flowers,” soon led to the attempt to
introduce and cultivate the olive, the orange, the mulberry for the
production of the silk-worm, and vines for the production of wine.
Charles II. himself sent over to the colony two small vessels with these
plants, and Protestants from the South of France for their cultivation;
he also exempted the province from the payment of duties on these
commodities for a limited time, which caused dissatisfaction at home,
and the remonstrance against “encouraging people to remove to the
plantations, as too many go thither already to the unpeopling and ruin
of the kingdom.” Emigrants continued to come over from England, and
these of various classes, not only impoverished cavaliers and
discontented churchmen, but the soundest element for colonisation,
sturdy dissenters, to whom their native land no longer afforded a secure
abode. Among other companies of emigrants, were a considerable number
from Somersetshire, who accompanied Joseph Blake, the brother of the
celebrated admiral, now dead. Blake was himself no longer young, but
unable to endure the present oppressions of England, and dreading still
worse from a popish successor to the crown, devoted the whole of the
vast fortune he had inherited from his brother to the purposes of
emigration. A colony of Irish went over, under Ferguson, and soon
amalgamated with the population. Lord Cardross also took over a company
of brave Scotch exiles, who had suffered grievously at home for their
religion—men who had been thumb-screwed and tortured for
conscience-sake, but they, having established themselves at Port Royal,
fell victims to the animosity of the Spaniards, who claimed that portion
of the district as appertaining to St. Augustine, and consequently
destroyed their settlement. Many returned to Scotland; the rest, like
the Irish, became blended with the original colonists.
From France also came great numbers of the best and noblest of her
people, men and women of whom she was not worthy, forced from their
country by the severity of laws which placed truth, sincerity and
uprightness before God and man, on a par with treason and murder. Louis
XIV., an old debauchee, sought to atone for a life of profligacy by
converting the Huguenots to the Catholic faith, even at the point of the
sword; their native land was made intolerable to them, and they sought
for peace by flight and voluntary exile. But flight and exile were no
longer permitted to them; to leave their native land was made felony.
Tyranny however, is powerless against the human will based on the rights
of conscience; and spite of the prohibitions of law, the persecuted
Calvinists fled in thousands to that happy land beyond the Atlantic, the
noblest privilege of which has ever been, that it furnished a safe
asylum to the truehearted and the conscientious of every European land,
and where men might worship their Maker according to the dictates of
their own souls. These refugees were warmly welcomed to New England and
New York, but the mild congenial climate of South Carolina was more
attractive to the exiles of France.
At the risk of prolonging somewhat this portion of our history, we must
be permitted to give an extract from the narrative of Judith Manigault,
the young wife of one of the exiles. It was felony, it must be
remembered, to leave their native land; therefore, says she, “we quitted
home by night, leaving the soldiers in their beds, and abandoning the
house with its furniture. We contrived to hide ourselves for ten days at
Romans, in Dauphiny, while a search was made for us, but our faithful
hostess would not betray us.” They reached the shore by a circuitous
journey through Germany and Holland, and thence to England, in the depth
of winter. “Embarking at London,” says the narrative, “we were sadly
off.” The spotted fever appeared on board the vessel, and many died of
the disease, among the rest our aged mother. We touched at Bermuda,
where the vessel was seized. Our money was all spent; with great
difficulty we procured a passage in another vessel. After our arrival in
Carolina, we suffered every kind of evil. In eighteen months our eldest
brother, unaccustomed to the hard labour which we were obliged to
undergo, died of a fever. Since leaving France we have experienced every
kind of affliction—disease, pestilence, famine, poverty, hard labour—and
have been six months without tasting bread, working the ground like
slaves; indeed, I myself have passed three or four years without having
it when I wanted it. “Yet,” adds she, in a noble spirit of resignation,
“God has done great things in enabling us to bear up under so many
trials.”
This family of Manigault was but one of many who escaped to Carolina,
and all had the same sad story, or even worse, to tell. Hither came
these fugitives from the most beautiful and fertile regions of
France,—“men,” says Bancroft eloquently, “who had all the virtues of the
English Puritans without their bigotry, to the land to which the
tolerant benevolence of Shaftesbury had invited the believers of every
creed. From a land, which had suffered its king to drive half a million
of its best citizens into exile, they came to the land which was the
hospitable refuge of the oppressed; where superstition and fanaticism,
infidelity and faith, cold speculation and animated zeal, were alike
admitted without question.” In this chosen home of their exile, lands
were assigned to them, on the banks of the Cooper River, and there they
soon established their homes. Their church was in Charleston, and
“thither,” says the same historian, who so keenly feels every beautiful
trait of humanity, “on the Lord’s-day, gathered from their plantations
on the banks of the river, and taking advantage of the ebb and flow of
tide, they might regularly be seen, parents with their children, whom no
bigot could wrest from them, making their way along the river, through
scenes so tranquil that the silence was broken only by the rippling of
the oars, and the hum of the flourishing villages that gemmed the
confluence of the rivers. Other Huguenot emigrants established
themselves on the south bank of the Santee.” Thus was the original
scheme of the Huguenot colonisation on this very soil, as entertained by
Coligny, at length accomplished, although a century later.
Liberal as was the Grand Model constitution as regarded religious
toleration, the spirit of the settlers was not equal to it in this
respect. The Huguenot colonists were not cordially received by them;
persecution was impossible, but hospitality was withheld; and though
they formed the most industrious, useful and sterling portion of the
population, it was many years before they were allowed the rights of
fellow-citizenship. As a striking instance out of many showing the noble
character of these emigrants, we may mention that, “when the great
struggle for American independence took place, the son of this Judith
Manigault intrusted the large fortune he had then acquired to the
service of the country which had received his exiled family.”
The province of South Carolina was divided, in 1683, into three
counties: Colleton, including the district around Port Royal; Berkeley,
embracing Charleston and its vicinity; and Craven; the district formerly
Clarendon, towards Cape Fear, the earliest settlement of the whole. But
Berkeley only as yet was sufficiently populous to afford a county-court.
West, who governed to the contentment of the settlers, failed to give
satisfaction to the proprietaries, and was superseded, in 1683, by
Moreton, a relative of Blake, and who was also created landgrave; the
next year, however, West was re-elected; a new governor was then sent
from England, but he died, and West remained in office; a second
governor came over, but he was soon deposed by the proprietaries, in
consequence of favouring the buccaneers, and Moreton again resumed
office. In six years the head of the government was changed five times.
The relationship between the colonists and the proprietaries increased
in difficulty every succeeding year. There was little that was
straightforward on either side, and where either apparently wished to do
right, they were counteracted by the other. For instance, the
proprietaries opposed and remonstrated against the practice of the
settlers, to carry on partisan war with the neighbouring Indians for the
purpose of kidnapping and selling them as slaves in the West Indies; but
the settlers persisted in it; nay, even Governor West himself was
accused of connivance at this barbarous practice. The payment of debts
which had been contracted out of the province could not be enforced; nor
would the more populous districts of Charleston, where the members of
assembly were elected, allow to the other provinces the same privilege,
when population extended, which they themselves enjoyed. There was a
lamentable want of high moral principle among these earlier settlers of
South Carolina.
Another serious charge against them is, the favour which they showed to
the buccaneers. “These remarkable freebooters,” says Hildreth, “a
mixture of French, English and Dutch, consisted originally of
adventurers in the West India seas, whose establishments the Spaniards
had broken up. Some fifty or sixty years before, contemporaneously with
the English and French settlements on the Caribbee Islands, they had
commenced as occasional cruisers on a small scale against the Spaniards,
in the intervals of the planting season. During the long war between
France and Spain, from 1635 to 1660, they had obtained commissions to
cruise against Spanish commerce, principally from the governors of the
French West India Islands. Almost anything, indeed, in the shape of a
commission was enough to serve their purpose. As an offset to that
Spanish arrogance which had claimed to exclude all other nations from
these West Indian seas, the Spanish commerce in those seas was regarded
by all other nations as fair plunder. The means and number of the
buccaneers gradually increased. The unquiet spirits of all countries
resorted to them. Issuing from their strongholds, the island of Tortugo,
on the west coast of St. Domingo, and Port Royal in Jamaica, they
committed such audacious and successful robberies on the Spanish
American cities, as to win almost the honours of legitimate heroes. They
were countenanced for a time by France and England; one of their leaders
was appointed governor of Jamaica, and another was knighted by Charles
II.”
Charles, spite of the favour he had shown to the buccaneer chief, was
compelled however, by treaties with his allies and by the complaints of
his own subjects, whose commerce was injured by these illegal traders,
to use his most strenuous endeavours to put an end to them; and his
successor was even still more in earnest. In 1684, a law was passed
against pirates, which was confirmed by the proprietaries of South
Carolina, and their commands issued, that it should be rigorously
enforced within their jurisdiction. But this was not an easy matter. The
colonists not only favoured the bold buccaneer, who brought abundance of
Spanish gold and silver into their country, but they were irritated
against the Spaniards, who, justly perhaps, incensed by the English
encroachments on their borders, had destroyed the Scotch settlement at
Port Royal, and were glad of any means to make reprisals. Little
attention therefore was paid by the English to the suppression of
piracy. “The pirates,” says Hewitt, in his history of South Carolina,
“had already by their money, their gallant manners, and their freedom of
intercourse with the people, so ingratiated themselves into the public
favour, that it would have been no easy matter to bring them to trial,
and dangerous even to have punished them as they deserved. When brought
to trial, the courts of law became scenes of altercation, discord and
confusion. Bold and seditious speeches were made from the bar in
contempt of the proprietaries and their government. Since no pardons
could be obtained, but such as they authorised the governor to grant,
the assembly violently proposed a bill of indemnity, and when the
governor refused his assent to this measure, they made a law empowering
magistrates and judges to put in force the _habeas corpus_ act of
England. Hence it happened that several of those pirates escaped,
purchased lands from the colonists, and took up their residence in the
country. While money flowed into the colony by this channel, the
authority of government was too feeble a barrier to stem the tide and
prevent such illegal practices.” The very proprietaries themselves at
length, to gratify the people, granted an indemnity to all the pirates,
excepting in one case, where the plunder had been from the dominions of
the Great Mogul. Very justly does this historian remark, “that the
gentleness of government towards these public robbers, and the civility
and friendship with which they were treated by the people, were
evidences of the licentious spirit which prevailed in the colony.” And
not only an evidence of this, but of the enmity which existed towards
the Spaniards; so great indeed was this enmity, that but for the earnest
remonstrances of the proprietaries, which in this case were regarded,
they would have invaded Florida to drive the Spaniards thence, and that
even while the two nations were at peace.
Affairs became still more and more difficult; and in 1685, James II.
meditated a revocation of the charter itself. The Palatine Court,
wishful not to offend the king at this critical moment, and to satisfy
the English merchants who were jealous of the trade of South Carolina,
ordered the governor and council to use their diligence in collecting
the duty on tobacco transported to other colonies, and to seize all
ships that presumed to trade contrary to the acts of navigation. But
vain were these orders, which they had no power to enforce. The
colonists resisted every attempt of this kind, disregarding the dictates
of the proprietaries, and holding themselves independent almost of the
English monarch.
At a loss how to manage in these perplexed circumstances, and imagining
that the fault existed in the governor as well as in the people, the
proprietaries resolved to remedy one error at least, by sending out
James Colleton, brother of the proprietary, who, to sustain his dignity
of governor-landgrave, should be endowed with 48,000 acres of land. This
was like the reasoning of the founders of the Grand Model, with whom
“the aristocracy was the rock of English principles,” and “the object of
law the preservation of property.” Colleton arrived, armed with all the
dignity that could be conferred upon his office, intending to awe the
people into submission; and his first act was to come into direct
collision with the colonial parliament. A majority of the members
refused to obey the Grand Model constitution, and these men were
excluded by him from the house, as “sapping the very foundations of
government.” All returned to their several homes, spreading discontent
and disaffection wherever they came. A new parliament was called, and
only such members were elected to it as “would oppose every measure of
the governor.” He next attempted to collect the quit-rents due to the
proprietaries; but here again direct opposition met him: the people, in
a state of insurrection, seized upon the public records and imprisoned
the secretary of the province. Colleton not knowing how to deal with
such refractory elements, pretended danger from the Indians or
Spaniards; and calling out the militia, declared the province under
martial law. A more unwise step could not have been taken: for men of
their temper were just as likely to use their arms against a ruler whom
they at once despised and disliked, as against the general enemy. Any
further step in folly was saved him. The English Revolution took place;
William and Mary were proclaimed, and, as if in imitation of the
mother-country, Colleton was impeached by the assembly and banished the
province.
Political convulsions, however, were not wholly at an end; for in the
midst of the ferment, the infamous Seth Sothel, whom we have seen
banished from North Carolina, suddenly made his appearance in
Charleston, and thinking, probably, that this was a people kindred to
himself, seized the reins of government, and for some little time found
actually a faction to support him. But he was too bad even for South
Carolina. After two years’ rule, he was not only deposed by the people,
but censured severely and recalled by the proprietaries, who, though he
was still a member of their own body, treated him as “a usurper of
office.”
A new governor, Philip Ludwell, was appointed, with orders to “inquire
into the grievances complained of and to inform them what was best to be
done;” and in this respect they had at last discovered the true dignity
of the governor. A general pardon was granted, and in April, 1693, “the
Grand Model constitution” was abrogated, the proprietaries wisely
conceding, “that as the people have declared they would rather be
governed by the powers granted by the charter, without regard to the
fundamental constitutions, it will be for their quiet, and the
protection of the well-disposed, to grant their request.”
The remark of Chalmers is just, that “the Carolinian annals show all
projectors the vanity of attempting to make laws for a people whose
voice, proceeding from their principles, must be for ever the supreme
law;” adding further, “it was not till the Carolinas, North and South,
were blessed with a simple form of government, that they began to
prosper; when the one acquired the manufacture of naval stores, the
other the production of rice and indigo, which have made both, in modern
times, populous, wealthy and great.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
VIRGINIA UNDER CHARLES II.
Of all the American colonies, Virginia, at once the most aristocratic
and the most loyal, was the one for whom the Restoration produced a cup
of unmixed sorrow. During the eight years of the Commonwealth, the
Virginians had governed themselves “with a wise moderation;” peace and
prosperity had prevailed throughout the extent of the land; the
population had rapidly increased, and the present generation, being all
born-Virginians, were distinguished by their patriotism and pride of
country.
Sir William Berkeley was elected governor by the General Assembly of
Virginia two months before the Restoration, and, acknowledging himself
as “the servant of the assembly,” he accepted the appointment from their
hands. But Virginia, speaking from the heart of her faithful loyalist
settlers, even then acknowledged a secret hope of a restored monarchy.
The Restoration took place, and Virginia, like England, set no bounds to
the expression of her joy. An address was sent to the king, “praying his
pardon for their having yielded to a power they were unable to resist.”
Forty-four thousand pounds of tobacco were given to the two deputies who
conveyed the address. Charles transmitted a royal commission to “his
faithful adherent,” Berkeley; and Berkeley, assuming authority under it,
issued writs for the election of a new assembly, no longer as governor
elected by the people, but as commissioner under the king. The loyal
enthusiasm and aristocratic tendencies of the people elected for this
new assembly only landholders and cavaliers. The democratic power of
Virginia was at an end. Momentous changes had already begun, not alone
in her constitution, but in the social condition of her people. Of this
social condition a few words must be allowed us.
There has always been in the character of the southern states “an
instinctive aversion to too much government.” This showed itself early
in Virginia by the isolated manner in which the country was colonised.
Unlike the New England colonists, the spirit of whose life was
organisation and government; who, naturally forming themselves into
communities, established towns with corporate authorities; who regarded
religions instruction as the first concern, and secular instruction as
the second; who, while yet small as a people, branched out into
colonies, and impelled by the spirit of commercial activity, traded to
all parts of the world; unlike these determined, energetic, and
expansive settlers, the people of Virginia showed from the first an
aversion to congregate in towns, or to engage in commerce. They lived on
their plantations, scattered over the colony, like the estates of the
nobility in an old country, and were themselves influenced by the spirit
of feudal institutions.
At the time of the Restoration, sixty years after the first settlement,
Virginia comprehended an extent of country about half the size of
England, with a population of about 40,000, including negro slaves and
indented servants. It was divided into fifty parishes; the plantations
lay dispersed among the banks of rivers and creeks, those on the James
River extending about 100 miles into the interior. Each parish extended
many miles in length along the river’s side, but in breadth ran back
only a mile. This was the average breadth. Many parishes were destitute
of churches, or any means of religious instruction; in fact, not more
than ten parishes were supplied with ministers, and of these some were
by no means of exemplary character. Religious worship was held but once
a day, and such families—and these were by far the greater number—as
lived at a distance from the church, did not trouble themselves to
attend at all. Religion, as evidenced by outward forms of worship, was
by no means a vital object with the Virginian planters of those days.
The general want of schools, likewise owing to the scattered state of
the population, “was most of all bewailed by parents in Virginia. The
want of schools was more deplored than the want of churches. The
children of Virginia, naturally of beautiful and comely persons, and of
more ingenuous spirits than those of England,” grew up almost devoid of
instruction.
“The theocratic form of government in New England,” says Hildreth,
“tended to diminish the influence of wealth by introducing a different
basis of distinction, and still more so that activity of mind, the
consequence of strong religious excitement. Hence, in New England, a
constant tendency towards social equality. In Virginia and Maryland, on
the other hand, the management of provincial and local affairs fell more
and more under the control of a few wealthy men, possessed of large
tracts of land, which they cultivated by the labour partly of slaves,
but principally of indented white servants.
“Indented servants existed, indeed, in all the American colonies; but
the cultivation of tobacco created a special demand for them in Virginia
and Maryland. A regular trade was early established in the transport of
persons who, for the sake of a passage to America, suffered themselves
to be sold by the master of the vessel to serve for a term of years
after their arrival. Nor was this embarkation always voluntary;
sometimes they were entrapped by infamous arts, sometimes even
kidnapped, and sometimes they were persons sentenced to transportation
for political and other offences. Felons so transported were known under
the appellation of ‘jail-birds.’ Cromwell in this way disposed of his
English, Scotch, and Irish prisoners of war, both in Virginia and New
England. On the expiration of their term of servitude, of four, five, or
seven years, these servants acquired all the rights of freemen, and in
Virginia were entitled to the fifty acres of land to which all
immigrants had a claim.”
The plantations lay along the rivers, and trading vessels ascending
them, landed their goods and took the tobacco, the great staple
production of the country, on board at their very doors. There was no
home-manufacture of any kind in Virginia; all manufactured goods were
imported from England. Virginia herself neither exported nor imported.
She possessed not above two vessels of her own; and, though
ship-building and navigation might have been carried on advantageously
from her position, she had neither the talent nor the turn of mind
necessary for such engagements.
As a picture of Virginian life at this period, we will indulge ourselves
with a graphic extract from Bancroft, to whom we are already so largely
obliged. “The generation now in existence was chiefly the fruit of the
soil; they were children of the woods nurtured in the freedom of the
wilderness, and dwelling in lonely cottages scattered along the streams.
No newspaper entered their houses, no printing-press furnished them with
books. They had no recreation but such as nature provides in her wilds;
no education but such as parents in the desert could give to their
offspring. The paths were bridleways rather than roads, and it is
questionable if there was what we should call a bridge in the whole
dominion. Visits were made in boats, or on horseback, through the
forests; and the Virginian, travelling with his pouch of tobacco for
currency, swam the river where there was neither ford nor ferry. Almost
every planter was his own mechanic. The houses, for the most part, but
of one story, and made of wood, often of logs, the windows closed by
convenient shutters for want of glass, were sprinkled on both sides of
the Chesapeake, from the Potomac to the borders of Carolina. There was
hardly such a sight as a cluster of three dwellings. Jamestown was but a
place of a State-house, one church and eighteen houses, occupied by
about a dozen families. Till very lately the legislature assembled in
the hall of an ale-house. Virginia had neither towns nor lawyers. A few
of the wealthier planters, however, lived in braver state at their large
plantations, and surrounded by indented servants and slaves, produced a
new form of society that has sometimes been likened to the manners of
the patriarchs, and sometimes to the baronial pride of feudalism.”
Such was the population of Virginia. Hospitable and luxurious in the
simplicity of their free, unconventional life; loving liberty, not so
much as a sublime principle of human elevation and enlightenment, but as
the very element of their joyous existence; cherishing a sentiment of
loyalty and attachment to the old mother-country, with such traditional
reverence as they would regard the head of an ancestral line;
enthusiastic and impulsive, quick to revenge and keen in their sense of
wrong. We shall see the effect produced on a people of this generous and
mercurial character, by the oppressions of a monarch whom they had
welcomed back to his throne with all the enthusiasm of their traditional
loyalty.
The first evidence of the Restoration perceived in Virginia was the
rigorous enforcement of the Navigation Act, by which all foreign vessels
were excluded from the English colonies. At the expense of 200,000
pounds of tobacco, Sir William Berkeley was sent over by the colony to
remonstrate on their behalf; but Sir William employed his time in
London, not on the business of the colony, but in securing to himself a
share in the Great Carolina Charter, in which, as we have said, he
became one of the eight proprietaries.
So far from anything being done to lessen the pressure of the Navigation
Act on the Anglo-American colonies, the following parliament increased
its stringency, and the colonists were prohibited from shipping their
produce, known under the term “enumerated articles,” to any other market
than that of England; and from importing any European commodities
otherwise than through the English merchant. This law, which pressed
heavily on New England, was fatal to Virginia, whose sole staple was
tobacco, and who depended on the New England trader, whose commercial
dealings were already of a European character, and who contrived for a
long time to set the law at defiance. It was different with
Virginia,—she had no ships of her own; custom-houses sealed her ports;
her market was restricted, and the prices of all foreign goods, coming
to her through the English merchant, were increased.
While these arbitrary and unjust laws were crippling her commerce, a
fatal change was also taking place in her constitution. The first
assembly elected after the Restoration consisted almost entirely of the
aristocratic party, whose first measures were to revise the legislative
code, and weed out those democratic tendencies which had been introduced
during the period of self-government. Under this new, or rather this
revival of the original constitution, the English episcopal church
became the religion of the state, with its canons, liturgy and
catechism. And though, as we have said, there were only about ten
ministers in the fifty parishes, yet strict conformity was required, and
every one was taxed for the support of the established church. Glebes
and parsonages were to be provided with a maintenance of not less than
fourscore pounds to each clergyman, besides fees and perquisites; for
any funeral sermon, 400 pounds weight of tobacco; marriage published by
banns, fifty pounds; by licence, two hundred pounds. Nonconformist
preachers were to be silenced or sent out of the country. Quakers, who
“gathered together unlawful assemblies, teaching and publishing lies and
false doctrines,” were to be imprisoned without trial till they could be
sent out of the colony, and treated as felons on their return. Among
other enactments we find that any “who, out of new-fangled conceits of
their own heretical invention, refuse to have their children baptized by
the lawful minister,” shall be subjected to a fine of 2,000 pounds
weight of tobacco. And a member of the assembly, being accused of
favouring Anabaptist and Quaker opinions, was expelled.
All this severity, however, had not so much the effect of destroying as
of diffusing these “heresies.” Men and women, to whom the great
wilderness had been as the temple of God, in which the spirit had taught
them divine things, now that bigotry and intolerance commenced their
pitiless work in Virginia, removed into the new state of North Carolina,
and took deep root there, as we have seen.
And not only was the church well provided for by the royalist assembly,
but the state also. While Virginia by her citizens elected her governor,
she had allowed him a fixed salary, which, now that he was nominated by
the crown, was insufficient. One thousand pounds, derivable from a
permanent tax on tobacco, with an additional two hundred more than the
whole annual expenditure of the government of Connecticut, was granted
as his permanent salary; but even that did not satisfy him. He
complained that he had not three times as much, adding for his
consolation, “I am, however, supported by my hopes that his gracious
majesty will one day consider me.” Such now was the royal governor of
Virginia.
The justiciary government of the province was also changed; the
magistrates were appointed by the governor and council, and held their
offices for life. The county courts, now independent of the people,
levied county-rates at their own pleasure and for their own
expenses—they being an irresponsible body. Like the county magistrates,
the newly-elected members of assembly, though nominally chosen for two
years held themselves to be equally irresponsible, and remained in
office for many years. Before long, therefore, “the meetings of the
people at the usual places of election had for their object, not the
election of burgesses, but to present their grievances.” Indeed the
power of election, if the exercise of it had been required, was soon
limited; the elective franchise being now restricted to freeholders and
householders.
The Restoration produced in Virginia a political revolution, opposed to
the principle of popular liberty and the progress of humanity. To sum up
the changes which had taken place; we shall find the General Assembly,
which sat at the pleasure of the governor, imposing arbitrary taxes, and
deriving extravagant and exorbitant emoluments; we shall find a
constituency restricted and diminished; religious liberty at an end,
arbitrary taxation in the counties by irresponsible magistrates;
hostility to popular education and the press—regarding which we may
quote the governor’s own words: “Thank God, there are no free schools
nor printing, and I hope we shall not have for these hundred years; for
learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world,
and printing has divulged them and libels against the best government.
God keep us from both!”
In this artificial and unhealthy state of the colony, the cultivation of
tobacco no longer paid the planter, and in order to raise the price, a
“stint” was proposed, that is to say, that the cultivation of tobacco
should cease for one or more years, so as to raise the price. About the
time when this extraordinary measure was proposed, Sir William Berkeley
sent out an exploring party, who crossed the first ridge of the Blue
Mountains, and discovered the wonderful succession of valleys beyond,
full of the richest vegetation, and abounding “with turkey, deer, elk,
and buffalo, gentle and undisturbed as yet by the fear of man.” These
beautiful and affluent regions, which it might have been expected would
have attracted settlers immediately, were however, owing to the sorrows
which were coming upon the colony, not penetrated again for fifty years.
About the same time also, a question was started with regard to negro
slaves, the decision of which was, as might be expected, prejudicial to
that unhappy class. The lawfulness of holding African slaves had been
supposed in part to rest upon their being “heathen;” but now, as
considerable numbers were converted and baptized Christians, this former
plea, if valid, ceased to be so. But the assembly soon settled the
question to the satisfaction of the planters, by an enactment which made
the negro, whether Christian or not, a slave; and furthermore it was
enacted that to cause the death of a slave by excess of punishment
should not be considered as felony. As regarded Indians being held as
slaves, a new law was provided, which made all servants, not being
Christians imported by shipping, slaves for life; and Indian slaves were
imported into Virginia from the West Indies and the Spanish main.
While the governor and the assembly were depriving the Virginian people
of their franchises, and laying burdens on them grievous to be borne,
Charles II., the monarch whom the aristocratical portion of the state
regarded with reverential affection, was preparing to invade even their
rights in no less unwelcome a manner than they had invaded the rights of
the people. In 1669, the Northern Neck, as it is called, the district
lying between the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers, was granted to Lord
Culpepper, “one of the most cunning and covetous men in England,” the
same territory having, immediately after the execution of Charles I.,
been granted to a party of cavaliers as a refuge for royalists, whose
long-established settlements were thus invaded. Nor did the invasion of
rights end here. Four years afterwards, the same lavish monarch granted
to the same Lord John Culpepper and to Henry, Earl of Arlington, one of
the most extravagant of Charles’s courtiers, the husband of the king’s
favourite, Lady Castlemaine, and esteemed to be the “best-bred man at
court,” “all the dominion of land and water called Virginia for the full
term of thirty-one years, together with all quit-rents, escheats, the
power to grant land, and all other powers of absolute sovereignty.”
The assembly was alarmed; and sent over deputies to beseech of the king
to reconsider this grant, or to purchase it for the colony; for which
purpose, as well as for the expenses of the deputies, an enormous
poll-tax was imposed. Under this new grant, Berkeley’s commission as
governor expired, but the aristocratic party voted him an increase of
salary, and solicited his reappointment as governor for life; and he
continued to hold office.
The discontent of Virginia rose to a great height. The people, who had
not their political or local gatherings, “now met in the solitude of the
forests to discuss their grievances. They were ripe for insurrection;
and, seeing the spirit that was in them, the men of wealth and
consideration, who otherwise were stung by their own and their country’s
wrongs to resistance, held aloof.”
In the meantime, events were bringing matters to a crisis. And, as so
singularly happens at times of public calamity and excitement, unusual
natural occurrences are regarded as portentous omens, so now a large
comet was visible in the sky, the tail of which streamed westward;
flights of pigeons, such as had never been since the time of the former
Indian wars, and which darkened the whole heavens, together with a
fearful plague of flies, prepared the popular mind, as it were, for the
calamities which were at hand.
These phenomena, which excited so deeply the superstitious fears of the
Virginians, were contemporaneous with those which we have already
mentioned as exciting similar feelings in the breast of New England at
the commencement of the great Indian war. Here, also, were they attended
by the breaking out of an Indian war. The Susquehannah Indians, being
driven by the Senecas from the head of the Chesapeake, came down upon
Maryland, and the Virginian planters of the Northern Neck aided in their
expulsion. Among these planters was John Washington, great-grandfather
of the celebrated General Washington, and who, with his brother
Lawrence, had emigrated about eighteen years before from England.
Washington was colonel of the forces employed against the Indians; and
having unfortunately and unjustifiably put to death six Indian chiefs
who had come to him to treat of peace, war broke out with tenfold
violence. It was now a war of reprisals; the savage was inflamed with
vengeance, and the midnight war-whoop was the signal of death to the
peaceful and defenceless inhabitants of the frontier. The people rose in
terror and demanded means of defence. But Berkeley, who held a monopoly
of the beaver trade in Virginia, discouraged the war and disregarded
their danger.
The people, irritated by their wrongs, and now incensed at the
indifference of the governor to their immediate distress, looked round
for a leader, and one was at hand. This insurgent chief was Nathaniel
Bacon, a young man not yet thirty, of great wealth and expectations, who
had studied law in London. His uncle, of the same name, and to whom he
was presumptive heir, was a member of the council; young Bacon also was
about to be admitted, though he was suspected by Berkeley of being
“popularly inclined.”
This young man was possessed of all the qualities requisite for a
popular leader; he had a fine address, was singularly eloquent and
persuasive, quick of apprehension, brave, yet discreet in action;
“though young, master of those endowments which constitute a complete
man; wisdom to apprehend, and discretion to execute.” The people
demanded that they should defend themselves as well as assert their
rights, and that Bacon should have a commission as their leader. Five
hundred men were ready to obey him. Bacon said that if another white man
were murdered, he would march against the Indians with no other
commission than his sword. Soon after, the Indians fell upon his own
people and slew them. This determined him to action. But scarcely had he
commenced his march against the Indians, than Berkeley, fearing the
result of a leader of Bacon’s influence and address on the minds of an
already disaffected people, proclaimed him and his followers rebels, and
hired troops to go in pursuit of them. The wealthier portion of Bacon’s
followers obeyed the summons to disperse, but he, with a small
determined band, pursued his purpose. Meantime an insurrection in
another part of the country compelled Berkeley to return to Jamestown,
where he was met by the insurgents, who demanded the immediate
dissolution of the assembly, which they regarded as the authors of the
country’s calamities.
Alarmed by the aspect of affairs, Berkeley acquiesced; the assembly was
dissolved, and writs issued for a new election, in which Bacon, now
having returned triumphant from his expedition against the Indians, was
elected member for Henrico county. The new assembly, spite of the
disfranchisement of the freemen, was one of a popular character, and the
measures which they immediately introduced were liberal and reformatory,
and by no means calculated to please the governor, who still continued
to treat Bacon as a delinquent. Bacon, on his part, in order to
conciliate the opposite faction, and to satisfy his aged and wealthy
relative, acknowledged on one knee, at the bar of the house, his error
in having taken up arms without a commission; and on this
acknowledgment, Berkeley promised him a commission as commander-in-chief
on the following Monday, that being Saturday. The town rang with
acclamations, and he was again hailed by the populace as the defender of
Virginia.
[Illustration: BACON ADDRESSING THE COUNCIL.]
But when, on the Monday, the granting of the commission was deferred by
the governor, and so on for several days, Bacon began to apprehend that
treachery was intended, which apprehensions also the elder Bacon seems
to have seconded. He suddenly, therefore, withdrew from Jamestown, and
warrants were secretly issued to seize him.
In a few days Bacon reappeared, at the head of a considerable body of
armed men, within a short distance of Jamestown. Berkeley called up his
forces to defend the town, but the soldiers were disaffected, half of
them were favourable to the popular side. Within four days after the
alarm of this second popular outbreak, Bacon, at the head of 600 men,
stood before the State-house in Jamestown. Berkeley, in a sort of tragic
excitement, rushed out, and, baring his breast, exclaimed, “Here, shoot
me! ’Fore God, a fair mark! shoot.”
“No, may it please your honour,” returned Bacon, calmly, “we will not
hurt a hair of your head, nor of any other man’s. We are come for a
commission to save our lives from the Indians, which you have so often
promised, and now we will have it before we go.”
Berkeley returned to the State-house, accompanied by Bacon, whose
partisans outside, crowding round the windows, exclaimed, “We’ll have
it; we’ll have it!” “You shall have it; you shall have it!” said one of
the burgesses, addressing them from the house, and they withdrew,
pacified. Bacon, once more in the house, “harangued the body for near an
hour on the Indian disturbances; the condition of the public revenues;
the exorbitant taxes, abuses and corruptions of the administration, and
all the grievances of their miserable country.”
“The commission was issued,” says Bancroft, “and the ameliorating
legislation of the assembly was ratified. That better legislation was
completed, according to the new style of computation, on the 4th of
July, 1676, just 100 years to a day before the Congress of the United
States adopting the declaration which had been framed by a statesman of
Virginia, who, like Bacon, was ‘popularly inclined,’ began a new era in
the history of man.” “The child is father of the man,” may be said with
equal truth of nations as of individuals. The early history of America
foretold a strong maturity.
A better day seemed now to be at hand, and the whole country rejoiced
with hope, when again the tempest gathered. Scarcely had Bacon marched
with his troops towards the frontiers, than Berkeley, repenting of the
concession that had been made to the popular party, again proclaimed him
a traitor. This unadvised step excited the indignation of every generous
heart in Virginia, and the party of Bacon was strengthened by the
accession of many powerful names. Drummond the late governor of North
Carolina, and Richard Lawrence, “a man of deep reflection and energy of
purpose,” hastened to the camp of Bacon. “Shall persons wholly devoted
to their king and country, men hazarding their lives against the public
enemy, deserve the appellation of rebels and traitors?” exclaimed Bacon,
when the news reached him. “But those in authority, how have they
obtained their estates? Have they not devoured the common treasury? What
arts, what sciences, what schools of learning have they promoted? I
appeal to the king and parliament, where the cause of the people will be
heard impartially.”
The purpose of Bacon was now changed; and, addressing the people of
Virginia, he invited them, by their love of country and home, to meet
him in convention at Middle Plantation, now Williamsburgh, and “aid in
rescuing the colony from the tyranny of Berkeley.” The call was
responded to, and an oath was taken by a convention composed of the
principal men of the colony, to join him against the Indians, and to
prevent, if possible, a civil war; yet still, if forces should arrive
from England—for Berkeley had appealed to the mother-country—they would
resist them, until their own appeal should reach the king.
It was about this time that “a spy was detected in Bacon’s camp. Being
sentenced to death by court-martial, Bacon declared that if any one in
the army would speak a word to save him, he should not suffer. Not a
word was spoken, and he was put to death. Bacon’s clemency won the
admiration of the army, and this was the only instance of capital
punishment under his orders; nor did he plunder any private house.”
Bacon was now almost omnipotent in the province. Drummond advised the
immediate deposition of Berkeley, urging from the ancient records of
Virginia that such things had already been done. Bacon preferred rather
that his retreat should be regarded as abdication, for he had left
Jamestown, and fled across Chesapeake Bay, to Accomac, on the eastern
shore; and so it was determined, the ten years for which he was
appointed having expired. As with the Puritans of New England, so here,
in this great contest for liberty and popular rights, were women among
the active spirits. “The child that is unborn,” said Sarah Drummond,
“shall have cause to rejoice of the good that will come by this rising
of the country.” “Should we overcome the governor,” said the cautious
Ralph Weldinge, “we must expect a greater power from England, that would
certainly be our ruin.” In reply, this spirited woman reminded them that
England had much to think of at that time, being divided herself into
hostile factions, and taking up from the ground a small stick, which she
broke, she said “I fear the power of England no more than a broken
straw.” As regarded the navigation act, she said, anticipating a future
greatness for Virginia, “We can build ships, and like New England, trade
to any part of the world.” With such women the men could not do less
than strive bravely.
Meanwhile Sir William Berkeley, who meant anything but an abdication by
his flight, collected at Accomac a large number of adherents, men of a
base and cowardly nature, allured by the passion for plunder, among whom
were great numbers of the indented servants of the insurgents to whom he
promised liberty. With these, a number of royalists and a horde of
Indians, he sailed with five English vessels and ten sloops for
Jamestown, where landing without opposition, he fell on his knees and
returned thanks to God, after which he again proclaimed Bacon and his
party traitors. As regards these ships, we must relate how they came
into the governor’s hands, and this we will do in the words of Campbell,
in his Introduction to the History of the Old Dominion. “There was a
gentleman in Virginia, Giles Bland, only son of John Bland, an eminent
merchant of London, who was personally known to the king and had
considerable interest at court. As he was sending out his son to
Virginia, to take possession of the estate of his uncle, Theodorick
Bland, he got him appointed collector-general of the customs. In this
capacity he had a right to board any vessel he thought proper. He was a
man of talent, courage, of a haughty bearing, and having quarrelled with
the governor, now sided warmly with Bacon. There chanced to be lying in
York River, a vessel of sixteen guns, commanded by Captain Laramore.
Bland boarded her with a party of armed men, on pretence of searching
for contraband goods, and seizing the captain confined him to the cabin.
Laramore, discovering Bland’s designs, resolved to deceive in his turn,
and entered into his measures with such apparent sincerity, that he was
restored to command. With her and a vessel of four guns under Captain
Carver, Bland, now appointed Bacon’s lieutenant-general, sailed with 250
men for Accomac. On his passage he was joined by another vessel,
commanded by Captain Barlow, one of Cromwell’s soldiers, and so appeared
off Accomac with four sail. The governor had not a single vessel to
defend himself, and was overwhelmed with despair. At this juncture he
received a note from Laramore, offering, if he would send him some
assistance, to deliver Bland with all his men into his hands. The
governor at first suspected a trick, but being advised by his friend
Colonel Ludwell, accepted Laramore’s offer as his only alternative, and
Ludwell himself undertook the enterprise. Accompanied by twenty-six men
he appeared alongside Laramore’s vessel, and not only boarded her
without loss of a man, but took the other vessels also soon after.
Bland, Carver and the other chiefs were sent to the governor, and the
common men secured on board the vessel.
“When Laramore waited on the governor, he clasped him in his arms,
called him his deliverer, and gave him a large share of favour. In a few
days the brave Carver and Barlow were hanged on the Accomac shore and
Bland put in irons. Captain Gardiner, sailing from James River, now came
to the governor’s relief with his own vessel, the Adam and Eve, and
several sloops. Sir William Berkeley, by this unexpected turn of
affairs, was suddenly raised from the abyss of despair to the pinnacle
of hope.”
Berkeley now took up his position in Jamestown, and was soon besieged by
Bacon and his force, which having been dispersed, was considerably
inferior in numbers to that of the governor. Jamestown was situated on a
peninsula two miles long and about a mile broad, washed on the south by
the river and encompassed on the north by a deep creek. The situation
was insalubrious, the low ground being full of marshes and swamps of
brackish waters, which created, especially in summer, a constant
malaria. Bacon commenced intrenchments across the neck of the peninsula,
and as a means of defence against the besieged, while engaged in this
work, resorted to an extraordinary expedient, which we will give in the
words of Mrs. Ann Cotton. “He was no sooner arrived at town, when, by
several small parties of horse, he fetched into his little league all
the prime men’s wives whose husbands were with the governor, as Colonel
Bacon’s lady, Madam Bray, Madam Page, Madam Ballard and others, which
the next morning he presents to the view of their husbands and friends
in town upon the top of the small work he had cast up in the night,
where he caused them to tarry till he had finished his defence against
his enemies’ shot, it being the only place for those in the towns to
make a sally at.
