Elisha Benjamin Andrews

“ What purity, what love of rectitude, what strength
of will did not the builders of America carry forth from that family
altar! He who would understand the richest side and the deepest moving
forces of our national life and development must not overlook those New
England fireside scenes.
[1688-1700]
Prayers ended, the "men folks" went forth to the day's toil. It was
hard, partly from its then rough character, partly from poverty of
appliances. For the hardest jobs neighbors would join hands, fighting
nature as they had to fight the Indians, unitedly. ”

“ But the colony itself was amazingly prosperous. There were internal
feuds, mainly petty, some serious. George Keith grievously divided the
Quakers by his teachings against slavery, going to law, or service as
magistrates on the part of Quakers, thus implying that only infidels or
churchmen could be the colony's officials.
Fletcher's governorship in 1693-94, under the royal commission, evoked
continual opposition, colonial privileges remaining intact in spite of
him. The people from time to time subjected their ground-law to changes,
only to render it a fitter instrument of freedom. ”

“ EARLY SPANISH AMERICA
[1498]
As we have seen, Spain by no means deserves the entire credit of
bringing the western continent to men's knowledge. Columbus himself was
an Italian. So was Marco Polo, his inspirer, and also Toscanelli, his
instructor, by whose chart he sailed his ever-memorable voyage. To
Portugal as well Columbus was much indebted, despite his rebuff there.
Portugal then led the world in the art of navigation and in enthusiasm
for discovery. ”

“ English politicians deemed it outrageous that conformists should be
denied any of that colony's privileges. For some time, under William and
Mary's charter, in this province where Congregationalism had till now
had everything its own way, only Church clergymen could celebrate
marriage. In New York and Maryland, too, hostility to the establishment
greatly stimulated disloyalty. This was true even in Anglican Virginia,
where the Church found it no easier to keep power than it was in
Massachusetts to get power, and where the clergy were unpopular,
concerned more for tithes than for souls. ”

“ The tragedy that had made memorable
the banks of the Mystic in the destruction of the Pequot fort was now
almost equalled. After the example of his old comrade Mason, Underhill
fired the village. By flame, shot, or sword more than five hundred human
beings perished.
While New Netherland was awaiting some message of cheer from Holland, a
company of Dutch soldiers came from Curacoa, but they did little to
follow up the successes already gained. ”

“ Canada, on the other hand, was oppressed by a
feudal constitution in the state, settlers being denied the fee simple
of their lands, and by Jesuits in Church. "New France could not grow,"
says Parkman, "with a priest on guard at the gate to let in none but
such as pleased him. In making Canada a citadel of the state religion,
the clerical monitors of the Crown robbed their country of a
transatlantic empire." Thus the Huguenots, France's best emigrants to
America, did not come to New France, but to New England and the other
Protestant colonies. ”

“ From 1643 to 1684 Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven
formed a confederation under the style of the United Colonies of New
England. Maine, Providence, and Rhode Island sought membership, but were
refused as being civilly and religiously out of harmony with the
colonies named. Connecticut, offensive to the Dutch, and exposed to
hostilities from them, was the most earnest for the union, while at the
same time the most conservative as to its form. It was a loose league,
leaving each colony independent save as to war and peace, Indian
affairs, alliances and boundaries. ”

“ He needed but to
conform, and great place was his. But conform he would not. True to the
inner light, braving the scoffs of all his friends, expelled from Oxford
University, beaten from his own father's door, imprisoned now nine
months in London Tower, now six in Newgate, this heroic spirit
persistently went the Quaker way. ”

“ As James I. broke with Parliament, a majority of the Virginia
shareholders proved Liberals, and they wrought with signal purpose and
effect to realize their ideas in their colony. To this political
complexion of the Virginia Company not only Virginia itself, but, in a
way, all America is indebted for a start toward free institutions.
During the governorship of George Yeardley, was summoned an assembly of
burgesses, consisting of two representatives, elected by the
inhabitants, from each of the eleven boroughs or districts which the
colony had by this time come to embrace. ”

“ Assuming charge of Carolina, the Crown reserved to itself the Spanish
frontier, and here, in 1732, it settled Oglethorpe, the able and
unselfish founder of Georgia, under the auspices of an organization in
form much like a mercantile company, but benevolent in aim, whose main
purpose was to open a home for the thousands of Englishmen who were in
prison for debt. Many Scotch and many Austrians also came. Full civil
liberty was promised to all, religious liberty to all but papists.
Political strife was warm here, too, particularly respecting the
admission of rum and slaves. ”

“ Philadelphia and New York had good schools by 1700; rural Pennsylvania
none of any sort till 1750, then only the poorest. A few New York and
New Jersey towns of New England origin had free schools before the
Revolution. Many Southern planters sent their sons to school in England.
In popular education New England led not only the continent but the
world, there being a school-house, often several, in each town. Every
native adult in Massachusetts and Connecticut was able to read and
write. In this matter Rhode Island was far behind its next neighbors. ”

