North Americans

“ The policy pursued by the British government towards the North American provinces alienated the affections of the people from the mother-country, and the idea of these extensive colonies becoming a great and independent empire, having gained possession of many minds, the Americans became impatient of their condition. ”

“ For it is to be observed that each English colony in North America is independent of the other, and that each has its proper laws and coin, and may be looked upon in several lights, as a state by itself. ”

“ The life of North America exhibits such a hurrying onward, such a concentration of the fulness of development in good and in evil. The vastness and comprehensiveness of this hemisphere, embracing the productions and peculiar beauties of every zone; the means of communication, their abundance and facility, which places them within the reach of every man ”

“ The first emigrations to North America were not composed of a strolling banditti of rude nations, like the first people of most other colonies in the history of the world. The early settlers in the newly discovered continent were as far advanced in civilization, policy, and manner; in their ideas of government, the nature of compacts, and the bands of civil union, as any of their neighbors at that period among the most polished nations of Europe. ”

“ In the people of the United States of North America, the grandest and most colossal state founded by England or any other country of which we have any historical record, we may recognise the indomitable courage, the energy and spirit which was one of the characteristics of the Northern race to whom a great part of the people belong. The first settlement of the country, territory by territory, State by State—the frontier life with its bold adventures, innumerable dangers, fights, struggles, privations and heroism—is the grandest drama that has ever been enacted in the history of the world. ”

“ The colonists of North America had all the qualities to secure a permanent foothold, and to extend territorial dominion. They seem to have counted the cost of relinquishing the attractions and advantages of European civilization, and having determined to cast their lot in a distant land, and settle in a wilderness, were ready to undergo the privations, hardships, and frequent perils incident to so bold an undertaking. ”

“ On the contrary, the English and French have distinguished themselves always, and all the world over, as colonists; so that, saving those States of North America which have received the native names of the great lakes and rivers, we can discover exactly which were colonized by the one nation and which by the other. ”

“ He who can raise his mind to the contemplation of the government of North-America, ruling over a perfectly free continent, may see in the future such a picture of national greatness as the world never before realized. ”

“ The answer seems obvious, for North America itself. But what did North America mean? It had a different meaning to different interests. The New Englander cared for little but the New England colonies, and the immediately adjacent lands and seas. To the Acadian settlers the Acadian peninsula, to the Canadian habitant the banks of the St. Lawrence, were all in all. The inland colonists of New York had in their minds not merely the safety of their colony, within its ill-defined boundaries, but also paramount influence over the Five Nations, and unrestricted trade with the western Indians. ”

“ Yes, it is indeed too true that we must look for new and: energetic governments in recently settled countries. The British colonies of North America passed through a Revolution, and reared for themselves the proudest republic on the face of the earth. ”

“ The colonies in North America have not only taken root and acquired strength, but seem hastening with an accelerated progress to such a powerful state as may introduce a new and important change in human affairs. ”

“ England, in this lapse of a century, unknown to herself, but under the providence of God and the influence of events, was fitting herself for the work of colonizing North America, on such principles and by such men, as should spread the English name and English blood, in time, over a great portion of the Western hemisphere. ”

“ When we speak of the vast mainland of North America becoming wholly European, mainly English, from Ocean to Ocean, we mean that it has become so, not by the adoption of the earlier people by invaders who were also teachers, but by the gradual vanishing of the earlier people before invaders who to them at least have been destroyers. ”

“ The great object of colonizing upon the continent of North America, has been to improve and extend the commerce, navigation, and manufactures of this kingdom, upon which its strength and security depend. ”

“ Moreover, the United States occupies the choicest portions of the North American continent. Our neighbor Canada has a cold and snow-bound frontier on her north, while on our south Mexico and the Central American countries lie near the tropics. The heart of temperate America, on the other hand, is included within the territory of the United States. ”

“ All the first settlers of America wanted was to be left to themselves.
When we compare the progress of Great Britain with that of North America, the contrast is sufficiently striking to attract our attention. While the progress of the former has been the work of ages, North America has sprung into wealth and power almost within a period which we can remember. But the colonists of North America should recollect, when they indulge in such comparisons, that their British ancestors took many centuries to civilise themselves, before they could send free and intelligent settlers to America. ”

“ North America is destined to be a federation, not so much because its first settlements were independent of each other, as on account of the length of its Atlantic coast, and the various routes to the interior afforded by the St. ”

“ But the development of commerce in the Pacific, as the middle of the century approached, pointed unmistakably to the young republic of North America as the power destined to bring about that important event. ”

“ Had the work of colonization here by Great Britain been as brisk and vigorous as that of her own American offspring, we should have seen lively times on the north and northwest of this continent. As it is, from the acknowledgment of our independence to this day, whenever we have had border troubles with the savages, they have invariably found aid and comfort, arms and supplies, from our brethren on the other side of that border. ”