They made a sally, the ladies being removed, but to very little purpose;
and two or three days afterwards, being impatient for plunder, the
followers of the governor “embarked in the night, secretly weighing
anchor, and dropping silently down the river,” fled from an enemy
greatly inferior to themselves in number, and who, while lying outside
the walls, had been exposed to hardships much severer than their own.
Berkeley also fled, accompanied by the inhabitants and their goods, thus
leaving Jamestown open to the insurgents.
The next morning Bacon entered; it was reported that the governor had
only fled to join a party of royalists who were advancing from the
north. He determined therefore to burn the town, to prevent its becoming
a harbour to the enemy; and Drummond and Lawrence, who were with Bacon,
not only counselled this desperate measure, but themselves set fire to
their own houses, which were the best in the town after the governor’s.
The number of houses, however, was small, amounting to about eighteen;
but the church, the oldest in America, and the newly-erected
State-house, were consumed likewise, “the ruins of the church-tower and
the memorials in the adjoining grave yard being all that now remain to
point out to the stranger where once Jamestown stood.”
Leaving the smoking ruins of Jamestown, Bacon marched to meet Colonel
Brent, who was advancing from the Potomac with 1,200 men. No battle
ensued, however, for the greater number of these deserted the royalist
cause, and Bacon, advancing to Gloucester, called a convention and
administered an oath to the people, swearing them to the cause of
popular liberty. The whole of Virginia, with the exception of the
eastern shore, was now revolutionised. Berkeley had again fled to
Accomac.
At this important moment, Bacon, who had inhaled disease on the marshes
of Jamestown, suddenly fell sick, and on the 1st of October died,
leaving the great cause of the people without a leader. His death wrung
the popular heart; despair fell on all, for there was no one to finish
his work.
The place of his interment was never known; it was concealed even from
the body of his partisans, lest his remains should be insulted by the
vindictive Berkeley. According to one tradition his friend Lawrence
secretly buried him, laying stones upon his coffin; others maintain that
his body was sunk in the deep waters of the majestic York River; and
this is by no means improbable.
General Ingram succeeded to the command of the popular forces on Bacon’s
death; and Berkeley, rejoicing in the misfortune that had befallen his
enemies, roused himself to resistance, and sent Colonel Beverley to meet
them. The tide now set in against the insurgents; Beverley immediately
captured Thomas Hansford, an insurgent leader, “a young, gay, and
gallant man; fond of amusement, impatient of restraint, keenly sensitive
to honour, fearless of death and passionately fond of the land that gave
him birth.” Brought before Berkeley, the choleric old cavalier ordered
him to be hanged. He heard his sentence unmoved, but asked as “a favour
that he might be shot like a soldier and not hanged like a dog.” “You
die as a rebel, not as a soldier!” was the reply. Reviewing his life, he
professed repentance of his sins, but would not admit that his so-called
rebellion was a sin; and his last words were, “I die a loyal subject and
a lover of my country.”
Hansford was the first Virginian who died on the gallows; the first
American martyr to the popular cause. He was executed on the 13th of
November, 1676. Other insurgent leaders were taken; among the rest,
Edmund Cheesman and Thomas Wilford; the latter, the second son of a
royalist knight who had died fighting for Charles I., and now a
successful Virginian emigrant. He, too, was hanged. Cheesman was brought
up before the governor. “Why did you engage in Bacon’s designs?”
demanded the latter. At that instant a young woman rushed forward, the
wife of the prisoner, and replying before he had time to utter a word,
exclaimed, “My provocations made my husband join in Bacon’s cause. But
for me he would never have done it!” And then falling on her knees, she
added, “and seeing what has been done was through my means, I am most
guilty; let me be hanged and my husband be pardoned!”
The governor, incapable of feeling the devoted affection of this noble
woman, ordered her off, adding the grossest insult to his words. Her
husband died in prison of ill usage.
With the success of his party the vindictive passions of the governor
increased. Mercy was an unknown sentiment to his heart, and his avarice
gratified itself by fines and confiscations. Fearing the result of trial
by jury, he resorted to courts-martial, where the verdicts were certain
and severe. Four persons were thus hanged on one occasion. Drummond was
seized, in the depth of winter, in Chickahomony Swamp, half famished,
and being stripped and put in irons, was conveyed to Berkeley. Berkeley,
seeing him approach, hastened out to meet him, and with a bow of
derision, saluted him: “Mr. Drummond, you are very welcome; I am more
glad to see you than any man in Virginia; Mr. Drummond, you shall be
hanged in half an hour!” “What your honour pleases,” replied the
patriot, calmly. He was tried by court-martial, and though he had never
held any military command, he was immediately condemned; and a ring
being forcibly torn from his finger, he was executed within three hours.
The fate of Lawrence was never known; but report said that he and four
others, in the depth of winter, when the snow was ankle-deep, threw
themselves into a river, rather than perish like Drummond. The conduct
of Berkeley had been that of a dastard in the struggle, and now his
cruelty was that of a fiend. A royal proclamation arrived from England,
promising pardon to all but Bacon. But this was utterly disregarded,
Berkeley, indeed, altered it to suit his own temper, and excepted from
mercy about fifty persons, among whom was Sarah Grindon, the wife of the
late attorney. Twenty-two were hanged; three died from hard usage in
prison; three fled before trial, and two after conviction.
In the course of two months, trials before the governor and council, by
“juries of life and death,” were substituted instead of courts-martial;
but the result was little different. Giles Bland, who, we may remember,
endeavoured to seize Laramore’s ship, was one of the first victims. It
was in vain that he pleaded the king’s pardon, then in the governor’s
pocket. The governor had condemned him already, and he perished. Indeed,
“none escaped being found guilty, condemned, and hanged, who put
themselves on trial.” The land groaned with the excess of punishment.
The very assembly itself besought of the governor “to desist from
sanguinary punishments, for none could tell when or where they would
cease.” And when executions ceased, other modes of punishment began.
Vast numbers, without trial, were condemned to heavy fines and
confiscation of property. Many were banished, their property being
forfeited; others were sentenced to beg pardon on their knees for their
lives, with ropes round their necks. In some cases, where the
magistrates were inclined to leniency, a small tape, or “Manchester
binding,” as it was called, was allowed as a substitute for the rope;
but this, when it came to the knowledge of the assembly, was censured as
contempt of authority. Many of the fines went to the use of the
governor.
When the news of these bloody doings reached London, Charles, who, with
all his faults, was not cruel, exclaimed with indignation, “The old fool
has taken away more lives in that naked country than I have for the
murder of my father!” There was some mercy in England, though there was
none in Virginia; for when Sarah Drummond, on the execution of her
husband and the confiscation of his estate for the use of the governor,
was driven out, with her five small children, to starve in the woods,
she, like a brave-hearted woman, as she was, having sent to London a
petition setting forth the cruel treatment of her husband and the
destitution of herself and her children, the Lord Chancellor Finch
exclaimed—Sir William Berkeley being then dead—“I know not whether it be
lawful to wish a person alive, otherwise I could wish Sir William
Berkeley so, to see what could be answered to such barbarity; but he has
answered that before this.”
As regarded the causes of this insurrection and the true character of
its leaders, every possible means were taken to veil them in obscurity,
or to throw disrepute and infamy upon them. No printing-press was
allowed in Virginia. It was a crime punishable by fine and whipping to
speak ill of Berkeley and his friends, or to write anything favourable
to the rebels or the rebellion. Every accurate account remained in
manuscript for more than a hundred years: so that the struggles and
sufferings of these unfortunate patriots were for so long misunderstood
and cruelly maligned.
“It was on the occasion of this rebellion,” says the historian, “that
English troops were first introduced into America. In three years,
however, they were disbanded, and became amalgamated with the people.
Sir William Berkeley returned to England with the squadron which brought
out these forces, it being necessary to justify his conduct there, where
the report of his cruelties had excited a strong feeling against him;
and, spite even of the strong faction which adhered to his principles in
Virginia, and which had restored the old order of things, so great was
the public joy at his departure, that guns were fired and bonfires made.
Arrived in England, he found the public sentiments so violent against
him that he died, it was said of a broken heart, and before he had had
an opportunity of justifying himself with the monarch.”
Colonel Herbert Jeffreys was left by Berkeley as deputy in his absence,
and on his death he assumed the office of governor. The results of
Bacon’s rebellion were disastrous to Virginia. This insurrection was
made a plea against granting a more liberal charter, and the
restrictions and oppressions under which Virginia had groaned became
only more stringent and heavy. All those liberal measures which were
introduced by Bacon’s assembly, and which were known under the name of
“Bacon’s Acts,” were annulled and the former abuses returned. In vain
were commissioners sent over by the monarch to redress their grievances;
reports of tyranny and rapine were received, but no amelioration of the
system which permitted them was introduced; “every measure of effectual
reform was considered void, and every aristocratic feature which had
been introduced into the legislature was perpetuated.”
When Virginia was granted to the Lords Culpepper and Arlington, the
former was appointed governor for life on the demise of Berkeley; and
now, therefore, this event having taken place, it was expected that he
should hasten to that country to assume his duties. Willing, however, to
regard his appointment as a sinecure, he fingered still in England,
until reproved by Charles himself for negligence, he embarked in 1680
for Virginia, where he arrived in May, and took the oath of office in
Jamestown. Culpepper carried with him what was intended should introduce
a spirit of peace and satisfaction through the colony—an act of general
pardon and indemnity under the great seal, which remitted all forfeiture
of estates in consequence of the rebellion, excepting in ten instances.
Bacon, Bland and Lawrence being among them. So far was good; but other
acts there were which at the same time caused general dissatisfaction
and misery. The principal of these was, that the impost of two shillings
on every hogshead of tabacco should be perpetual, and instead of being
accounted for to the assembly as hitherto, should be applied as a royal
revenue for the support of government. His own salary—as governor—of
£1,000 he doubled, on the plea that, being a nobleman, such increase was
necessary; besides house-rent and perquisites, amounting to nearly
another thousand. Not satisfied with this, “he altered the currency, and
then disbanding the soldiers, paid their arrears in the new coin,
greatly to his own advantage. But shortly afterwards, finding that, by
the same rule, his own perquisites would be deteriorated, he restored it
to its former value.”
Lord Culpepper remained in Virginia from May to August, and having in
these few months sown the seed of a plentiful harvest of sorrow and
dissatisfaction for that unhappy country, returned to England.
Virginia was now quiet, but her miseries were not at an end. Large crops
of tobacco were raised, and the price sank far below a remunerative
scale. Attempts were made to plant towns, to prescribe new channels for
commerce, and to introduce manufactures; but these were not the natural
growth of the times or the soil, and trade was only impeded by any laws
to direct it. Tobacco sank still lower, and again the scheme of the
“stint,” or the cessation of planting, was entertained. During two
sessions the assembly endeavoured to legislate for these difficult
circumstances; but in May, 1682, the malcontents commenced to cut up the
tobacco-plants, especially the sweet-scented, which was produced nowhere
else, and to this futile procedure, Culpepper, who had now returned, put
a stop by measures of great severity—hanging the ringleaders and
enacting plant-cutting high treason. Lord Culpepper had in the interim
of his absence purchased the share of Arlington, and he now returned to
establish his own claim to the Northern Neck. It was vain, spite of the
injustice of the case, for the holders of land in this fine district to
attempt the maintenance of their prior claims; nothing remained for them
but compromise.
A printing-press was at this time brought over into Virginia, by John
Buckner, who printed the enactments of the session; but such publicity
was dreaded. He was called to account by Culpepper, and forbidden to
print anything until his Majesty’s pleasure should be known; and the
following year any printing-press was forbidden in Virginia, under the
royal authority.
The slave-code received some alterations during Culpepper’s government,
which were worthy of the remorseless spirit of the man. Slaves were
forbidden the use of arms, or to leave their masters’ plantations
without a written pass, or to lift a hand against a Christian, even in
self-defence. Runaways, who refused to give themselves up, might be
lawfully killed.
“All accounts,” says Bancroft, “agree in describing the condition of
Virginia at this time as one of extreme distress. Culpepper had no
compassion for poverty; no sympathy for a province impoverished by
perverse legislation; and the residence in Virginia was so irksome, that
in a few months he again returned to England. The council reported the
griefs and restlessness of the country, and renewed the request that the
grant to Culpepper might be recalled. The poverty of the province
rendered negotiation easy, and in the following year Virginia was once
more a royal province.”
Lord Howard of Effingham succeeded Culpepper as governor, but the change
was hardly beneficial to the unhappy province. Office was only desirable
to him as a means of making money. Nothing could exceed the mean avarice
of this man; it became almost a proverb. It is said that, with an eye to
the fees, he established a Court of Chancery, claiming, by virtue of his
office, to be sole judge.
The accession of James II. produced no change in the state of Virginia;
but the suppression of Monmouth’s rebellion sent over to her a number of
truly noble, though involuntary exiles. These were the men who, by
sentence of the infamous judge Jefferies, were condemned to
transportation, and sent over for sale to the labour-market of the
American colonies. The courtiers of James rejoiced in this harvest of
blood; and Virginia, smarting from her own wounds, received the exiles
with mercy. These political convicts were, many of them, men of family
and superior education, accustomed to the conveniences and elegancies of
life; and, as regarded them, the government of Virginia received
injunctions, under the signature of the monarch; “take care,” said they,
“that these convicted persons continue to serve for ten years at least,
and that they be not permitted, in any manner, to redeem themselves by
money or otherwise until that time be fully expired. Prepare a bill for
the assembly of our colony with such clauses as shall be requisite for
this purpose.” But Virginia had suffered too much not to sympathise with
her noble transports. She had no wish to make the yoke of their
suffering any heavier. In December, 1689, the exiles were pardoned.
America, in every one of her colonies, was benefited by the intolerance
and the oppressions of Europe. Hence she derived her best population;
hence her clear instinct of liberty, and the courage and energy which
bore her through the struggle for its attainment.
In the fourth year of James II., “the Northern Neck was assigned to
Culpepper, with many privileges, on account of the loyal services of his
family. The only daughter and heiress of Lord Culpepper, marrying Lord
Fairfax, this splendid territory came into his hands.”
The state of Virginia did not improve under James II.; and so oppressive
was the government found to be, that the first assembly convened after
his accession, called in question the monarch’s right to negative such
of their proceedings as did not meet with his approbation; the king was
displeased, and censured “the disaffected and unjust disposition of the
members, and their irregular and tumultuous proceedings.” The assembly
was dissolved by royal proclamation, and James Collins loaded with irons
and imprisoned for treasonable expressions. But the council stood firm
to their principles of obedience and conformity, and pledged themselves
to bring the state to submission. Beverley, a royalist and former
adherent of Berkeley’s, and for a long time clerk of the assembly, in
whose soul the despotism of the time seems to have called forth a germ
of liberty, fell under the strong resentment of the king; and being
disfranchised, and a prosecution commenced against him, he died soon
afterwards, a martyr to those very principles for which Bacon had
struggled, and which he then had opposed.
The principles of Bacon indeed were, under the severity of the present
rule, becoming the principles of the whole of Virginia, as the noblest
essences are only brought out by extreme pressure. The measures of the
king for the erection of forts for the defence of the colony were very
coolly received. The spirit of the colony was shown by the new assembly,
which was now, in 1688, convened, and for the turbulent and unmanageable
disposition of which, it was very soon dissolved by the council.
Discussion, so long fettered, once more asserted its liberty; the
scattered dwellers along the river banks passed from house to house the
kindling cry of liberty. The whole colony was about to rise once more;
and Effingham, alarmed at the position of affairs, hastened to England,
followed by Philip Ludwell, as his accuser in the name of the people.
During his absence, Nathaniel Bacon, the elder, president of the
council, assumed the temporary administration. But before either the
accused or the accuser reached the English shores, James had abdicated,
and that Revolution had taken place, which for the moment cast the
affairs of Virginia into the shade.
CHAPTER XIX.
MARYLAND UNDER CHARLES II.
With the Restoration Maryland became once more a proprietary government.
Philip Calvert assumed the administration as deputy of Lord Baltimore,
and clemency drawing a veil over late offences, the colony enjoyed
tranquillity. The spirit of Lord Baltimore was broad and tolerant; a
large benevolence marks his legislation; and the persecuted and the
outcast had ever a secure home in his province. “From France came
Huguenots; from Germany, from Holland, from Sweden, from Finland, from
Piedmont, came the children of misfortune, to seek protection under the
tolerant sceptre of the Roman Catholic. Bohemia itself, the country of
Jerome and Huss, sent forth its sons, who at once were made citizens of
Maryland with equal franchises.”[7]
Though Maryland in many respects resembled Virginia, yet in others she
was strikingly different. The spirit of her people was more active and
enterprising, and hence, availing herself of her sea-coast, her traffic
at this time was not inconsiderable.
In 1662, Charles, the eldest son of Lord Baltimore, took up his
residence in the colony as governor. Misunderstandings with the Indians
were adjusted, and the colony gradually extended. The Navigation Act,
however, pressed heavily upon its commerce; Dutch vessels could no
longer export its tobacco to Europe; and following the example of
Virginia, a tax of 2_s._ per hogshead was laid on all exported tobacco,
one-half to serve as a colonial revenue for governmental purposes, and
the other as a revenue for the proprietary—an arrangement which is said
to have been advantageous to the colony, while it was equally so to Lord
Baltimore.
Maryland, like Virginia, under these restrictive commercial laws,
suffered from the over-production of tobacco, and black slaves, as being
cheaper, were preferred to white labourers; an act, therefore, was
passed in 1671, for encouraging the importation of negroes, which in
consequence of the interrupted trade with Holland had now almost ceased.
Lord Baltimore, by his prudence, moderation and wisdom, had been by far
the most successful of all proprietary governors; and now in his old age
he began to reap a rich harvest, not only of honour and respect, but of
wealth, from the colony “which he had planted in his youth, and which
crowned his old age with gratitude.” One thing only Lord Baltimore
failed in, and this was an acknowledgment of those principles of popular
liberty and popular rights which were the fundamental principles of the
Anglo-American colonies. The leaven, however, was already working in
Maryland under the paternal sway of Lord Baltimore, and nothing but his
own virtues prevented it effectually leavening the whole lump.
At the death of Lord Baltimore, after a supremacy of forty-three years,
Maryland contained ten counties, five on either side of the Chesapeake,
and about 16,000 inhabitants, the greater number of whom were
Protestants. There was no established church in Maryland, either
Catholic or Episcopal. The latter, however, had a strong hankering after
this state of privilege, and one of the clergy appealed to the
Archbishop of Canterbury regarding their forlorn condition; “the
priests,” said he, “are provided for; the Quakers take care of their own
speakers; but no care is taken to build up churches in the protestant
religion.”
Yet though the Quakers maintained their own preachers, and as a
religious sect, spite of all their “abominable heresies,” were tolerated
in Maryland, yet they were not safe even here from suffering, but that
for civil, rather than religious causes. Until the year 1688, the era of
great revolutions, the Quakers were liable to fines and imprisonment,
from their refusal to perform military duties and to take an oath.
Otherwise the Quaker was warmly welcomed. The scattered dwellers in the
wilderness, and on the hanks of the Maryland rivers, opened their souls
to “the truth” as promulgated by George Fox and his friends; their
simple hearts were as good soil into which the seed of the spirit fell
and brought forth abundantly. Many a “heavenly meeting” had George Fox
in this friendly colony. “His landing in the country,” he says, “was so
ordered by the good providence of God, that he arrived just in time to
be present at a farewell meeting which was held by John Burneyate,
before his setting sail for old England. And a very large meeting this
was, and held four days, to which came many of the world’s people, five
or six justices of the peace, a speaker of the assembly, a member of the
council, and divers others of note.” And not alone did “the world’s
people” listen with joy to this “minister of the truth, but the emperor
or sagamore of the Indians, and his subordinate chieftains, after a
great debate with his council, came to hear him, and listened in the
evening to that which he had to say to them from the Lord, and which he
enjoined them to convey to their people,” and “they, carrying themselves
courteously and lovingly inquired, where the next meeting would be, for
that they would attend it.” As in Carolina and Virginia, we have many a
graphic picture of the life of the settlers in the wilderness; of the
stranger travelling through woods and bogs, sleeping out at night, or
being hospitably entertained at some lonely dwelling, where “huge dogs”
gave the first notice of their approach; or after having travelled all
day through the woods, and seen “neither man nor woman, house nor
dwelling-place, of their being lovingly entertained by some Indian king,
who spread mats for them to lie on by the fire of their wigwam, and made
the strangers welcome to their small store of provisions.” Again we see
George Fox and his friends on their way to some great meeting, rowing in
boats, “there being so many boats on the river at that time that it was
almost like the Thames, there never having been seen before so many
together at one time;” a thousand coming to the meeting at once, so that
“never before was there seen such a concourse of people together,—people
of the world, protestants of divers sorts, and some papists; and among
them magistrates and their wives, and other people of chief account in
the country, and of common people a great many.” These large meetings,
which would last for four or five days, must have resembled the revivals
and camp-meetings of later days.
It was on an occasion of this kind, when travelling to a meeting with
his friend, “that an accident befell, which, for the time, was a great
exercise” to them. “One John Jay, a friend, of Barbadoes, was intending
to accompany us,” says George Fox, “through the woods to Maryland; and
he being to try a horse, got upon his back, and he fell a running, and
cast him down upon his head, and broke his neck, as the people said.
They that came near him took him up for dead, and carried him a good way
and laid him on a tree. I got to him as soon as I could, and feeling of
him, concluded him to be dead. And as I stood by him, pitying him and
his family, I took hold of his hair, and his head turned anyway, his
neck was so limber. Whereupon, throwing away my stick and my gloves, I
put one hand under his chin and the other behind his head, and raised
his head two or three times with all my strength, and brought it in. I
soon perceived that the neck was right; he began to rattle in the
throat, and soon after to breathe. The people were amazed, but I bid
them have a good heart and be of good faith and carry him into the
house. They did so, and set him by the fire; but I bid them get him some
warm thing to drink and put him to bed. After he had been in the house
awhile, he began to speak, but did not know where he had been. The next
day we passed away, and he with us, about sixteen miles, to a meeting,
through woods and bogs, and over a river, where we swam our horses, and
got over ourselves upon a hollow tree; and many hundreds of miles did he
travel with us after this.”
But we must now leave George Fox and his friends, and return to the
affairs of Maryland.
On the death of Lord Baltimore, in 1676, his son and successor to his
title, who had now successfully administered the government of the
colony for fourteen years, returned to England, leaving Thomas Notley as
his deputy. During his administration the whole code of laws had been
revised, and the act of toleration, which from the first had made
Maryland so honourable, was confirmed. But spite of this careful
provision for the exercise of the broad spirit of religion, scarcely had
Lord Baltimore arrived in England when he was called to account by the
Bishop of London, in whose diocese the colonies were supposed to lie,
for the neglect of religion in his province. The bishop was seconded by
the king and his ministers, who were determined that the English
episcopal church should be dominant in Maryland as it was in Virginia.
This party at home strengthened the party of the ultra-Protestants in
the colony, who had long been dissatisfied with their non-privileged
position. Besides this, the recent insurrectionary movements in Virginia
were not without their influence on the neighbour state; and Fendall,
the former governor, “a man well-experienced in commotions,” headed the
disaffected Episcopalians, and the authority of Lord Baltimore, a
“papist proprietary,” was called in question. Lord Baltimore hastened
back, and order was soon re-established. Fendall was tried, found guilty
of sedition, and banished. But Baltimore now was not at liberty to
govern his province in his own way. Having been accused, though
apparently without cause, of favour towards Papists, the English
ministry soon interfered, and an order was issued, that “all offices of
government should be intrusted exclusively to Protestants.” Catholics
were excluded from office in the very colony which they had planted.
Lord Baltimore’s hold on Maryland was being loosened now on all hands.
The colonists, among whom the doctrine of civil equality was
deep-rooted, called in question the authority of an hereditary
proprietary; and the partisans of the English church, whose monarchical
principles might otherwise have found no stumbling-block in that
circumstance, became his violent opponents as a Papist. Another cause
too existed, which affected Lord Baltimore unfortunately in his
relationship with England. In attempting “to modify the unhappy effects
of the Navigation Laws on colonial industry, he had become involved in
opposition to the commercial policy of England. A formidable adversary
was thus raised; the Governor of Virginia was made superintendent of the
custom-house officers of Maryland. This led to great dissatisfaction;
quarrels and bloodshed ensued;” and the blame of all, one way or
another, was laid on Lord Baltimore.
The accession of a catholic monarch in England might be considered as a
favourable auspice for a catholic proprietary. But no! William Penn, the
Quaker, found favour with James, when Lord Baltimore found none. The
Catholic was even obliged to relinquish to the Dissenter half the
peninsula between the Chesapeake and Delaware, besides “a wide strip
along the northern limit of his province.” Nor was that all. The charter
of Maryland was threatened. A writ of _quo warranto_ was issued against
it, and Lord Baltimore hastened to England to maintain his rights. But
before the legal process by which they were invaded was ended King James
himself was dethroned.
CHAPTER XX.
SETTLEMENT OF NEW JERSEY.—THE QUAKERS.
Two months before the surrender of New Netherlands to the English, the
Duke of York made over the land embraced by his patent, lying between
the Hudson and the Delaware, to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret,
both proprietaries of Carolina. In compliment to Sir George Carteret,
who, as governor of the Isle of Jersey, had been the last commander to
lower the royal flag in the civil wars, this territory was called New
Jersey.
The proprietaries immediately published terms of colonisation, or, as
they called them, “concessions,” offering fifty acres of land to each
settler, and the same quantity for each servant or slave, at a quit-rent
of one-halfpenny per acre, and the same to all indented servants at the
expiration of their term of servitude. No quit-rent, however, was to be
demanded until 1670.
Already in 1663, before this grant to Berkeley and Carteret was known,
several puritan families from Long Island had purchased a considerable
tract of country from the Indians and formed a settlement on Newark Bay.
A few Swedish farmers also remained scattered here and there, besides
old Dutch settlers, all considering themselves legalised possessors of
their land. When, therefore, two years afterwards, Sir Philip Carteret
arrived as proprietary governor, he found sturdy settlers ready and
resolved to oppose his claims to their portion of the soil; hence much
discord and difficulty arose.
The only Indian inhabitants of New Jersey were tribes of the Delaware,
the most peaceful of all the aborigines, and who readily conceded their
claims to the country on very easy terms to the settlers. As regards
this Delaware portion of the Indian people, so different in character to
all the other tribes, we must be allowed a moment’s interruption to
relate how, according to their own tradition, this difference arose. It
appears that, in old times, long and grievous wars were carried on
between the Iroquois and the Delawares, until both nations were in
danger of annihilation. On this the Iroquois sent to the Delawares,
saying, “it is not profitable that all nations should be at war with
each other, or this will at length cause the ruin of the whole Indian
race. We have, therefore, considered a remedy. One nation shall be the
WOMAN. She shall make no war, but she shall speak words of peace, to
heal the disputes of those who are walking in foolish ways. The men then
shall hear and obey the woman.” The Delawares consented to this remedy.
A council was called, and again the Iroquois spoke: “We dress you in the
woman’s long habit; we give you oil and medicines, and a plant of Indian
corn, with a hoe. To your care we commit the great belt of peace and
chain of friendship.”
But even if this tradition may be fiction, it nevertheless is well known
that the Delawares were greatly respected and honoured by many tribes,
and that the term “grandfather” was applied to them, though
_grandmother_, one would think, would have been more appropriate. This
assumed relationship, however, may have reference to the good Delaware
sagamore, _Tamenend_, who lived in their tradition as King Arthur in
ours.
Philip Carteret landed at the settlement on Newark Bay, to which the
name of Elizabethtown, in honour of Lady Carteret, the wife of the
proprietary, was given, and which was established as the seat of
government. Wishing to attract steady settlers from the New England
colonies, Carteret announced that “puritan liberties were warranted a
shelter on the Raritan;” and an association of church-members from New
Haven emigrated thither immediately. “With one heart they resolved to
carry on their spiritual and town affairs according to godly
government,” and proceeded to elect officers among themselves, excluding
all from political rights who could not claim church-membership. This,
though not in accordance with the intentions of the proprietary, was not
interfered with. Emigrants were attracted, not only from New England,
but from Great Britain. The climate was mild and salubrious; the soil
fertile; and the vicinity of the older settlements prevented the danger
of distress to which earlier settlers were exposed; besides which, no
hostility was to be feared from the peaceful natives. A combination of
circumstances thus rendered New Jersey especially promising for
colonisation.
All went well till 1670, when the demand for quit-rent would commence.
The first settlers claimed exemption on the plea of having purchased
their lands prior to the Duke of York’s grant, from the natives, whose
right to the soil was stronger than that of any English monarch
whatever. So urged the earlier settlers, and many of the later ones set
up the same plea, and the payment of quit-rent was refused. Disorder and
disaffection prevailed, and that to so great an extent that, in 1672,
Philip Carteret was deposed, and James Carteret, a frivolous young man,
the natural son of the proprietary, was elected in his place.
Opposition was vain. Governor Carteret hastened to London, leaving John
Berry as his deputy. The proprietaries determined to bring the colony to
order, remodelled their “concessions,” and abridged the power of the
people. The Duke of York expressed his dissatisfaction, and the king
fixed a time within which the quit-rent should be paid. But other
changes were at hand, which now for the moment turn our attention again
to New York.
The settlers of New Netherlands had very willingly placed themselves
under British rule, in the hope of advantages which would thence accrue,
but the new government conceded very little to the province. The
governor, and the council of his own appointment, were possessed of the
executive and higher judicial power; of popular rights there were none.
Once only an assembly was held at Hempstead, on Long Island; but the
governor, finding that “factious republicans” abounded, held no second.
In 1667, Nichols retired from office, and was succeeded as governor by
Lord Lovelace. If Nichols’ administration had been unsatisfactory, that
of his successor was still more so. The very Swedes and Finns, said to
be the most patient of all emigrants, were roused to resistance. Lord
Lovelace’s system of government may be comprised in his own words: “the
method for keeping the people in order is severity, and laying on such
taxes as may give them liberty for no thought but how to discharge
them.” An arbitrary tax was therefore imposed of ten per cent. on all
exports and imports. This roused the colony, which, by its now eight
established towns, protested against the imposition of taxes by the
governor and council, they themselves having no voice whatever in the
matter; but their protest was called “scandalous, illegal, and
seditious,” and ordered to be burnt by the common hangman before the
town-house of New York.
The government of the Duke of York was hated for its despotism, and the
contempt and disregard which it ever showed towards the popular
interest; when, therefore, in 1673, war broke out again between England
and Holland, the first opportunity was taken to surrender to its former
possessors. Lovelace, who was absent at the time of the surrender, was
sent to England in the Dutch fleet. “The colonists for the most part,”
says Hildreth, “were not greatly dissatisfied with the change. The local
magistrates on Long Island mostly swore allegiance to the Dutch. The
people of New Jersey, where a government could hardly yet be said to
exist, were prompt to follow the example, as were also the settlements
on the Delaware. For a moment the province of New Netherlands revived.”
But only, as it were, for a moment; in fifteen months the
re-establishment of peace restored the possession of New York to the
English.
The duke, having obtained from his brother a new grant, sent out Major
Edmund Andros as governor; and the Dutch authorities quietly surrendered
the province once more. The inhabitants prayed to have an assembly, but
their prayer was not granted, though some concessions were allowed. Nor
was the desire of the three eastern towns of Long Island to be permitted
still to remain attached to Connecticut, indulged. They were severed
from that province, and a claim was put forth by New York for the whole
territory as far as Connecticut River. This, however, was so stoutly
resisted by the troops sent out under Captain Bull, at Saybrook, when
Andros appeared there with several sloops of war, intending to enforce
his purpose, that he finally abandoned the attempt, remarking jocularly,
that such a Bull as had there met him deserved to have his horns tipped
with gold. But though defeated in this instance, he was more successful
with regard to the territory lying between the Kennebec and the
Penobscot, which, during the Dutch supremacy, had been held by
Massachusetts, and now was reclaimed by Andros. “Exclusive of this
district of Sagadahoc, and of the settlements west of the Delaware,
consisting of two Dutch and two Swedish villages, and the islands of
Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, now called Duke’s County, the province
of New York contained twenty-four towns and villages, of which the
sixteen on Long Island were arranged in three counties. The city of New
York, at that time far inferior to Boston, had about 350 houses, and
some 3,000 inhabitants. The very centre of the present city was a farm,
which had been the company’s and was now the duke’s. The entire
population of the province amounted perhaps to 12,000 or 15,000. The
value of the annual exports was about £50,000. The exports were wheat,
tobacco, beef, pork, horses, lumber, and peltry. The mercantile fleet
counted three ships, eight sloops, and seven boats. Even on the island
of Manhattan agriculture was the chief occupation. The manners of the
people were simple. There were few servants, and very few slaves; yet
the distinction of ranks, especially among the Dutch, was very marked.
There was no good will between the Dutch inhabitants and the immigrants
from New England; and the English towns on Long Island still cherished
the hope of being restored to Connecticut, in whose popular institutions
they longed to share.”[8]
We now return to New Jersey, which, on the ratification of peace between
England and Holland, again reverted to the English proprietaries.
Berkeley, however, sold his share for £1,000 to John Fenwick and Edward
Byllinge, both Quakers. The Quakers, holding opinions in advance of
their age, and carrying out those opinions into practice, were
persecuted everywhere, more or less, in the New World as in the Old; and
now, therefore, that they numbered among their brethren men of wealth
and influence, they purchased for themselves a district where “Friends”
might find a safe asylum, and the “Holy Experiment of a Christian
commonwealth might be tried.”
The “Holy Experiment” of the Quakers, and the “Grand Model Constitution”
of Locke and Shaftesbury, were two extremes. In them intellectual pride
and worldly wisdom were exhibited on the one hand, and on the other the
philosophy of Christianity. The quakerism of Fox and Penn and Barclay
was simply Christianity as Christ and the apostles promulgated it; it
was that wisdom and truth which ancient philosophers, sages and poets of
all nations acknowledged and sought after, and which modern philosophers
and poets—Descartes and Bacon and Coleridge and Wordsworth and
Emerson—have taught, and are teaching, and to which the present age is
listening and growing wiser by so doing. But quakerism rose in an age of
excitement, and the absurdities and extravagances of fanaticism threw a
disrepute over the grandeur and sublimity of the doctrines which it
taught, and which its disciples were ready to seal with their blood. Of
all sects who have arisen since the days of the apostles, none
comprehended the enlightening and ennobling truths of Christianity so
fully as the Quakers. None comprehended Christianity in its broad
universality as they. The “light and the truth,” which they declared
were like God’s natural gifts of air and sunshine, given to all alike,
rich or poor, bond or free, learned or unlearned, Christian or savage,
man or woman,—were the immortal prerogatives of humanity. In this
doctrine of the universality of the “inner light,” the Quaker regarded
all men as equal by creation. “God discovers himself to every man,” says
Penn;—“every mortal truth exists in every man’s and woman’s heart as an
incorruptible seed,” says Barclay. “The Bible alone, the Quaker
maintained, only enlightened those to whom it was conveyed; but the
whole human race was illumined by this inner light. It was ever present
in the human breast, to warn, to counsel and to console. The inner light
shed its blessings on woman equally with man.” “It redeems her by the
dignity of her moral nature, and claims for her the equal culture and
the free exercise of her endowments. Woman is man’s companion, according
to the Quaker, in his intellectual and moral advancement; woman, as a
human being, has equal rights with man.”
All men, the Quaker argues, are equal; and he bows not down to his
fellow-man, but to God alone, and says _thee_ and _thou_ to all, nor
uncovers his head in token of obeisance to any.
“George Fox declares,” says Bancroft, in his able summary of quakerism,
“that he saw his doctrine in the pure openings of light without the help
of any man. But the spirit that made to him the revelation was the
invisible spirit of the age, rendered wise by tradition, and in a season
of revolution excited by the enthusiasm of liberty and religion. There
is a close analogy between the popular revolutions of France and
England. In France the same symbols and principles reappeared, but more
rapidly, and on a wider theatre. The elements of humanity are always the
same. The inner light dawns upon every nation, and is the same in every
age; and the French Revolution was a result of the same principles as
these of George Fox gaining dominion over the mind of Europe. They are
expressed in the burning and often profound eloquence of Rousseau; they
reappear in the masculine philosophy of Kant.
“Everywhere in Europe were the Quakers persecuted. In England, the
general law against Dissenters, the statute against Papists, and special
statutes against themselves, put them at the mercy of any malignant
informer. They were hated by the church and by the Presbyterians, by the
peers and by the king. During the Long Parliament, in the time of the
protectorate, at the Restoration, in England, in New England, in the
Dutch colony of New Netherlands, everywhere; and for long wearisome
years they were exposed to perpetual dangers and griefs. They were
whipped, crowded in jails among felons, kept in dungeons foul and gloomy
beyond imagination, fined, exiled, sold into colonial bondage.
Imprisoned in winter without fire, they perished from frost. Some were
victims to the barbarous cruelty of the jailor; twice George Fox
narrowly escaped death. The despised people braved every danger to
continue their assemblies. Hauled out by violence, they returned. When
their meeting-houses were torn down, they gathered openly on the ruins.
They would not be dissolved by armed men; and when their opposers took
shovels to throw rubbish on them, they stood close together, ‘willing to
have been buried alive, witnessing to the Lord.’ They were exceeding
great sufferers for their profession, and in many cases fared worse than
the worst of their race. They seemed, indeed, to be as poor sheep
appointed to the slaughter, and as a people killed all day long, abused
and suffering, who went forth weeping and sowed in tears.”
And now this oppressed and persecuted people were about to have a land
of refuge in the wilderness. In March, 1674, shortly after George Fox’s
return to England after that visit to his friends in America of which we
have spoken, and perhaps at his suggestion, Lord Berkeley sold his share
of New Jersey to Fenwick and Byllinge; and the following year, Fenwick,
with a large number of Friends’ families, set sail in the Griffith, and
ascending the Delaware, landed at a place which he called Salem, for it
indeed seemed the “dwelling-place of peace.”
Byllinge having become embarrassed in his circumstances, assigned his
share of the province to William Penn and two others, still Quakers, and
their earliest care was to obtain a division of the territory between
themselves and Sir George Carteret, so that they might be able to carry
out their own views of independent government. New Jersey was therefore
divided, Carteret receiving the eastern portion, which was called East
New Jersey, and Fenwick and his friends the western, or West New Jersey.
The Quakers, like the pilgrim fathers of the Mayflower, prepared the
fundamental law of the colony even before they took possession, so that
from the first they were under the guidance of an enlightened
legislation. The quaker proprietaries, in their “Concessions,” “laid a
foundation,” to use their own words, “for after ages to understand their
liberty as Christians and as men, that they may not be brought into
bondage but by their own consent; for we put the power in the people.”
The fundamental laws of New West Jersey were published in March, 1677,
and afford a striking contrast to “the Grand Model” of Carolina. They
insured entire freedom of conscience, enacting that no person, at any
time or in any way, should be called in question or suffer damage or
detriment on account of religious opinion. Government was to be
administered by a general assembly elected by ballot; every citizen
being capable either of electing or being elected. Every member of the
assembly was to be paid one shilling a day by his constituents, “that he
may be known as the servant of the people.” The executive power was
vested in the commissioners appointed by the assembly, and the people
themselves chose justices and constables; the judges were to be
appointed by the assembly. Trial by jury was established; and, that “all
and every person in the province, by the help of the Lord and these
fundamentals, may be free from oppression and slavery, it was enacted,
that no man could be imprisoned for debt; courts were to be managed
without attorneys or counsellors; the native was to be protected by the
laws; and the orphan to be educated by the state.”
Two emigrating quaker-companies were commenced in England, one in
London, the other in Yorkshire. Thomas Olive and others went out as
commissioners to superintend the colony till a permanent government was
established; and in 1677 about 400 colonists went out, and purchasing
land from the Indians, established themselves at Burlington, on the
Delaware—these being, probably, Yorkshire Friends—and a tent covered
with sail-cloth furnished them with a place for their religious worship.
The Indians, those peaceful Delawares, received them as friends, and
rejoiced in the prospect of dwelling in perpetual amity with them. “You
are our brethren,” said the sachems, “and we will live like brothers
with you. We will have a broad path for you and us to walk in. If an
Englishman shall fall asleep in this path, the Indian shall pass him by,
and say, he is an Englishman; he is asleep, let him alone. The path
shall be plain; there shall not be in it a stump to hurt the foot.”