“ Plymouth early made a treaty with Massasoit, the chief of the
neighboring Wampanoags, the peace lasting with benign effects to both
parties for fifty years, or till the outbreak of Philip's War, discussed
in a later chapter. The first winter in Plymouth was one of dreadful
hardships, of famine, disease and death, which spring relieved but in
part. Yet Plymouth grew, surely if slowly. It acquired rights on the
Kennebec, on the Connecticut, at Cape Ann. It was at first a pure
democracy, its laws all made in mass-meetings of the entire body of
male inhabitants ”

“ The clergy, almost to a man,
decried vaccination when first vented, proclaiming it an effort to
thwart God's will. Clergymen, except perhaps in Carolina and Virginia,
were somewhat better educated, yet those in New England led all others
in this respect.
Colonial America boasted many great intellectual lights. President
Edwards won European reputation as a thinker, and so did Franklin as a
statesman and as a scientist. Linnaeus named our Bartram, a Quaker
farmer of Pennsylvania, the greatest natural botanist then living. ”

“ Velaspuez, governor of Cuba, jealous of the success of Cortez in Mexico,
had sent Pamphilo de Narvaez to arrest him. In this attempt Narvaez had
been defeated and taken prisoner. Undeterred by this failure he had
solicited and received of Charles V. the position of governor over
Florida, a territory at that time embracing the whole southern part of
what is now the United States, and reaching from Cape Sable to the
Panuco, or River of Palms, in Mexico. With three hundred men he, in
1528, landed near Appalachee Bay, and marched inland with the hope of
opening a country rich and populous. ”

“ The Mound-builders made elegant pottery, of various design and accurate
shapes, worked bone and all sorts of stones, and even forged copper.
There are signs that they understood smelting this metal. They certainly
mined it in large quantities, and carried it down the Mississippi
hundreds of miles from its source on Lake Superior. They must have been
masters of river navigation, but their mode of conveying vast burdens
overland, destitute of efficient draft animals as they apparently were,
we can hardly even conjecture. ”

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

“ This was not the worst. The colonial government had always been abused
for the ends of worthless office-holders from England. Now it was farmed
out more offensively than ever. In 1673 Charles II. donated Virginia to
two of his favorites, Lords Arlington and Culpeper, to be its
proprietaries like Penn in Pennsylvania and Baltimore in Maryland. They
were to have all the quit rents and other revenues, the nomination of
ministers for parishes, the right of appointing public officers, the
right to own and sell all public or escheated lands; in a word, they now
owned Virginia. ”

“ The Indians
of the lower Mississippi Valley, when De Soto came, had dogs, and also
what the Spaniards called hogs, perhaps peccaries, but neither brute was
of any breed now bred in the country. A certain kind of dogs were native
also to the Juan Fernandez and the Falkland Islands.
Mr. Edward John Payne is doubtless correct in maintaining, in his
"History of the New World called America," that the backwardness of the
American aborigines was largely due to their lack of animals suitable
for draft or travel or producing milk or flesh good for food. ”

“ A colony of one hundred and five planters sent out by the first or
London Company, proceeded, also in 1607, to Chesapeake Bay, entering
James River, to which they indeed gave this name, and planted upon its
banks Jamestown, the first permanent English colony on the continent.
This London Company consisted of a council in England, appointed by the
king, having the power to name the members of a local council which was
to govern the colony, the colonists themselves having no voice. ”

“ A wind-mill was set up about 1620, the first in America. It
stood at Falling Creek on the James River. The pioneer iron works on the
continent were in this colony, hailing from about the date last named.
Community of property prevailed at Jamestown in all the earliest years,
as it did at Plymouth. After the event noted by John Rolfe: "about the
last of August [1619] came in a Dutch man of warre that sold us twenty
Negars," slavery was a continual and increasing curse, as is attested
by the laws concerning slaves. It encouraged indolence and savagery of
habit and nature. ”

“ ENGLISH AMERICA TILL THE END OF THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR
1660--1763
CHAPTER I.
NEW ENGLAND UNDER THE LAST STUARTS
[1660]
The Commonwealth in England went to pieces at the death of Oliver
Cromwell, its founder. The Stuart dynasty came back, but, alas!
unimproved. Charles II. was a much meaner man than his father, and James
II. was more detestable still. The rule of such kings was destined to
work sad changes in the hitherto free condition of Massachusetts. This
colony had sympathized with the Commonwealth more heartily than any of
the others. ”

“ The very year that witnessed the landing of the Pilgrims records the
beginning of another attempt to colonize the New World. While Secretary
of State, having been appointed in 1619, Sir George Calvert, a member of
the Virginia Company from 1609 until its dissolution in 1624, determined
to plant a colony for himself. In the memorable year 1620 he bought of
Lord Vaughan the patent to the south-eastern peninsula of Newfoundland,
the next he sent colonists thither with a generous supply of money for
their support. In 1623 King James gave him a patent, making him
proprietary of this region. ”

“ Winthrop the
Younger, son of Governor Winthrop, of Massachusetts, commissioned by
these last, built a fort at Saybrook. Till the expiration of his
commission the towns immediately upon the Connecticut were under the
government of Massachusetts. Their population in 1643 was three
thousand. A convention of these towns met at Hartford, January 14, 1639,
and formed a constitution, like that of Massachusetts Bay, thoroughly
republican in nature. Connecticut breathed a freer spirit than either
Massachusetts or New Haven, being in this respect the peer of Plymouth. ”