“ But since the North American peoples are now to play an increasingly important part in our history, it will be well to devote a little more attention than we have hitherto given to their development. We have already glanced at this story in § 8 of the preceding chapter. We will now tell a little more fully—though still in the barest outline—what these colonies were, whose recalcitrance was so disconcerting to the king and ministers of Great Britain in their diplomatic game against the rest of mankind. ”

“ In a generation all the best land on this continent will have been taken up. But, thanks to the far-reaching wisdom of our fathers, the greater part of the world will be open to the trade, to the colonizing, and to the enterprise of our children. We shall not be confined to a frozen north or to a single continent. We shall take part in work that is of world-wide significance, and shall act out our belief that God loves not North America only, but the whole world. Only on conditions of the British Empire standing, can this be done. ”

“ America—North America—is the noblest country ever given by God to his children—a country saved through all the progressive ages of the world for a new experiment in human government, and here some British adventurers opened a branch office. That they might ‘worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience,’ they hurled themselves in their frail barques, turned their prows—the ships’ prows—to three thousand miles of boisterous waves, and landed on Plymouth’s rock-bound shores. ”

“ The new problems were how to administer and to develop not a small island or peninsula but a very large continental area, and how to rule a rival white race which from the [70] beginnings of colonization in North America had made that area, or part of it, its own. To these two most difficult problems was added a third, how to administer the new territory and to rule the French colonists, so as to work in harmony with the adjacent British colonies. Conquest and settlement, so to speak, overlapped. ”

“ The spirit that had shattered the Grand Armada and won for commerce the freedom of the seas, was directed to new countries and new States to be founded in North America, where the institutions, the habits, the sentiment and the society of their ancestors were to be transplanted, cultivated and developed, as they had been a thousand years before from the forests of Germany to the shores of Britain. ”

“ Had neither occurred, the whole of North America would now be one magnificent undivided country, pursuing its own independent destiny, and yet united in such unblemished ties of blood and memory to the old country that each could lean at all times upon the other. ”

“ To close this brief account of the physical conditions of the first European settlements in North America, we may say, that the English colonies were peculiarly fortunate in those physical conditions upon which they fell. There is no area in either of the Americas, or for that matter in the world outside of Europe, where it would have been possible to plant English colonies that would have been found so suitable for the purpose: climate, soil, contact with the sea, and a chance of dominion over the whole continent were given them by fortune. ”

“ The United States has been represented to the British and Irish emigrants by the free States—the Northern States and the great West—and the British and German emigrant who finds himself in the South, has drifted there through the Northern States, and either is a migratory labourer, or hopes to return with a little money to the North and West, if he does not see his way to the possession of land and negroes. ”

“ I do not admit, sir, that the analogy to which the gentleman refers us, is just, or that the cases are at all similar. There is no resemblance between the cases upon which a statesman can found an argument. The original North American colonists either fled from Europe, like our New England ancestors, to avoid persecution, or came hither at their own charges, and often at the ruin of their fortunes, as private adventurers. ”

“ It is impossible to forget in the early history of the North American colonies, what facility the French displayed, in contrast with the English, in attaining communication with the children of the forest, in acquiring and retaining their confidence, in taking on their rude and uncultivated modes of life, and in shaping even their superstitions to their own selfish purposes. ”

“ The colonization of North America by the English was not complete with the founding of the seaboard settlements, but continued in a series of steps westward. At each step American society has returned to simple frontier conditions, under which it has been free to try out new experiments in democracy. Each stage of advance has made its special contribution to our institutions. ”

“ In driving France out of Canada, they had Washington and the colonists to help; but now they were to have Washington and the colonists to oppose them.
We cannot realize that at the opening nineteenth century the interior of the North American continent, now so familiar to every reader of public journals, was less known to the world than is the heart of Africa today. French fur traders had penetrated its wilderness depths to the base of the Rocky mountains ”

“ But in the centre of the North American continent, the same Anglo-Saxons have passed from their first condition of scattered and dependent colonies, and become a united and independent nation, five-and-twenty millions strong. Our fellow-countrymen here in America compose one-fortieth part of all the inhabitants of the globe. We are now making the greatest political experiment which the sun ever looked down upon.
First, we are seeking to found a State on industry, and not war. All the prizes of America are rewards of toil, not fighting. We are ruled by the constable, not by the soldier. ”

“ All the intelligence of the North, and a great portion of that of the South, felt the deepest interest in our success, not merely as descendants of the mother country, but also because they recognised the war in which we were engaged as a struggle in the cause of liberty. ”

“ The many advantages of such lands that produce a staple for Britain, in North America, are not to be told. The whole interest of the nation in those colonies depends upon them, if not the colonies themselves. Such lands alone enable the colonies to take their manufactures and other necessaries from Britain, to the mutual advantage of both. ”

“ Not even the great North American republic has a territory at once so large and so productive. What will be its future? Is the people worthy of such an inheritance?
420 The first thought that rises in the mind of those who are possessed, as in this age we all more or less are, by the passion for the development of natural resources, is a feeling of regret that a West European race, powerful by its numbers and its skill, say the North American or German or English, has not, to use the familiar phrase, "got the thing in hand." ”