All went well with the colony, when a difficulty arose between them and
Andros, the agent of the Duke of York, who still possessed Delaware, and
who demanded customs of all the ships which ascended that river to New
Jersey. The Quakers refused to pay them; and the duke, to whom they made
their remonstrance, agreed to refer the question to Sir William Jones,
an eminent lawyer of that day.
We must give a few clauses from their remonstrance, to show the
straightforward and manly spirit of the quaker colonists:—
“An express grant of the powers of government,” say they, “induced us to
buy the moiety of New Jersey. If we could not assure people of an easy,
free and safe government, liberty of conscience and an inviolable
possession of their civil rights and freedoms, a mere wilderness would
be no encouragement. It were madness to leave a free country to plant a
wilderness, and give another person an absolute title to tax us at will.
“The customs imposed by the government of New York are not only a burden
but a wrong. The King of England cannot take his subjects’ goods without
their consent. This is a home-born right, declared to be law by divers
statutes.
“The land belongs to the natives; of the duke we buy nothing but the
right of an undisturbed colonisation, with the expectation of some
increase of the freedoms of our native country. We have not lost English
liberty by leaving England.
“The tax is a surprise to the planter; it is paying for the same thing
twice over. By this precedent we are assessed without law, and excluded
from our English right of common assent to taxes. Such conduct has
destroyed government, but never raised one to true greatness.
“Lastly, to exact such interminable tax, and to continue it after
repeated complaints, will be the greatest evidence of a design to
introduce, if the crown should ever devolve upon the duke, an unlimited
power in England.”
Such plain speaking as this was worthy of the men who bowed and bared
the head only to God. Their arguments established their cause. Sir
William Jones decided that the duke had no claim to the tax.
In East Jersey also, Andros attempted to exercise, on behalf of the
duke, the same arbitrary power, and here also was he opposed. But the
measures which he took to enforce obedience were of a more violent
character. He sent soldiers to seize Carteret, the governor, who was
taken in his bed, and carried prisoner to New York. He summoned a
special court for his trial, himself being judge, and though the jury
persisted in returning a verdict of acquittal, he was still detained a
prisoner.
The result of the decision in favour of the Friends of West Jersey led
to the formal relinquishment of all claim to the territory or government
by the Duke of York; and shortly afterwards a similar release was made
by him on behalf of East Jersey, when that province also became an
independent jurisdiction.
In 1681, Jennings being appointed governor of West Jersey, the first
legislative assembly was convened, and laws were enacted based on the
Quakers’ view of religion and morality. By their laws, all distinctions
of faith, wealth, or race, were rejected; it was the universal humanity
for which they legislated. For the expenses of their government £200
were levied, to be paid in corn, skins, or money. The salary of their
governor was £20 a year; they prohibited the sale of ardent spirits to
the Indians; and in all criminal cases, excepting treason, murder and
theft, the person aggrieved had the power to pardon the offender.
The state of West Jersey presented a picture of a practical Utopia; its
laws were based on the broadest principles of Christianity and faith in
an improved and improvable humanity; it was an experiment in human
virtue, and bore the test. The few hundred souls who commenced it, the
little band of Friends, grew soon into thousands, and God’s peace rested
on them like a visible blessing, under which they, the meek and
longsuffering, literally began to possess the earth with an overflowing
measure of joy. A kindly and pleasant intercourse commenced now between
the Friends on each side the Atlantic; the cup of the oppressed and
persecuted ran over with blessings!—“Friends,” wrote George Fox, and
others, in a spirit of loving admonition, “Friends that are gone to make
plantations in America, keep the plantations in your hearts, that your
own vines and lilies be not hurt. You that are governors and judges,
eyes you should be to the blind, and feet to the lame, and fathers to
the poor; that you may gain the blessing of those who are ready to
perish, and cause the widow’s heart to sing for gladness. If you rejoice
because your hand hath gotten much; if you say to fine gold, Thou art my
confidence, you will have denied the God that is above. The Lord is
ruler among nations; he will crown his people with dominion.”
The first trouble which West Jersey knew, was that Byllinge, the
original proprietary, claimed the right to appoint the deputy-governor;
this led to some dispute, but was finally settled by such alteration in
the constitution as enabled them to choose their own governor; after
which all went well.
On the death of Sir George Carteret, the patentee of East Jersey, this
portion of his estates was offered for sale, and William Penn and eleven
others, in 1682, became the purchasers. But East Jersey, settled
principally by Puritans, presented a different character to the western
portion of the province. On the change of proprietaries, Robert Barclay,
one of twelve Scotch proprietaries, several of whom were not Quakers,
and who were now associated with the first twelve, was appointed
governor for life; but he never assumed office himself, appointing
Rudyard as his deputy. Great numbers of Scotch emigrants, principally
from Aberdeen, Barclay’s native county, removed to East Jersey. Rudyard
was succeeded as deputy-governor, in 1684, by Gawin Laurie, a Scotch
Quaker and merchant of London, who endeavoured, but in vain, to
establish a commercial capital at Perth Amboy, on Raritan Bay, to rival
New York.
Thus were the Quakers firmly established in the New World; like the
Puritans of New England, whom they equalled in stability and every
sterling quality of character, they took deep root wherever they fixed
themselves. We must now follow them to the other side of the Delaware,
where William Penn is at this very time planting his colony of peace.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE SETTLEMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA.
Forty years before the grant of Pennsylvania to William Penn, the
western bank of the Delaware river was settled by Swedes, as we have
already related. Penn received a territory, the soil of which was
already broken by the European planter.
Of William Penn himself, one of the most remarkable men of his age, and
the greatest of the American legislators, we must be allowed to say a
few words. By his mother’s side he was of Dutch origin, and his father
was Admiral Penn, commander of the English fleet at the conquest of
Jamaica, and who afterwards distinguished himself under the Duke of York
in the war with the Dutch.
William Penn, born in 1644, was the only son of his parents. At so early
an age as eleven, as he himself relates, he was suddenly surprised “with
an inward comfort and an external glory in the belief of God, and his
communion with the soul.” His attention was first turned to the Quakers
by the preaching of Thomas Loe; and while at Oxford he and other
students withdrew themselves from the established worship, and held
their own private religious meetings. They were fined for nonconformity,
but to no purpose; and finally were expelled for refusing to wear
surplices, which custom was then revived in the college, as well as for
disrobing others of them, as a relic of popery. His father, displeased
by these religious excesses, and hoping to turn his mind from them, sent
him to travel for two years on the continent, after which he studied law
in Lincoln’s Inn. Thus, in early manhood perfected by travel and study,
he is described as being of “engaging manners, of great natural vivacity
and gay good humour, and so skilled in the use of the sword, that he
could easily disarm his antagonist.” Every worldly advantage was
prepared for him, through the influence of his father and the favour of
his sovereign. But his mind was still deeply impressed with “a sense of
the vanity of the world, and the irreligiousness of its religion.”
In 1666 he went to Ireland to manage his father’s estates, where he
became an openly professing Quaker. “God,” says he, “in his everlasting
kindness having guided my feet, in the flower of my youth, when about
two-and-twenty years of age.” Apprehended at a Quakers’ meeting held at
Cork, he and others were committed to prison, he refusing to find bail
for himself.
Admiral Penn now summoned his son home, being greatly annoyed at this
open profession of quakerism. At home, the demeanour of his son, which
exhibited all the rigid peculiarities of the sect, still further
displeased him. He tried every means; even blows, to obtain conformity;
but in vain. As regarded “hat worship,” the admiral would have been
satisfied if his son would merely have uncovered his head in presence of
the king, the Duke of York and himself; but even that the young man
would not concede. The scoffs, jeers and wonderment of his gay London
acquaintance mattered nothing to him. He bore all meekly, steadfast to
that which appeared to him the requirements of duty; and finally his
father in anger turned him out of doors penniless.
The affection of his mother preserved him from absolute want; and soon
he became quaker preacher and author; and his “Sandy Foundation Shaken”
was published, which led to his imprisonment in the Tower. Here he
remained for seven months, during which he wrote his “No Cross, No
Crown,” the most celebrated of his works. The steadfastness of his
spirit was shown by this imprisonment. In vain the good-natured Charles
II. wished to lure him to submission; he could not or would not gainsay
his conscience. After his liberation, in 1669, he was reconciled to his
father through the intervention of the Duke of York, but his adherence
to his quaker principles remained unshaken.
The following year, the Conventicle Act being passed, Penn was one of
the first sufferers under it. He was committed to Newgate for preaching
at what was called “a riotous and seditious assembly,” which was merely
one of those out-of-doors meetings which the resolute Quakers held when
driven out by force from their meeting-houses. The famous trial of Penn
and Mead at the Old Bailey followed, in which an English jury, as
resolute in the right as the Quakers themselves, asserted and maintained
the prerogative of independent judgment in defiance of the bench, though
they were fined forty marks each, and Penn was returned to prison. The
same year Admiral Penn died, testifying to his son on his death-bed,
that if the Quakers remained true to that which was in them, they would
regenerate the world.
William Penn inherited from his father property to the value of £1,500
per annum, and a claim on government to the amount of £16,000. The
following year he was again a prisoner in Newgate, one of the most
wofully noisome prisons at that time in London, where he lay for six
months.
In 1677, in company with George Fox and Robert Barclay, he paid a
“religious visit” to Holland and Germany, distributing pamphlets
wherever they went, seeds of liberty and truth, which sprang up into
after plentiful harvest. And not alone did they address the people, but
kings and princes, palatine-princes and magistrates, promulgating
everywhere the universal principle of truth, and awakening many souls to
its consciousness. The year after his return, Penn pleaded before a
committee of the House of Commons, that the affirmation of the Quaker
might be legalised instead of an oath; and an enactment for this purpose
would have passed but for the sudden prorogation of parliament.
The sufferings of the people to whom he was attached led William Penn to
seek for them an asylum in the New World, and his efforts on their
behalf were blessed, as we have seen, by their establishment in West
Jersey. This great and benevolent act, this planting of “the truth” on a
new and prolific soil, led to the extension of still more magnificent
plans of philanthropy; and in 1681 William Penn applied to Charles II.
for an extensive tract of land, lying on the other side of the Delaware,
in liquidation of the debt due to his father. Had Penn demanded the
amount of the debt itself from the lavish and impoverished monarch, he
would have asked in vain; but to ask the payment of a debt by a grant of
land was to make the thing easy to the monarch, while to William Penn
the land had fourfold the value of the money. The application was
seconded by the Duke of York, who had ever shown a friendly interest in
the son of his former naval associate. Besides which, it has been said,
that belonging to a persecuted sect himself, he had strong sympathy with
a man who, like Penn, had suffered so unflinchingly for conscience-sake.
“At length, after many waitings, watchings, solicitings and disputes in
council,” writes William Penn, “my country was confirmed to me under the
great seal of England. God will bless and make it the seal of a nation.”
Penn, now in the thirty-seventh year of his age, became the sovereign of
a vast province, which was called by the king, PENNSYLVANIA, though Penn
himself would have dispensed with the first syllable of the name, as
being a species of self-glorification; but the monarch insisted upon its
retention.
In April, 1681, Penn issued his proclamation as absolute proprietary, in
the following words, addressed to his subjects in the New World:—
“My Friends,—I wish you all happiness here and hereafter. These are to
let you know that it hath pleased God in his providence to cast you
within my lot and care. It is a business that, though I never
undertook before, yet God has given me an understanding of my duty and
an honest mind to do it uprightly. I hope you will not be troubled at
your change and the king’s choice, for you are now fixed at the mercy
of no governor that comes to make his fortune great. You shall be
governed by laws of your own making, and live a free, and if you will,
an industrious people. I shall not usurp the right of any, or oppress
his person. God has furnished me with a better resolution, and has
given me his grace to keep it. In short, whatever sober and free men
can reasonably desire for the security and improvement of their own
happiness, I shall heartily comply with. I beseech God to direct you
in the way of righteousness, and therein prosper you and your children
after you.—I am, your true friend, WILLIAM PENN.”
The grant to Penn made him sovereign proprietary not only of
Pennsylvania, but of the settlements of the Swedes, Dutch and English,
on the western bank of the Delaware and the mouth of the Schuylkill. A
royal proclamation, announcing this fact to these settlers, accompanied
by the letter to his new subjects above given, was immediately sent over
by William Penn by the hand of his young relative, William Markham. At
the same time companies were formed in London for commercial purposes,
and for the purchase of land and emigration; lands were sold at the rate
of 40_s._ for every 100 acres, the purchasers being entitled also to
lots in the city, all land being subject to a quit-rent of 1_s._ for
each 100 acres. In the course of the summer, three vessels of emigrants,
with three commissioners on board, set sail for the new land; but good
fortune seemed not to attend them; one was driven to the West Indies,
another frozen up on the Delaware.
Penn, though he inherited a considerable property from his father, was
not by any means a wealthy man. Owing to the liberality of his
expenditure on behalf of his suffering brethren, his circumstances were
straitened, and he had a growing family; yet such was the integrity of
his mind, that he refused £6,000 which were offered him by a London
trading company, for a monopoly of the Indian traffic between the
Delaware and the Susquehannah. Monopoly was contrary to his principles
of justice, and he replied, nobly, that “he would not abuse the love of
God, nor act unworthy of his providence, by defiling what came to him
clean.” No; his government in Pennsylvania was to be “a Holy
Experiment,” for which there was no room in England, and
self-aggrandisement, even though himself profited by it, could have no
place there.
In September, Penn sent out instructions regarding the laying out of the
new city. Wishing to avoid the fault of the cities of the Old World,
which, built during times of disquiet, were crowded within narrow
bounds, so as to be easily defended in case of need, he desired that his
new city should be laid out with ample space, allowing to each house its
garden, so as to form “a green country town.” He also sent a friendly
letter to the Indians, addressing them as brethren, as children of the
same Heavenly Father, “having the same law written in their hearts, and
alike bound to love and help to do one another good.”
The “Grand Model” constitution was not the result of more thought than
was the frame of government which the deeply religions mind of Penn
prepared for his province. According to his views, government, like
religion, was based on love, and had for its purpose the advancement and
happiness of the people, even more than the correction of evil-doers.
Although acknowledging in himself the supreme head of the state, “yet
for the matters of liberty,” said he, “I purpose that which is
extraordinary—to leave myself and successors no power of doing mischief;
that the will of one man may not hinder the good of a whole country.”
And again, “It is the great end of government to support power in
reverence with the people, and to secure the people from the abuse of
power; for liberty without obedience is confusion, and obedience without
liberty is slavery.” Shaftesbury counselled with Locke, and the
intellect of the age produced the “Grand Model;” Penn counselled with
Algernon Sidney and his quaker brethren, who, like himself, listened to
the Divine Voice within their own souls, and a frame of government
suitable to the “Holy Experiment” was the result; and fundamental
principles of government were acknowledged, which, though too pure for
that age and for that province even, have since become not only the
avowed basis of legislature in Pennsylvania, but in Great Britain
itself. Truth is immortal, and no “Holy Experiment” is ever tried in
vain.
According to the proposed constitution, the legislative and executive
authority was vested in a council of seventy-two persons, elected by the
freemen for three years, one-third to go out annually; the proprietary
or his deputy to preside and have a triple vote. Laws thus proposed were
to be submitted for approval or rejection to an assembly of freemen. To
this frame of government were subjoined forty “fundamental laws,” agreed
upon by Penn and his intending emigrants, religious toleration being of
course one of these. The words of this provision were:—“All persons
living in this province, who confess and acknowledge the one Almighty
and Eternal God to be the creator, upholder and ruler of the world, and
that hold themselves obliged in conscience to live peaceably and justly
in civil society, shall in nowise be molested or prejudiced for their
religious persuasion or practice in matters of faith and worship.”
The proposals which Penn had published soon attracted attention; and a
“Free Society of Traders” was immediately formed, who took up, on his
terms, 20,000 acres of land, and received in consequence their
appurtenant city lots of 100 acres, constituting an entire street of the
new city. A German emigration society was also formed, and from the
neighbourhood of Frankfort and “the highlands above Worms,” where the
simple peasantry had gladly embraced quaker principles at the preaching
of Penn, Fox, and others, great numbers not only now, but for several
years, continued to flock over to the new land of hope and promise; and
Germantown, among other settlements, was founded.
In August, 1682, Penn obtained from the Duke of York a surrender of all
claims on his part to the province of Pennsylvania; and soon afterwards
a grant of the settlements on the western and southern banks of the
Delaware river and bay, which had hitherto been included in the duke’s
charter, and claimed as an appurtenance of New York. These now took the
title of “The Territories,” and furnished to Pennsylvania the important
advantage of an ocean-outlet.
These measures being secured, Penn prepared to embark, together with 100
of his friends, emigrants to the new country. Penn took leave of his
wife, the noble and beautiful daughter of Isaac Pennington, to whom he
was sincerely attached, in an affecting letter, recommending his
children to her love and care, and praying her “to live sparingly till
his debts were paid;” yet, as regarded the education of the children, to
“let it be liberal; to spare in that respect no cost, for by such
parsimony all is lost,” said he, “that is saved.”
The voyage was long and disastrous, owing to the small-pox which broke
out in the ship and destroyed one-third of the passengers. On the 27th
of October, the ship arrived at Newcastle, on the Delaware, where crowds
were gathered to receive their distinguished governor. The following
day, the surrender of the Duke of York being read in the court-house,
Penn received from the duke’s agent earth and water, in token of the
solemn delivery of “the territory” into his hands. After this, he
addressed the people, recommending to them peace and sobriety, and
assuring them on his part of liberty of conscience and civil freedom. He
then proceeded up the broad majestic Delaware to Upland, or Chester,
where again crowds of rejoicing simple people, like dwellers in Arcadia,
thronged to bid him welcome.
[Illustration: RECEPTION OF PENN.]
He found the inhabitants of this province, Swedes, Dutch and English, to
amount already to between 2,000 and 3,000—“plain, strong and industrious
people.” There were six religious societies established, three of
Swedish Lutherans and three of the Quakers. “The land itself,” he wrote,
“was good, the air clear and sweet, the springs plentiful, and
provisions good and easy to come at; an innumerable quantity of
wild-fowl and fish; in fine, what an Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would be
well contented with.”
“Tradition,” says Bancroft, “describes the journey of Penn and his
friends from Chester, in an open boat, in the earliest days of November,
to the beautiful banks, fringed with pine-trees, on which the city of
Philadelphia was soon to rise.” Markham had already began to build, on
Pennsbury Manor, “a stately brick house” as the proprietary residence.
After visits to East and West Jersey and to New York, in compliment to
his friend, the duke, and after a meeting with the Friends of Long
Island, Penn returned to Chester, where the first assembly was convened.
The body of freemen present amounted to seventy-two, and these
petitioning that they, “owing to the fewness of the people and their
unskilfulness in matters of government, might constitute both assembly
and council,” it was enacted that, in future, “the assembly should
consist of thirty-six members only, six from each county, to be chosen
annually, with a council composed of three members for each county, to
hold their seats for three years, one to be chosen each year. The
governor and council to possess, jointly, the right of proposing laws.”
This latter enactment, as regarded the power of the proprietary
governor, which was now made at the special request of the assembly,
gave rise to after dissatisfaction and reproaches against Penn as a
violation of his original engagement.
It was about this time, in the winter season, that Penn made his
celebrated treaty with the Indians, under the great elm-tree of
Shakamaxon, which was then leafless, and not heavy with foliage as
represented by West. Here Penn met the delegated Indians of the
Leni-Lenape, or Delaware confederacy, not for the purchase of land, but
to cement with them the covenant of friendship of which he had written.
He had written to them as to men and brethren, to whom the same moral
obligations referred; he had promised, and his agent Markham had carried
out the same principle, that they should be secure in their pursuits and
possessions, and that all differences should be adjusted by a peaceful
tribunal, composed of an equal number of each race. The representation
of this treaty, by West, is not accurate. Bancroft gives it to us
thus:—“The delegated chiefs of the forest, men of lofty demeanour and
grave aspect, are assembled without their weapons; the old men sit in a
half-moon upon the ground; the middle-aged are in a like figure at a
little distance behind them; the young foresters form a third semicircle
in the rear. Before them stands William Penn, graceful in the summer of
life, in dress distinguishable only from his friends, principally young
men, by whom he was surrounded, by a light blue silk sash, which was
bound round his waist.”
William Penn stood thus in the dignity of noble manhood, upright
intentions and brotherly love; and gazing around, beheld, “far as his
eye would carry,” the plumed and painted chieftains of the forest
gathering round him. It was like the realisation of Christ’s own mission
of peace and good will to man; the bow and the tomahawk of the savage
were laid aside, and the oldest sachem of the peaceful Delawares
announced to the benevolent Onas that “the nations were ready to listen
to his words, believing him to be a messenger sent to them from the
Great Spirit.”
“We meet,” said William Penn, in reply, “on the broad pathway of good
works and good will; no advantage shall be taken on either side, but all
shall be openness and love. I will not call you children, for parents
sometimes chide their children too severely; nor brothers only, for
brothers differ. The friendship between me and you I will not compare to
a chain, for that the rains might rust, or a falling tree break. We are
the same as if one man’s body were divided into two parts; we are all
one flesh and blood.”
The simple sons of the forest, believers in the “Great Spirit,”
comprehended these words in their inmost soul; and receiving in good
faith Penn’s presents, returned the wampum belt of peace. “We will
live,” said they, “in love with Father Onas and his children as long as
moon and sun shall endure;” and so saying, the treaty was formally
signed, the chieftains marking the emblems of their various tribes. The
purchases of Markham were ratified, and others made.
[Illustration: PENN AND THE INDIANS.]
As regards the tree which was in its prime when this group, beautiful in
the sight of heaven, stood under its branches, our readers may have an
interest in knowing that it was situate on the northern side of
Philadelphia, and was standing until March 3rd, 1810, when it was blown
down. A marble monument now marks the place where it stood. “It was a
remarkably wide-spreading rather than lofty tree, its main branch
measuring 150 feet; its age, as computed by its circles of annual
growth, was 283 years. While it stood, the Methodists and Baptists held
their summer meetings under its shade.” It was truly a “gospel tree.”
The treaty of peace made on this occasion was never broken on either
side for seventy years—as long as the Quakers retained the government of
the province. The terrible and bloody Indian war of New England was but
a few years passed; Maryland and Virginia were in a state of continual
hostility with these very Algonquin or Delaware Indians, who were
naturally inclined for peace; so also the Dutch. It remained alone for
William Penn and his friends, who believing God’s word implicitly—that
Christ’s law was one of love, not of violence—came in the guise of
peace; and through all the numerous records of quaker life in America,
even in the midst of Indian warfare and outrage, not one drop of quaker
blood was shed. To be a Quaker, to possess no “weapon of war,” was to be
safe from Indian danger. Many a beautiful and touching narrative is
related, in the early Friends’ books, of solitary dwellers in the great
woods of Virginia and Maryland, when, on the approach of the Indians,
who had left fire and desolation behind them, “the fierce dogs that
usually kept the place” were cowed into silence, and the pious people,
to use their own phraseology, “not having been free in their minds” to
take in the string which lifted the latch—their only means of
security—lay wakeful, listening to the coming footsteps of the foe, who,
on finding the latch-string trustfully outside the door, “spake a few
Indian words, and went on.”
Once only was the calm of peace disturbed. A rumour passed through the
province, in the year 1688, that 500 Indians were assembled on the
Brandywine to massacre the settlers. On this, Caleb Pusey and five other
Friends presented themselves unarmed before them, to inquire the cause
of this report. “The great God,” said the Quaker, addressing the sachem,
“who made all mankind, extends his love to Indians and English. The
rains and the dews fall alike on the ground of both; the sun shines on
us equally, and we ought to love one another.” “What you say is true,”
returned the red chieftain; “go home, and harvest the corn which God has
given you: we mean you no harm.”
In January, or the First Month, as Friends called it, of 1683, the
ground having been purchased from the Swedes, who had already a church
there, the new city was laid out on a neck of land between the
confluence of the Schuylkill and the Delaware, “a situation,” said
William Penn, “unsurpassed by any of the many places he had seen in the
world.” To the infant city, thus pleasantly situated, the name of
Philadelphia, or the City of Brotherly Love, was given. The streets were
designated from the native groves of chesnut, pine or walnut through
which they ran; and so rapid was the growth of the city, that it
contained eighty houses by the end of the year; and in two years time it
contained 2,500 inhabitants; schools were established, and a
printing-press was at work. In three years it was larger than New York
in half a century. Well might Penn observe, that he might without vanity
say that he had led the greatest colony into America that ever man did
on private credit, and that the most prosperous beginnings which ever
were are to be found among them. Well might he say so; for in 1682
alone, the year in which Philadelphia was founded, twenty-two vessels,
bringing over 2,000 persons, arrived. Many, coming late in the autumn,
took up their temporary abode in caves dug in the river banks to receive
them; and provisions falling short, they were fed, as if by Providence,
by unusual flocks of pigeons and extraordinary “draughts of fishes,”
while the friendly Indians themselves brought them game which they had
hunted.
In March, the second legislative assembly of the province was held in
Philadelphia, though many of the inhabitants as yet lived in hollow
trees. Fifty-four representatives, nine from each of the six counties,
“Swedes, Dutch and quaker preachers,” were appointed to draw up a
charter of liberties which altered and amended the previous laws;
William Penn having liberally announced at the opening of the assembly,
that as regarded the frame of government prepared in England, “they
might amend, alter, or add, and that he was ready to settle such
foundations as might be for their happiness.” This principle of
legislating for the happiness of the people was ever acknowledged by
Penn. To his dying day he declared, even though in this Eden of his
planting many poison growths had sprung up which embittered his life,
that if the people needed anything to make them happier, he would grant
it. The constitution now established was democratic, with the exception
of an hereditary proprietary, whose power, however, was controlled by
the people. As regarded a revenue, he was offered a tax on all exports,
as was the case in Maryland, the revenue of Lord Baltimore being derived
from a tax on tobacco; but this he declined, unwilling to “burden his
colony with taxes.” What a contrast is this to the views taken by the
Lords Culpepper, Arlington and Lovelace! Orphan courts were established
for administering the affairs of deceased persons, and for the
prevention of lawsuits three “peacemakers” were appointed in each
county, thus carrying out the quaker principle of arbitration instead of
action at law. Liberal and upright as was Penn’s conduct as head of a
government, a signal mistake was made by the incompatible union of two
opposing elements, democracy and feudality; Penn’s principles accorded
to his colony the utmost popular liberty, but his circumstances made him
absolute ruler. Hence for ninety years Pennsylvania was distracted with
the jarring of these two discordant elements.
Penn, soon after his arrival in America, visited Lord Baltimore in
Maryland, partly as a visit of friendship, and partly for the
arrangement of boundaries, which from the very first was an intricate
and perplexing question. The defined boundaries, both of Penn’s and
Baltimore’s charter, were inconsistent with each other, more especially
as the number of miles contained in a degree was now altered to
sixty-nine from sixty, by which measurement Baltimore’s grant had been
made. This question was no way adjusted, when Penn, in 1684, having
organised, as he hoped, a satisfactory government, entered into a treaty
of lasting peace with the natives, and seen his city and his colony
flourishing in unexampled prosperity, returned to England, “intrusting
the great seal to his friend Lloyd, one of the principal quaker
settlers, and the executive power to a committee of the council.”
As yet not a cloud dimmed the social or civil horizon of Pennsylvania;
and leaving his mansion of Pennsbury, “the sweet quiet” of which seems
to have been delicious to his soul, he thus wrote, on board, a farewell
to the people of his land of promise, which he sent to them before he
sailed:—“My love and my life,” said he, “are to you and with you, and no
water can quench it, nor distance bring it to an end. I have been with
you, cared for you, and served you with unfeigned love; and you are
beloved of me and dear to me beyond utterance. I bless you in the name
and power of the Lord, and may God bless you with his righteousness,
peace and plenty all the land over! You are come to a quiet land,”
continued he, “and liberty and authority are in your hands. Rule for Him
under whom the princes of this world will one day esteem it their honour
to govern.” Then, addressing the city which he had planted, he breaks
forth like an apostle to one of the churches: “And thou Philadelphia,
the virgin settlement of this province, my soul prays to God for thee
that thou mayst stand in the day of trial, and that thy children may be
blessed.”
William Penn reached London in October, 1684, after an absence of two
years; and the hot dispute between himself and Lord Baltimore, regarding
boundaries, was submitted to a Committee of Trade and Plantations, by
which it was decided that the so-called Territories, now constituting
the state of Delaware, and which Lord Baltimore claimed, formed no part
of Maryland. They were therefore once more formally assigned to Penn, to
whom was thus secured that outlet to the ocean which he so much coveted.
The northern line of boundary was settled the following year, and that
again to the disadvantage of Baltimore.
When the Duke of York ascended the throne as James II., Penn used his
influence with him to obtain general liberty of conscience; and through
his means 1,200 Quakers alone were liberated from imprisonment for
conscience-sake. Nor did his own people only claim his interposition of
mercy; it was suffering humanity for which he appealed, and so widely
extended was the reputation of his philanthropy and power, that all the
oppressed thronged to him for aid; even Massachusetts, just then in the
agony of losing her charter, sent to the head of “the abominable sect of
Quakers” to beseech his interference on their behalf with the king. And
though he could not save the chartered liberties of the other
sister-states, yet so great was the esteem with which the monarch
regarded him, that Pennsylvania was the only one against whose charter a
_quo warranto_ was not issued.
[Illustration: PENN’S DEPARTURE.]
It has been endeavoured to throw obloquy on Penn’s name from his
political connexion with James II.; but as the tree must be known by its
fruits, Penn’s reputation may safely be left to the test of his works.
He founded a state based on the most liberal principles; self-exaltation
or self-aggrandisement never formed a part of his plan; and the
soundness of his legislative wisdom is shown by the fundamental
principles of his government remaining to be those of Pennsylvania to
the present time. Penn’s happiness in his province was, like all human
happiness, of a very mixed character. Discontents and heart-burnings
arose; a democratic assembly warred against a feudal proprietary, each
wronging the other, because they were brought into unnatural
juxtaposition. Besides the anxieties arising from the dissatisfied
condition of a province which he had established with so much care and
hope, Penn was harassed by embarrassed circumstances. Nobly refusing a
revenue from his state, he was imprisoned for debt in his advancing
years; and, to add still further to his distress, when his friend James
II. was deposed, and an exile in France, he was imprisoned on an
unsupported charge of keeping up a treasonable correspondence with him.
In 1692, the government of Pennsylvania was taken from him, and placed
in the hands of Fletcher, governor of New York. Two years afterwards,
the suspicions against him being removed, he was restored to his
rights—“the Territories,” or three lower counties on the Delaware, which
in 1691 had withdrawn from their connexion with Pennsylvania and been
indulged with a deputy-governor by Penn, now becoming once more a
portion of his jurisdiction, having been reunited to the larger state by
Fletcher, during his governorship.
The only drawback that appears in the character of the philanthropic
legislator of Pennsylvania, is at the same time so incongruous with the
spirit of his life and actions, that it seems to stand forth in
startling deformity. This refers to negro slaves, whom he held
apparently without much sense of injustice. True, he used his influence
to insure the slave “moral and religious culture, and the rights and
comforts of domestic life,” yet, when he was unsuccessful in so doing,
he continued to hold slaves, as, indeed, did other Friends. The poor
Germans, “the little handful of Friends from the highlands above the
Rhine,” in accordance with the doctrines of George Fox, were the only
body in Pennsylvania who at that time saw clearly that it was not lawful
for Christians to keep slaves. The unlettered Swedes, half a century
before, who settled on the western bank of the Delaware, and now were
numbered among William Penn’s people had, however, early borne their
testimony against slavery. “The Swedes,” said they, arguing from the
sound principle of human nature, “will gain more with a free people,
with wives and children, than by slaves, who labour with reluctance and
soon perish by hard usage.” The simple wisdom of these peasants was, in
this respect, superior to the wisdom of more elevated men whether of
that age or the present.
CHAPTER XXII.
NEW FRANCE.—DISCOVERIES IN THE REGION OF THE GREAT LAKES.
We have already spoken of the early French discoveries in Canada, or New
France, the settlements on the Bay of Fundy and the St. Lawrence, the
founding of Quebec and Montreal, of Champlain’s expeditions southward,
and his discovery of the lake which still bears his name. The English
colonists, from Maine to South Carolina, whom we have seen firmly plant
themselves on the new soil, occupied as yet, comparatively speaking,
merely the sea-coast, and engaged as they were in agriculture and
maritime trade, had little time or inclination for inland exploration.
For three-quarters of a century their knowledge of the interior was
derived from the Indians and from French discoverers.
Besides, as regarded the New England States, the formidable belt of the
Iroquois territory, or the territory of the Five Nations, which formed
their western boundary, effectually prevented them whilst in their
earlier stage from advancing far in that direction. This most powerful
of the Indian confederacies consisted of the five nations of Senecas,
Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas and Mohawks, who occupied a vast extent of
country between the St. Lawrence, Lake Champlain, and the upper waters
of the Hudson, including the great lakes of Ontario and Erie, as far
north as Lake Huron and the Georgian Bay. It was this formidable barrier
which, while it prevented the Dutch from exploring the Hudson to the
north, had already prevented the French from descending the same river,
when Champlain had discovered the heads of the stream.
The French fur-traders on the St. Lawrence and its tributaries were
necessarily brought into connexion with the Indian, but not alone was
this the case with the French trader; the French missionary kept pace
with him, and even went far a-head, and became the great European
explorer of the interior of North America.
We have seen with admiration, the zeal of Eliot and his coadjutors in
Christianising the feeble remains of the Indian tribes in New England;
and George Fox and his friends equally nobly preaching to those of
Maryland, Carolina and Virginia, as to “men and brethren” in whose souls
the Divine Voice had an utterance as well as in their own; we have seen
William Penn legislating for them equally as for the whites, and forming
with them a covenant of peace which has obtained a world-wide
reputation. But the Christian zeal and uprightness of these men was far
surpassed in intensity by the devotedness, the constancy, and the
heroism of the Jesuit missionaries of New France, who in their
earnestness to save the souls of the heathen, died the death of martyrs
and counted their loss great gain in Christ.
Too little is known by general English readers of this affecting portion
of American history, which is unsurpassed by anything we have yet
related.
When, in 1632, Quebec was restored to the French, a hundred associates,
Richelieu, Champlain and various opulent merchants being of the number,
obtained a grant of New France from Louis XIII., the grant including
“the whole basin of the St. Lawrence, and of such other rivers of New
France as flowed into the sea, besides Florida, which was claimed as a
French province by virtue of Coligny’s unsuccessful efforts.” Champlain,
the governor of New France, a man of a religious mind, who had already
declared that the salvation of a soul was worth more than the conquest
of an empire, was the earnest supporter of missionary labours. As
missionaries of New France, he would have selected priests of the
Franciscan or mendicant order, as being “free from ambition;” but he was
overruled, and the mission of converting the heathens of the New World
was intrusted alone to the Jesuits. They had here the monopoly of souls.
Their labours, however, were of the most apostolic character. “They
had,” says Bancroft, “the faults of ascetic superstition, but the
horrors of a Canadian life in the wilderness were resisted with
invincible passive courage and a deep internal tranquillity. The history
of their labours is connected with the origin of every celebrated town
in the annals of French America; not a cape was turned, no a river
entered, but a Jesuit led the way.”
In 1634, two Jesuits, Brebeuf and Daniel, left Quebec in company with a
party of Huron Indians, who inhabited the wild forest regions east of
the lake which bears their name. The journey was one of “three hundred
leagues, now through the wild forest, now ascending the Ottawa, the
great western tributary of the St. Lawrence, an impetuous river,
abounding in falls, where the canoe had to be carried for leagues on the
shoulders.” Thus by day encountering the perils and hardships of a
journey through this savage country, and at night sleeping on the earth,
they at length reached the Manitoulin, or Georgian Bay, the eastern
branch of Lake Huron. On the borders of this lake a mission was soon
established, and a little chapel erected, “built by the aid of the axe,”
and consecrated to St. Joseph, where mass was celebrated and matins and
vespers chanted, and the host administered to the Huron converts, who,
touched by the doctrine of the Saviour, promulgated by these his devoted
ministers, thronged to receive the symbols of divine love. The Christian
villages of St. Louis and St. Ignatius arose in the wilderness, and the
praises of God and Christ resounded in the Huron tongue. For fifteen
years this successful mission was continued, other missionaries being
soon attracted to this field of labour; for we are told by Bancroft,
from, whom we shall freely borrow in this portion of our history, that
“now and then one of these fathers would make a voyage to Quebec in a
canoe, with two or three savages, paddle in hand, exhausted with rowing,
his feet naked, his breviary hanging about his neck, his shirt unwashed,
his cassock half-torn off his lean body, but with a face full of
content, charmed with the life which he led, and inspiring by his air
and by his words a strong desire to join him in his mission.”
Jean de Brebeuf, the Huron missionary, was an ecstatic in his sufferings
and devotions. Not satisfied with the toil and subjection of his body
consequent on his arduous labours, he subjected himself to the rigours
of penance and self-mortification, and was rewarded with beatific
visions which exalted his pious raptures into ecstacy,—“What shall I
render to thee, Jesus, my Lord, for all thy benefits? I will accept thy
cup and invoke thy name!” exclaimed he, and registered a vow before God
and the host of heaven, before St. Joseph and other saints, “never to
shrink from martyrdom for Christ’s sake, but to receive the death-blow
only with joy!”
The life of Brebeuf in the wilderness was like an unceasing hymn. Now he
was instructing his youthful neophytes, who regarded him with a
reverential love; now he was passing slowly through the village and the
neighbouring forest, ringing a bell as the signal for older converts or
inquirers to assemble for a religious conference; and so great was his
influence on the minds of the sages and warriors of the forest, that he
won, not only their listening ear, but inspired many of them with a
profound friendship for him. Of this class was the great warrior
Ahasistari, whose mind was of a singularly high character. It was thus
that he acknowledged his faith in Jesus, whom, unconsciously, he had
long worshipped: “Before you came,” said he, “into this country, when I
have been in the greatest perils, and have alone escaped, I have said to
myself, some powerful spirit has the guardianship of my days.”
Ahasistari was baptized, and with a zeal kindred to that of his
spiritual father and friend, exclaimed, addressing a number of other
converts, “Let us strive to make the whole world embrace the faith in
Jesus.”
These missionary labours being crowned with success, a central station
was fixed at St. Mary’s on the Matchedash, the river which connects the
Toronto and Huron lakes, and “here three thousand Indian converts
received in one year a frugal welcome.”
These joyful tidings awoke an enthusiasm in France on its behalf; the
king, the queen, the princesses, the very pope himself, vied in their
evidence of favour. Young nobles, renouncing the pleasures of the world,
joined the missionary corps and devoted their revenues to its service.
Thus “was a Jesuit college and school for Indian children established at
Quebec, about the time that the Puritan College of Cambridge was
established in Massachusetts: thus did the niece of Cardinal Richelieu
endow a public hospital open to all mankind, in which young nuns from
the hospital of Dieppe were sent over: thus was an Ursuline convent for
the education of girls founded by a young and wealthy widow of Alençon,
who went with three nuns to Quebec for this purpose, and who, kissing
the soil of their adopted country as they landed, were received by the
governor and Indians shouting for joy of their welcome, whence they were
escorted to the church with chanted _Te Deums_.
Missionary labours having now acquired a national importance, Montreal
was converted, with many religious ceremonies, into the head-quarters of
the Christianised Indians, intended to form a post of communication
between Quebec and Lake Huron. Champlain, the governor, being now dead,
was succeeded by M. de Montmagny. There were at this time upwards of
fifty missionaries employed; twice or thrice a year they assembled at
St. Mary’s, the rest of the time they were scattered among the Indians.
These adventurous men not only carried the gospel of Christ into the
wilderness, and to the hitherto unknown inhabitants on the banks of vast
lakes and rivers, but every year extended the geographical knowledge of
the interior.
Within very few years after the commencement of these labours, a scheme
was formed to carry the gospel to the south of Lake Huron, to Lake
Michigan and Green Bay, thus advancing into the immense regions of the
north-west and west. Views, as it were, were opened up into the remote
wilderness, by the occasional visits at some missionary outpost of
Indians from remote nations, who reported of distant rivers and regions
where as yet the white man was unknown. Thus came a chief from the
head-waters of the Ohio, and others from the wandering Algonquins. The
French had as yet been kept from the Lakes Erie and Ontario, and the
more southern waters of the St. Lawrence, by the determined hostility of
the Mohawks, so that their access to the west was by the river Ottawa;
although Brebeuf had visited the neutral tribes about Niagara.
In 1641, Charles Raymbault and Claude Pijart appeared as missionaries
among the Algonquins of Lake Nipissing. It was towards the close of
summer when the Jesuits arrived, and the great festival of the dead was
about to be celebrated by these wandering tribes. To this ceremony all
the confederated nations assembled, their canoes covering the waters of
the lake as they advanced towards a bay on the shores of which the
ceremony was to take place. As the boats approached, they were received
with shouts which echoed among the rocks. Beneath a long shed lay the
bones of the dead in coffins of bark, incased in rich furs; all night
long the mourning-song of the war-chiefs was chanted, accompanied by the
wailing of the women. When these savage but mournful ceremonies were
ended, the Jesuits made known their wish of penetrating the more distant
wilderness, and conveying thither the light of a new and milder
religion, and by their presents and gentle words so won upon the
savages, that an invitation was given to visit the nation of the
Chippewas below the falls of St. Mary.
The invitation was gladly accepted, and Charles Raymbault, with Isaac
Jogues as his companion, set out on this long and arduous journey. After
crossing Lake Huron, which occupied seventeen days, they arrived at the
straits which connect it with Lake Superior, where two thousand persons
were met to receive them. Making known, on their part, the religion of
Christ, they heard of Indian nations eighteen days’ journey still
further to the west—the far-famed Sioux—with fixed abodes, and who
cultivated maize and tobacco, but whose race and language were unknown.
The chiefs of the Chippewas received the envoys of Christianity with
kindness, and invited them to remain. Raymbault, after languishing a
year in consumption, returned to Quebec to die. Jogues was ascending the
St. Lawrence with Ahasistari and other Huron chiefs, when a war-party of
Mohawks, enemies alike to the French and the Hurons, lying in wait for
them, attacked them as they approached the shore to land. Jogues might
have escaped, but he would not desert his companions, some of whom were
unbaptized converts. The brave and noble-hearted Ahasistari had already
fled to a secure covert, when seeing Jogues in the hands of the enemy,
he came forth, saying, “My brother, I made an oath to thee that I would
share thy fortune, whether life or death; here am I to keep my word.”
The captives were marched away in triumph to the Mohawk country. In
three successive villages Jogues was compelled to run the gauntlet; on
one of which dreadful occasions he rejoiced his soul by “a vision of the
glory of the Queen of Heaven.” Again, when consumed with hunger and
thirst, an ear of Indian corn on the stalk being thrown to him, he found
cause of exultation in the few drops of water contained in the curl of
the leaf, because they sufficed to baptize two captive neophytes! The
brave Ahasistari perished in the flames, having received absolution,
“with all the courage of a Christian martyr and the stoicism of an
Indian chief.” A young Indian convert too, having marked the sign of the
cross on an infant’s brow, was struck with a tomahawk, in the belief
that he was aiming to destroy the child by a charm.
Jogues expected a similar fate, but his life was spared; and roaming
through the forest of the Mohawk, he carved the cross and the name of
Christ on the bark of trees; and advancing thus to the confines of the
Mohawk country, was ransomed by Van Cuyler, the Dutch commandant of
Albany, on the Hudson. To reach Canada again Jogues was obliged to
return to France. He was shipwrecked however, on the English coast near
Falmouth, and falling into hands as merciless as the Iroquois, was
plundered by wreckers even of the clothes from his back. Father
Bressani, another Jesuit—who on his way from the Hurons was taken
captive by the Iroquois, and having seen his companion furnish a
cannibal feast, was stripped and ill-used till his life only was
left—was saved also by the humanity of the Dutch.
In 1645, the French desirous of establishing peace with the Five
Nations, a great assembly took place at Three Rivers, a little above
Montreal, on the St. Lawrence, where were present the French officers in
full uniform and five Indian sachems in all their bravery. Speeches were
made in the figurative style of the Indians, with great professions of
everlasting peace, the Algonquins being a party thereto. “We have
thrown,” said the Mohawk orator, “the hatchet so high in the air, and
beyond the skies, that no arm on earth can reach to bring it down. The
shades of our braves that have fallen in war have gone so deep into the
earth, that they never can be heard calling for revenge.”
Peace being assured, and having been preserved through one winter,
Father Jogues desirous, of establishing a mission among the Five
Nations, and being the only person who understood the language of the
Onondagas, set out as its founder in the month of June. His mind seemed
prophetic of his fate, and his last words to his Christian brethren
were, “_Ibo et non redibo!_” I shall go, but shall never return. And so
it was. Arrived in the Mohawk country, he was taken prisoner, on charge
of having blighted the corn. He met his death with composure; his head
was hung on the palisade of the Indian village, and his body thrown into
the peaceful Mohawk River. Nor did the Jesuits alone satisfy themselves
with penetrating to the east. Gabriel Dreuillettes, accompanied by an
Indian guide, crossed the St. Lawrence to the sources of the Kennebec in
Maine; and descending that river, reached a missionary station of the
Franciscans on the Penobscot, established several years before by
D’Aulney. Leaving these, his Christian brethren, he established himself
in the remoter wilderness, where a chapel was built, and Indian converts
gathered around him.
As regarded their intercourse with the Indians, the versatile French
seemed to acquire much greater influence over these children of the
forest than the stern and uncompromising settlers of New England. The
remarks of the historian Hildreth on this subject deserve attention.
“The French missionaries, better acquainted with human nature and the
philosophy of religion, were more moderate in their demands and more
tender in their treatment. Though themselves enthusiasts of the highest
pitch, they asked not so much of their converts ecstacies and
metaphysics as admiring reverence and ceremonial observances, which ever
constitute the religion of the multitude. Themselves in the highest
degree self-denying and ascetic, surpassing in this respect even their
puritan rivals, they yet looked with fatherly indulgence on the human
weaknesses and easily-besetting sins of their converts. These converts
were admitted to all the privileges of French subjects; intermarriages
became frequent—for prejudices of caste were much less strong on the
part of the French than of the English—and thence resulted a mixed race;
the Canadian couriers of the woods, boatmen and woodsmen, combining the
hardihood and activity of the Indian, with the more docile, manageable
and persevering temper of the French. There were dozens of Jesuit
missionaries employed in New France, not less zealous than Eliot, and
far more enterprising, whose travels and adventures show religious
influences and theocratic ideas not less operative in the first
exploration of the distant West, than in the original settlement of New
England.”
After the display of Iroquois ferocity, and the murder of Jogues, of
which that seemed the signal, war was resumed. The proud Iroquois
determined on the destruction or dispersion of the Hurons and Wyandots,
and the missionaries labouring among these nations shared their fate. On
the morning of July 4, 1648, the village of St. Joseph, in the absence
of the Indians, who were on the chase, and when only women and children
remained, was surprised by a war-party of Mohawks. The village was
fired, and the remorseless tomahawk began its bloody work. The terrified
women and children flocked round the missionary, Father Daniel, who
seeing the destruction which was at hand, hastened through the village,
speaking words of Christian comfort and baptizing the dying. When the
enemy advanced to the chapel, the calm, devoted preacher stood before
them to oppose their entrance of the sacred building. For a moment they
were awe-stricken, and paused as if to retire; the next they discharged
against him a shower of arrows. Bleeding from many wounds, he lifted up
his hands and voice, and overpowering the yells of the savages by his
words of pity and forgiveness, he received finally his death-blow from a
hatchet. The following winter, in the dead of night, a thousand Iroquois
warriors attacked the village of St. Ignatius and murdered its four
hundred inhabitants; the same fate befell St. Louis, in which dwelt the
missionaries Brebeuf and Lallemand. Both could have escaped, but that
their Christian zeal and love forbade them to desert converts who might
need baptism in the hour of death. Faithful to the last, these servants
of Christ, having spent their lives in works of love, died as martyrs.
Brebeuf for three hours, and Lallemand for seventeen, were subjected to
the direst Indian tortures, the stoic Indians themselves beholding with
amazement the firmness of their victims. Wonderful was the Christian
heroism of these missionaries. The history of man hardly contains any
greater. Charlevoix says truly, writing of these men, “The Lord
communicates himself without measure to those who sacrifice themselves
without reserve.” And, speaking of them personally, he adds, “I myself
knew some of them in my youth, and I found them such as I have painted
them, bending under the labour of a long apostleship, with bodies
exhausted by fatigues and broken with age, but still preserving all the
vigour of the apostolic spirit.”
It had been the desire of the missionaries, after this Huron calamity,
to have collected the scattered remains of the nation on the Grand
Manitoulin Isle, in Lake Huron. But it was not accomplished. The Huron
nation was never again to be collected, and the station on the
Manitoulin was abandoned.
The pride of the Iroquois increased with their successes, even as the
zeal of the missionaries grew with their sufferings, and the conversion
of the formidable Five Nations became now the object of their desire;
but this object was too vast even for their accomplishment. The
Iroquois, possessed of fire-arms obtained from the Dutch, now also their
partisans, resolved on the extermination of the French, and their
war-parties triumphed at Three Rivers and advanced to Quebec, killing
the governor at the one place, and a priest at the other. “No frightful
solitude of the wilderness,” says Bancroft, “no impenetrable recess of
the frozen north, was safe against the passions of the Five Nations.
Their chiefs, animated not only by cruelty but by pride, were resolved
that no nation should role but themselves.”
In this state of terrible alarm, beset by enemies as powerful as they
were remorseless, New France despatched one of her council and Father
Dreuillettes, the missionary of the north-east, to ask aid from the
united colonies of New England against the Mohawks; but “the story of
their sufferings, and their murdered missionaries, were listened to with
indifference: no aid could be obtained from that quarter.” Nothing was
left for them but to suffer or to help themselves, and after they had
remained for about three years in this state of constant alarm, the
Iroquois consented to peace.
According to Indian custom, numbers of the vanquished Hurons had been
adopted into the nation and families of the conquerors; and many of
these carried thus with them into the bosom of the Five Nations,
affection for the French, and some knowledge of Christianity; and when
Father Le Moyne was sent as envoy to ratify the treaty of peace, he was
welcomed by a party of his old Huron friends. This circumstance awoke in
his soul the hope that those mighty nations might be converted to
Christianity, and the whole west become subject to France. A vaster
field was now open for missionary labour than before. Le Moyne
established himself on Mohawk River, and two others, Dablon and
Chaumonot, an Italian priest and an old missionary among the Hurons,
took up their quarters at Onondaga, the village of that nation, where
they were warmly welcomed. They were welcomed also by the Oneidas. A
grand assembly of the nations gathered, “under the open sky and among
the primeval forests,” to receive the emissaries of Christ. Chaumonot
addressed them with all the fervour and impassioned eloquence of an
Italian orator, and his Indian audience were transported out of
themselves. “Happy land!” sang the excited chiefs, “happy land, in which
the French are to dwell! Glad tidings! glad tidings! It is well that we
have spoken together; it is well that we have a heavenly message!”
A chapel sprang, as it were, instantly into being, for the enthusiasm of
the Indians finished it in a day; and the services of the Romish Church
were chanted in the Mohawk tongue. Christianity was thus planted among
the Onondagas, who dwelling on the banks of the Oswego, which was
included within the charter of the Hundred Associates, was claimed as a
part of the French empire. Chaumonot made his way to “the more fertile
and densely-peopled land” of the Senecas, the most powerful tribe of the
confederacy, while René Mesnard was reserved as a missionary by the
Cayugas, and a chapel erected in their village, the interior of which
was hung with mats, on which were displayed pictures of the Virgin and
the Infant Saviour which attracted the admiring gaze of the converts.
While Christian missions were thus established throughout the other
nations, the chapel of the Onondagas becoming too small for its
increasing worshippers, was enlarged, and for a moment it seemed as if
the religion of peace had taken root in the blood-stained soil of the
Five Nations. At the close of 1657, Jesuit priests published their faith
from the Mohawk to the Genesee, Onondaga remaining the central station.
A little colony of fifty Frenchman was also established on the
Oswego.[9]
But neither settlements nor missionary labours could change the nature
of the inveterate savage. A war of extermination was carried on by them
against their neighbours, the Eries; and the tortures of the captives,
even women and children, which were brought to the villages, called
forth protests from the missionaries. These excited the displeasure of
the Indians, and three Frenchmen were murdered. In vain was aid
solicited from Canada; the growing ill-will of the Onondagas compelled
the missionaries to abandon their chapel and the colonists their
settlement. The Mohawks obliged Le Moyne to depart; and the following
year war again broke out with the Five Nations.
The same year the first bishop of New France, the able Montigny, arrived
at Quebec, and the island of Montreal having been granted in fief to the
Seminary of St. Sulpice, at Paris, a deputation of monks came over, and
the foundation of the present city was laid, by the establishment of a
hospital, to serve in which religious women came from France. “To the
unassisted energy of Margeurite Bourgeoise,” says Hildreth, “the
institution of the Daughters of the Congregation owes its origin. With
no other resource than her courage and her confidence in God, she
undertook the establishment of a convent at Montreal, to secure to all
female children, however poor and destitute, a useful and respectable
education. The whole island of Montreal, in fact, resembled a religious
community.”
The puritanic rigidity of life in New England was equalled by that of
catholic Montreal. As a picture of the manners of those days in that
religious city, we may give the description of La Hontan:—“We have here
a misanthropical bigot of a curé, under whose spiritual despotism play
and visiting the ladies are reckoned among the deadly sins. If you have
the misfortune to be on his black list, he launches at you publicly from
the pulpit. In order to keep well with Messieurs the priests of St.
Sulpice, our temporal lords, it is necessary to communicate once a
month. No one dare be absent from great masses and sermons. These
Arguses have their eyes constantly on the conduct of the women and the
girls. Fathers and husbands may sleep in all assurance, unless they have
suspicion of these vigilant sentinels themselves. Of all the vexation of
these disturbers, I find none so intolerable as their war upon books.
None are to be found here but books of devotion. All others are
prohibited and condemned to the flames.”
While civilisation was labouring to establish itself in the north, the
adventurous Jesuits had penetrated to the far west. In 1656, two young
fur-traders returned to St. Louis, after a two years’ travel of 500
leagues, bringing back with them a great number of Ottawas. They related
wonderful and exciting histories of vast lakes in the west, and numerous
tribes of Indians, as yet unknown to the white man. New fields were
opened for commerce and missionary labours.
Gabriel Dreuillettes, formerly missionary in Maine, and Louis Gareau, an
old Huron missionary, were deputed to this service, and accompanied by
the Ottawas, returned with them in their canoes. But the Mohawks,
enemies of the Ottawas, attacked the little fleet and Gareau was killed.
In 1660, two other fur-traders, who had passed the winter on the banks
of Lake Superior, returned to Quebec, again escorted by a great number
of canoes rowed by Algonquins and laden with peltry. The Mohawks and
their confederate nations had carried on a war of extermination against
the Eries, and were now advancing against other nations lying more to
the south and west. The Algonquins, therefore, besought an alliance with
the French against these powerful enemies.
Again the missionary enthusiasm was excited; the very bishop of Quebec
himself was eager to undertake the enterprise; but the decision being by
lot, René Mesnard, late missionary among the Cayugus, was chosen. He was
already advanced in years, and experienced in missionary service. “I
go,” said he, “trusting in Providence, who feeds the little birds of the
desert and clothes the wild flowers of the forest.” “In three or four
months,” wrote he to a friend, “you may add me to the memento of
deaths.” In the autumn he reached the southern shore of Lake Superior,
and the following year, being on his way to the Bay of Chegoimegon, on
the western extremity of that great lake, he lost his way in the forest
and never more was seen; his cassock and breviary being kept for long
years afterwards as amulets among the Sioux.
Again the Mohawks made war on the French, and Montreal was in danger;
the abandonment of the country was even thought of and might have been
carried out, but that Colbert, the minister of the young Louis XIV., who
had just come to the throne, estimating at its true value the commercial
relationship of France with the Canadian colony, was the means of its
being transferred to a new West India company, the original company of
New France having resigned its rights to the sovereign. Under this new
management, “a royal regiment, under the indefatigable Tracy as viceroy,
was sent over for its defence; Courcelles, a veteran soldier, was
appointed governor, and Talon, a man of business and integrity, as royal
representative in civil affairs. Every omen was favourable, save the
conquest of New Netherlands by the English, which took place at this
time, and which circumstance, in a quarter of a century, made the
hunting-fields of the Iroquois the battle-grounds of these two European
rivals.”
Under the better prospects which the change of administration introduced
into New France, Father Allouez, nothing daunted by the cruel fate of
Gareau and Mesnard, set out on a mission to the remote west. His journey
commenced in August, 1665, and early in September he entered the great
lake, reverenced by the Indians as a divinity, “and sailing along the
lofty banks and pictured rocks of its southern shore, passed beyond the
Bay of Keweena, obtaining knowledge of those copper mines known
immemorially to the Indians, and for which that region is now
celebrated, and so arrived at Chegoimegon, where landing, he celebrated
mass and inscribing the cross on a lofty tree of the forest, claimed the
country for the Christian king of France.”
The great village of the Chippewas was situated on Chegoimegon Bay, and
at the moment of Allouez’ arrival a grand council of ten or twelve
nations had assembled there to prevent war between the Chippewas and the
Sioux. Into this assembly advanced the fearless missionary, and in the
names of Christ and of the monarch of France commanded peace; offering
to them the advantage of commerce, and protection from the French
against their common enemy the Iroquois.
These Indians who had never before seen a white man, listened to him
with reverence. A chapel soon sprung up there, and the services were
chanted in a new tongue. At this mission of St. Esprit, more than twenty
different nations listened to the teacher. Hither came scattered
remnants of the Hurons and Ottawas; hither came the Potawatamies,
worshippers of the sun, who invited Allouez to their homes still further
westward; hither came the Sacs and Foxes, hunters of the deer, the
beaver and the buffalo; hither came the Illinois and the impassive
Sioux, whose food was wild rice, and who used skins of beasts instead of
bark to roof their cabins, and who excited the missionary’s curiosity by
the accounts they gave of the mighty Mesipi, on which they dwelt, and
which flowed to the south; forests they had not, but vast prairies where
herds of deer and buffalo grazed on the tall grasses. “They told him of
their mysterious peace-pipe, and of the welcome which they gave to
strangers;” and Allouez, as he listened, exclaimed, “Their country is
the best field for the gospel.”
After a residence here of two years, Allouez returned to Quebec, and
there exciting an enthusiasm equal to his own, he, already on the third
day after his return, in company with Louis Nicolas, another missionary,
was on his way back to Chegoimegon.
CHAPTER XXIII.
NEW FRANCE (_continued_). DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
The zeal of the Jesuit missionaries received a fresh stimulant, not only
from the opening of this new field of labour, but from the introduction
by Talon of a number of Franciscan friars, who thus broke up the Jesuit
monopoly, and gave rise to a spirit of rival piety. No time was lost in
occupying the ground made known by Allouez. Claude Dablon and James
Marquette soon followed him, and the mission of St. Mary’s, on the falls
between the Lakes Superior and Huron, was established.
“The peninsula between Lake Superior and Green Bay was soon explored.
Milwaukie, Chicago and St. Joseph’s were visited, and missions planted
among the tribes on Lake Michigan.” For several years this indefatigable
triumvirate of missionaries laboured at the work of christianising the
Indian and exploring the country. The design of navigating “the Great
River,” of which they continued to hear reports, originated with
Marquette in 1669, and the interval which occurred between that time and
its accomplishment was employed by him in acquiring some knowledge of
the Illinois language.
At length Talon, seconding Colbert’s views of extending the empire of
France and the sphere of Jesuit missions, deputed Marquette to the
welcome business of exploration. Before he set out, however, he had
collected the scattered remains of one branch of the Hurons at the Point
of St. Ignatius, on the northern shore of the peninsula of Michigan,
where a chapel was built and a mission established. This settlement was
long maintained “as a key to the west, and a convenient rendezvous of
the remote Algonquins, to whom the French gave protection; and Marquette
thus gained a place also as one of the founders of Michigan.”[10]
While Marquette was thus occupied, Allouez and Dablon explored Eastern
Wisconsin and the north of Illinois, preaching the religion of the cross
among the Mascoutins, Kickapoos and Miamis. Allouez alone extended his
pilgrimage among the tribes of the Fox Indians who inhabit the region
around the river of that name.
The Potawatomies, among whom Marquette dwelt, heard with amaze of his
intended exploration of the “Great River,” or the “Father of Rivers,” as
it was also poetically called, and used their utmost efforts to
discourage him. “Those distant, nations,” they told him, “never spared
the stranger; their mutual wars filled their borders with bands of
warriors; besides which the Great River abounded in monsters, which
devoured both men and canoes; while the excessive heats caused death.”
Marquette was not discouraged; “I shall gladly lay down my life for the
salvation of souls,” said he.
Marquette, accompanied by Joliet a trader of Quebec, five other
Frenchmen and two Algonquin guides, paddled up Green Bay in birch-bark
canoes; then ascending Fox River crossed the portage to the Wisconsin,
where in a beautiful region dwelt the friendly Kickapoos, Mascoutins and
Miamis, to whom Allouez had preached with success. A council of the old
men was called to receive the strangers; and the two guides left them,
from fear of the Sioux and the fabulous terrors of the region into which
they were venturing.
And now, on the tenth of June, 1673, Marquette, Joliet and their French
companions, being, as Marquette himself says, “left alone, in this
unknown land, in the hands of Providence,” embarked on the Wisconsin,
and sailed “between alternate prairies and hill-sides, without seeing a
single Indian; and for the first time beholding herds of buffalo, the
lowings of which and the splash of their oars, were the only sounds
which broke the silence of the primeval wilderness. Thus proceeded they
for seven days, when they happily entered the Great River, with a joy
that cannot be expressed.” So far the object of their mission was
accomplished. And now the two birch-bark canoes, raising their sails,
floated down the magnificent river unconscious into what regions it
would lead them.
But we will take the eloquent and picturesque Bancroft as our guide—we
cannot take a better:—“They floated down the calm magnificence of the
ocean-stream, over the broad clear sand-bars—the resort of innumerable
water-fowl—gliding past islets that swelled from the bosom of the
streams, with their tufts of massive thickets, and between the wide
plains of Illinois and Iowa, garlanded with majestic forests, or
chequered by island groves and the open vastness of the prairie.
“About sixty leagues below the mouth of the Wisconsin, they perceived on
the western bank of the Mississippi the trail of men; and, leaving the
canoes, Joliet and Marquette resolved alone to brave a meeting with the
savages. After walking about six miles over beautiful prairie, they
beheld one village on the banks of a river and two others on a distant
slope. This river was the Moingona, now corrupted into Des Moines.
Marquette and Joliet were the first white men who trod the soil of Iowa.
Commending themselves to God, they raised a shout, on which four old men
advanced slowly to meet them, bearing the peace-pipe, brilliant with
many-coloured plumes. ‘We are Illinois,’ said they—that is, when
translated, ‘We are men!’—and they offered the calumet. An aged chief
received the strangers with great joy at his cabin, and the whole
village gazed on them with friendly astonishment.
“At a great council Marquette published to them the One true God, their
Creator. He spoke, also, of the great captain of the French, the
governor of Canada, who had chastised the Five Nations, and commanded
peace; and he questioned them of the Mississippi and the tribes which
possessed its banks. A magnificent feast of hominy, fish and the
choicest viands from the prairies, was prepared for the messengers, who
announced the subjection of the hated Iroquois.
“After a delay of six days, the chieftain of the tribe and hundreds of
warriors attended the strangers to their canoes. A peace-pipe,
embellished with brilliant feathers—the mysterious arbiter of peace and
war, the safeguard among the nations—was hung around Marquette as a
parting gift.
“The little group proceeded down the river. They passed the
perpendicular rocks which wore the appearance of monsters; they heard at
a distance the noise of the waters of the Mississippi, known to them by
its Algonquin name of Pekitanoni; and when they came to the most
beautiful confluence of rivers in the world, where the swifter Missouri
rushes like a conqueror into the calmer Mississippi, dragging it, as it
were, hastily to the sea, the good Marquette resolved in his heart one
day to ascend the mighty river to its source, and then, descending a
westerly flowing stream, to publish the gospel to all the people of this
New World.
“In a little less than forty leagues, the canoes floated past the
confluence of the Ohio, then called the Wabash. Its banks were tenanted
by the peaceful Shawanees, who had quailed under the incursions of the
Iroquois.
“The thick canes now began to appear so close and strong that the
buffalo could not break through them; the insects became intolerable,
and as a shelter against the sun of July, the sails were folded into an
awning. They had now left the region of prairies, and forests of
whitewood, admirable for their vastness and height, crowded even the
skirts of the pebbly shore. It was also observed, that in the land of
the Arkansas the Indians had guns.
“Near the latitude of thirty-three degrees, on the western bank of the
Mississippi, stood the village of Mitchigamea, in a region which had not
been visited by Europeans since the days of De Soto. ‘Now,’ thought
Marquette, ‘we must indeed ask the aid of the Virgin.’ Armed with bows
and arrows, with clubs, axes and bucklers, amid continual whoops, the
natives, bent on war, came to meet them in vast canoes made out of
hollow trees; but at sight of the mysterious peace-pipe held aloft, God
touched the hearts of the old men, who checked the impetuosity of the
young, and throwing their bows and quivers into the canoes, as a token
of peace, prepared a hospitable welcome.
“The next day, a long wooden canoe, containing ten men, escorted the
discoverers for eight or ten leagues, to the village of Arkansea, the
limit of their voyage. They had left the region of the Algonquins, and
could now only speak by an interpreter. Half a league above Arkansea,
they were met by two boats, in one of which stood the commander, holding
in his hand the peace-pipe and singing as he drew near. After offering
the pipe, he gave bread of maize. The wealth, of his tribe consisted in
buffalo skins; their weapons were axes of steel, a proof of commerce
with Europeans.
“Thus had our travellers descended below the entrance of the Arkansas to
the genial climes which have scarcely any winter but rains; and so,
having spoken of God, and the mysteries of the Catholic faith; having
become certain that the Father of Rivers went not to the ocean east of
Florida, nor yet to the Gulf of California, Marquette and Joliet left
Arkansea, and ascended the Mississippi.
“At the thirty-eighth degree of latitude they entered the river
Illinois, and discovered a country without its parallel for the
fertility of its beautiful prairies, covered with buffaloes and
stags—for the loveliness of its rivulets and the prodigal abundance of
wild ducks and swans, and of parrots and wild turkeys. The tribe of
Illinois that tenanted its banks entreated Marquette to come and reside
among them. One of their chiefs, with their young men, conducted the
party, by way of Chicago, to Lake Michigan, and before the end of
September all were safe in Green Bay.
“Joliet returned to Quebec to announce the discovery, of which the fame,
through Talon, quickened the ambition of Colbert. The unaspiring
Marquette remained to preach the gospel to the Miamis, who dwelt in the
north of Illinois, round Chicago. Two years afterwards, sailing from
Chicago to Mackinaw, he entered a little river in Michigan. Erecting an
altar, he said mass according to the rites of the Catholic church, after
which he begged the men who conducted his canoe to leave him alone for
half an hour. At the end of that time they went to seek him, but he was
no more. The good missionary had fallen asleep on the margin of the
stream that bears his name. Near its mouth, the canoe-men dug his grave
in the sand. Ever after, the forest rangers, if in danger on Lake
Michigan, would invoke his name. The people of the West will build his
monument.”
A modern traveller[11] remarks, with great truth and beauty, of the
Mississippi, that the history of its discovery has two epochs, and each
a romance, the one as different to the other as day and night—the one a
sun-bright idyll, the other a gloomy tragedy. The first belongs to the
northern district, the second to the southern; the former has for its
hero the mild pastor, Father Marquette, the other the Spanish soldier,
Ferdinand de Soto.
Joliet, returning from the West, stopped at Frontenac, now Kingston, an
outpost on Lake Ontario, of which the young Robert Cavalier la Salle was
governor. La Salle, himself of a bold and adventurous turn of mind, had
occupied his solitary leisure in reading the voyages of Columbus and the
adventures of De Soto, and a traveller such as Joliet would not fail of
being welcome. Of a good family in France, and educated a Jesuit, though
he had afterwards been absolved from his vows, he had come over to
Canada in the year 1667, and enjoying the favour of Talon and
Courcelles, had explored Lakes Ontario and Erie. In 1675—when, on the
dissolution of the West India Company, New France had reverted to the
crown, La Salle hastened to his native land and obtained from the
monarch the grant of Fort Frontenac, on condition of maintaining the
fortress. This grant gave him in fact the exclusive traffic with the
Five Nations. La Salle’s settlement here occurred about the time of the
war with King Philip in New England and Bacon’s rebellion in Virginia.
From Joliet, who was well entertained at Frontenac, La Salle heard of
the discovery of the Mississippi; and at once conceiving vast plans for
the colonisation of the south-west, he again hastened to France and
obtained a royal commission for the perfecting the discovery of the
Mississippi, together with the monopoly of the trade in buffalo hides.
The purpose of this visit accomplished, La Salle lost no time in
returning to America, provided with men and abundant stores, and
accompanied by Chevalier Tonti, an Italian soldier, as his lieutenant.
It was autumn when he returned; and before winter, he had built a wooden
canoe of ten tons, the first that ever sailed into Niagara River, and
thus conveyed part of his company to Tonawanta Creek, not far from the
falls at the foot of Lake Erie, a spot which he had selected for the
purpose, and here he commenced building a sailing-vessel of sixty tons
burden, which he called “The Griffin.” While the ship was building, a
trading house was established at Niagara, where La Salle collected furs
from the Indian traders; and Tonti and the Franciscan Father Hennepin,
who was attached to the enterprise, ventured among the Senecas, with
whom they formed amicable relationships.
On August 7th, 1679, amid a salvo of cannon, the chanting of the _Te
Deum_, and the astonishment of the assembled Indians, “The Griffin” was
launched, the first civilised vessel that ever ploughed the waters of
Lake Erie. She bore La Salle, Tonti, and Hennepin, besides sailors,
boatmen, hunters and soldiers, amounting in all to sixty persons.
Leaving Lake Erie, they entered the strait “Detroit,” at the head of the
lake, and passing through a little lake which they called St. Clair,
entered Lake Huron by a second strait, and navigating that inland sea,
reached Lake Michigan by the Straits of Mackinaw, where La Salle planted
a colony, and thence, after a voyage of twenty days, to Green Bay, thus
being the first to traverse that which is now a great highway of
commerce. From this point, after despatching his vessel back to Niagara,
with a valuable cargo of furs, ordering her to return immediately to the
head of Lake Michigan with provisions and supplies, he and his company
repaired in birch-bark canoes to the appointed place of rendezvous,
stopping by the way at the mouth of the St. Joseph, then called the
Miami, where Allouez had already established a Jesuit mission, and here
they built a fort called the Post of the Miamis.
Of the Griffin came no tidings; and weary of waiting, La Salle resolved
to employ himself in exploring the Illinois. Ten men were left to guard
the fort, and La Salle, Hennepin, and the rest, it now being the depth
of winter, penetrated to the banks of Lake Peoria, where was an Indian
village. Four days’ journey below Lake Peoria, they built a second fort,
which, as expressive of their disappointment in receiving no tidings of
the Griffin, and the general depression, was called _Crevecœur_.
The circumstances of La Salle “were such as either to sink the spirit
into despair, or to call forth untried energy and courage, according to
the character of the soul; La Salle’s was of the heroic class. He
resolved therefore, now that no tidings could be expected of the
Griffin, which in fact had perished with all its valuable cargo of furs,
to proceed himself alone, to hasten or obtain the necessary supplies, to
Fort Frontenac; having first however, despatched Hennepin to explore the
Upper Mississippi, in a canoe which his courage and example had inspired
his men to build.
In the month of March, with his gun and powder and shot, a blanket, and
two skins to cut into moccassins, La Salle, with only three attendants,
set off on foot, Tonti remaining at the Illinois fort with the main
body.
When La Salle, after an arduous journey, in which he encountered untold
hardships, arrived at Fort Frontenac, he found that owing to a report of
his death, his creditors had seized his property, which however was
restored to him by help of the governor, and he was enabled to pursue
his enterprise.
During his absence Hennepin, bearing the calumet or pipe of peace, and
with two companions, followed the Illinois to the Mississippi, ascending
which he advanced as far as the falls of St. Anthony, which he thus
named in honour of his patron saint. He spent the summer in excursions
through the surrounding country, and after a short captivity among the
Sioux, returned by the Wisconsin and Fox rivers to Green Bay, whence
proceeding to Quebec, he went to France, and, in 1682, published an
account of his travels, stating incorrectly that he had discovered the
sources of the Mississippi.
Tonti, in the meantime, who was left at Rock Fort or the Post of the
Miamis, near the Illinois village, encountered many disasters. The men
left at Crevecœur deserted, and the Iroquois, enemies alike of the
Illinois and La Salle, descended the river, and compelled Tonti and the
few who remained with him, with the exception of an aged Franciscan,
Gabriel de la Ribourd, to flee to Lake Michigan, where they were kindly
received by the Potawatomies. La Salle, on his return therefore the
following year, with men and stores, and rigging for a new vessel, had
the mortification and grief of finding the two forts abandoned.
Distressed but not disheartened, the brave adventurer set about to
retrieve his fortunes; and having built another fort on the Illinois,
which he called St. Louis, set out to find Tonti and his men, in which
having succeeded, they all returned to the Illinois. The following
winter was actively employed in building a second vessel, in which,
early in the following year, 1682, he descended the Illinois, and
entering upon the waters of “the Father of Rivers,” was once more on the
career of successful achievement. The voyage was happy and prosperous,
interrupted only to plant a cabin on the first Chickasa bluff, to raise
the cross by the Arkansas, or to plant the arms of France near the Gulf
of Mexico. The country was formally claimed for the French monarch, and
in honour of him called Louisiana.
“The following year La Salle returned for the third time to France, the
tidings of his achievement, which had preceded him, having awakened the
utmost enthusiasm. Colbert was now dead, but his son Seignelay, minister
for maritime affairs, attached no less importance than his father had
done to the French affairs in the New World.” Four vessels were,
therefore, prepared for the colonisation of the lands bordering the
mouth of the Mississippi, on board of which ware 280 persons, of whom
100 were soldiers; with about thirty volunteer gentlemen, two of whom,
“the young Cavalier, and the rash passionate Maranget,” were nephews of
La Salle; there were also various mechanics and some young women, so
confident were the hopes of permanent colonisation.
Disasters and ill omens commenced early on the voyage; and Beaujeu, the
naval commander, who appears to have been a man of dogged obstinacy,
continually thwarted and annoyed La Salle. On the 10th of January, 1685,
they were near the mouth of the Mississippi, where Tonti, already aware
of the enterprise, having descended the river from fort St. Louis with
twenty Canadians and thirty Indians, was awaiting his old commander. La
Salle however, unfortunately not recognising the land marks, or losing
his reckoning, sailed past it, and perceiving his error, would have
returned; but again he was opposed by Beaujeu, who persisted on still
sailing westward, and by this means they reached the Bay of Matagorda.
Hoping that all might yet be well, La Salle yielded to the self-will of
Beaujeu, and entered the bay, trusting that the streams which emptied
themselves into it were branches of the Mississippi. Here, on the shore
of Texas, the ill-fated company disembarked, the store-ship being
unfortunately wrecked in entering the harbour. The people at once lost
hope; La Salle alone was calm and energetic; but Providence did not
bless his efforts; endeavouring to save by boats some of the stores of
the wrecked vessel; a storm arose and the wreck went to pieces; nearly
everything was lost, and the same night the Indians came down and
murdered two of the volunteers.
Terror and despair prevailed; La Salle alone was calm and resolute, and
by the force of his character, and the inspiration of his example,
sufficient energy remained to construct a fort on the shore of the
remains of the wreck, where about 230 persons remained, while La Salle,
with sixteen companions, ascended a stream on the west of the bay, in
the hope of reaching the Mississippi. But no Mississippi was to be
found. An elevated situation above the Bay of Matagorda was selected by
La Salle for the erection of a fortified post, which was called St.
Louis. This settlement it was which gave to France a claim upon Texas,
of which possession was taken, as a portion of Louisiana, in the name of
the French.
About six months were spent in constructing this fort, which was built
from timber felled in the neighbouring groves, and with fragments of the
wreck brought up in canoes, together with a good supply of arms. After
all, the little colony was not ill-supplied, if they had been possessed
of courage and perseverance. Whilst these necessary works were going
forward, La Salle carefully explored the neighbouring country for “the
fatal river;” on one occasion being absent four months and returning in
rags. But his presence always renewed hope. In April of the next year he
set out again with twenty companions, and wandered into New Mexico. On
his return, he found the last of the vessels left with the colonists
wrecked, and themselves reduced to about six-and-thirty, grown desperate
and cruel by despair. He now determined, seeing that no succour was
likely to reach them from France, to proceed to Canada on foot, and with
sixteen companions set out on this terrible undertaking, their baggage
laden on the wild horses of the prairies, and with moccassins made of
green buffalo hides. The journey was full of unprecedented hardships. We
will give the concluding scene of the tragedy in the words of our able
historian Bancroft.
“In the little company of wanderers were two men, Duhaut and
l’Archevêque, who had embarked their capital in the enterprise; of these
Duhaut had long shown a spirit of mutiny. Inviting Maranget to take
charge of the fruits of a buffalo hunt, they quarrelled with and
murdered him. Wondering at the delay of his nephew’s return, La Salle
went in search of him. At the brink of a river he observed eagles
hovering as if over carrion, and fired an alarm gun. Warned by the
sound, Duhaut and l’Archevêque crossed the river; the former skulked in
the prairie-grass; La Salle asked of the latter, ‘Where is my nephew?’
At the moment of the answer Duhaut fired and La Salle fell dead without
a word. ‘You are down now, proud bashaw! you are down now!’ shouted one
of the conspirators, as they despoiled the body, which was left on the
prairie, naked and without burial, to be devoured by wild beasts.
“Such was the end of this daring adventurer. For force of will and vast
conceptions, for various knowledge and quick adaptation of his genius to
untried circumstances, for a sublime magnanimity, that resigned itself
to the will of Heaven and yet triumphed over affliction by energy of
purpose and unfaltering hope—he had no superior among his countrymen.
“After beginning the colonisation of Upper Canada, he perfected the
discovery of the Mississippi from the falls of St. Anthony to its mouth;
and he will be remembered through all time as the father of colonisation
in the great central valley of the West.”
As regarded the companions of La Salle, some joined the Indians, and the
murderers were themselves murdered. Seven alone, among whom were the
other nephew of La Salle, and Joutel, the historian of the expedition,
having obtained an Indian guide, finally reached Arkansea, on the
Mississippi, where to their inexpressible joy they beheld a large cross
on an island. Here it was that Tonti had awaited their arrival; having
returned, after long and vain tarriance, to the mouth of the river.
Before leaving his station at this latter point, he entrusted a letter
for La Salle to the nearest Indians, “who faithfully kept it for
fourteen years, and then delivered it to the first Frenchmen who made
their appearance.”
While La Salle was thus employed in exploring the West, difficulties had
sprung up in the administration of the affairs of New France. Frontenac,
the governor-general, having disagreed with the Jesuits, had even
imprisoned the afterwards celebrated Abbé Fenelon, who was for two years
a missionary in Canada, for having preached against him. Talon had been
removed from office, and M. du Chesneau appointed intendant in his
place, but only for a short time, as both he and Frontenac were
recalled, and De la Barre and Meules succeeded them.
De la Barre found the Iroquois again in a restless state, and war
evidently at hand, to aid in which, at the solicitation of the colony,
three companies of marines were sent over from France. The terrible
Iroquois, during the interval of peace with the French, had occupied
themselves in carrying on wars of extermination against all the tribes
who had the misfortune to be settled on their borders; they had driven
the tribes of the Lower Susquehanna upon the settlements of Maryland, as
we have seen; and began “to come in contact with the back settlers of
Virginia. The tribes west of the Blue Ridge and the Upper Ohio were
exterminated or driven away. The Shawanees, whom Marquette had heard of
as inhabiting the banks of the Lower Ohio, fled eastward before these
formidable warriors, and crossed the mountains into Carolina. The
conquest of the Five Nations, to which we shall presently find the
English laying claim, embraced both banks of the Ohio, and reached to
the Mississippi.”[12]
Dongan, the governor of New York, jealous of the French discoveries in
the West, furnished the Iroquois with fire-arms and fomented the growing
ill-will between them and the French.
De la Barre made an unsuccessful expedition against the Iroquois, and
soon after was superseded in his office by the Marquis de Denonville,
who brought over 500 or 600 regular troops, whilst M. de Champigny, who
also brought additional companies of marines, was appointed intendant in
the place of Meules.
Denonville determined to conquer the Senecas, the most hostile of the
Five Nations, and “card money,” as it was called, the first paper money
of America, made payable in France, was issued to defray the expenses of
the war. A number of chiefs, decoyed into Fort Frontenac, were
treacherously taken prisoners and shipped to France to work in the
galleys. The Seneca country was ravaged by a force of 800 regulars,
1,000 Canadians, and 300 Indians; this roused the whole body of the
Iroquois, and the invasion of the French territory was threatened. After
a short interval of peace, the Iroquois came down on the island of
Montreal, which they surprised, killing 200 persons, and taking the same
number prisoners. Quebec was in the utmost danger. At this disastrous
moment the accession of William of Orange to the English throne having
involved England and France in war, new troubles threatened the French
colonies, of which we shall speak anon.
“Canada,” says Hildreth, “though long planted, had not flourished; the
soil and the climate were alike unfavourable. The colonial government
was a military despotism; the land was held on feudal tenures, and the
body of the colonists, unaccustomed to think or act for themselves, had
little energy or activity of spirit. If the missionaries and fur-traders
were exceptions, their number was small, and their undertakings remote
and scattered, calculated to disperse over a vast extent a scanty
population, which amounted as yet to hardly 12,000 persons.”
These missionaries and fur-traders had, however, produced wonderful
results; spite of continual hostility from the terrible Iroquois, they
had acquainted themselves with the great lakes of the West; they had
established missionary posts along the shores of the Huron, Superior and
Michigan lakes; they had explored the Mississippi from the falls of St.
Anthony to the sea; and had traced the Fox River, the Wisconsin and the
Illinois from their sources to their confluence with the great river;
and that, while the rivers Connecticut, Delaware, Susquehanna, Potomac
and the James remained unexplored by the British settlers on their lower
waters.
The settlements in Acadia had never acquired much vigour, and the total
of the French inhabitants in this portion of the French American
territory did not amount to 3,000.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE COLONIES AFTER THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
We must now take a hasty glance at the colonies, which we left at the
eve of the Revolution of 1688, and discover how this great change
affected them.
We have seen the Grand Model constitution of Carolina fall before the
wishes of the people, and a more practical and popular form of
government take its place. In 1694, considerable dissatisfaction existed
in the colony owing to contentions between Dissenters and Churchmen,
who, though forming but a small minority, yet demanded exclusive
privileges. It was therefore advised by Thomas Smith, who had succeeded
Philip Ludwell as governor, that in order to give respectability to the
office, and to restore harmony between the contending parties, one of
the proprietaries himself should be sent out as governor. The young Earl
of Shaftesbury was elected to this office, but he declining it, John
Archdale, an honest Quaker proprietary, was chosen.
Archdale, as might be expected, gave the Dissenters a majority in the
council, as they formed a majority in the colony; he also appeased the
discontent which the system of quit-rents had caused, by remitting them
for three or four years, and forgiving the arrears due—a very politic
act, as it would have been next to impossible to collect them. He was a
wise and humane man, and not only succeeded in quieting the discontents
and disputes of the colonists, but established an amicable relationship
with the Indians by an act of humanity. He protected the natives round
Cape Fear from kidnappers, and they in return engaged to befriend
shipwrecked mariners on their coast. Spite of his peace principles, he
yet raised a militia-force for the defence of the colony, excusing
however all from being enrolled who could plead scruples of conscience
against it. With the Spaniards of St. Augustine he also established
friendly relations, by ransoming four Indian Catholic priests, prisoners
among the Yamasees, and sending them back to St. Augustine. “I shall
return your kindness,” was the reply of the Spaniard; and when an
English vessel soon afterwards was wrecked on the coast of Florida, and
the crew taken captive by Indians, they were ransomed by him.
Archdale soon brought the affairs of Carolina into a flourishing
condition; the fame of her prosperity attracted to her soil industrious
Scotch emigrants, as well as settlers from Massachusetts; she was in
fact looked upon as a sort of “American Canaan flowing with milk and
honey.”
Archdale having thus, by his wisdom, patience and labour, laid a firm
foundation for a most glorious superstructure, he appointed Joseph
Blake, son of that Joseph Blake, brother of the admiral, who twenty
years before led a colony of Dissenters into Carolina, as his successor,
and returned to England. Scarcely, however, was Archdale gone, than
Blake, to satisfy the importunate church party, endowed the episcopal
church at Charleston with a parsonage and annual stipend; and though the
Huguenots, who had suffered so long disabilities on account of religion
and country, were very properly enfranchised, yet were Catholics
excluded from liberty of conscience, which was granted to all other
Christians. Again religious, or rather _irreligious_, contentions raged
violently. Nathaniel Moore, the successor of Blake, not only established
the episcopal form of worship, but excluded all Dissenters from any
share in the government. The Dissenters, indignant at this arbitrary and
unjust exclusion, appealed to the British parliament in 1706, and these
acts were declared contrary to the laws of the charter. They were
repealed therefore by the colonial assembly; but though the disabilities
of the Dissenters were removed, the Church of England remained the
established religion of the province until the American Revolution.
Party spirit and strife had entered the colony, not only as regarded
religion, but on the questions of finance and quit-rents; nevertheless
the colony continued to flourish.
Rice, of which a bag had accidentally been brought to Charleston in a
vessel from Madagascar at the time of Archdale’s government, and
distributed among various planters, had been cultivated at first as a
matter of curiosity, but was now becoming a staple product of the
colony, and a great source of wealth. So important had it become indeed,
in 1704, that an act of parliament placed it amongst the “enumerated
articles.” The cultivation of this grain led to the large importations
of negroes which yearly took place into Carolina.
The fur-traders of Carolina adventured far into the interior; the oak of
the inland forest was cleft into staves for the West Indies, and the
pine furnished masts, boards and joists, tar and turpentine. These naval
stores, however, were rather the produce of the hardier North Carolina,
where but few negro slaves were to be found, and the inhabitants were of
a much more sturdy and independent character. “North Carolina,” says the
historian, “like ancient Rome, was famed as the sanctuary of runaways.
Seventy years after its origin, it is described as a country where there
is scarce any form of government; and it long continued to be said, with
but slight exaggeration, that in North Carolina every one did that which
was right in his own eyes, paying tribute neither to God nor to Cæsar.”
But in this lawless state, where there was neither church nor creed,
where “Quakers, Atheists, Deists and other evil-disposed persons,” lived
a life of freedom and peace, all went well; and the stone which marks
the grave, beneath the shade of a large cedar-tree, of Henderson Walker,
the governor in 1694, records simply that “North Carolina, during his
administration, enjoyed tranquillity.”
But to this irreligious state, as it was considered, the proprietaries
determined to put an end, by establishing episcopacy as the religion of
the colony; and Robert Daniel was sent over by them as deputy-governor
for this purpose. The apple of discord was now thrown into the colony,
and long and bitter disputes followed, the Quakers being accused as the
principal fomenters of these distractions. The colony was broken up into
two factions, and each party in 1706 had their own governor and their
own house of representatives, neither of which were able to gain the
ascendancy—the one, of which Thomas Cary was head, wanting a legal
sanction; the other, led by William Glover, popular favour. At length,
Edward Hyde, a relative of Queen Anne’s, was sent over, in the hope of
restoring order; and he, as deputy-governor of North Carolina, was to
receive as usual his commission from Tynte, the governor of South
Carolina; but Tynte was dead when he arrived, and the turbulent people
of North Carolina paid him no respect. Affairs grew desperate; the
friends of Hyde took up arms to assert his power, and called in the aid
of Spotswood, an experienced soldier and governor of Virginia. But
Spotswood, though vehement against “the mutinous spirit of North
Carolina, yet pleaded the difficulties of marching forces into a country
so cut up with rivers;” besides which he had no troops but militia, and
Virginia herself, at least the counties bordering on Carolina, “were
stocked with Quakers;” and he only sent a party of marines from the
guardship as an evidence of his good disposition. Cary and the leaders
of his party having, however, appeared in Virginia with the intention,
as they said, of appealing to England in defence of their actions, were
compelled by Spotswood to take their passage in a man-of-war just then
returning.
Whilst all these disturbances were going forward, North Carolina
increased greatly in population. Disturbances, in fact, in these young
American states, seem to have been merely like the ebullitions of
vigorous youth, which grows in spite of them, and through which all
their powers are brought into exercise. In 1698, the first settlements
were made on Pamlico River, the Indians of that vicinity having been
nearly destroyed by fever and the ravages of war with more powerful
tribes. In 1707, a number of French Protestants removed into Carolina
from Virginia; and a few years later, a hundred German families from the
Palatinate, whence they were driven by the devastations of war and
religious persecution, found a home there also, 250 acres of land being
assigned by the proprietaries to each family.
The Revolution produced no ill effects in Virginia. Francis Nicholson,
who in the reign of James had been expelled from New York by the
insurgents, was the first governor of Virginia under William III.; and
Andros, “fresh from imprisonment in Massachusetts,” was the second. To
Nicholson Virginia was indebted for the establishment of the College of
William and Mary, which was endowed by a gift of quit-rents from the
king and a royal domain, and by a tax of a penny on every pound weight
of tobacco exported to the other colonies. To Andros it owes the
preservation of what few annals of the province had escaped the
destruction of neglect, time and civil war.
Though the powers granted to the governor were exorbitant—“the armed
force, the revenue, the interpretation of the law, the administration of
justice, the church, all being under his control and guardianship”—the
spirit of independence was vigorous in Virginia; and when, in 1691, the
revenue being exhausted by the governor and his favourites, additional
supplies were demanded, the assembly claimed the right, and maintained
it too for some time, of nominating a treasurer of their own, and when
finally this right was refused, declined to contribute their quota for
the defence of the colonies against France. Nay indeed, being aware of
the revenue derived by the mother-country from the duties on tobacco,
“they made,” says old Quarry, “a nice inquiry into the circumstances of
government, and concluded that the assembly itself was entitled to all
the rights and privileges of an English parliament.” As regarded the
established church, also, these independent colonists carried things
very much in their own way. The Bishop of London might license, and the
governor might recommend, a minister, but if the congregation did not
like him they would not have him; and by refusing, spite of all
protests, to accept a minister as an incumbent for life, but merely as a
servant of the congregation from year to year, they kept the power in
their own hands. Virginia was the opposite of Massachusetts; and though
some of the parishes were so large that in many cases the inhabitants
lived fifty miles from the church, the assembly would not be at the
expense of altering the bounds, though it was threatened with “paganism,
atheism, or sectaries.” Finally, this obstinacy with regard to the
clergy led to a collision with the crown. In the meantime great was the
liberty and great the enjoyment of Virginia. She had no large towns, no
marts of commerce; “as to outward appearance,” it was said, “Virginia
looked like a wild desert,” and in England it was reported to be “one of
the poorest, miserablest and worst countries in all America.” Tobacco
was still the general currency, and the colony having no vessels of its
own, the merchants’ ships lay for months waiting for the cargoes which
their boats picked up at the various plantations.
The principles of liberty for which Bacon had perished were not by any
means dead. “Pernicious opinions, fatal to royal prerogative,” says an
old writer, “were improving daily;” and though the Virginians resented
any charge of republicanism, yet the colonial mind was, in effect,
strongly biased that way. From the insurrection of Bacon, for about
three-quarters of a century, Virginia enjoyed uninterrupted peace.
In 1710, Governor Spotswood penetrated the Blue Ridge, a portion of the
Allegany chain, an enterprise which had not been attempted since the
days of Sir William Berkeley; and though settlers were slow to advance
into these new regions, yet the Indian trader, gradually crossing the
Alleganies, brought back knowledge of the country on the Ohio and the
western lakes.
The English Revolution, which destroyed the doctrine of legitimacy, was
fatal to the claims of Lord Baltimore. He had left Maryland, to assert
his rights in England, just before the deposition of James, entrusting
the administration of the colony to nine deputies; and these having
hesitated for some time to proclaim the new sovereign, a rumour gained
ground of a plot between the Catholics and Indians for the murder of the
Protestants, and an armed association was formed for asserting the
rights of King William and for the defence of the protestant faith.
This rumour was utterly baseless, but the Catholics were compelled to
surrender all power of government, and the king proceeded, against every
claim of justice, to deprive Lord Baltimore of his charter, though no
charge existed against him but that of being a Catholic. In 1692, Sir
Lionel Copley arrived in Maryland as the royal commissioner, and the
whole system of government was arbitrarily changed. “The first act of
the new assembly recognised William and Mary; the second established the
Church of England as the religion of the state, to be supported by
general taxation.” Toleration was, however, secured to Protestant
Dissenters; the Quakers travelled about on their “religious visits” as
well as “a sort of wandering pretenders from New England, who deluded
even churchmen, we are told, by their extempore prayers and
preachments.” All were tolerated excepting the Catholics, they who had
been the founders of the province, and the first to acknowledge and
legislate for liberty of conscience for all; they were subjected to a
system of legalised persecution; mass was forbidden to be celebrated
publicly; catholic priests were forbidden to preach or teach, and
children were basely tempted to change their profession of religion by
the offered bribe of a portion of their parents’ property. And, pitiable
to say, Benedict, the son of Lord Baltimore, the worthy catholic
proprietary, only recovered the province by renouncing the catholic
church for that of England, in the year 1715.
Maryland, like Virginia, had no large towns, and remained undisturbed by
either Indians or French. “Its staple was tobacco, yet hemp and flax
were raised, and all were employed as currency. In Somerset and
Dorchester the manufacture of linen and even woollen cloth was
attempted. In Maryland, white labourers being found more advantageous
than negroes, the market was always well supplied with them, the price
varying from £12 to £30. Maryland was the most southern colony which, in
1695, consented to pay its quota towards the defence of New York, thus
forming from Chesapeake to Maine an imperfect confederacy. The union was
increased by a public post. Eight times in the year letters might be
forwarded from the Potomac to Philadelphia. Public education was talked
of, and promised by the assembly, but not carried out. The population
increased, though not rapidly. In 1710 bond and free amounted to about
30,000; a bounty still continued to be offered for every wolf’s head;
the roads to the capital were marked by notches on trees; and
water-mills still solicited legislative encouragement.[13]
William Penn, more fortunate than his neighbour Lord Baltimore,
recovered his province without any compromise of principle. Within two
years after the Revolution, he had been three several times arrested and
tried, and openly acquitted; and now, in 1690, he determined once more
to visit his province, where, spite of all his efforts at good and happy
government, discontent existed. Numbers of emigrants were again prepared
to accompany him, “a convoy was granted, and the fleet ready to sail,
when, on his return from the funeral of George Fox, messengers were sent
to apprehend him.” “Three times having been tried, and three times
acquitted,” says Bancroft, “he now went into retirement. Locke would
have interceded for him, but he refused clemency, waiting rather for
justice. The delay completed the wreck of his fortunes; sorrow lowered
over his family; the wife of his youth died; his eldest son had no
vigorous hold on life; and many, even among his friends, cavilled at his
conduct.” It was a deep baptism of sorrow; but he had still powerful
advocates who interceded successfully for him. “He is my old
acquaintance,” said William of Orange, finally; “he may follow his
business as freely as ever; I have nothing to say against him.” His
innocence was fully established, and in August, 1694, he was restored to
his proprietary rights.
But for the pressure of poverty, Penn would have immediately embarked
for his province; but this he was not able to do until the last year of
the century; and in the meantime Pennsylvania was governing itself by
the members of the assembly, who acting upon Penn’s liberal permission
that “the government should be settled in a condition to please the
generality,” altered, and disputed, and altered again, paying little
regard to the men whom Penn had left in authority, until at length all
seemed settled to the public satisfaction and nothing was wanting but
concert with the proprietary.
William Penn was once more in his beloved province—no longer in the
prime of manhood, full of hope and joy, but gentle and conciliatory as
ever. “Keep to what is good in the charter and frame of government,”
said he, addressing the assembly the following spring, “and lay aside
what is burdensome, and add what may best suit the common good.” The old
charter was surrendered, which was a much easier thing than the forming
of a constitution, which should prove, as a member of the council
expressed himself, “firm and lasting to themselves and their children.”
This was a difficult undertaking, besides which, the lower counties on
the Delaware, dreading to lose the independence which they had lately
enjoyed, refused a re-union with Pennsylvania, and hot and bitter
disputes were the consequence.
In the midst of their disputes both parties were startled, and brought
again into pacific relationship, by the news that the English parliament
was about to annul every colonial charter. The occasion was momentous;
Penn, who had come to America with the hope of ending his days in this
province of his love, found it necessary immediately to return to
England, to defend the common rights of himself and Pennsylvania. His
hopes seemed in all ways destined to disappointment. At this moment his
words to the assembly were: “Since all men are mortal, think of some
suitable expedient and provision for your safety, as well in your
privileges as your property, and you will find me ready to comply with
whatever may render us happy by a nearer union of our interests. Review
again your laws; propose new ones that may better your circumstances;
and what you do, do quickly. Unanimity and despatch may contribute to
the disappointment of those that so long have sought the ruin of our
young country.”
The new constitution was called the “Charter of Privileges.” The
territories were allowed to separate themselves from Pennsylvania, as
they desired; and from that time Delaware has been an independent
province. Penn would gladly have legislated for the sanctity of marriage
among the slaves, but he was defeated: nor yet could he carry out all
his benevolent plans for the Indians, though he obtained a law for the
prevention of fraud in trading with them; and again treaties of peace
were renewed with the Onondagas and their tributaries on the
Susquehanna.
By the Charter of Privileges, which now became the fundamental law as
long as the proprietary government lasted, the legislative power was
vested in the governor and assembly to be annually chosen, to sit upon
its own adjournments, and to propose bills subject only to the assent of
the governor. Sheriffs and coroners were appointed by the people;
questions of property could not be brought before the governor and
council; and the justiciary was left to the legislature, which gave
occasion to after disputes. Entire religious liberty was established.
“And now,” says Bancroft, “having divested himself and his successors of
any power to injure, Penn had founded a democracy. By the necessities of
the case, he remained the feudal sovereign; for only as such could he
grant or have maintained the charter of colonial liberties. But time and
the people would remove the inconsistency. Having thus given freedom and
popular power to his provinces, no strifes remaining but strifes about
property, happily for himself, he departed from the young country of his
affections.”
Penn left James Logan, for many years the colonial secretary and member
of the council, the agent of his private property, who was able, by his
mild but firm character, to maintain Penn’s rights against the
encroaching, mean spirit of the colonists, whose selfish bargaining
contrasted so painfully with the broad liberality of the proprietary.
In England, the virtue and sacrifices of William Penn were not without
acknowledgment; he retained his province. His poverty might have induced
him to part with it to the crown; but insisting on the liberties which
he had granted being unannulled, the crown hardly set any value upon it;
and when, distressed and worn out with the angry and unworthy disputes
of the province with him on questions of property, he threatened to
resign his powers to government, the province, like a spoiled child
threatened with the rod, yielded at once and promised no further
offending. The early Pennsylvanians were in fact spoiled by the kindness
and concessions of Penn; they were incapable of comprehending the
breadth of his practical Christianity; they almost despised him for it,
and treated him with no consideration.
Writs had been issued by James II. against the charters both of East and
West Jersey, and the whole province was placed under the jurisdiction of
Andros, governor of New York. The Revolution terminated the authority of
Andros; and from June, 1689, to August, 1693, New Jersey had no regular
government whatever, both the east and west portions being broken up
into factions, headed by different proprietaries, which kept the country
in a very unsettled state. At length the proprietaries, threatened by
parliament, and finding no means of settling their contending claims, as
well as a great falling off in their profits, agreed to surrender their
authority to the crown; and in the first year of Queen Anne’s reign, New
Jersey became a royal province, the claims of private property being in
every case respected.
On the surrender of the proprietary claims to government, the two
Jerseys were united in one province, and the government conferred on
Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, of whom we shall hear more anon.
The commission and instructions to Lord Cornbury formed the constitution
of New Jersey. The legislative power was vested in the governor with the
consent of the royal council and representatives of the people; the
elective franchise required a property qualification; all laws were
subject to a veto of the governor and the crown. The governor, with
consent of his council, instituted courts of law and appointed their
officers; the people had no part in the justiciary. Liberty of
conscience was granted to all but Catholics; and favour was invoked for
the Church of England.[14] Two of the royal instructions deserve notice:
First, “great inconveniences,” says the queen, “may arise by the liberty
of printing in our province of New Jersey; therefore, no book, pamphlet,
or other matter whatsoever may be printed without a licence.” Secondly,
the “traffic in merchantable negroes” was especially enjoined.
A change was come over the administration of New Jersey since the days
when honest Thomas Olive, the governor of West Jersey, had been
satisfied with a salary of £20 a year, and had administered justice as a
magistrate, sitting on the stump of a tree in his field. New Jersey was
now a royal united province, and a kinsman of the queen was its ruler;
but the change was not palatable to the sturdy quaker and puritan spirit
of the colony. The history of Lord Cornbury’s administration was that of
continual contention with the assemblies. But through all this, as we
shall find was the case in New York, a more vigorous spirit of liberty
awoke in the province.
The last meeting of Lord Cornbury with the assembly of New Jersey is,
however, worth recording. Samuel Jennings, speaker of the assembly, a
steadfast Quaker, was deputed to read a remonstrance to him on his
acceptance of bribes, his new method of government, his encroachment on
public liberties, and a long list of other offences, all very
plain-spoken, as befitted an assembly of which a fearless,
uncompromising Quaker was the speaker. “Stop!” exclaimed Lord Cornbury,
not relishing the nature of the remonstrance. Again Jennings repeated
the charges with greater emphasis than before. On this Lord Cornbury
retorted by charging the Quakers with disloyalty and a factious spirit;
and they, in return, replied in the words of Nehemiah to Sanballat,
“There is no such thing done as thou sayest, but thou feignest them out
of thine own heart!” And finally, said they, “to engage the affections
of the people, no artifice is needful, but to let them be unmolested in
the enjoyment of what belongs to them of right.”
As regards New York, we must take up the thread of history somewhat
before the Revolution, having last parted from it when Sir Edmund
Andros, the governor, made his ineffectual attempt on Connecticut. The
government of Andros was arbitrary and unpopular, the people having no
share in the legislation, and no voice in the imposition of taxes, while
the popular institutions of New Jersey on the one hand, and Connecticut
on the other, served but to increase their dissatisfaction by contrast.
Thomas Dongan, a Catholic, succeeded Andros as governor; he arrived in
the province in 1683, and by the advice of ‘William Penn, came with
instructions from the duke to convene an assembly of representatives.
The first assembly, consisting of a council and eighteen
representatives, to the great joy of the colony, met the following year,
and a “Charter of Liberties” was granted, which declared the supreme
legislative power to reside in the governor, council and people, met in
general assembly; that every freeman and freeholder should enjoy the
elective franchise; that no freeman should suffer but by judgment of his
peers, and that all trials should be by a jury of twelve men; that no
tax should be assessed but with consent of the assembly; that no seaman
or soldier should be quartered on the inhabitants against their will;
that no martial law should exist; and that no one professing faith in
God by Jesus Christ, should at any time be in any way disquieted or
questioned for any difference of opinion in matters of religion.
In 1684, the governors of New York and Virginia met the deputies of the
Five Nations at Albany, on the Hudson, and renewed with them a treaty of
peace.
On the accession of the Duke of York to the throne, the people of his
province naturally expected, if not favour, at least the continuation of
a representative government, which, however, was in part withdrawn; an
arbitrary tax was imposed, and printing-presses forbidden. It was soon
perceived that the intention of the king was to introduce the catholic
religion into the province, and the officers appointed by him were of
that faith; this added to the general dissatisfaction.
The exiled governor, Dongan, was recalled by James II., shortly before
his abdication, and Francis Nicholson, lieutenant-general of Andros, who
was now governor of New England, succeeded him. Dread of the
establishment of Popery added to general discontent, and the want of
perfect good feeling between the Dutch and English inhabitants of the
province caused any change to be welcomed with joy; accordingly the news
of the deposition of James, and the accession of William and Mary, was
received with enthusiasm, and the people rose in rebellion to the
existing government.
Jacob Leisler, a Dutch merchant and captain of militia, whose
temperament, however, unfitted him for the command, was elected by the
insurgents as their leader. Opposed to this faction were the large Dutch
landholders, some English merchants, the friends of episcopacy, and the
government party; nevertheless, at the head of several hundred men and a
few companies of militia, and with the general populace in his favour,
Leisler, at the commencement of June, took possession of the Fort of New
York, in the name of William and Mary, to whom an address was sent,
which in due course was received without disapprobation by King William.
Dongan, who had not yet left the harbour, was joined by Nicholson, thus
deprived of his authority, and the two hastened to England. The
magistrates in the meantime, unable to resist this popular movement,
after seeing Leisler appointed by a committee of safety as temporary
governor of the province, retired to Albany on the Hudson, where,
denying the authority of Leisler, they yet continued their
administration in the name of William and Mary. Milborne, the son-in-law
of Leisler, who had just arrived from England, was appointed by him
secretary of the province, and sent to demand the surrender of the Fort
of Albany, which of course was refused.
About this time, a letter arriving from the king, addressed to “Francis
Nicholson, or to such as, for the time being, take care for the
preserving the peace and administering the law in New York,” together
with a royal commission; Leisler, in Nicholson’s absence, regarded his
own authority as now sanctioned by the monarch.
In the meantime, France having espoused the cause of James, war was
declared with England, and the little party at Albany, alarmed by the
hostile inroads of the French and their Indian allies on the frontier
settlements, and weakened by internal discord, yielded up the fort to
Milborne.
The horrors of intercolonial war were now beginning. As soon as the
declaration of war between France and England was known, Count Fontenac,
who had but lately arrived in Canada—a man of extraordinary capacity and
energy of character, although approaching seventy years of age—prepared
to visit, upon the English frontier, some of the miseries which Canada
herself had so lately suffered from the hands of the Five Nations. Three
several expeditions were planned, all of which were successful. The
war-parties consisted principally of converted Indians, chiefly Mohawks;
the fruits of the self-denying perseverance of the French missionaries
being made use of for the most barbarous purposes. Religious zeal was
added to native ferocity; the English were represented not only as
enemies but as heretics, to destroy whom it was their duty as
Christians, and their glory as soldiers.
In January, 1690, whilst the province of New York was convulsed by
internal tumults, one of these war-parties, advancing in single file
through the deep snow, a track being made by the snow-shoes of the
foremost, arrived at Schenactady, a Dutch village on the Mohawk, after
twenty-two days’ march. It was midnight, and the inhabitants were
asleep, fearless of danger, when at once the awful war-whoop roused
them, and the most dreadful scenes of murder, fire and devastation
succeeded. Sixty lay dead in the street; seven-and-twenty were taken
prisoners; the rest, half naked, fled towards Albany amid driving snow,
some perishing by the way, others losing their limbs by the intensity of
the cold. The terror of this attack decided the party who held it to
give up Albany to Leisler.
The whole of the following summer was spent in fruitless preparation and
attempts, in conjunction with Connecticut, to protect their frontiers,
and invade Canada; but all ended in unsuccess, and distrust and
confusion prevailed throughout the miserable province. In January of
1691, Richard Ingoldsby arrived from England with a commission as
captain, and announcing the speedy arrival of Colonel Sloughter as
governor. He demanded possession of the fort, but not producing any
order from the king, nor yet from the expected governor to that purpose,
Leisler refused to yield, promising him courteously, at the same time,
aid as a military officer. Ingoldsby, angry at opposition, and supported
by the enemies of Leisler, proceeded to land his troops, at the same
time denouncing Leisler and his garrison as traitors. The passions of
the militia were roused, and, greatly to the grief and dismay of
Leisler, shots were fired, by which several lives were lost.
On March 19th, Colonel Sloughter, “a profligate, needy, and
narrow-minded adventurer,” entered the harbour. Leisler immediately sent
messengers to receive his orders; the messengers were detained; the next
morning he wrote, inquiring to whom he should surrender the fort.
Sloughter’s only reply was an order to Ingoldsby to arrest Leisler and
his council. The following day Leisler, Milborne, and six others, were
under arrest and brought up to trial before a special court, composed of
the adverse party. Six of the prisoners were immediately found guilty of
high treason, but afterwards reprieved. Leisler and Milborne, denying
the jurisdiction of the court by which they were tried, refused to
plead, and appealed to the king. But they were condemned of high treason
as mutes, and sentenced to death. Nevertheless, Sloughter hesitated to
carry the sentence into execution, until the will of the king should be
known, writing to him “that certainly never greater villains lived.”
The friends of Leisler boldly defended his conduct, but the opposite
party was now in power, and the execution of Leisler and his son-in-law
was demanded; still Sloughter hesitated, but nothing could allay the
bitter hatred of Leisler’s enemies. At a dinner-party, therefore, when
Sloughter was intoxicated, they obtained from him the signatures of the
death-warrants, and before he had recovered his senses, the executions
had taken place.
On the 16th of May, amid drenching rain, Leisler having taken leave of
his wife and his numerous family, he and his son-in-law were conducted
to the gallows outside the city-wall. “Guarded by troops,” says the
historian, “the sad procession moved on, thronged about by weeping
friends and exulting enemies. More distressed for the fate of his
son-in-law than for his own, Leisler admitted that he might have fallen
into error; and turning to the sorrowing populace, said, ‘Weep not for
us, we are going to our God; but weep for yourselves that remain behind
in misery and vexation.’” The handkerchief was bound round his face, and
he said, “I hope these eyes shall see our Lord Jesus in heaven!” These
were his last words. Livingstone, one of the leaders of the adverse
party, pressed forward to the prisoners to gratify himself with the
sight of their last moments. “I will implead thee at the bar of God for
this,” said Milborne. His last words were: “I die for the king and queen
and the Protestant religion in which I was born and bred. Father, into
thy hands I commit my spirit!” The distressed people, with cries and
tears, rushed forward to receive some last memento of their favourite
leaders, a fragment of their clothes or a lock of hair.
The rain poured down in torrents; but no rain could wash away the effect
of that blood, the shedding of which was regarded by the populace as
base murder. The appeal to the king was prosecuted by Leisler’s son; and
a committee of the Lords Commissioners of Trade ordered the estates of
the deceased to be restored to their families. But more was required;
and in 1695 the attainder was reversed, after which the bodies were
disinterred, and after lying in state, were re-buried in the old Dutch
church.
The execution of these two popular leaders did more to strengthen their
cause than their lives could possibly have done. Their friends, who were
“always distinguished by their zeal for popular power, for toleration,
for their opposition to the doctrine of legitimacy,” formed a powerful
and ultimately a successful party. Leisler and Milborne being no more,
it was not long before a contest began between the assembly, composed of
aristocratic members, and the English monarch, for their rights and
privileges as British subjects; and in the meantime the war with Canada
went on.
After four months of inefficient and turbulent administration, Governor
Sloughter died, and was succeeded by Colonel Benjamin Fletcher, a man as
unprincipled and as little fitted for his post as his predecessor.
Fletcher revived the old scheme of extending the territory of New York
from Connecticut River to Delaware Bay; and by royal commission he had
command of the militia of New Jersey and Connecticut. The war with
Canada requiring the defence of the frontiers, an address was sent to
the king requesting that the other colonies might be compelled to
furnish their quota of troops. Parliament attempted to compel this from
all the colonies north of Carolina; but several of them refused, as we
have already stated, and it was never enforced.
Inadequate as Fletcher was for the office of governor in the then
excited state of the colony, he had the prudence to be guided in Indian
affairs by Major Schuyler, who possessed great influence over the
Iroquois, by whom he was called “Quidder,” they being unable to
pronounce his Christian name of Peter. Schuyler was a brave,
intelligent, and humane man; and having great influence over the border
tribes, was extremely useful to the governor, who had the good sense to
admit him to the council. Shortly after Fletcher’s arrival, the French
having made an incursion into the Mohawk country and taken captive 300
of their warriors, were pursued by Schuyler from Albany, and by
Fletcher, who posted from New York with a body of troops. They did not
overtake the invaders; but the Iroquois, greatly pleased by the
promptitude of action exhibited by Fletcher, gave him the name of
Cayenguirago, or the Great Swift Arrow.
Fletcher, besides his commission for New York, was appointed governor of
Pennsylvania and Delaware, this being the time when Penn was deprived of
his charter.
In the spirit of the Revolution of 1688, Fletcher was a zealot for the
establishment of the episcopal church, and, under the plea of
introducing uniformity in the language and literature as well as the
religion of the colony, the inhabitants of which were a mixture of Dutch
and English, he introduced into the assembly a bill for the settlement
of episcopalian ministers of his own selection throughout the province.
This bill gave rise to a great deal of party spirit; and finally it was
agreed that ministers should be settled in certain parishes, but that
the choice should be left to the people.
“New York is the most northern colony which admitted by enactment the
partial establishment of the Anglican Church.” The dissenters kept
strict watch henceforth that the episcopacy, favoured by England, made
no further inroad on their rights.
The peace of Ryswick terminated for the present the war with the French;
and the Earl of Bellamont, a man of integrity, and with warm sympathies
for popular freedom, arriving as governor in April, 1698, the dawn of a
calmer day seemed at hand. The commission of Bellamont embraced the
whole of the British northern territory from the confines of Canada to
Connecticut and Rhode Island. His kinsman, John Nanfan, who accompanied
him, was appointed lieutenant-governor of New York. Bellamont having
served on the parliamentary committee which had inquired into the trials
of Leisler and Milborne, viewed the aggressions of the opposite party
with great disapprobation; and under his administration it was that the
stigma was removed from the memory of those injured men, and justice
done to their families.
Fletcher, “who was accused of winking at violations of the Acts of
Trade, and favouring the pirates who frequented the American harbours,”
was removed from his post on this ground, and the Earl of Bellamont was
strictly enjoined to their vigilant suppression. The buccaneers, at the
remonstrance of Spain, being no longer supported by France and England,
had now become sugar-planters, holding large possessions of slaves in
Jamaica, Hayti, and St. Domingo, which were now thriving islands through
their means. Piracy, however, still remained to a vast and increasing
extent, every sea from China to America being infested with these
profligate robbers, who were often welcomed to the colonial harbours on
account of the wealth they brought and the freedom of their expenditure.
Before Bellamont left England, a company was formed for the suppression
of piracy; and it being supposed that great wealth would accrue from the
re-capture of the pirate vessels, the king himself, the Earl of
Bellamont, the Lord Chancellor Somers, the Earls of Shrewsbury, Romney,
and Oxford, all held shares. By the advice of Robert Livingstone, a
merchant of New York, then in England, and himself a partner, the
command of a vessel fitted out for this purpose was given to Captain
Kidd, a ship-builder of New York.
Kidd, duly commissioned, hastened to Plymouth in April, 1696; but
turning pirate himself, sailed into the eastern seas, where he carried
on great depredations. The wealth he thus amassed was buried, tradition
says, on the east end of Long Island, after which, according to the same
source, he burned or sunk his ship, the famous Quedah Merchant, and had
the hardihood to take up his quarters at Boston, where, in 1698, he was
arrested by Bellamont, who also held a commission as governor of
Massachusetts, and sent to England for trial. The ship being driven back
by the storm, gave rise to a rumour, that the ministry then in power
were afraid of having Kidd brought to trial, on account of so many
powerful Whig names being implicated in his piracy. This led to an
impeachment of several of the adventurers in the House of Lords; but
Kidd, and nine of his men, being easily found guilty, were condemned and
executed for piracy and murder. The adventures and fate of Captain Kidd
form the subject of one of the very few popular ballads which the
history of America has given rise to in that country; which shows what
hold the deeds of this bold sea-robber took on the public mind.[15]
Bellamont, by his urbanity and integrity, became greatly esteemed and
beloved, both in New York and Boston. In the former place he at once
obtained the confidence of the people, by acting up to the promise which
he made in his address to the first assembly in this mercantile
colony:—“I will pocket none of the public money myself, nor shall there
be any embezzlement by others; but exact accounts shall be given you
when, and as often as, you require.” In Boston he took the direct road
to public favour, by paying attention to the ministers and popular
teachers; and while he attended the episcopal church on Sundays, he was
constant, and, by his own account, an edified attendant of the weekly
lecture. The highest salary was voted to him in Boston that had ever
been given to the governor; while in New York, spite of his
controversies with the merchants regarding the Navigation Laws, a
revenue for six years was provided for him.
Unfortunately, death soon closed the administration of this popular
governor; and after about a year of violent contentions between the
Leisler faction and the opposite party, Lord Cornbury arrived as
governor both of New York and New Jersey, as we have already mentioned.
Cornbury, though cousin of Queen Anne, was a needy and unprincipled man,
and in him the aristocratic faction immediately found an ally. With a
powerful majority in the assembly, a revenue was not only voted him for
seven years, but £2,000 for the expense of his voyage, and his salary
raised to £1,200 per annum.
In April, 1703, war having been proclaimed in England against France and
Spain, the assembly met, and £1,500 was appropriated to fortify the
Narrows, it being strictly provided that this money should be applied to
no other purpose whatever. But the fortifications were not built, and
Cornbury, dishonest as he was extravagant, made use of the money for his
own necessities; and when the assembly, the following year, expressed
their displeasure and refused to make further advances, Lord Cornbury
said, “I know of no rights that you have as an assembly but such as the
queen is pleased to allow you.”
So zealous was Lord Cornbury for the episcopal church, that he forbade
preachers or schoolmasters to exercise their vocations without a licence
from the bishop; he commenced also to persecute dissenting missionaries,
but was obliged to desist in consequence of the general indignation, the
majority of the people being themselves dissenters. Twice had he
dissolved the assembly, and the third time “proved only how rapidly the
political education had advanced under his administration. Dutch,
English, and New England men were now all of one spirit.” The real birth
of liberty in the popular heart was owing to the abuses and follies of
Lord Cornbury. For some time, we are informed, he endeavoured to
maintain his authority by a greater display of imperiousness; but
falling deeply into debt, he suffered himself to be humbled by the
assembly, whose rights he had so haughtily disputed, and became
contemptible in the eyes of the people by parading the fort in the dress
of a woman, and by similar acts of folly.
“Disguised alike with his antics and his knavery, the public indignation
at length vented itself in clamorous demands for his recall, which was
granted in 1709, when he was succeeded by Lord Lovelace. No sooner was
Cornbury divested of the dignity of office, than his creditors threw him
into prison, from which he was only released by succeeding to the
earldom of Clarendon on the death of his father.
Lord Lovelace found the assembly much wiser from the vices of Cornbury,
and they refused to advance more money than was necessary for the annual
expenditure; but all conflict on this or any other subject was spared by
the hand of death, which removed the new governor within a few weeks,
Ingoldsby, the lieutenant-governor, succeeded him. During the short time
of his administration, another attempt was made by New York and the New
England provinces to invade Canada. The design was to co-operate with
the British fleet in an attack on Quebec, and troops from Massachusetts,
Rhode Island, and New Hampshire assembled at Boston, waiting the arrival
of the squadron; while the troops of New York, New Jersey, and
Connecticut, about 1,500 in number, marched to Wood Creek, near the head
of Lake Champlain, where fortifications were erected and provisions
stored. The British fleet, however, was despatched to the aid of
Portugal instead; and, to the mortification of New York, which had
incurred for this purpose a debt of £20,000, the levies were recalled
and disbanded. Besides the regular troops, the colony had enlisted 600
Iroquois warriors, the wives and children of whom, amounting to about
1,000, they had undertaken to support at Albany. For this reason New
York refused to join in an attack upon Acadia, which was soon afterwards
made, excusing themselves to the Queen on the plea that their frontiers
were left undefended.
The following year Colonel Schuyler proceeded to England to urge upon
parliament the conquest of Canada, accompanied by five grand Mohawk
chiefs, who produced a vast sensation wherever they appeared. They
paraded the streets of London dressed in black clothes, over which they
flung scarlet mantles trimmed with gold. On the 19th of April they were
introduced to Queen Anne, when one of them, having referred to the
scheme for the conquest of Canada, said:—
“We were mightily pleased when we heard our great Queen had resolved to
send an army to conquer Canada; and immediately, in token of friendship,
we hung up the kettle and took up the hatchet, and, with one consent,
assisted Colonel Nicholson in making preparations on this side the lake;
but at length we heard that our great Queen was prevented in her design
at present, which made us sorrowful, lest the French, who had hitherto
dreaded us, should now think us unable to make war against them. The
reduction of Canada is of great weight to our free hunting; so that, if
our great Queen should be unmindful of us, we must, with our families,
forsake our country, or stand neuter, either of which would be against
us.”
So saying, he presented belts of wampum, in proof of the sincerity of
the Five Nations; and having received a gracious reply from the Queen,
withdrew.
In June, 1710, Robert Hunter arrived in New York as governor. The
history of Hunter is striking. A native of Scotland, he was in his youth
apprenticed to an apothecary, but running away from his master, he
enlisted as a common soldier. Gifted with fine talents and address, and
handsome in person, he became the friend of Swift and Addison, and the
husband of Lady Hay. Military promotion followed his marriage, and in
1707 the appointment of lieutenant-governor of Virginia was conferred
upon him. On his voyage to that province he was captured by the French;
and, now on his return to England, received a commission as governor of
New York and New Jersey.
Three thousand Germans, who had been driven from the Palatine by the
devastations of war, and taken refuge in England, accompanied the new
governor. Many of these immigrants settled in New York; others on the
Hudson, on the manor of Livingstone; and others again in Pennsylvania,
as we have already mentioned; and there, finding the country so much to
their taste, invited their friends at home to follow them, who
accordingly flocked over in great numbers.
Hunter soon came into collision with the assembly on financial
questions. The people, now too wise not to keep some power in their own
hands, made the post anything but a sinecure. “Here,” writes the
governor to his friends, “is the finest air to live upon in the
universe; the soil bears all things, but not for me; for, according to
the custom of the country, the sachems are the poorest of the people.”
And again, after three years’ experience, “I am used like a dog, I have
spent three years in such torment and vexation, that nothing in life can
ever make amends for it.”
In 1687, Andros, governor of New York, appeared in Connecticut, and
under the commission from King James, appointing him governor of all New
England, demanded the surrender of the charter from the assembly which
was then sitting. This unwelcome demand led to a long discussion, which
lasted till night, when the court was thronged with citizens. All at
once the lights were extinguished, and though the utmost decorum was
preserved under this extraordinary occurrence, yet when the candles were
re-lighted, the charter was nowhere to be found. This was a scheme for
its preservation. It was secreted by Captain Wadsworth in a hollow tree,
which is still standing, and known as the Charter Oak. Andros,
nevertheless, assumed the government of the province, which he held till
the Revolution.
The news of the accession of William and Mary diffused the utmost joy
throughout Connecticut. An address of the most loyal and scriptural
character was sent over; in which, however, they took care to make known
that their acquiescence to the rule of Andros was an involuntary
submission to an arbitrary power, and that, by the consent of the major
part of freemen, they had resumed the government.
The administration was restored by the royal sanction. “They elected,”
says Bancroft, “their own governor, council, and assembly men, all their
magistrates, and that annually. The government of Connecticut was a
perfect democracy. It rested on free labour, and upheld equality; the
people were the sources of all power.”
During the war which followed the Restoration, Colonel Fletcher,
governor of New York, was empowered by his commission to take command of
the militia of Connecticut; but this was resolutely resisted. The scene
is curious; and again we find that brave patriot, Captain Wadsworth, an
actor. Fletcher arrived at Hartford, and ordered out the troops. The
troops, with Captain Wadsworth at their head, appeared. Fletcher ordered
his commission to be read; Wadsworth ordered the drums to beat.
“Silence!” shouted Fletcher; and the drums ceased. Again the reading of
the commission commenced, and again the drums beat louder than ever.
Again Fletcher commanded silence, and in the silence which ensued,
Wadsworth, turning to Fletcher, said, with great emphasis, “If we are
interrupted again, I will make the sun shine through you!” Again the
drums beat, and Fletcher made no further attempt to command the
Connecticut forces.
We have already related how Yale College was founded in 1700. Delegates
from the churches of Connecticut met at Saybrook in 1708, and framed a
system of church government called the “Saybrook Platform,” which
obliged all the clergy of the state to meet annually in each county by
rotation, for the consideration of ecclesiastical affairs.
The colonial history of Connecticut contains from this time no events of
interest apart from the general history of the colonies. The laws,
customs, manners, and religious opinions were similar to those prevalent
in Massachusetts.
Rhode Island submitted without opposition to the authority of Andros;
but when, on the English Revolution, he was deposed in Boston, the
people assembled at Newport and resumed their former chartered
privileges, and re-elected the very officers whom Andros had deposed.
“The government was again organised on a free basis, and the old emblem
of the state—an anchor with its motto, _Hope_—became significant of the
steadfast zeal and spirit with which Rhode Island has ever cherished
religious freedom and civil rights.” “Less liberal, however, than
Connecticut,” says Bancroft, “Rhode Island attached the franchise not to
the inhabitant but to the soil; and, as a wrong principle always leads
to a practical error, it fostered family pride and a distant imitation
of the English law of primogeniture.”
CHAPTER XXV.
THE FIRST INTERCOLONIAL WAR, AND THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT.
The charter of Massachusetts being annulled in 1685, Joseph Dudley was
appointed president over the country from Narragansett to Nova Scotia.
The following year Sir Edmund Andros arrived at Boston as royal governor
of all New England. Andros was not only unpopular, as marking by his
governorship the epoch of the loss of independence, but still more so
from the arbitrary character of his proceedings; and as an evidence of
the feeling of the colony, it refused to hold the annual thanksgiving on
the day of his appointing. He was called the tyrant of New England; and
when, early in the year 1689, the news reached Boston, by way of
Virginia, of the revolution in England, an insurrection immediately took
place for his deposition. Andros, affecting to disbelieve the first
rumours of this event, imprisoned those who had brought them to the
city; and then, seeing the determined spirit of the people, who were
already organised under their old leaders, fled with precipitation to
Fort Hill, a fortified stronghold of the city. Simon Bradstreet, now
eighty-seven years of age, was re-chosen governor, while the former
magistrates and some of the principal inhabitants formed themselves into
a committee of safety. A declaration was drawn up by Cotton Mather, and
Andros summoned to surrender, which he did shortly; when, with his
principal officers, Dudley, Randolph, and others, he was sent to
England; and William and Mary having been joyfully proclaimed, the
former mode of government was “temporarily” resumed; and Sir Henry
Ashurst and Increase Mather, father of Cotton Mather, with two others,
hastened to England as agents of the colony.
William was so much occupied in establishing himself on his new throne,
that Massachusetts was for a while left to manage her own affairs. In
the meantime she was busy with her warfare against Canada and the French
Indian allies. In July, 1689, the Pennicook Indians in New Hampshire,
who had lost several of their number by the treachery of the whites,
were instigated by the Baron de St. Castine to take vengeance on the
British settlement at Dover in that state. One evening, therefore, two
Indian squaws, requesting the hospitality of a night’s lodging in the
house of the venerable Major Waldron, a magistrate and Indian trader,
were kindly received and allowed to sleep by the fire. In the dead of
the night they rose and admitted a war-party, who at once filled the
house. The old magistrate started forward, exclaiming, “What now? what
now?” and defending himself with a drawn sword, was stunned by a blow
from a hatchet. Then placing him in mockery at the head of a long table
in his hall, the savage intruders bade him “judge Indians again!” and
drawing gashes across his breast with their knives, said, “Thus I cross
out my account!” till at length he died. The Indians then burnt his
house and others that stood near, and, having killed twenty-three
persons, carried away with them twenty-nine prisoners.
In August the Jesuit father Thury, having established “a perpetual
rosary” in the chapel of the Indian village of Banibas, a hundred Indian
warriors, “purified by confession,” paddled in their birch-bark canoes
from the Penobscot towards Pemaquid, and surprised the settler Thomas
Gyles, who, with his sons, was at work in his fields at noontide,
getting up his hay. The struggle was short; the wounded father asked
merely leave to pray for his children, and then, commending them to God,
sank beneath the hatchets of the impatient Indians, who left his body in
the field covered with boughs. Hastening to Pemaquid, they took it after
two days’ resistance, and then, carrying away many prisoners, returned
to Penobscot.
Alarmed by this outrage, commissioners were sent from New England to the
Mohawks at Albany, asking their assistance. “We have burnt Montreal,”
returned the proud warriors; “we are allies of the English, and we will
keep the chain unbroken;” but they refused to march against the eastern
tribes, from whom the English were now suffering.
We have related already how a party of combined French and Indians in
the following January surprised the village of Schenectady. In March, a
party from Three Rivers, headed by Hertelle, consisting but of
fifty-three persons, three of whom were his sons and two his nephews,
surprised the settlement at Salmon Falls on the Piscataqua, and after a
bloody encounter, in which most of the men of the settlement were
killed, burnt the place, houses, barns, and cattle in their stalls, and
carried away fifty-four prisoners, mostly women and children. The
progress of the march was marked by outrage and murder. A more direful
chronicle does not exist; but we will not relate its horrors.
By the way, Hertelle met with another party from Quebec, which he
joined, and a successful attack was made in May on the settlement of
Casco Bay, in Maine.
Massachusetts was roused, and an expedition was hastily fitted out,
under the command of Sir William Phipps, against Nova Scotia. Sir
William Phipps was a native of Pemaquid, one of twenty-six children by
the same mother. His history, as one of the early “self-made men” of
America, is interesting and instructive. In his boyhood he kept sheep;
as he grew older, he worked as a ship-carpenter; then he was a sailor;
after which he rose to be a ship-master. He received knighthood from the
hand of James II. in consequence of his success in raising, by means of
the diving-bell, the buried treasure of an old Spanish galleon, on the
coast of St. Domingo, which produced a large fortune to himself and
several noblemen who were partners in the enterprise. Thus become a man
of rank and consequence, he returned to Boston, and now, in May 1690,
set sail against Acadia. The conquest of Port Royal was easy, and the
plunder of the neighbouring settlements defrayed the expenses of the
expedition. This success determined the people of New York and New
England to combine for the conquest of Canada. An armament destined for
the reduction of Quebec was placed under the command of Sir William
Phipps, and the land troops in two separate bodies marched to Montreal;
but the expedition was altogether unsuccessful. Sir William was
compelled to return from before Quebec, and of the land forces, one
party was repulsed, and the other stopped by the way, owing to small-pox
having broken out among them. Canada was triumphant, and the event was
celebrated in France by a medal struck for the occasion. But so great,
it is said, had been the fear of the French on the rumour of this
intended invasion, that the aged Frontenac “himself placed the hatchet
in the hands of his allies, and with the tomahawk in his grasp chanted
the war-song and danced the war-dance,” to inspire them with the frenzy
of war.
This unfortunate expedition involved Massachusetts in a great amount of
debt, and gave rise to the first paper money in the British colonies,
though “card money,” as we have said before, had already been made use
of by Canada.
During the summer, Colonel Church, so famous in King Philip’s war, led a
party against the eastern tribes, and attacked an Indian settlement, at
what is now Lewistown, where he burnt the corn and killed many, not
sparing women and children. But this only led to retaliation, which the
Indians understood but too well. Terror and dismay spread through all
the frontier settlements. The Indians lay in ambush, and the ploughman
was shot in the furrow by the unseen foe; it was necessary to go armed
to gather in the crop; every house became a garrison liable to attack at
any moment. The women were taught not only to load the musket, but to
fire it.
Sometimes the Indians killed all who fell into their hands, but most
generally their object was to make prisoners, especially of women and
children, who were sold as servants in Canada. These unhappy captives,
in their long and dreary travels through the woods in midwinter, often
with infants in their arms, suffered dreadfully, not only from hunger
and fatigue, but from the wanton cruelty of their captors. Arrived in
Canada, they were frequently treated with great kindness by their French
purchasers; partly from humane motives, but more commonly from a desire
to make converts of them to the catholic faith. Many who returned,
related that this was one of their sorest trials and temptations. Some
yielded; some children, captives among the Indians, became so accustomed
to the wild and adventurous life of the woods, as to return unwillingly
to civilised life when ransomed.[16]
Massachusetts continued to be governed by the aged Bradstreet until
1692, when the king refusing to confirm the restoration of the former
government, granted a new charter, which extended the limits of the
province, but restricted its privileges. Sir William Phipps, who had
been sent over to England to solicit aid in prosecuting the war against
Canada, as well as to second the other envoys in obtaining the
restoration of the charter, was returned to the colony as governor under
this new charter, which embraced under the title of the Province of
Massachusetts Bay, besides the former territory of Massachusetts,
Plymouth, Maine, and Nova Scotia. Plymouth, always anxious for a
separate government, was thus, contrary to her wishes, joined to
Massachusetts; and New Hampshire, which had only lately placed herself
under her protection, was forcibly dissevered, and that in consequence
of Mason’s claim to the soil having been purchased by a London merchant
of the name of Allen, who appointed as governor, his son-in-law, Usher,
the same bookseller and merchant of Boston who had been employed to
purchase Maine; and hence followed for New Hampshire a long, uneasy time
of disputed claims and lawsuits.
Almost the only privilege which the new charter allowed to the people,
was that of choosing their own representatives. The king reserved to
himself the right of appointing a governor, lieutenant-governor, and
secretary; and of repealing all laws within three years of their
passage.[17] Toleration was secured to all sects excepting Roman
Catholics, the hatred against whom was greatly increased by the
cruelties of the French and their Indian converts. Increase Mather, who,
unlike his colleagues, had yielded to the force of circumstances in
London, and accepted the charter spite of its curtailment of liberties,
was permitted to nominate the officers to be appointed by the crown. By
him Sir William Phipps, who was a member of Mather’s church, was named
as governor, and Stoughton his lieutenant.
A dark and awful cloud was lowering over Massachusetts. Not alone had
she to deplore the ravages of her frontiers and the abridgment of her
charter privileges; a new and direr calamity was now falling upon her,
and which, like so many of her other sorrows and all her mistakes, was
mainly attributable to her spiritual pride. The belief in witchcraft was
in this century prevalent in all Christian countries. The laws of
England, which admitted it and punished it with death, had been adopted
in Massachusetts, strengthened by the Scriptural Judaic command, “Thou
shalt not suffer a witch to live;” and as early as 1645 the mania
commenced, several persons at Boston and other towns were taken up and
tried, and one individual executed, for this supposed crime.
“Among other evidences,” says Hildreth, “of a departure from the ancient
landmarks, and of the propagation even in New England of a spirit of
doubt, were the growing suspicions of the reality of that every-day
supernaturalism which formed so prominent a feature of the puritan
theology. Against this rising incredulity, Increase Mather had, in 1684,
published a book of ‘Remarkable Providences,’ which enumerated and
testified to the truth of all the supposed cases of witchcraft which had
occurred in New England, with arguments to prove their reality.”
As the sight of an execution for murder creates in the mind of the
debased a morbid passion for the committal of the crime, so did the
publication of this work soon give rise to a supposed case of
witchcraft. A house at Newbury was said to be haunted or bewitched, and
the wife of the occupant, a wretched old woman, was accused as a witch.
Seventeen people came forward on her trial to charge her with
misfortunes which had happened to them in the course of their lives, and
but for the firmness and good sense of Simon Bradstreet, and the
abrogation of the charter which just then took place, and gave people
something else to think of, she would have been executed on the charge.
Mather, however, had sown seed which fell into fruitful ground, and in
due course sprang up, being fostered in the meantime by the
re-publication, in Boston, of the works of Richard Baxter and the
authority of Sir Matthew Hale. In 1688, therefore, the morbid
imaginations of the people, already predisposed, being excited by this
mental food, cases of witchcraft were discovered. The four children of a
“pious family” in Boston, the eldest a girl of thirteen, began to be
strangely affected, barking like dogs, purring like cats, being at times
deaf, dumb, or blind; having their limbs distorted, and complaining of
being pricked, pinched, pulled, and cut. A pious minister was called in,
witchcraft was suspected, and an old Irish woman, an indented servant of
the family, who had scolded the children in Irish because her daughter
was accused of theft, was taken up on the charge. Five ministers held a
day of fasting and prayer, and the old woman was tried, found guilty,
and executed.
“Though Increase Mather,” says Hildreth, “was absent, he had a zealous
representative in his son, Cotton Mather, a young minister of
five-and-twenty, a prodigy of learning, eloquence, and piety, recently
settled as colleague with his father over Boston North Church. Cotton
Mather had an extraordinary memory, stuffed with all sorts of learning.
His application was equal to that of a German professor. His lively
imagination, trained in the school of puritan theology, and nourished on
the traditionary legends of New England, of which he was a voracious and
indiscriminate collector, was still further stimulated by fasts, vigils,
prayers, and meditations, almost equal to those of any catholic saint.
Like the Jesuit missionaries of Canada, he often believed himself,
during his devotional exercises, to have direct and personal
communication with the Deity. In every piece of good fortune he saw an
answer to his prayers; in every calamity or mortification, the especial
personal malice of the devil or his agents.”
In order to study these cases of witchcraft at his leisure, Cotton
Mather took one of the bewitched to his house, and the devil within her
flattered his religious vanity to the extreme. He preached and prayed on
the subject, calling witchcraft “a most nefandous treason against the
Majesty on High,” and wrote another book of “Memorable Providences
relating to Witchcraft and Possession,” in which he defied the modern
Sadducee any longer to doubt. Four ministers testified to the
unanswerable arguments which he thus set forth, as did also Richard
Baxter in London.
Public attention thus turned to the subject, other cases of the same
character soon occurred. Two young girls of Salem, the daughter and
niece of Samuel Parris the minister, began to be “moved by strange
caprices,” and being pronounced bewitched by a physician of Boston,
Tituba, an old Indian woman, the servant of the family, was suspected,
principally because she had volunteered to discover the witch by some
magical rites. Of course nothing was talked of but these girls; it was
quite an interesting excitement; ministers met to pray; the whole town
of Salem fasted and prayed, and a fast was ordered throughout the
colony. The rage for notoriety, or the effects of these cases on the
imagination of others of similarly nervous temperaments, soon produced
their results, and not only were several girls affected in the same way,
but also poor old John, the Indian husband of Tituba.
The whole of Salem was agog, and the magistrates took up the matter
solemnly. Accusations spread; two women, the one crazy, the other
bed-ridden, were suspected, in addition to the others. Parris preached
the next Sunday on the subject, and the sister of one of the accused
left the church, which was enough to throw suspicion upon her. The
deputy-governor of the colony came to Salem, and a great court was held
in the meeting-house, five other magistrates and “a great crowd being
present.” Parris was the general accuser. The accused were held with
their arms extended and their hands held open, lest by the least motion
of their fingers they might inflict torments on their victims, who
sometimes appeared to be struck dumb or knocked down by the mere glance
of their eye.
“In the examinations in Salem meeting-house, some very extraordinary
scenes occurred. ‘Look there,’ cried one of the afflicted, ‘there is
Goody Procter on the beam.’ (This Goody Procter’s husband, firmly
protesting the innocence of his wife, had attended her to the court,
and, in consequence, was charged by some of ‘the afflicted’ with being a
wizard). At the above exclamation, many if not all the bewitched had
grievous fits. _Question by the Court_: ‘Ann Putnam, who hurts you?’
_Answer_: ‘Goodman Procter, and his wife too.’ Then some of the
afflicted cry out, ‘There is Procter going to take up Mrs. Pope’s feet;’
and immediately her feet are taken up. _Question by the Court_: ‘What do
you say, Goodman Procter, to these things?’ _Answer_: ‘I know not, I am
innocent!’ Abigail Williams, another of the afflicted, cries out, ‘There
is Goodman Procter going to Mrs. Pope;’ and immediately the said Pope
falls into a fit. _A Magistrate to Procter_: ‘You see the devil will
deceive you; the children (so the afflicted were called) could see what
you were going to do before the woman was hurt. I would advise you to
repentance, for you see the devil is bringing you out!’ Abigail Williams
again cries out, ‘There is Goodman Procter going to hurt Goody Bibber;’
and immediately Bibber falls also into a fit. And so on. But it was on
evidence such as this that people were believed to be witches, and were
hurried to prison and tried for their lives.
“Tituba was flogged into confession; others yielded to a pressure more
stringent than blows. Weak women, astonished at the charges and
contortions of their accusers, assured that they themselves were
witches, and urged to confess as the only means of saving their lives,
were easily prevailed upon to admit any absurdities: journeys through
the air on broomsticks, to attend a witch sacrament—a sort of travesty
on the Christian ordinance—at which the devil appeared in the shape of a
‘small black man;’ signing the devil’s book; renouncing their former
baptism, and being baptized anew by the devil in ‘Wenham Pond,’ after
the Anabaptist fashion. Called upon to tell who were present at these
sacrifices, the confessing witches wound up with new accusations. By the
time Phipps arrived in the colony, near a hundred persons were already
in prison. Nor was the mischief limited to Salem; many persons were
accused in Andover, Boston, and other towns.”[18]
Phipps landed on the 14th of May; on the 16th the charter was published,
and he installed in office. On the 2nd of June, Stoughton was sitting as
chief judge, appointed by the governor, in a special court at Salem, on
the trial of a poor old friendless woman, one Bridget Bishop, who was
accused by Samuel Parris; another poor woman, Deliverance Hobbs by name,
among other things was accused, as Cotton Mather relates, “of giving a
look towards the great and spacious meeting-house of Salem, and
immediately a demon, invisibly entering the house, tore down a part of
it.” She protested her innocence, but was hanged on the 10th of June.
Cotton Mather and the other ministers of Boston and Charlestown were
loud in their gratitude and praise of the zealous Phipps and Stoughton,
and the accusations and trials and condemnations proceeded. It was a
chapter out of the history of the middle ages.
It remained for the science and better knowledge of the present day to
explain these witch phenomena according to psychological and natural
laws. At that time they were believed to be nothing less than the work
of the devil, and as such were punished. “We recommend,” said the
minister of that stern puritan religion which had now grown rampant in
severity, “the speedy and rigorous prosecution of such as have rendered
themselves obnoxious;” and the court accordingly, on the 30th of June,
condemned to death five women, of blameless lives, all protesting their
innocence. Of these five, Rebecca Nurse, whose sister had left the
church while Samuel Parris was preaching a violent sermon against
witches, was at first acquitted on insufficient evidence, and a reprieve
was granted by Phipps. But Parris, who seems to have been a man of a
virulent disposition, could not bear that an especial object of his
hatred, one against whom he had preached, and whom he had denounced from
the pulpit, should escape. The subservient governor recalled the
reprieve, and the following communion-day she was taken in chains to the
meeting-house, excommunicated, and hanged with the rest.
The frenzy increased. On August 3rd, six more were arraigned; and
John Willard, an officer who had been employed to arrest suspected
persons, declining to serve any longer, was accused by “the
afflicted,”—_afflicted_ indeed!—condemned and hanged. Among those
who suffered with Willard was Procter, the husband of Elizabeth
Procter, her execution having been delayed on account of her
pregnancy. He had truly and manfully maintained his wife’s
innocence, and, as we have already related, been himself accused;
others witnessed against him under the agony of torture, and he was
condemned. He was a man of firm and clear character, and petitioned
for trial in Boston, but to no purpose. The behaviour and execution
of this man sank deep into the public mind, and offended many. Still
greater was the effect produced by the execution of George
Burroughs, himself a minister, who was accused of witchcraft because
he denied its possibility. He was formerly the minister at Salem;
afterwards at Saco, whence he had been driven by the Indian war; and
was now, to his own sorrow, once more in Salem, where he had many
enemies. Among other things charged against him was the fact, that
though small of size, he was remarkably strong, whence it was argued
that his strength was the gift of the devil. “On the ladder,” says
Bancroft, “he cleared his innocence by an earnest speech, and by
repeating the Lord’s Prayer composedly and exactly with a fervency
that astonished all who heard him. Tears flowed to the eyes of many;
it seemed as if the spectators would rise up to hinder the
execution. Cotton Mather, on horseback among the crowd, addressed
the people, cavilling at the ordination of Burroughs as no true
minister; insisting on his guilt, and hinting that the devil could
sometimes assume the appearance of an angel of light; and the
hanging proceeded.”
On September 9th, six women were found guilty and condemned; and a few
days later again eight women; while Giles Cory, an old man of eighty,
who refused to plead, was pressed to death—a barbarous usage of the
English law, which, however, was never again followed in the colonies.
On the 23rd of this month, the afflicted are stated by Hildreth to have
amounted to about fifty; fifty-five had confessed themselves witches and
turned accusers; twenty persons had already suffered death; eight more
were under sentence. The jails were full of prisoners, and new
accusations were added every day. Such was the state of things when the
court adjourned to the first Monday in November. The interval was
employed by Cotton Mather in preparing his “Wonders of the Invisible
World,” containing a triumphant account of the trials, and vaunting the
good offices of the late executions, which he considered a cause of
pious thankfulness to God. Although the president of Harvard College
approved, the governor commended, and Stoughton expressed his thanks for
the work of Cotton Mather, yet a spirit was abroad in the colony and
becoming more demonstrative every day, which was very adverse both to
these outrages on humanity and to their promoters.
In the interim between the last executions and the sitting of the
adjourned court, the representatives of the people assembled, together
with the church of Andover, with their minister at their head, and
protested against these witch trials: “We know not,” said they, “who can
think himself safe, if the accusations of children and others under a
diabolical influence shall be received against persons of good fame.”
Very truly and reasonably did they say so; for even now one of the
Andover ministers was accused, and the wife of the minister of Beverley;
and when the son of old Governor Bradstreet refused as a magistrate to
grant any more warrants, he himself was accused, and shortly after his
brother, for bewitching a dog; and both were obliged to flee for their
lives, their property being immediately seized. And more than this, when
Lady Phipps, in the absence of her husband, interfered to obtain the
discharge of a prisoner from jail, accusations were whispered even
against her!
The frenzy of delusion becoming weaker, Cotton Mather wrote, and
circulated in manuscript, the account of a case of witchcraft in his own
parish in Boston. This called forth a reply from Robert Calef, a
clear-headed, fearless man, who, by the weapons of reason and ridicule,
overcame and put to flight, in an astonishingly short time, both witches
and devils. It was in vain that Cotton Mather denounced him as “a coal
from hell;” the sentiment of the people went with him; and though a
circular from Harvard College signed by the president, Increase Mather,
solicited from all the ministers of the neighbourhood a return of the
apparitions, possessions, enchantments, and all extraordinary things,
wherein the existence and agency of the invisible world is more sensibly
demonstrated, the next ten years produced scarcely five returns.[19]
The invisible world was indeed becoming really so; and as is always the
case, the superstition, when it ceased to be credited, lost its power of
delusion. Cotton Mather and his party were too self-righteous to follow
the example of William Penn and the Quakers of Pennsylvania, or they
might soon have cleared Massachusetts of its witches. The Swedes who
emigrated to the banks of the Delaware brought with them all the terrors
and superstitions which the wild and gloomy Scandinavian mythology had
engrafted upon Christianity, and a woman was accused by them of
witchcraft in 1684. The case was brought to trial; William Penn sat as
judge; and the jury, composed principally of Quakers, found the woman
“guilty of the common fame of being a witch; but not guilty as she stood
indicted.” No notoriety could be obtained by witchcraft in Pennsylvania;
it furnished the excitement neither of preaching, praying nor fasting;
and the psychological epidemic, not finding there a moral atmosphere
capable of sustaining it, died out. There were no more cases of
witchcraft in Pennsylvania.
Scarcely was this fatal delusion at an end, when Boston was visited by
the yellow fever, brought there by troops from the West Indies on their
way to co-operate in the attack on Canada, and to which the recently
excited state of the public mind made the city more susceptible.
In 1694 Sir William Phipps, who was a man of choleric temper, having got
into dispute with the royal collector at Boston, and afterwards with the
captain of a man-of-war, on whom he inflicted personal chastisement and
then committed to prison, was recalled to England to account for his
conduct, where he died shortly after his arrival. The general court
petitioned parliament that he might not be removed. The Earl of
Bellamont was appointed his successor; but his arrival being delayed,
Stoughton administered the government for several years.
The treaty which had been made with the eastern Indians at Pemaquid had
not remained unbroken; during the awful witch-delusion the horrors of
Indian warfare were renewed. In 1694 a party of Indians, again
instigated by the Jesuit Thury, and led by French officers, surprised
the settlement at Oyster Bay, now Durham, and killed or took captive
about 100 of the inhabitants. Port Royal was re-captured by Villebon;
and soon after the whole of Acadia returned to its ancient allegiance.
In the autumn of 1696 the fort of Pemaquid, being compelled to surrender
to a mixed force of French and Indians, was laid in ruins, and the
neighbouring country devastated. Colonel Church, on the other hand,
destroyed Beau Bassin, a French settlement on the Bay of Fundy.
Still instigated by the French, who excited in the hearts of their
Indian allies the utmost hatred of the English, the remoter territory of
Massachusetts was overrun by them, and early in 1697 they advanced as
far as the towns of Andover and Haverhill, to within twenty-five miles
of Boston, killing many of the inhabitants, and carrying others into
captivity.
We must be permitted to give here an incident from this terrible
frontier life, which will serve to show the horrors of the time and the
spirit of the frontier settler. On March 15th, 1697, a party of Indians
came to Haverhill, and began to burn and slay as usual, and so reached
the house of Hannah Dustan, who had been confined about a week, and was
there with her nurse, Mary Neff. Her husband, who was at work in the
distant fields with their eight children, hurried home with his loaded
gun for her defence. But the Indians were on his threshold; and he, with
his eight children, was in a strait what to do; whether to rush to the
rescue of his wife and leave the children, or secure their safety and
leave his wife and home to the care of Providence. The Indians came up
to him also, but he fired, and bidding his children flee, kept them
before him, until he had reached a place of safety, about two miles off;
here leaving the children, he returned to his home, which by this time
was a heap of burning ruins. The Indians, having entered the house,
compelled the mother and her infant to rise and prepare to accompany
them, together with the nurse and about half a score other English
captives. The brains of the infant were dashed out against a tree, that
the care of it might not impede the progress of the mother. For many
days they were driven on by their savage captors, until they were about
150 miles up the wilderness country. “The good God,” says Cotton Mather,
who relates this circumstance, “heard the sighs of the prisoners, and
gave them, favour in the eyes of their enemies.” The Indians were
converts of the French Jesuits, and very zealous in their devotions, in
which they would have compelled the women to join, ever threatening
them, as they went along, with having to run the gauntlet in the Indian
village to which they were bound. With the two women was a boy from
Worcester, Samuel Leonardson by name, and they three planned a scheme of
escape. The boy, conversing with his Indian master, inquired how the
Indian smote when he intended instant death; the savage warrior
instructed him. Accordingly, one night, when the Indians were soundly
asleep, the women and the boy arose, each armed with a tomahawk, and
smote as the Indian had taught them. Ten out of the twelve who occupied
the wigwam were slain; the other two, a boy and a squaw, escaped. After
this, embarking in a birchen canoe on the Merrimac which they had
followed, the three, with the ten scalps in a bag, and their tomahawks
as trophies, arrived at the English settlements, where they were
received by their friends as persons returned from the dead; and £50 was
voted to them by the General Assembly, while the whole colony rang with
the fame of their adventure.
The peace of Ryswick caused a temporary cessation of hostilities and the
restoration to each party of the conquests which the other had made.
Peace being established in England, government had now leisure to pay a
little attention to the colonies, and that attention, of course, was not
of the most agreeable kind. In answer to the reiterated complaints of
the English merchants, of the violation of the Acts of Trade, and
especially of direct intercourse being carried on between the colonies
and Scotland and Ireland, the Board of Trade and Plantations was
established, which continued a rigid and jealous oversight of the
American colonies until the time of the American Revolution. All direct
trade between Ireland and the colonies was now strictly prohibited, on
the plea that, if any trade were at all permitted with this unfortunate
island, which was just then smarting under the inflictions of the late
war, it would be a cover for the smuggling of colonial produce, known
under the term “enumerated articles.” The number of revenue officers was
increased, and the unpopular Randolph was appointed surveyor-general,
and placed at their head.
In 1699 the Earl of Bellamont arrived in Boston from New York. How
popular he made himself, we have already related. Bellamont was the
first governor who opened the General Assembly by a formal speech, and
from his time it has been continued.
“Neither Usher, the lieutenant-governor of New Hampshire, who fled to
Boston in alarm for his life; nor his successor, Partridge, who, being a
ship-carpenter, had the merit of introducing into that province a
profitable timber-trade to Portugal; nor the proprietary, Allen, who
presently assumed the government, were more successful than Cranfield
had been in extorting quit-rents from the settlers of that sturdy little
province. And New Hampshire, now included under Bellamont’s commission,
continued for the next forty years to have the same governors as
Massachusetts, though generally a lieutenant-governor was at the head of
the administration.”[20]
On the death of Lord Bellamont, Massachusetts had the mortification of
receiving the “apostate” Joseph Dudley, the friend of the hated Andros,
as governor, he having obtained the appointment through the influence of
Cotton Mather. The popular party, they who had opposed the tyranny of
Andros, now set themselves in opposition to the new governor, and
refused to comply with the royal instructions, which required them to
fix permanently the salaries of the governor and crown officers.
Although “a spirit of latitudinarianism” was gradually narrowing the
bounds of the theocratic power in Massachusetts, still her code retained
most of its rigid enactments. It was still forbidden “to travel, work,
or play, on the Sabbath;” and constables and tithingmen were commanded
to “prevent all persons from swimming in the waters; all unnecessary and
unreasonable walking in the streets or fields; keeping open of shops, or
following secular occasions or recreations on the evening preceding the
Lord’s-day, or on any part of the day or evening following.”
Atheism and blasphemy, under which was included the denying that any of
the canonical books of Scripture were the inspired word of God, were
punished with six months’ imprisonment; setting in the pillory;
whipping; boring through the tongue with a red-hot iron; sitting on the
gallows with a rope round the neck; or any two of these punishments, at
the discretion of the court. Adultery was punished by the guilty parties
being set on the gallows with a rope round their necks, and on their way
thence to the jail, to be severely flogged, not exceeding forty stripes;
and ever after to wear the capital letter A, of two inches long, cut out
of cloth of a contrary colour to their clothes, and sewed upon their
upper garments on the outside of their arm or on their back in public
view, and if caught without this, to be liable to fifteen stripes.[21]
This extraordinary mode of punishment has, it will be remembered by our
readers, furnished the subject for one of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fine and
graphic stories, “The Scarlet Letter.”
CHAPTER XXVI.
SETTLEMENT OF LOUISIANA.—QUEEN ANNE’S WAR.
The Peace of Ryswick restored to France all the places on Hudson’s Bay
of which she had possession at the commencement of the war. With the
exception of the eastern portion of Newfoundland, she retained the whole
line of coast, with the adjacent islands, from Maine to beyond Labrador
and Hudson’s Bay, besides Canada and the valley of the Mississippi; the
boundaries, however, not being defined, remained subjects of dispute.
The boundary between New France and New York was especially difficult of
adjustment, each nation claiming the extensive intervening territory
occupied by the Five Nations.
In the year 1700, the jealousy of the Five Nations having been excited
by the claim of Bellamont to build forts in their territory, they began
to suspect the British intentions towards them; and Callieres, the
successor of Frontenac in Canada, taking advantage of their state of
feeling, offered them either peace with the French, or a war of
extermination. They chose the former, and sent envoys to Montreal, “to
weep,” according to their phraseology, “for the French who had died in
the war.” A grand treaty of peace was formally signed between the French
and their Christianised Indian allies, and these their ancient,
formidable enemies—each nation testifying its solemn assent by its
symbol, that of the Senecas and Onondagas being a spider; the Cayugas a
calumet; the Oneidas a forked stick; the Mohawks a bear; the Hurons a
beaver; the Abenakis a deer; and the Ottawas a hare. Peace was also
established between the French allies and the Sioux, which was to extend
beyond the Mississippi. The hold which the French had upon these nations
being through the Jesuit missionaries, a law was passed the same year in
New York for the “hanging of every Popish priest who should voluntarily
enter the province.”
Peace being established with England, the French, in 1698, renewed their
endeavours, which the war had interrupted, to plant a settlement at the
mouth of the Mississippi; and Lemoine D’Iberville, who had already
signalised himself on the shores of Hudson’s Bay and Newfoundland, was
selected for the enterprise. By birth he was a Canadian, one of the
seven sons of Charles Lemoine, an early emigrant from Normandy; and with
his two brothers, Sauvolle and Bienville, and 200 colonists and a few
women and children, in two frigates and two tenders, D’Iberville sailed
for the mouth of the Mississippi, which, as yet, had never been entered
from the sea.
Unlike the enterprise of La Salle, good fortune attended that of Lemoine
D’Iberville from the commencement. Cordially and honourably received by
the governor of St. Domingo, his expedition was there increased by a
larger vessel, and in January, 1699, he anchored in the Bay of
Pensacola; but his landing was forbidden by a fort erected here by
Spaniards, lately come from Vera Cruz, and under the guns of which lay
two Spanish ships. Spain still claimed the whole range of the Gulf of
Mexico.
Sailing westward, D’Iberville cast anchor south-east of Mobile, and
landed February 2nd on Ship Island, where, the larger vessel having
returned to St. Domingo, the people erected huts while he explored the
opposite shore, the Bay of Biloxi, and the mouth of the river
Pascagoula. On the 27th of the same month, D’Iberville, his brother
Bienville, forty-eight men, and Athanase, a Franciscan, who had been one
of the companions of the unfortunate La Salle, set forth in search of
the mouth of the Mississippi. Floating trees and muddy waters led them
to the obscure outlet of the great Father of Rivers, which they ascended
to a village of the Bayagoulas, a tribe occupying the western bank, just
below Red River, and with whom was found to be faithfully preserved that
letter written by Tonti, and committed to their care in 1684; which
circumstance was the joyful assurance to them that they had found the
Mississippi.[22]
Returning from this point, D’Iberville, quitting the great river by the
Manshac Pass to the eastward, sailed through the Lakes Maurepas and
Pontchartrain, so called from two of the French ministers, and arrived
safely at Ship Island. Preferring the shores of the Bay of Biloxi to the
low lands of the Mississippi, a fort was erected there, the four
bastions and twelve cannon of which were to maintain the French
authority over the territory, extending from about the Rio del Norte to
the confines of Pensacola; after which, D’Iberville set sail for France,
leaving his brothers Sauvolle and Bienville in command of the fort,
around which the huts of the settlers had clustered.
Though the fear of Spanish interference with this first French
settlement in Mississippi was soon removed by the transfer of the
Spanish throne to a branch of the Bourbons, still no great success could
be looked for; the soil was arid sand, and the heat of the burning sun
made the settlers remember with longing the invigorating climate of
Canada. Nevertheless their settlement was not without its agreeable
circumstances, among which were the visits of missionaries from their
stations among remote tribes, and who, floating down the great river in
their birch-bark canoes, came to visit them. “Already,” says Bancroft,
“a line of communication existed between Quebec and the Gulf of Mexico.
The boundless southern region, made a part of the French empire by
lilies carved on the trees and crosses erected on the bluffs, and
occupied by French missionaries and forest rangers, was annexed to the
command of the governor of Biloxi.”
A hundred settlers, with a missionary at their head, had already
established themselves upon that beautiful strait between Lakes Erie and
St. Clair which La Salle, on his first journey, had marked out as an
advantageous post. A fort was built, and Detroit became a flourishing
settlement, as did also Kaskaskia and Cahokia, two missionary stations
on the eastern bank of the Mississippi. The ambition of forming a vast
and powerful French American empire was now becoming stronger even than
the idea of a Jesuit Theocracy.
Whilst the little settlement was establishing itself at Biloxi, a scheme
was formed in London to claim for England the territory granted in 1630,
to Robert Heath, under the name of Carolana. William III. had taken
Father Hennepin into his pay, who now pretended to have been the first
who descended the Mississippi. He had lately published his narrative in
London, and added to his former account that of his pretended voyage. On
the plea, therefore, of this priority of claim, an English expedition
was fitted out under Coxe, a physician of London and a proprietary of
New Jersey, who had bought up the old patent of Carolana, and now, with
two armed English vessels, set out to explore the mouth of the
Mississippi. Bienville, who had been intrusted by his brother
D’Iberville to pursue the exploration of the country, was on his return
to Biloxi, about fifty miles above the mouth of the river, when, to his
great surprise, meeting one of Coxe’s vessels, he resorted to an
expedient which soon removed the intruder. He pretended that this river
was not the Mississippi, and that the country was under the French
supremacy, on which the English captain, instantly turning his ships
about, hastened back. The reach of the river where this occurrence took
place is called the _English Turn_ to this day. Thus ended the English
attempt to establish a claim to the old _Carolana_; and though William
III. declared that he would leap over “twenty stumbling-blocks rather
than not effect it,” England never gained any permanent establishment on
the Mississippi.
Coxe’s vessels had brought out a number of French Huguenot emigrants,
who were landed in Carolina; and these soon after desiring to remove to
Louisiana, where their nationality might be preserved, wrote to Sauvolle
for this purpose. Sauvolle communicated with the French government,
asking merely, on their behalf, liberty of conscience. The reply of the
king was characteristic: “He had not driven Protestants from France to
make a republic of them in America.”
D’Iberville returned towards the end of the year with sixty Canadians,
and early the following, set out to select a situation for a new
settlement. While building a fort about fifty miles above the mouth of
the river, he was visited by the aged Tonti, the former companion of La
Salle, who had come down the Illinois with seven attendants for that
purpose. D’Iberville and his brother Bienville, in company with Tonti,
now ascended the Great River as far as the country occupied by the
Natchez, by whom they were well received; and here, upon a high bluff, a
settlement was marked out under the name of Rosalie, now called Natchez.
In May, D’Iberville again returned to France, and Bienville, pursuing
his explorations, crossed the Red River to Natchitoches. Gold and
mineral wealth were again the great objects of search, but nothing was
met with save swampy forests and dismal solitudes; nor could any report
of gold be obtained from the natives. La Sueur, in pursuit of this
bootless quest, spent the summer and autumn of the same year in
ascending the Mississippi as far as the falls of St. Anthony, and then
entering the St. Peter’s, reached the prairies of Missouri, and spent
the winter among the Towas, that he might in spring take possession of a
copper mine.
The settlers of Biloxi, mere hireling adventurers, were not the men to
weather through the early hardships of a colony. Whilst France was
urging them to search for the precious metals, the fevers incident to
such a soil and climate were sweeping them rapidly away. Sauvolle was an
early victim; and the command then fell upon the young and adventurous
Bienville. When D’Iberville returned from France in 1703, he found but
150 alive, and soon after the colony was removed to the western bank of
the Mobile; and this, the first European settlement in the present state
of Alabama, continued to be the head-quarters of the colony for the next
twenty years. D’Iberville, attacked soon after by yellow fever, escaped
narrowly with his life to France, and died at Havanna in 1706. “When he
left Louisiana, it was little more than a wilderness, containing about
thirty families. The colonists were unwise in their objects. Their
scanty number was scattered on discoveries, or among the Indians in
quest of furs. There was no quiet agricultural industry. The coast of
Biloxi was sandy as the deserts of Lybia; the fort on the delta of the
Mississippi was at the mercy of the rising waters; and the buzzing and
sting of musquitoes, the hissing of the snakes, the croaking of the
frogs, the cries of alligators, seemed to claim the country still as the
inheritance of reptiles; whilst, at Mobile, the sighing of the pines and
the hopeless character of the barrens warned the emigrants to seek homes
more inland.”[23]
As regards the condition of the American provinces belonging to the once
powerful Spain, it will be sufficient to state that they shared in a
great measure the condition of the parent-country. Spain had now no
navy, and “foreigners, by means of loans and mortgages, gained more than
seven-eighths of the wealth from America, and furnished more than
nine-tenths of the merchandise shipped for the colonies. Spanish
commerce and manufactures had almost ceased to exist; and its dynasty
had become extinct.” A Bourbon was on the throne, and the liberties of
the Netherlands being endangered, William III. declared war both against
France and Spain.
In the war which commenced with the eighteenth century, the English
colonists had for enemies, not alone the French of Canada, but the
Spaniards of Florida also. The Spanish settlements in the neighbourhood
of St. Augustine were not very extensive, it is true; and that of
Pensacola was of later date. The tribes of Appalachees, inhabiting what
is now called Middle Florida, and who had received some rudiments of
civilisation from Spanish missionaries, were employed in agriculture,
and as herdsmen. The powerful tribes of the confederated Creek Indians
occupied the territory south and south-west of the Savannah and the
Alleganies, bordering on the English settlements of South Carolina, and
forming now the State of Georgia. The country south-west of the
Alleganies was occupied by the equally formidable Cherokees, who claimed
as their hunting-ground the whole country as far as the Kenhawa and the
Ohio; between these and the English settlements of the two Carolinas,
was the territory of Yamasees, the Catawbas, and the Tuscaroras.
The governor of South Carolina at this time was James Moore, successor
to Joseph Blake, “a needy and ambitious man,” who had enriched himself
by kidnapping Indians and selling them as slaves. The hope of Indian and
Spanish captives induced this man, as soon as the news of the war
reached Carolina, to undertake an expedition against St. Augustine. The
town was very soon taken, but the garrison retired to the fort, which
was strong and well built; and before this could be attacked the
assailants had to send for heavy artillery from Jamaica. In the meantime
an Indian runner was sent with the tidings to Bienville at Mobile, who
communicated the intelligence to the Spanish viceroy at Havanna, and two
Spanish ships of war were immediately despatched to St. Augustine, at
the sight of which Moore abandoned his vessels and fled by land. This
expedition burdened Carolina with debt, and caused the issue of her
first paper money.
Again, at the close of 1705, Moore, at the head of fifty white
volunteers and about 1,000 Indian allies of the Creek nation, marched
through the forests which De Soto had traversed, and surprised the
settlements near St. Mark’s, where, surrounded by their herds of cattle,
the semi-civilised Indians lived in peaceful allegiance to the Spanish.
It was the middle of December, when the unexpected invaders came down
upon the quiet villagers; and though they could not take the fort, they
plundered the villages, burning and robbing the churches. A barefoot
friar, the only white man, came forward to beg for mercy; but about 100
women and children, and fifty warriors were seized as slaves. The fort,
however, could not be taken, and the Indian chief purchased peace with
the plate of his church and ten horse-loads of provisions. Two thousand
of these Indians removed to the banks of the Altamaha, under the
jurisdiction of Carolina, and their country was given up to the Lower
Creek Indians, allies of the English. A century and a quarter
afterwards, when General Jackson expelled the Indians from this
territory, traces were found of these Spanish missionary villages,
overgrown with forest.[24] Thus did the English power extend itself to
the Gulf of Mexico, and obtain a claim to that region which soon after
became the province of Georgia.
The following year Charleston was invaded by a French and Spanish
squadron. But though the town was suffering at the time from yellow
fever, the colonists, aided by the Huguenots, who fought for their old
quarrel, bravely defended the place and repelled the invaders with great
loss. D’Iberville was at Havanna preparing for a new attack on
Charleston, when he died.
The consequences of the European war were terrible in Massachusetts. The
broken eastern tribes settled in two villages, Becancour and St.
Francis, were encouraged by the Jesuits priests to make continual
inroads on the English; and now that peace existed between the Five
Nations and the French, the whole force of Canada was directed against
the New England frontiers.
In vain had a congress of chiefs assured Governor Dudley at Casco, that
“the sun was not further from the earth than were their thoughts from
war with the English;” six weeks afterwards, led on by the French,
war-parties ranged over the whole country, carrying terror and
devastation wherever they came.
It was winter, a season favourable to Indian warfare, and the snow lay
deep on the ground, when Hertelle de Rouville, with 200 French, and 142
Indians, surprised the little town of Deerfield in the dead of night,
being able to pass the palisades which defended the place, owing to the
depth of the snow. Our readers are sufficiently familiar already with
the horrors of Indian warfare; we will not, therefore, go through the
terrible details. The village, with the exception of the church and one
dwelling-house, was set on fire and wholly destroyed; but few of the
inhabitants escaped; forty-seven were killed, and 120 carried into
captivity. Among these latter were the Rev. John Williams, the minister
of the place, his wife and five children, two being among the murdered.
Eunice, the wife, who was in delicate health, carried her Bible with her
and endeavoured to find comfort in its pages for her companions in
affliction; on the second day of their terrible march, however, being
unable to keep up with the party, she was struck dead with the tomahawk.
Her body, left at the foot of a hill, was found by some of the remnant
of Deerfield, and reverently interred in the burial-ground of that
place. Her husband was afterwards laid by her side, and their grave
stones long marked the spot. The youngest daughter, but seven years old
at the time of this domestic tragedy, was adopted into a family of
praying Indians near Montreal, and became so deeply attached to her new
friends that nothing could induce her to leave them. She afterwards
became the wife of a chief, and in later years visited her family and
friends, then restored to Deerfield, in her Indian dress; but though
every inducement was used to prolong her stay, and a fast was held in
the village, with prayer for her deliverance, she returned, after a few
days, to her own wigwam and the love of her own Mohawk children.[25]
Terror and dismay spread through New England; and the veteran Benjamin
Church, roused by these horrors, rode seventy miles to offer his
services to Dudley, governor of Massachusetts, on behalf of his
suffering fellow-citizens. Accordingly, at the head of 500 soldiers, he
ascended the Penobscot and St. Croix rivers, and destroyed several
Indian towns and took many prisoners.
In 1705, Vaudreuil, then governor of Canada, proposed to Dudley a treaty
of neutrality, and an exchange of prisoners took place, at which time
John Williams and his family, with the exception of the one child we
have mentioned, together with the other inhabitants of Deerfield, were
restored.
War, however, soon broke out again. In 1707, Rhode Island and New
Hampshire, having raised the means by the issue of bills of credit,
joined New England in an enterprise against Acadia. A thousand men,
therefore, under Colonel March, entered the river in an English frigate,
and landed before the town of Port Royal. Not being able to take the
fort for want of cannon, they burned the town, killed the cattle, and
destroyed the harvests by cutting the dams in the river and overflowing
the land. From Port Royal they advanced along the coast, committing all
the depredations in their power. The next year, the French retaliated.
Hertelle de Rouville, descending the Merrimac, reached the devoted
village of Haverhill, not far from Boston. We have already related the
sorrows of this place, and the heroism of some of its inhabitants, and
again similar scenes were witnessed. Haverhill stood in the midst of the
primeval forest, near the Merrimac, and a new meeting-house, the pride
of the place, stood in the centre of the village. On the night of the
29th of August, the inhabitants resigned themselves to repose,
unconscious that in the neighbouring forest lay the savage Hertelle de
Rouville and his men, and who, an hour before daybreak, having solemnly
prayed, rushed into the village, bearing with them the terrors and
horrors of Indian warfare. The village was set on fire. Benjamin Rolfe,
the minister, and his wife and children, were cruelly murdered, as well
as about fifty others, while the same number were carried away captive.
Many instances of the heroism of the women are related. Mrs. Swan
defended her house, her husband and family, with an iron spit three
yards long. The wife of John Johnson, who had fled to the garden with
her child in her arms, after the murder of her husband in the house,
contrived, as she fell mortally wounded, to hide the infant, which was
found alive at her breast when the massacre was over. Mary Wainwright,
whose husband was among the first killed, unbarred her house-door,
apparently willingly, at the bidding of the savage enemy, and asking
them civilly what they wanted, and being told money, went out, as she
said, to bring it to them, and gathering up all her children, save one,
succeeded in escaping.[26]
In the midst of the outrage, rapine, and bloodshed, a brave man, named
Davis, was heard shouting, as if to multitudes of people, “Come on! come
on! we will have-them!” And the enemy, believing that a large body of
troops was advancing, made a hasty retreat soon after sunrise, carrying
with them a number of prisoners, several of whom however, were rescued
by Samuel Ayer, a bold village champion, and a few others, who pursued
them, though Ayer himself perished in the enterprise. A mound in the
village grave yard marks to this day the resting-place of the unhappy
victims.
“Such,” says Bancroft, “were the sorrows of that generation.” And the
reader may say, in the words of Peter Schuyler, in his remonstrance to
the Marquis de Vaudreuil: “My heart swells with indignation when I think
that a war between Christian princes, bound to the exactest laws of
honour and generosity, which their noble ancestors have illustrated by
brilliant examples, is degenerating into a savage and boundless
butchery!”
The atrocities of this warfare inspired the English colonists with still
deeper abhorrence of the French missionaries, and led to the design of
exterminating the Indians, which otherwise might not have been
entertained. As it was not possible to carry on regular warfare with the
Indians, who shifted their abodes at the approach of the enemy, a bounty
of ten pounds for every Indian scalp was offered to the regular troops,
and to volunteers the sum was doubled, while as much as fifty pounds per
scalp was promised to parties who should gratuitously scour the forests
for Indians, that the whole land might be cleared of them, as countries
were in the old times cleared of wild beasts.
In the meantime Nicholson led a great force against Port Royal, and
succeeded in taking the place, the garrison being compelled by famine to
surrender. The name was changed to Annapolis, in honour of Queen Anne,
and it has remained in the hands of the English ever since. It was on
the occasion of this victory that the brave Peter Schuyler hastened to
London with his five Iroquois sachems, as we have already related, to
induce the British government to prosecute the war thus fortunately
commenced against Canada. The witty and dissipated St. John, afterwards
Viscount Bolingbroke, entered warmly into this scheme, and a fleet of
fifteen ships of war and forty transports was placed under the command
of Sir Hovenden Walker, while the brother of Mrs. Masham, “honest Jack
Hill,” as he was called by his bottle companions, was placed at the head
of seven veteran regiments of Marlborough’s army and a battalion of
marines.
On June 25, the fleet arrived at Boston, where supplies and colonial
forces were taken on board. An army from Connecticut, New Jersey, and
New York, Palatine emigrants, and about 600 Iroquois, assembled at
Albany, preparatory to an attack on Montreal; whilst in the west, the
English having strengthened themselves by an alliance with the Fox
Indians, sought to expel the French from Detroit, their settlement in
Michigan.[27]
Nor were the French on their part negligent; by means of the Jesuit
missionaries, treaties were renewed with the natives; the fortifications
of Quebec and Montreal were strengthened, and the people were so
resolute and determined, that women even laboured voluntarily for the
common defence. The whole of New France was ready for the enemy many
weeks before he appeared. At length, after unaccountable and inexcusable
delay, the English squadron ascended the St. Lawrence, Sir Hovenden
Walker puzzling his brain the while how his ships were to be secured
during the coming winter, when the rivers would be frozen, and
concluding to “secure them on the dry ground in frames and cradles till
the thaw.” Thus forgetting the present in the future, they slowly
proceeded, and, on a dark and stormy night, through the stupidity of
Admiral Walker, who though warned of danger, would not believe it, eight
transports were wrecked and near 1,000 men drowned.
A council of war the next morning declared it impossible to proceed.
There is something like fatuity in the reasoning of the admiral: “Had
we,” says he, “reached Quebec, 1,000 or 1,200 men must have been left to
perish of cold and hunger; by the loss of a part, Providence has saved
all the rest:” and the fleet, turning about, sailed direct for England,
having sent back the colonial transports. Nor did the admiral wait to
attack the French post in Newfoundland, as his orders required, so great
was his impatience to remove, not only from this inhospitable climate,
but from the colonists whom he had come to serve, and of whom he related
that “their interestedness, ill-nature, sourness, hypocrisy and canting
were insupportable.”
This ignoble retreat caused great disappointment and displeasure at New
York; nor was the expedition against Detroit more successful. This
little fort, “the most beautiful spot in Canada,” was defended by Du
Buisson and only twenty men. Summoning, however, his Indian allies, who
were all strongly attached to their Jesuit teachers, they rallied round
the fort, each nation under its own ensign, and thus, by one spokesman,
addressed the commandant: “Father, behold thy children compass thee
round! We will, if need be, gladly die for our father—only take care of
our wives and our children, and spread a little grass over our bodies to
defend them from the flies!” The English allies of the Fox nation were
now in their turn besieged, and being compelled to surrender, were
either murdered or distributed among the confederates as slaves.
Whilst the northern states were busy with their schemes of Canadian
conquest, and suffering under the horrors of Indian warfare, North
Carolina, which was then broken up into factions, as we have already
related, under a disputed governorship was thrown into a state of
universal alarm, which cast all other considerations into the shade, by
the hostilities of the Tuscaroras, by whom a plot was formed for the
extermination of the whites. Their first outbreak was on the infant
settlements of the already-mentioned German emigrants from the
Palatinate, and to whom lands had been appropriated on the southern bank
of the Roanoke, near the mouth of which was the Swiss settlement of New
Berne, all lying within the country of the Tuscaroras. These Indians,
alarmed and offended at the encroachments of the white man, determined
to take summary vengeance; and accordingly, Graffenburg, the German
superintendent, and Lawson, the colonial surveyor-general, who, with his
chain in his hand, was allotting out the lands to the new-comers, were
seized by sixty armed Indians, and carried up the country to the chief
village of the nation, where the assembled chiefs, after a discussion of
two days, condemned Lawson to be burned at the stake; Graffenburg, who
represented himself as “the chief of another tribe, distinct from the
English, and only recently arrived,” was allowed to return, on condition
that he occupied no more Indian lands. The poor, persecuted German
settlers, with the Huguenots their neighbours, were now exposed to the
cruelties of more pitiless enemies even than their catholic persecutors
of the Old World. For three days and nights the fierce Tuscaroras and
their allies hunted their human prey through the woods, devastating the
country with fire and blood until they paused from weariness.
South Carolina sent a force of 600 militia and 650 Indians, under
Captain Barnwell, for their relief; and though as yet “a vast and
howling wilderness” separated North from South Carolina, they boldly
marched through it, and joining the troops of North Carolina, attacked
the Indians intrenched in a rude fort, killed 300, and took a
considerable number prisoners. The rest fled to the chief town of their
nation, where they hastily constructed means of defence; but being
pursued by Barnwell, were at length compelled to sue for peace. After
the loss of about 1,000 warriors, the Tuscaroras abandoned their country
for ever, and uniting themselves to the Iroquois, became a sixth nation
in that terrible confederacy.
But the Indian war was not yet at an end. In 1715, the Yamasees, who
occupied the country north-east of the Savannah river, secretly
instigated a combination of all the Indians, from Florida to Cape Fear,
against South Carolina. The Creeks, Apalachians, Cherokees, Catawbas and
Yamasees engaged in the enterprise, the whole force of which was
computed to be 6,000 fighting men. The southern tribes fell suddenly on
the traders settled among them, and in a few hours ninety persons were
massacred. The news was conveyed to Charleston, where the utmost alarm
prevailed.
Formidable parties also penetrating the northern frontier approached
Charleston; they were repulsed by the militia, but their route was
marked by devastation. Charles Craven, at that time governor, adopted
the most energetic measures. At the head of 1,200 men he marched towards
the southern frontier, and overtook the strongest body of the enemy, at
a place called Saltcatchers, when an obstinate and bloody battle was
fought. The Indians were totally defeated, and the governor pressing
upon them, drove them from their territory and pursued them over the
Savannah river. Here they were hospitably received by the Spaniards of
Florida, and long afterwards continued to make incursions into Carolina.
Nearly 400 of the Carolinians were slain in this war.
These events in their consequences heightened the dissensions already
existing between the colonists and the proprietaries. The legislature
had applied to the company for aid and protection, which was denied;
large issues of paper money were therefore resorted to as a temporary
relief, the expenses of the war being estimated at £100,000. Directions
were given by the proprietaries to reduce the quantity in circulation.
The next step of the assembly was to appropriate the lands from which
the Indians had been driven; but even this was opposed by the
proprietaries, who refused the necessary sanction. Nor was their request
for the recall of the chief justice Trott and the receiver-general
Rhett, both of whom had made themselves extremely disliked in the
province from their tyrannical measures, attended to; on the contrary,
they were not only retained in office, but thanked for their
services.[28]
It almost seemed as if the proprietary government was doing all in its
power to irritate the mind and alienate the affections of the colony;
accordingly, in 1719, a general combination was formed for its
subversion. The inhabitants bound themselves “to stand by each other for
their rights and privileges, and have nothing more to do with the
proprietaries.” All was done with the utmost secrecy and despatch. A
deputation of the people waited on Robert Johnson, their governor,
begging him “to hold the reins of government for the king.” Johnson,
true to his employers, firmly rejected their offer; on which, choosing
Arthur Middleton as president, they voted themselves “a convention
delegated by the people,” and selected James Moore, a very popular man,
as “the fittest person” for the government of the province.
These summary measures were not found to be displeasing to the English
crown. It was decided in London that the proprietaries had forfeited
their charter, and that both North and South Carolina should be taken
under the royal protection.
“In 1720, Francis Nicholson, known in the history of the northern
provinces, was appointed governor; and early the following year he
arrived at Charleston, where he was received with every demonstration of
joy. Peace being now made between England and Spain, Nicholson was
instructed to cultivate the friendship of the Indians, and also of the
Spaniards of Florida. He accordingly made treaties with the Cherokees
and Creeks, in which boundaries were settled, and other necessary
regulations made. Having thus secured the province from without,
Governor Nicholson, by the encouragement and support which he gave to
literary and religious institutions, soon caused its internal affairs to
assume a new aspect.”[29]
But though South Carolina had thus changed the conditions of its own
government, the change was not recognised in North Carolina till 1729,
when seven-eighths of the proprietaries sold their shares to the crown
for £22,000, Lord Carteret alone retaining his eighth share. At this
period the two Carolinas became separate royal governments, and so
remained till the Revolution.
Before leaving the subject of South Carolina, we must mention that which
Hildreth very justly calls her “bad pre-eminence on the subject of
slave-legislation,” and which remains a distinctive characteristic to
the present time.
At the commencement of the eighteenth century, Carolina received a
remonstrance from Pennsylvania on the subject of the importation of
Indian slaves into that province; and in 1712, Massachusetts enacted
that no further importation of Indian slaves into her province should
take place under pain of forfeiture to the crown. South Carolina had a
vast propensity for dealing in slaves, whether Indian or African; and
the same year that Massachusetts passed her prohibitory law, South
Carolina enacted her first slave-law, which premising that all her
estates and plantations could only be cultivated by the labour of negro
and other slaves, and that all such negroes and slaves “are of such
barbarous, wild, and savage natures, as unfit them to be governed by the
laws, customs, and practices of the province,” other laws shall be
enacted for the good regulation of them, and “the restraining of the
disorders, rapine, and inhumanity to which they are naturally prone and
inclined.”
As a specimen of these enactments, which were instituted for the “good
regulation” of these unhappy negroes, mulattoes, mestizoes, or Indians,
we will give the following:—“Every person,” says Hildreth, “finding a
slave abroad without a pass, was to arrest him and punish him on the
spot ‘by moderate chastisement,’ under a penalty of 20s. for neglecting
it. All negro houses were to be searched once a fortnight for arms and
stolen goods. A slave guilty of petty larceny was, for the first
offence, to be ‘publicly and severely whipped; the second, to have one
of his ears cut off,’ or ‘branded on the forehead with a hot iron, so
that the mark should remain,’ for the third offence, to ‘have his nose
slit;’ for the fourth, to ‘suffer death or other punishment,’ at the
discretion of the court. Any justice of peace, on complaint against any
slave for any crime—from ‘chicken-stealing’ up to insurrection and
murder—was to issue his warrant for the slave’s arrest; and the case was
to be judged by himself, another justice, and three freeholders, whom
they should summon; and if satisfactory evidence of guilt appeared, they
were to sentence the culprit to death or other punishment as the case
might be. If the punishment were death, the ‘kind of death’ was left to
the judgment and discretion of the court; execution to be done forthwith
on their warrant; the crown to be indemnified at the public charge. This
summary form of procedure in the trial of slaves remains in force in
South Carolina to this day; and a very similar form was also adopted,
and still prevails, in North Carolina.”
Death was the punishment of any person who, by “promising freedom in
another country,” induced a slave to leave the province, and the
punishment also of the slave himself if taken. Any slave running away
for twenty days was, for the first offence, “publicly and severely
whipped;” for the second offence, the runaway was to be branded with the
letter R on the right cheek; if the master omitted to do this he was
fined £10. For the third offence, if absent thirty days, to be whipped,
and have one of his ears cut off; the master, for omission, to be fined
£20, and so on, the punishment still increasing in atrocity; whilst any
captain or commander pursuing, apprehending and seizing runaway slaves,
and bringing them back, dead or alive, was entitled to a premium of from
£2 to £4 for each slave, and all persons wounded or disabled in such
service to be compensated by the public; but if the unfortunate slave
“should suffer in life or member, no person whatever shall be liable to
any penalty therefor.” Any person killing his slave out of “wantonness,”
“bloody-mindedness,” or “cruel intention,” to forfeit £50. No master was
to allow his slaves to have their own time, nor “to plant for themselves
any corn, peas, or rice, or to keep any stock of hogs, cattle, or
horses.”
Furthermore, this remarkable act, not contented with outraging humanity
in the person of the slaves, proceeds to insult and blaspheme
Christianity also; and “since charity and the Christian religion we
profess,” says the document, “obliges us to wish well to the souls of
men, and that religion may not be made a pretence to alter any man’s
property and right, and that no person may neglect to baptize their
negroes or slaves for fear that thereby they should be manumitted and
set free, it shall be, and is hereby declared, lawful for any negro, or
Indian slave, or any other slave or slaves whatsoever, to receive and
profess the Christian faith, and to be thereunto baptized; but
notwithstanding such slave or slaves shall receive or possess the
Christian religion and be baptized, he or they shall not thereby be
manumitted or set free.”[30]
“The treaty of Utrecht, 1713,” says the same able author, “happily put
an end to the war between the French and the North American colonies;
and by this treaty, the fur trade of Hudson’s Bay; the whole of
Newfoundland, reserving to the French some share of the fisheries; and
that portion of the island of St. Kitts in the West Indies belonging to
France, together with Acadia according to its ancient limits, were ceded
to the English,” whose sovereignty over the Five Nations was
incidentally acknowledged. But that which the English merchants esteemed
a far more valuable concession was the transfer to the English South Sea
Company of a contract for the annual transportation to Spanish America
of not less than 4,800 negroes, or, in trade language, “Indian pieces,”
originally entered into, shortly after the accession of the Bourbon
dynasty, with a company of French merchants, and known as the Assiento.
It being expected that immense profits would accrue from this trade,
Philip V. of Spain, and Queen Anne of England, each reserved to
themselves one-quarter of the stock of the company. Thus were the
sovereigns of England and Spain the largest slave-merchants in the
world. Harley, however, who had the good sense and the uprightness to
distinguish between a base undertaking and commercial advantage, advised
Queen Anne to assign her stock to the South Sea Company, and it was
done.
“From the period of the Peace of Utrecht, Spain became intimately
connected in her commercial relations with the destinies of the British
American colonies. Like France, she was henceforth their enemy, while
they, as dependencies of Great Britain, tended to strengthen the power
of that kingdom; but from the same motives of policy, like France, she
favoured their independence.”[31]
The territory ceded to the English in the Bay of Fundy was now erected
into a new province; the old name of Nova Scotia being restored, and
which it has ever since retained. Louisiana, of which, however, no
boundaries were decided, remained in the possession of the French, and
they, under that name, comprehended a vast territory comprising the
whole basin of the Mississippi.
In 1710, the post-office system was extended by England to America. “A
chief office,” we are told by Hildreth, “was established at New York, to
which letters were to be conveyed by regular packets across the
Atlantic. The same act regulated the rates of postage in the
plantations. A line of posts was presently established, north to the
Piscataqua, and South to Philadelphia, irregularly extended, a few years
afterwards, to Williamsburg in Virginia; the post leaving Philadelphia
for the south as often as letters enough were lodged to pay the expense.
The postal communication subsequently established with the Carolinas was
still more irregular.”
In 1718, William Penn died in England, leaving his interests in
Pennsylvania and Delaware to his sons, John, Thomas and Richard Penn,
who continued to administer the government by deputies until the time of
the Revolution, when the American Republic purchased their claims for
about £100,000.
At the time of the accession of the House of Hanover to the British
throne, the population of the English colonies is stated to have been as
under, though this statement is considered somewhat below the truth:—
Whites. Negroes. Total.
New Hampshire 9,500 150 9,650
Massachusetts 94,000 2,000 96,000
Rhode Islands 8,500 500 9,000
Connecticut 46,000 1,500 47,500
New York 27,000 4,000 31,000
New Jersey 21,000 1,500 22,500
Pennsylvania and Delaware 43,300 2,500 45,800
Maryland 40,700 9,500 50,200
Virginia 72,000 23,000 95,000
North Carolina 7,500 3,700 11,200
South Carolina 6,250 10,500 16,750
——————— —————— ———————
375,750 58,850 434,600
——————— —————— ———————
The American seas were again, at the close of the war, infested with
pirates, the head-quarters of whom were the Bahama Isles and the
unfrequented creeks of the coast of the Carolinas. In 1717, a celebrated
pirate named Bellamy was wrecked on Cape Cod, where he perished with
about 100 of his men, the five or six who escaped the sea being hung at
Boston. Another, Theach, or Blackbeard as he was called, lurked in
Pamlico Bay, and was supposed to be favoured by Cornbury and other
governors of South Carolina; he, however, was taken by two Virginian
vessels sent out by Spotswood from the Chesapeake in pursuit of him. A
force from England took possession of Providence, the chief harbour of
the Bahamas, fortified the place, and established a regular colony
there, which was the first permanent occupation of this desolate group.
A desperate body of pirates, headed by Steed Bonnet, harboured about
Cape Fear. After an expense of about £10,000 he was taken, and with
forty of his men hung at Charleston; and in 1723, twenty-six others,
natives of Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and Virginia, were
executed for the same crime at Newport. These summary measures cleared
the American seas of pirates.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE ACCESSION OF THE HOUSE OF HANOVER—LAW’S GREAT BUBBLE—LOUISIANA
ESTABLISHED—GROWTH OF LIBERTY IN THE STATES.
The accession of the House of Hanover to the British throne was hailed
throughout the British American colonies as a Whig and protestant
triumph, especially welcome to the northern states.
We have already spoken of the financial difficulties into which the late
wars had in every case brought the states engaged in them—French as well
as English—and which gave rise to the emission of a vast amount of paper
money, in every case only increasing the difficulty; while in some, as
in that of Louisiana, the most disastrous results were the consequence.
The French had at this period apparently gained firm possession of a
powerful extent of American territory. In 1713, they erected on the
banks of Lake Champlain, the whole basin of which they claimed, the Fort
at Crown Point, and soon after the fortress of Niagara. Anthony Crozat,
a wealthy French merchant, took over in 1712 a second colony to Detroit,
which was now a flourishing settlement. He also held a patent from Louis
XIV. for the exclusive trade of Louisiana, in which De la Motte
Cadillac, the governor, became his partner.
Now in possession of the most important western routes to the
Mississippi, the French had the satisfaction of seeing their various
settlements at Chicago, Vincennes and Kaskasia, all in a flourishing
condition. It was the boast of the royal geographer of France, that the
American territory of New France “extended to the remotest waters which
flowed west to the Mississippi, south to the Mobile, and north to the
St. Lawrence;” and in order to defend as well as to connect this vast
territory, a line of military forts was designed and in part erected.
The English were not unmoved spectators of these ambitious designs, and
eagerly awaited the time when they might defeat them. As yet, however,
the two rival powers were separated by extensive tracts of country
occupied by the most formidable savage tribes of America, but who were
destined ere long to be involved in the great struggle between these two
civilised nations.
But to return to Anthony Crozat, the merchant whose opulence was said to
be “the astonishment of the world.” The most extravagant ideas had been
circulated through France regarding the gold and silver mines of
Louisiana, and Crozat anticipated that their treasures, and a trade
which he intended to establish with Mexico, would augment his wealth
still more. But of gold and silver there were none, and every Spanish
harbour on the Gulf of Mexico was closed against his ships. Disappointed
in his hopes, after five years of vain perseverance, he threw up his
patent, only to be succeeded by other adventurers of a much more
dangerous character. The exclusive commerce of Louisiana for twenty-five
years, with a monopoly of the Canadian fur trade, was conferred upon the
“Mississippi Company,” or “the Company of the Indies,” which soon became
notorious for the ruin which it brought on thousands. At the time when
the colony was transferred to this dangerous company it contained about
700 people.
The Mississippi Company was connected with John Law’s Bank, one of the
most gigantic financial speculations of any age. Law, a native of
Edinburgh, and controller-general of France, conceived a plan of paying
off the national debt of that country by means of the profits arising in
part from this Mississippi Company. The French ministry fell into the
scheme, and Law opened a bank under the auspices of the Duke of Orleans,
then regent of France, and most of the people of property in that
country, deluded by the prospect of the immense gains which were
promised them, became shareholders either in the bank or in one of Law’s
companies, for he had an East India as well as a Mississippi Company.
Law’s Bank was declared a royal bank in 1718, and the shares rose to
such a value that they were soon worth eighty times the amount of all
the current specie of France. The very next year the great bubble
burst—only one year before the bursting of the South Sea bubble in
England,—and so great was the ruin which it involved, that the French
government was almost overthrown, and tens of thousands of families
reduced to beggary and despair.
Meantime, the Mississippi Company had undertaken to introduce 6,000
white settlers and half that number of blacks into the colony; and the
enormous sums which were soon realised by the sale of land-shares
enabled both this company and private speculators to send over great
numbers. Of the grants of land which were made, it may suffice to say
that Law himself received twelve square miles on the Arkansas, which he
undertook to settle with 1,500 Germans.
Bienville, now re-appointed governor, selected, in June 1718, a site on
the banks of the Mississippi for the capital of the new empire; it was
in the middle of a swamp, which he set a party of convicts to clear,—but
no matter, a grand empire was to be founded, and in honour of the regent
the city was called New Orleans. On the 25th of August, 1719, 800
emigrants from France chanted Te Deum as they cast anchor near Dauphin’s
Island. Here full of rejoicing hopes they landed, and with that the joy
and the hope was at an end. Disappointment was the condition of all,
despair and death that of many. Almost the only colonists who were
successful in Louisiana were emigrants from Canada, resolute and hardy
men, “who came,” says Bancroft, “with little beyond a staff and the
clothes that covered them.”
In 1722, Charlevoix reports of this infant metropolis, which Bienville
had made the seat of government, that it consisted of a large wooden
warehouse, a shed for a church, two or three ordinary houses, and a
quantity of huts crowded together, the whole being a savage and desert
place, as yet almost entirely covered with canes and trees.
The failure of Law’s bank put a period to emigration to Louisiana,
nevertheless great numbers of new settlers were already there, many of
whom were of a more resolute character than those of New Orleans; and it
was to this very desert of cane-brake that Law’s German settlers on the
Arkansas removed, and here, receiving allotments of land on each side of
the river, they soon began to prosper; the rich tract of land known to
this day as the “German coast” testifying to the success of their early
labours.
Louisiana was at length established; the upper and more remote parts
were placed under the care of the Jesuits, the lower under that of the
Capuchins. Eight hundred and fifty French and Swiss troops were
maintained in the country, and the administration committed to a
commandant-general, two king’s lieutenants, a senior councillor, three
other councillors, an attorney-general, and a clerk. These, with any
director of the company who might be in the province, formed the
Superior Council, which was also the supreme tribunal in civil and
criminal matters.
“Rice was the principal crop, the main resource for feeding the
population; to this were added tobacco and indigo. The bayberry, a
natural production of that remote region, was cultivated for its wax.
The fig had been introduced from Province, and the orange from St.
Domingo. As the settlements in the Illinois country were increased by
immigration from Canada, supplies of flour began to be received from
that region.”[32]
The French, however, did not establish themselves amid this vast
territory without a struggle with the aboriginal possessors, whose blood
ever crimsoned the soil as if in preparation for the harvests of the
white man. The Choctas, inhabiting the lower Mississippi, were allies of
the French. In the midst of this nation dwelt the Natchez, a peculiar
race, worshippers of the sun like the Peruvians.
Alarmed by the encroachments of the French, who had built Fort Rosalie
in the Natchez country, and instigated by the hostile Chickasaws, they
rose in 1729, and massacred nearly the whole of the whites, about 200 in
number. Terror spread through the colony, from New Orleans into
Illinois, and the French, with their allies the Choctas, rose for
vengeance. A war of extermination began; and within two years the great
chief of the tribe, the Great Sun, as he was called, with 400 prisoners,
were shipped off to Hispaniola, and sold as slaves; the few scattered
remnants of the nation were received among the Chickasaws and the
Musgogees. The Natchez as a race were no more.
The Mississippi Company, disappointed in every hope of profit, and still
further embarrassed by the Natchez war, threw up their patent, and
Bienville was appointed royal governor of Louisiana. His first business
was to subdue the Chickasaws, who, undaunted by the fate of their
friends, the Natchez, threatened to become as formidable adversaries in
the South as the Iroquois in the North.
We will not go into the terrible details of this war, which lasted for
about three years, during which some of the noblest men of the province
suffered the horrors of Indian martyrdom, among whom was the brave
Vincennes, whose name is preserved in the oldest settlement in Indiana.
At length in 1740, after four years of fruitless warfare and unexampled
suffering, peace was said to be concluded, but the Chickasaws remained
masters of the wilderness, and continued as a defence to the English
settlements on the west.
Half a century after the first colonisation of Louisiana by La Salle,
says Bancroft, its population probably amounted to 5,000 whites and half
that number of blacks. The valley of the Mississippi was still nearly a
wilderness. Half a century, with kings for its patrons, had not
accomplished for Louisiana one tithe of the prosperity which within the
same period had sprung naturally from the benevolence of William Penn to
the peaceful settlers on the Delaware.
The paper money put into circulation by Massachusetts to defray her late
war expenses brought her also into the extremest financial difficulties.
The attention of the colony was directed to remedy these, and three
parties were formed, each with its several plan; and the scheme of a
public bank, the government being pledged for the value of the issues,
was adopted, and bills of credit to the amount of £50,000 put in
circulation; but the scheme failed, and Governor Shute, who succeeded
Dudley in 1766, recommended a further emission of bills of credit, which
led to the issue of double the former amount. It was but like the
drunkard’s dram, to steady for a moment the shattered nervous system,
only by increasing the mischief.
The governor lost his popularity, the currency was depreciated, and
disputes arose on the question of his salary, which he demanded should
be raised, while the people, attributing to him some of the present
difficulties, insisted equally resolutely on its reduction.
Wearied at length with contention, he returned to England, to prefer his
complaints to parliament, and succeeded so far as to obtain the
introduction of two clauses in the Massachusetts charter, which
controlled her liberties, and which, for fear of something worse, the
council was obliged to submit to.
While these violent contentions were going forward between the governor
and the colony, the utmost alarm was excited by the breaking out of the
small-pox in Boston, which led to much popular exasperation. Cotton
Mather, now a much wiser man than in the days of the Salem witchcraft,
having read in the transactions of the Royal Society an account of the
Turkish mode of inoculation for this terrible malady, resolved to stem
the present affliction by this remedy. After applying in vain to various
medical practitioners, he at length prevailed on Zabdiel Boylston to try
the experiment. Boylston, a native of the colony, and a man of courage
and enlightenment, made the first attempt upon his own son. Inoculation
was successful in every case where it was used, but a violent opposition
against it, as an interference with the will of God, arose; pamphlets of
the most virulent character were circulated; the incensed mob, who
regarded this new-fangled mode of practice as the infusion of poison
into the blood, paraded the streets with halters in their hands to hang
the inoculators, and a lighted grenade was even thrown into the house of
Cotton Mather, as expressive of the popular exasperation. But neither
Cotton Mather, nor his enlightened friend, Zabdiel Boylston, were men to
be easily daunted. The zeal which thirty years before had made Mather a
knight-errant against witchcraft, sustained him now, even though the
general court itself seemed inclined to prohibit inoculation by legal
enactment. Fortunately, however, humanity and science prevailed; the
bill was thrown out of the council, and the same remedy being at the
very same period introduced into England, no further opposition was
made.
The popular controversies which had lately been carried on by pamphlets
on the paper money, Governor Shute’s salary, and now on the small-pox,
led James Franklin, a printer of Boston, to commence a newspaper called
the “New England Courant.” There were already in Boston two newspapers,
or rather advertising sheets, which satisfied themselves with a bald
summary of news. Franklin, however, aimed at the discussion of public
questions, and the diffusion of free opinion. Benjamin Franklin, then a
boy of fifteen, was his brother’s assistant, not only composing the
types and carrying out the paper, but himself writing for its columns.
Strange to say, this paper was one of the opponents of inoculation. This
might have passed; but when the hypocrisy of “religious knaves” was
attacked, and the acts of government censured, the two printers were
cited before the council, and charged with “mocking religion and
bringing it into contempt; affronting his majesty’s ministers, and
disturbing the good order of the province.” The elder Franklin was
imprisoned, the younger, the real offender, admonished. The paper was
continued in the name of Benjamin Franklin, but its credit was gone, and
after languishing some little time it expired. The elder brother blamed
the younger severely as the author of his misfortunes, and the next year
Benjamin fled to New York to escape the tyranny of his brother, and
thence on foot to the Delaware, arriving in Philadelphia with one dollar
in his pocket, but without friends or home.
Again the Indian war was carried on in the northern frontier, and even
as far west as Connecticut River, where Fort Dummer was erected as a
defence of the towns in that quarter. Fort Dummer is now Brattleborough,
the oldest town in the present state of Vermont. Without going into the
particulars of this war, it is sufficient to say, that it was terrible
and bloody, as all such former wars; that the premium on Indian scalps
rose to £100; and that Norridgewock was taken, and the Jesuit father,
Sebastian Rasles, slain, with numbers of his Indian disciples, the
chapel profaned and burned, together with the whole village.
The English government, jealous of the growing prosperity of the
colonies, and incited by the dissatisfaction of the royal governors,
menaced the American provinces by the loss of their charters, by the
curtailment of their popular liberty, and the imposition of taxes. The
latter, however, the scheme of which originated, it is said, with Sir
William Keith, at one time governor of Pennsylvania, was rejected by the
commissioners of trade and by Sir Robert Walpole, who, foreseeing the
impolicy of such a measure, replied, “I will leave the taxing of the
British colonies to some of my successors who have more boldness than I
have, and who are less the friends of commerce than myself.”
Every means was taken to advance the British manufacturer at the expense
of the colonies, and all competition of industry in the colonies was
prohibited. It was soon found that hats could be made most
advantageously in the land of the beaver, but this was forbidden; nor in
any wise could the provinces he allowed to trade with each other. In
1719, the House of Commons declared, that the erecting of manufactories
in the colonies tended to decrease their dependence on Great Britain,
and the production of iron was strictly forbidden: “None in the
plantations should manufacture iron-wares of any kind whatsoever, nor
make bar nor iron-rod.” The northern colonies opposed this hill
resolutely. Logan, the excellent governor of Pennsylvania, justly
remarked, “To prohibit our making bar-iron for our own use, is the very
way to alienate the minds of the people of these parts, and shake their
dependence on Britain.” To promote the interests of the British sugar
colonies, all intercourse was forbidden between the northern provinces
and any tropical island, except those belonging to Britain, which put a
stop to the commercial transactions between the northern colonies and
the French and Dutch islands, whereby the provisions, horses and timber
of the north had been exchanged for rum, sugar and molasses. In 1733,
parliament having recognised the “sugar colonies of America as the most
important to the trade of England,” imposed a duty of 9d. on every
gallon of rum, 6d. on every gallon of molasses, and 5s. on every
hundred-weight of sugar, or on any of these articles imported from
foreign plantations into the British colonies. This led to extreme
dissatisfaction, to contraband trade, and, in the case of molasses, to
almost entire prohibition; for, rather than submit, the resolute
colonists gave up the use of it. In Maine, also, where a royal monopoly
of the fir-timber existed, the settlers were brought into continual and
vexatious collision with the revenue officers. If a single tree were
felled on any of the land claimed by the British Crown, the settler was
liable to punishment for trespass and for the destruction of timber
destined for the royal navy. Added to all this, were financial
difficulties and disputes about the currency. Unceasing discontent and
dissatisfaction existed between the colonies and Great Britain. The
seeds of the great approaching struggle were already sown.
In 1728, Burnet, the son of Bishop Burnet, was appointed governor of
Massachusetts and New Hampshire, in the place of Shute, and again the
controversy rose respecting salary. £1,400 were offered, which, he
refused, and removed, on suspicion of undue influence, the general court
from Boston to Salem; but even there it was equally refractory, when it
was again adjourned, and met in four months at Cambridge, but with no
favourable result. The following month, harassed with the difficulties
of his position, Burnet sickened of fever and died, bequeathing the old
quarrel to his successor, Belcher. The instructions of the new governor
forewarned him of the temper of the people he had to govern, and that
“for some years they had been attempting by unwarrantable practices, to
weaken, if not cast off, the obedience which they owed to the crown, and
the dependence which all colonies ought to have on the mother-country.”
Belcher, therefore, as the wisest policy, accepted such amount of salary
as the assembly chose to vote him.
During the time of Belcher’s governorship, the metaphysician Berkeley,
the advocate of the non-existence of matter, removed to Newport, in
Rhode Island, intending to become a citizen of the New World. He had
conceived the idea of establishing a college in the Bermudas for the
instruction of Indians and the education of missionaries; and resigning
his rich sinecure Irish deanery of Derry, he proposed to become rector
of this college, which was to be endowed by the sale of lands in the
portion of St. Kitts ceded to the English, at £100 per annum. George I.
took an interest in the scheme, and the House of Commons gave the
necessary assent, when Berkeley, just married, arrived at Newport, now a
“gay, thriving and commercial city of five thousand inhabitants.”
Berkeley, pleased by his reception, bought land and built a house,
intending here to wait till all requisite arrangements were made. But
George I. died, and the requisite arrangements never were made; and
after two years Berkeley returned to England, and became Bishop of
Cloyne.
In New York the people and the governor came also into collision, and in
the midst of the excitement it occasioned, a newspaper appeared as the
organ of the popular cause, which soon led to the imprisonment of its
printer, John Peter Zenger. The trial was an important one. The aged
Andrew Hamilton, a lawyer of Philadelphia, addressed the jury for the
printer. “This is not,” he said, “the cause of a poor printer of New
York alone; it is the best cause—the cause of liberty. Every man who
prefers freedom to a life of slavery will bless and honour you as men,
who, by an impartial verdict, lay a noble foundation for securing to
ourselves, our posterity, and our neighbours, that to which nature and
the honour of our country have given us a right—the liberty of opposing
arbitrary power by speaking and writing truth.” The jury returned a
verdict of “Not Guilty;” and not only the colony of New York, but all
the other colonies in which the struggle for the birth of liberty had
commenced, exulted as for a great triumph. At the same time, Benjamin
Franklin, through a paper which he had established in Philadelphia, was
giving a voice to the sentiment which was vital in every American
breast. “The judgment of a whole people,” declared he, “if unbiased by
faction, undeluded by the tricks of designing men, is infallible. The
people cannot, in any sense, divest themselves of the supreme authority,
inasmuch as the voice of a whole people is the voice of God.”
“The colonies,” says Bancroft, “were forming a character of their own,
Throughout the whole continent national freedom and independence were
gaining vigour and maturity.”
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE SETTLEMENT OF GEORGIA AND THE PROGRESS OF THE STATES.
The settlement of Louisiana was for many years a series of unsuccessful
attempts. That of Georgia, though perhaps it cannot be called a success
from the commencement, furnishes that which is still better, a beautiful
chapter in the history of humanity.
At the period of which we are now writing, England acknowledged the
principle avowed by Locke and Shaftesbury in the Grand Model
Constitution of Carolina, that the protection of property was the end of
government; hence petty theft, whatever the incitement might be, was
punished by the gallows, and the jails were filled with small debtors,
whom the law condemned to life-long imprisonment. The hard and hapless
case of these unfortunate men attracted the attention of the benevolent,
and a commission to inquire into the state of the jails throughout the
kingdom was formed. Of this commission was James Oglethorpe, a member of
the British parliament, “a man of an heroic mind and a merciful
disposition, in the full activity of middle life,” at once a scholar and
a soldier. He had served in the British army, and under Prince Eugene,
was present at the siege of Belgrade; his most marked characteristic,
however, was that of active philanthropy, and as founder of a state, he
holds a distinguished place in American history beside William Penn and
the pilgrim fathers.
In 1728, Oglethorpe besought the interference of parliament on behalf of
the sufferings of those whose only crimes were misfortune and poverty;
nor did he rest until “from extreme misery he had restored to light and
freedom multitudes who, by long confinement for debt, were strangers and
helpless in the land of their birth.” His benevolence, however, did not
confine itself alone to these; he designed to provide an asylum also for
persecuted Protestants of all nations, who might, in the New World,
freely worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience. A
scheme of this kind could not lack advocates in England. The king,
George II., favoured the design; the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts lent it aid; and parliament advanced its objects
by a grant of £10,000. On the 9th of June, therefore, a charter was
granted to Oglethorpe and others, which constituted the country lying
between the Savannah and Altamaha and westward to the Pacific Ocean, the
province of Georgia. This country was to be held for twenty years, under
the guardianship of a corporation, “in trust for the poor.” The seal of
the corporation bore on one side a group of silk-worms at their labour
with the motto, _Non sibi, sed aliis_—not for themselves, but for
others—thereby expressive of the disinterested intention of the
originators, who refused to receive for their labours any temporal
advantage or emolument whatever. The reverse side represented the genius
of Georgia, with a cap of liberty on her head, a spear in one hand and a
horn of plenty in the other. The reported wealth and beauty of this land
of promise awoke the most brilliant hopes for the future.[33]
Oglethorpe sailed from England in November, 1732, with his little band
of liberated captives and oppressed Protestants, amounting in number to
about 120 persons, and after a voyage of fifty-seven days, reached
Charleston. Immediately after his arrival in the New World, he proceeded
up the Savannah river, and landed on a high bluff, called Yamacraw,
which he at once selected as the site of his capital, the Indians being
induced to give it up to the strangers through the agency of Mary
Musgrove, an Indian woman, who had married an English trader; and there
Savannah now stands. At the distance of half a mile dwelt the Yamacraws,
a tribe of Creek Indians, who, with their chief, Tomo-chichi, at their
head, sought alliance with the strangers. “Here is a little present,”
said the red man, stretching out before him a buffalo-hide, painted on
the inside with an eagle’s head and feathers; “the eagle’s feathers are
soft, and betoken love; the buffalo’s hide is warm, and betokens
protection. Therefore, love and protect our little families.”
Oglethorpe received with kindness these friendly demonstrations.
It was on the first day of February, when the little band of colonists
pitched their tents on the banks of the river. Oglethorpe’s tent stood
beneath four tall pine-trees, and for twelve months he had no other
shelter. In this beautiful region was the town of Savannah laid out,
according as it stands at the present day, with its regular streets and
large squares in each quarter of the town, whilst through the primeval
woods a road was formed to the ground which was to become a great
garden, intended as a nursery-ground for European fruits and the
wonderful natural products of America.
Such was the commencement of the commonwealth of Georgia. The province
became already, in its infancy, an asylum for the oppressed and
suffering, not only among the people of Great Britain, but in Europe
itself. The fame of this asylum in the wilderness rang through Europe.
The Moravian brethren, persecuted in their native land, received an
invitation from England of a free passage to Georgia for them and for
their children, provisions for a whole season, a grant of land to be
held free for ten years, with all the privileges and rites of native
English citizens, and the freedom to worship God in their own way. This
invitation they joyfully accepted.
On the last day of October, 1733, with their Bibles and hymnbooks, with
two covered wagons, in which were conveyed their aged and their little
children, and another wagon containing their worldly goods, the little
evangelical band set forth in the name of God, after prayers and
benedictions, on their long pilgrimage. They sailed up the stately
Rhine, between its vineyards and ruined castles, and thence forth upon
the great sea in the depth of winter. When they lost sight of land, and
the majesty of ocean was revealed to them, they burst forth into a hymn
of praise. When the sea was calm and the sun rose in his splendour, they
sang, “How beautiful is creation! how glorious the Creator!” “When the
wind was adverse, they put up prayers; when it changed, thanksgivings.
When they sailed smoothly with a favouring gale, they made holy
covenants, like Jacob of old; when the storm raged violently, they
lifted up their voices and sang amid the storm, for to love the Lord
Jesus gave great consolation.”
Thus they arrived at the shore of the New World. Oglethorpe met them at
Charleston and bade them welcome; and five days afterwards they pitched
their tents near Savannah. Their place of residence was to be yet
further up the country. Oglethorpe provided them with horses, and
accompanied them through the wilderness. By the aid of Indian guides and
blazed trees, they proceeded onward, till they found a suitable spot for
their settlement. It was on the banks of a little stream, and both were
called by them Ebenezer. Here they resolved to build their dwellings,
and to erect a column in token of the providence of God, which had
brought them safely to the ends of the earth.
The same year was the town of Augusta founded, which soon became a
favourite resort of the Indian trader. The fame of Oglethorpe extended
through the wilderness, and in May came the chiefs of the eight tribes
of the Musgogees, to make an alliance with him. Long-king, the tall old
civil chief of the Ocanos, was their spokesman.
“The Great Spirit, which dwells everywhere around us,” said he, “and
which gave breath to all men, has sent the Englishmen to instruct us!”
He then bade them welcome to the country south of the Savannah, as well
as to the cultivation of such lands as his people had not used; and, in
token of the sincerity of his words, he laid eight bundles of buckskins
at the feet of Oglethorpe. The chief of the Coweta tribe arose and said:
“We are come five-and-twenty days’ journey to see you. I have never
desired to go down to Charleston, but when I heard that you were come,
and that you were good men, I came down to you that I might hear good
things.”
A Cherokee appeared among the English. “Fear nothing,” said Oglethorpe,
“but speak freely.” “I always speak freely,” replied the mountain-chief;
“wherefore should I be afraid? I feared not when I was among enemies; I
am now among friends.” And the settlers and the Cherokees became
friends.
A Chocta chief, named Red-shoes, came the following year, and proposed
to trade. “We come from a great distance,” said he, “and we are a great
nation. The French built forts amongst us. We have long traded with
them, but they are poor in goods; we desire that a trade may be opened
between ourselves and you.”
The good faith which Oglethorpe kept in his transactions with the
Indians, his noble demeanour and bearing, and the sweetness of his
temper, won for him the confidence of the red men. He was pleased with
their simple manners and customs, and endeavoured to enlighten their
minds and to instruct them in the knowledge of that God whom they
ignorantly worshipped.
The laws which Oglethorpe framed for Georgia, forbade the introduction
both of intoxicating liquor and of slavery. “Slavery,” said he, “is
contrary to the Gospel, as well as to the fundamental law of England. We
will not permit a law which allows such horrid crimes.” And when later,
various of “the better class of people” endeavoured to introduce negro
slaves, Oglethorpe resolutely opposed it, and declared, that if slaves
were introduced into Georgia, he would no longer concern himself with
the colony. He continued steadfast, enforcing his determination by his
almost arbitrary power, although many of the planters, in the belief
that they could not successfully cultivate the land with white
labourers, threatened to leave the colony.
Oglethorpe continued to labour with unabated activity for the well-being
and prosperity of the province, extending and securing its boundaries,
establishing towns, and regulating the commonwealth. He visited the
evangelical brethren at Ebenezer, laid out the streets of their new
town, and praised their good management. Within a few years the product
of raw silk within this little settlement had increased to ten thousand
pounds annually; besides which, indigo had become a staple article of
traffic. They also opposed the introduction of negro slaves in the most
earnest manner, maintaining that the whites could labour equally well
under the sun of Georgia. Their religion united them with each other.
They settled their own disputes. Labour was with them worship, and
worship the business of their lives. They had peace and were happy.
From the Moravian towns Oglethorpe journeyed southward, passing through
narrow inland channels, the shores of which were covered with woods of
pine, evergreen oaks, and cedars, which grew down to the water’s edge,
and which resounded with the melody of birds. On St. Simon’s Island,
fire having cleared the grass from an old Indian field, the streets of
Frederica were laid out, and, amid the carolling of hundreds of birds, a
fort was constructed on a bluff commanding the river.
The Highlands of Scotland had already sent a company of bold
mountaineers, who sought for a home under Oglethorpe’s banner; and
Oglethorpe, attired in the highland costume, now sailed up the Altamaha,
to visit them at Darien, near the mouth of that river, where they had
located themselves.
In 1734, Oglethorpe, after about fifteen months’ residence in his
colony, made a voyage to England, taking with him Tomo-chichi and others
of the Creeks, to do homage at the English court, and to confirm his
report of the friendly relationship with the Indians. In 1736 he
returned, bringing with him 300 emigrants, whom he cared for like a
father. Reaching the shore, he ascended with his companions a rising
ground, not far from Tybee Island, where they all fell on their knees,
and returned thanks to God for having safely conducted them to Georgia.
Among these was a second company of Moravians, men who had “a faith
above fear,” and who in the simplicity of their lives seemed to revive
the primitive Christian communities where rank and state were unknown.
With this company came also John and Charles Wesley, Charles the
secretary to Oglethorpe, and both burning with a desire to become
apostles of Christ among the Indians, and to live in the New World a
life wholly and entirely consecrated to God. They desired to make
Georgia a religious colony. The Wesleys, however, found the sting as
well as the trail of the serpent in this religious garden of Eden, and
that through the guile of two young and fair women, one of whom early
compelled Charles to retire to England, whither he was sent ostensibly
as the bearer of despatches. The preaching of John excited the utmost
religious fervour, and balls were deserted to listen to his ministry;
but “a snare,” as he relates, “was laid to entrap him,” and he became
the lover of a young lady, the wooing of whom brought him only
embarrassment and vexation. He gave her up, but that did not end his
trouble; she married another, and the husband, on the plea of her
religious character being attacked, claimed damages at law to the amount
of £1,000. The jury returned a verdict in favour of the husband, and
Wesley, assisted by the good Moravians, prepared to flee to England.
Measures were taken to detain him; but as he himself records, he “saw
clearly that the hour was come, and as soon as evening prayer was over,
the tide serving, he shook the dust off his feet,” and left Georgia and
America for ever.
As Wesley landed in England, he encountered Whitfield just about to
embark for Georgia. The main purport of his visit was to establish there
an orphan-house, similar to that at Halle. The design was carried out,
the institution was founded in the neighbourhood of Savannah; but though
it continued to exist during his lifetime it languished and finally was
given up after his death. The permanent work which he carried out was
somewhat different. In order to collect funds for this orphan-house, he
commenced a tour through the colonies, producing wherever he went the
most extraordinary effects. At this time a religious reaction was taking
place in the New England states. The public mind, having rushed as it
were into latitudinarianism from the asceticism and sternness of the
rigid Puritan creed and life, now with that natural and necessary
reaction which follows every extreme, was going back to the religious
enthusiasm, of a former period. The preaching of Whitfield was a spark
which fell upon this inflammable material. Crowds followed him
everywhere; he preached, and the people, with cries and tears and
violent bodily contortions, believed that the Divine grace was born in
their souls. A “great revival” took place throughout New England; and
controversy, which in Connecticut lasted for nine years, raged between
the Old and New Lights.
“During these religious excitements,” says Hildreth, “the Baptists of
New England received a new impulse; the sect began largely to increase,
and ere long many of the New Light congregations joined the Baptist
church. In the middle and southern colonies, the Scotch and Irish
Presbyterians, who were being continually increased by additional
numbers from the mother-country, kindled into zeal by the preaching of
this modern apostle, became formidable rivals to the Episcopal church.”
“From this first visit of Whitfield,” continues the same author, “may be
dated that organised system of revivals and religious excitements which
to this day are in progress of development, and which are not without
results upon the moral and intellectual character of America.” Many
distinguished schools and colleges owe their establishment to the
religious fervor of that period.
[Illustration: WHITFIELD PREACHING.]
Whilst this excitement was going on in the New England colonies, New
York was the scene of a cruel and terrible delusion, which almost vied
in its horrors with the witch trials of Salem. New York at this time,
1741, contained between 7,000 and 8,000 inhabitants, 1,200 or 1,400 of
whom were blacks. The robbery of a house, and the occurrence of nine
fires in rapid succession, occasioned a kind of insane terror. The
magistrates having offered a reward, pardon and freedom to any slave who
would reveal the supposed incendiaries, two women of indifferent
character gave information of a plot among the negroes to burn the city,
murder the whites, and make one of their own party governor. Incredible
as the story was, it gained belief, and great numbers of slaves and
free-blacks were arrested. “The eight lawyers of the place assisted by
turns on behalf of the prosecutors; the prisoners, who had no counsel,
were tried and convicted on insufficient evidence; the lawyers vied with
each other in heaping abuse upon the unfortunate prisoners, and the
chief justice in passing sentence vied with the lawyers.”[34] Many
confessed to save their lives, and then appeared as witnesses against
others. Thirteen were burnt at the stake, eighteen were hanged, and
seventy-one transported.
When the general terror had a little subsided, and the public mind,
looking more coolly at the whole thing, considered the base character of
the informers and witnesses, the reality of the plot was doubted, and
the shame of blood-guiltiness rested upon the city.
The same year that Oglethorpe returned from England, he fortified the
colony in anticipation of war between England and Spain. For this
purpose forts were erected at Augusta, Darien, Frederica, Cumberland
Island, near the mouth of the St. Mary’s, and even as far south as St.
John’s river, all the territory north of that river being claimed for
England. This latter erection led to complaints from the Spanish
authorities at St. Augustine; hostilities were threatened; the fort at
the mouth of the St. John’s was therefore abandoned, and the St. Mary’s
river became from that time the established southern boundary of
Georgia.
Again, in 1737, Oglethorpe hastened to England to make there more
effectual preparations for the struggle, and returned with a commission
as brigadier-general, with a command extending over South Carolina, and
bringing with him a regiment of 600 men. He was received with salutes
and bonfires at Savannah and every demonstration of joy.
In 1739, war being formally declared, Oglethorpe planned an expedition
against St. Augustine. In November of the same year Admiral Vernon took
Porto Bello; and the following May, Oglethorpe entered Florida “with a
select force of 400 men from his own regiment, some troops from
Carolina, and a large body of friendly Indians.” A Spanish fort,
twenty-five miles from St. Augustine, surrendered after a short
resistance; another within two miles was abandoned; but St. Augustine,
when required to surrender, sent a bold defiance. Ships were stationed
at the entrance of the harbour to prevent supplies, and every measure
was taken to reduce the place. Oglethorpe, enduring all the fatigues and
hardships of the common soldiers, in spite of ill health consequent on
exposure to perpetual damps, was always at the head of every important
action. Great as was his courage and endurance, his conduct as a soldier
in an enemy’s country was still nobler; the few prisoners whom he took,
we are told, were treated with kindness; the cruelties of the savages
were reproved and restrained; not a field nor a house nor a garden near
St. Augustine was injured, unless by the Indians.
But St. Augustine resisted; Spanish galleys contrived to enter with
provisions; the unsuccess of the English fleet in the West Indies
prevented any assistance from that quarter; and sickness at length
breaking out among Oglethorpe’s forces, he was compelled in July to
return to Georgia.
Two years afterwards, in 1742, the Spaniards invaded Georgia. A fleet of
thirty-six sail from Havanna and St. Augustine, bearing upwards of 3,000
troops, entered the harbour of St. Simon’s, an island in the mouth of
the Altamaha, landed a number of troops, and erected a battery of twenty
guns. Oglethorpe, who was at that time on the island with less than 800
men, exclusive of Indians, spiked his guns and retreated to Frederica,
there to await the promised reinforcements from Carolina. From this
place he wrote to Savannah—“We will not suffer defeat; we will rather
die like Leonidas and his Spartans, if we can but protect Carolina and
the rest of the Americans from desolation.” The Spanish general,
Monteano, however, unacquainted with the coast and the proper points of
attack, wasted his efforts and was defeated in repeated skirmishes.
Oglethorpe, still disappointed of aid from Carolina, resolved, however,
to make a night attack on one of the enemy’s camps; but his intentions
were revealed by a French soldier who deserted. Apprehensive, says
Willson, that the enemy would now discover his weakness, he devised a
plan to destroy the credit of any information he might give. He wrote a
letter to the deserter, desiring him to urge the Spaniards to an
immediate attack, or to induce them to remain in St. Simon’s island yet
three days, as by that time several British ships would have arrived.
The letter, as Oglethorpe intended, was carried to the Spanish
commander. The deserter was arrested as a spy, and the utmost perplexity
prevailed in the Spanish camp. At that moment, fortunately for
Oglethorpe, three small vessels were perceived in the offing, which
being supposed to be a part of the expected British fleet, an attack on
Oglethorpe at Frederica was determined upon.
All turned out as Oglethorpe wished; one party of the advancing troops
were defeated by himself and his Highlanders who marched out of the town
to meet them, and another fell into an ambuscade. The scene of
destruction was terrible; the ground was covered with dead, and the
place to this day bears the name of the Bloody Marsh. The enemy fled
with precipitation to their ships, leaving their guns and ammunition
behind, and in a few days were sailing to the south, making, however, on
their way, an attack on Fort William, where again they were repulsed
with loss. The Spanish commander gained so little credit by this
expedition, that on his return to Havanna he was tried by court-martial
and dismissed the service. Oglethorpe, a week after his deliverance,
ordered a general thanksgiving.
Thus was Georgia established and defended; yet were there many
discontented and many disaffected within her borders; and scarcely was
the war at an end and peace once more within the colony, than Oglethorpe
sailed for England to meet and rebut various slanderous charges brought
against him, every one of which was disproved. But though he lived till
upwards of ninety, he never returned to the colony; joining soon after
the army against the Pretender. After Oglethorpe left Georgia, changes
were introduced into its laws and administration; the prohibition of rum
was removed from the statute-book; and the former somewhat military rule
of government was changed, the administration being entrusted to a
president and council, who were required to govern according to the
instruction of the trustees.
In one respect Georgia fell short of the liberality which might have
been expected from her founder; she was closed against “Papists,”
although, as regarded the Jews, Oglethorpe was more enlightened than the
English trustees of the colony. Among the earlier settlers, a company of
Jews coming over, the trustees wrote somewhat in perplexity, that “they
had no intention of making Georgia a Jews’ colony,” and requested
Oglethorpe, therefore, “to give these Israelites no encouragement.” If
he did not encourage them, neither did he discourage them, for they
settled at Savannah, opened a synagogue, and the descendants of many of
them remain to this day among the most worthy citizens of the place.
With all his noble virtues, Oglethorpe belonged more to the old
institutions than to the new; and hence somewhat of feudal usages had
been introduced, which led to long-continued discontent. Another cause
of discontent was the prohibition of slave-labour. Gradually, therefore,
this was relaxed; slavers from Africa visited Savannah, and the laws
against them were not enforced; in vain the Moravians opposed slavery as
contrary to the Gospel; their religious teachers in Germany, as well as
Whitfield, the great apostle of the colonies, “trusted that God would
overrule slavery to the Christianising of the slave,” and the Moravians
after long opposition yielded. Slaves were at first hired from Carolina
for a short period, or during life, and a sum equal to the value of the
slave paid in advance. Thus by degrees Georgia became a planting state,
with slave-labour like Carolina.[35]
In 1752, the trustees wearied with the many complaints which still
continued against even their amended form of government, resigned their
charter to the king, and Georgia became a royal government. The
liberties and privileges enjoyed by Carolina were now conferred on
Georgia; but the colony did not assume a really flourishing condition
until the close of the French and Indian war, when Florida was
surrendered to England, and security was thus insured to her frontiers.
In 1737, the eastern boundary of Maine was settled; so also was the
southern boundary of New Hampshire, though somewhat to the disadvantage
of Massachusetts, who not being greatly in favour with the English
parliament in consequence of her pertinacity with regard to the salaries
of Burnett and Belcher, had but little countenance to expect from that
quarter. Nor was another boundary dispute settled more to her
satisfaction in 1741, when the country conquered in the old times from
Philip and the Wampanoags, and claimed by Massachusetts under the
Plymouth grant, was ceded to Rhode Island after having been a subject of
contention between the two states for about 100 years.
We have already related that the Treaty of Utrecht conferred upon a
company of English merchants the monopoly of supplying slaves to the
Spanish colonies. Whilst this was the case on one hand, the African
company of independent traders, on the other, were conveying over
thousands of negro slaves to the British colonies. England, says
Bancroft, valued Africa as returning for her manufactures abundant
labourers for her colonies. The African coast for thirty degrees in
extent was traversed for the supply of the human cargo; Africans above
thirty and under fourteen were rejected, and very few women in
proportion were taken; the English slave-ships were laden with the youth
of Africa. Of the horrors of the middle passage we will not speak;
suffice it to say, that the loss of life on the voyage is computed to
have been, on an average, fifteen per cent.
The number of slaves in the northern provinces was small in proportion
to the whites; but in the lowlands of South Carolina and Virginia they
constituted the great majority. It is not easy to calculate the number
imported into the colonies. In the northern and middle states the negro
slaves were employed as domestic servants and agricultural labourers. In
New York they amounted to one-sixth of the population, and the slave
code of that province was as severe as those of South Carolina and
Virginia. In Georgia, as we have said, slavery obtained powerful
advocates in Whitfield and his associate Habersham, who, however, soon
turned trader. It was on the plea of Christianising the heathen that
they founded their argument, and the heart of the poor slaves even in
those early days seems to have been a ready recipient of the
consolations of religion. There were Uncle Toms even then; for Habersham
says exultingly, “Many of the poor slaves of America have already been
made freemen of the heavenly Jerusalem.” One circumstance must, however,
be observed; slavery was only permitted in Georgia on Whitfield’s
argument, and the masters were compelled, by fine, to oblige their
slaves “to attend at some time in the Lord’s-day for religious
instruction.” And hence, says Hildreth, may doubtless be ascribed the
peculiarly religious character of the negroes in and about Savannah. Nor
has the old humane spirit of Georgia ceased to exist. Miss Bremer,
speaking of this state, says: “I augur most favourably from the freer
and happier life of the negroes of Savannah; from the permission which
is given them to have their own churches, and where they themselves
preach. Besides this, much is done in Georgia for the instruction of the
negro slaves in Christianity, for their emancipation and their
colonisation at Liberia.”
Christianity, however, could not enfranchise the slave; he might become
a freeman of the heavenly Jerusalem, but a human thrall he remained in
the earthly America, spite of all that early philanthropists,
“enthusiasts,” and abolitionists could say and do; and as regarded the
slave-trade, the colonies had no power. England alone must bear the
burden of this shame and guilt. The English slave-trade received its
greatest impetus from the Assiento treaty. From 1680 to 1700, about
300,000 negroes were shipped from the coast of Africa; from 1700 to
1750, about 2,000,000. The English manufacturers advocated and supported
the trade, because it opened to them the African market. In the reign of
William and Mary, parliament legislated for the better supply of negroes
to the plantations; “and again it declared its opinion in 1695, that the
slave-trade is highly beneficial and advantageous to the kingdom and her
colonies.” Queen Anne was so decided a patron of the slave-trade, that
she herself, as we have said, became a slave-trader, and boasted to her
parliament that she had secured to Englishmen a new market for slaves in
Spanish America. George II. favoured it; and lastly, in 1749, in order
to give the utmost activity to the trade, all monopoly was removed, and
free-trade in slaves laid open to English competition; “the slave-trade
being,” according to the words of the statute, “very advantageous to
Great Britain.” To the credit of Horace Walpole, he saw the iniquity of
this traffic, while parliament was throwing it open to the rejoicing
manufacturers and merchants; and, according to his account, the English
trader at that time conveyed 46,000 slaves every year to the British
American colonies alone. So determined was England to thrust this trade
upon the colonies, that when any of them endeavoured to check the
importation, they were severely reproved. The reason of this was
obvious. The colonies were already becoming too independent. “The
African slave-trade,” it was asserted by a British merchant in 1745,
“was the great pillar and support of the British plantation trade in
America.” “If,” argued he, “it were possible for white men to answer the
end of negroes in planting, our colonies would interfere with the
manufactures of these kingdoms. In such case, indeed, we might have
reason to dread the prosperity of our colonies; but while we can supply
them abundantly with negroes, we need be under no such apprehension.”
And again: “Negro labour will keep our British colonies in a due
subserviency to the interests of their mother-country; for while our
plantations depend only on planting by negroes, our colonies can never
prove injurious to British manufacturers, never become independent of
their kingdom.”
So reasoned the England of that day, in the spirit of an arbitrary and
utterly selfish policy; and the colonies had no power of resistance.
Before concluding this portion of our history, which may be considered
as the early dawn of that day which saw ascend, through suffering and
blood, the sun of American independence, a few remarks may be welcome on
the life and manners of the colonies.
America could already boast of names which were an ornament to the age.
“America may look,” says Willson, “upon the scientific discoveries of
Franklin; upon Godfrey’s invention of the quadrant; upon the researches
of Bartram, a Pennsylvanian Quaker and farmer, whom Linnæus called the
greatest natural botanist in the world; upon the mathematical and
astronomical inventions of Rittenhouse, and upon the metaphysical and
theological writings of Jonathan Edwards with the greater pride, when it
is considered that these eminent men owed their attainments to no
fostering care which Britain ever showed for the cultivation of science
and literature in her colonies; that these men were their own
instructors, and that their celebrity is wholly of American origin.”
As regards the spirit of bigotry and intolerance which we have had such
frequent occasion to deplore in the history of New England, a great
change had now taken place. Although much puritanical strictness and
formality still pervaded New England manners, yet religious zeal had
become so tempered with charity, that explosions of frenzy and folly
like those of the early Quakers were no longer treated as offences
against religion, but as violations of public decency and order, justice
being tempered with prudence and mercy, and with a noble justice, also,
we may add; for during the administration of Governor Belcher, the
Assembly of Massachusetts passed laws making pecuniary compensation to
the descendants of those Quakers who had suffered capital punishment in
the years 1658 and 1659, and also to the descendants of such as had been
the victims of the persecutions for witchcraft in 1693. In 1729, the
legislature of Connecticut exempted Quakers and Baptists from
ecclesiastical taxes; and two years later a similar law was enacted by
the Assembly of Massachusetts.
Notwithstanding the exceeding strictness of the puritanic laws of New
England, we are told by numerous writers that the manners of the people
were distinguished by innocent hilarity and true politeness. Lord
Baltimore, it is said, was agreeably surprised by the graceful and
courteous behaviour of the gentlemen and clergy of Connecticut, and
confessed that he found the aspect and address which he thought peculiar
to nobility in a land where aristocratic distinction was unknown. “The
inhabitants of Massachusetts,” says a writer of the time, “were
distinguished in a high degree by their cheerful vivacity, their
hospitality, and a courtesy the more estimable that it was indicative of
true benevolence.” “Men devoted to the service of God,” says another
author, “like the first generation of the inhabitants of New England,
carried throughout their lives an elevated strain of sentiment and
purpose which must have communicated some of its grace and dignity to
their manners.”
Of the state of manners and morals in Maryland, Virginia, and the
southern colonies, so gratifying an account cannot be given. While the
upper classes of the southern people were distinguished for a luxurious
and expensive hospitality, they were too generally addicted to
card-playing, gambling, and intemperance, while hunting and cockfighting
were favourite amusements of all classes. The hospitality of Virginia
was, however, a beautiful feature of its life. “The early Virginian
colonists,” says the author whom we have quoted above, “remote from
crowded haunts, unoccupied by a variety of objects and purposes, and
sequestered from the intelligence of passing events, found the company
of strangers peculiarly agreeable. All the other circumstances of his
lot contributed to the promotion of hospitality.”
The celebrated Jefferson related that, in his father’s time, it was no
uncommon thing for gentlemen to post their servants on the main road,
for the purpose of amicably waylaying and bringing to their houses any
travellers who might chance to pass. Similar bounty is said to have
prevailed among the Quakers of Pennsylvania, “where unlimited
hospitality formed a part of their regular economy.”
“But whatever diversities of manners, morals, and general condition,”
says Willson, “might have been found in the several colonies in the
early period of their history, yet a gradual assimilation of character,
and a gradual advance in wealth, population, and the means of happiness,
were observable among all as we approach the period of the Revolution.
It cannot be denied, however, that New England colonial character and
New England colonial history furnish on the whole the most agreeable
reminiscences. As we approach this period, we behold a country of
moderate fertility, occupied by an industrious, hardy, cheerful,
virtuous, and intelligent population; a country where moderate labour
earned a liberal reward; where prosperity was connected with freedom;
where a general simplicity of manners and equality of condition
prevailed, and where the future invited with promises of an enlarging
expanse of human happiness and virtue.”
Having given this picture of life and manners prevalent in the North
American colonies at the period of the Revolution, we must of necessity
return to the course of our history, which takes us back about a quarter
of a century. At this time, that is from 1720 to 1730, the value of
exports from the mother-country to the colonies is stated by Hildreth to
have amounted to an annual average of £471,299.
END OF VOL. I.
-----
Footnote 1:
Bancroft.
Footnote 2:
Bancroft.
Footnote 3:
Bancroft.
Footnote 4:
Bancroft.
Footnote 5:
Bancroft.
Footnote 6:
Bancroft.
Footnote 7:
Bancroft.
Footnote 8:
Hildreth.
Footnote 9:
Bancroft.
Footnote 10:
Bancroft.
Footnote 11:
Miss Bremer.
Footnote 12:
Hildreth.
Footnote 13:
Bancroft.
Footnote 14:
Bancroft.
Footnote 15:
_Yᵉ lamentable Ballad and yᵉ True Historie of Captain William Kidd,
who was Hanged in Chains at Execution Dock, for Piracie and Murder on
yᵉ High Seas._
You captains bold and brave, hear our cries, hear our cries,
You captains bold and brave, hear our cries,
You captains brave and bold, though you seem uncontroll’d,
Don’t for the sake of gold lose your souls.
Don’t for the sake of gold lose your souls.
My name was Captain Kidd, when I sail’d, when I sail’d,
My name was Captain Kidd, when I sail’d,
My name was Captain Kidd, God’s laws I did forbid,
And so wickedly I did, when I sail’d.
My parents taught me well, when I sail’d, when I sail’d,
My parents taught me well, when I sail’d,
My parents taught me well to shun the gates of hell,
But against them I rebell’d, when I sail’d.
I’d a bible in my hand, when I sail’d,
I’d a bible in my hand, when I sail’d,
I’d a bible in my hand by my father’s great command,
And I sunk it in the sand, when I sail’d.
Then, after narrating two cruel murders on the high sea, and the death
of the mate, who called him to his bedside, and warned him of the
great day of reckoning which would come, the ballad-writer, in the
person of Captain Kidd, describes his short repentance and long career
of wickedness; how he took three ships from France and three from
Spain, all of which he burned; after which he found himself possessed
of “ninety bars of gold and dollars manifold,” but finally was
overtaken by fourteen ships, which being “too many for him,” he was
taken, cast into prison, and condemned to die. He then bids a pathetic
farewell to the “raging main, to Turkey, France and Spain, which he
ne’er shall see again,” and concludes—
To Execution Dock I must go, I must go,
To Execution Dock I must go,
To Execution Dock will many thousands flock,
But I must bear the shock, I must die.
Take warning all by me, for I must die, I must die,
Take warning all by me, for I must die,
Take warning now by me, and shun bad company,
Lest you lose your souls like me, for I must die.
Footnote 16:
Hildreth.
Footnote 17:
Mrs. Willard.
Footnote 18:
Hildreth.
Footnote 19:
Hildreth.
Footnote 20:
Hildreth.
Footnote 21:
Hildreth.
Footnote 22:
Bancroft.
Footnote 23:
Baucroft.
Footnote 24:
Hildreth.
Footnote 25:
Bancroft.
Footnote 26:
Bancroft.
Footnote 27:
Bancroft.
Footnote 28:
Willard.
Footnote 29:
Willard
Footnote 30:
Hildreth.
Footnote 31:
Willson.
Footnote 32:
Hildreth.
Footnote 33:
This sketch of the settlement of Georgia is given principally from my
translation of Miss Bremer’s “Homes of the New World” and is derived
from Bancroft.
Footnote 34:
Hildreth.
Footnote 35:
Willson.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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