A Brief History of the United States

by John Bach McMaster

FOOTNOTES

[1] Henry Hudson was an English seaman who twice before had made voyages to the north and northeastward for an English trading company. Stopping in England on his return from America, Hudson sent a report of his discovery to the Dutch company and offered to go on another voyage to search for the northwest passage. He was ordered to come to Amsterdam, but the English authorities would not let him go. In 1610 he sailed again for the English and entered Hudson Bay, where during some months his ship was locked in the ice. The crew mutinied and put Hudson, his son, and seven sick men adrift in an open boat, and then sailed for England. There the crew were imprisoned. An expedition was sent in search of Hudson, but no trace of him was found.

[2] One of these, Cape May, now bears his name; the other, Cape Henlopen, is called after a town in Holland.

[3] The first patroonship was Swandale, in what is now the state of Delaware; but the Indians were troublesome, and the estate was abandoned. The second, granted to Michael Pauw, included Staten Island and much of what is now Jersey City; it was sold back to the company after a few years. The most successful patroonship was the Van Rensselaer (ren'se-ler) estate on the Hudson near Albany. It extended twenty-four miles along both banks of the river and ran back into the country twenty-four miles from each bank. The family still occupies a small part of the estate.

[4] New Amsterdam was then a cluster of some thirty one-story log houses with bark roofs, and two hundred population engaged in the fur trade. The town at first grew slowly. There were no such persecution and distress in Holland as in England, and therefore little inducement for men to migrate. Minuit was succeeded as governor by Van Twiller (1633), and he by Kieft (1638), during whose term all monopolies of trade were abandoned. The fur trade, heretofore limited to agents of the company, was opened to the world, and new inducements were offered to immigrants. Any farmer who would go to New Netherland was carried free with his family, and was given a farm, with a house, barn, horses, cows, sheep, swine, and tools, for a small annual rent.

[5] From these nine men in time came an appeal to the Dutch government to turn out the company and give the people a government of their own. The first demand was refused, but the second was partly granted; for in 1653 New Amsterdam was incorporated as a city with a popular government.

[6] Read Fiske's Dutch and Quaker Colonies, Vol. I, pp. 286-291. In 1673, England and Holland being at war, a Dutch fleet recaptured New York and named it New Orange, and held it for a few months. When peace was made (1674) the city was restored to the English, and Dutch rule in North America was over forever.

[7] Each town was to elect a constable and eight overseers, with limited powers. Several towns were grouped into a "riding," over which presided a sheriff appointed by the governor. In 1683 the ridings became counties, and in 1703 it was ordered that the people of each town should elect members of a board of supervisors.

[8] In 1683 Thomas Dongan came out as governor, with authority to call an assembly to aid in making laws and levying taxes. Seventeen representatives met in New York, enacted some laws, and framed a Charter of Franchises and Privileges. The duke signed this as proprietor in 1684; but revoked it as King James II.

[9] William Penn was the son of Sir William Penn, an admiral in the navy of the Commonwealth and a friend of Charles II. At Oxford young William Penn was known as an athlete and a scholar and a linguist, a reputation he maintained in after life by learning to speak Latin, French, German, Dutch, and Italian. After becoming a Quaker, he was taken from Oxford and traveled in France, Italy, and Ireland, where he was imprisoned for attending a Quaker meeting. The father at first was bitterly opposed to the religious views of the son, but in the end became reconciled, and on the death of the admiral (in 1670), William Penn inherited a fortune. Thenceforth all his time, means, and energy were devoted to the interests of the Quakers. For a short account of Penn, read Fiske's Dutch and Quaker Colonies, Vol. II, pp. 114-118, 129-130.

[10] Penn intended to call his tract New Wales, but to please the king changed it to Sylvania, before which the king put the name Penn, in honor of Penn's father. The king owed Penn's father £16,000, and considered the debt paid by the land grant.

[11] All laws were to be proposed by the governor and the upper house; but the lower house might reject any of them. At the first meeting of the Assembly Penn offered a series of laws called The Great Law. These provided that all religions should be tolerated; that all landholders and taxpayers might vote and be eligible to membership in the Assembly; that every child of twelve should be taught some useful trade; and that the prisons should be made houses of industry and education.

[12] Pennsylvania extended five degrees of longitude west from the Delaware. The south boundary was to be "a circle drawn at twelve miles' distance from Newcastle northward and westward unto the beginning of the fortieth degree of northern latitude, and then by a straight line westward." This was an impossible line, as a circle so drawn would meet neither the thirty-ninth nor the fortieth parallel. Maryland, moreover, was to extend "unto that part of Delaware Bay on the north which lieth under the fortieth degree of north latitude."

Penn held that the words of his grant "beginning of the fortieth degree" meant the thirty-ninth parallel. The Baltimores denied this and claimed to the fortieth. The dispute was finally settled by a compromise line which was partly located (1763-67) by two surveyors, Mason and Dixon. In later days this Mason and Dixon's line became the boundary between the seaboard free and slave-holding states. The north boundary of Pennsylvania was to be "the beginning of the three and fortieth degree of northern latitude," which, according to Penn's argument in the Maryland case, meant the forty- second parallel, and on this New York insisted.

[13] The grant extended from the 31st to the 36th degree of north latitude, and from the Atlantic to the South Sea; it was given to eight noblemen, friends of the king. In 1665 strips were added on the north and on the south, and Carolina then extended from the parallel of 29 degrees to that of 36 degrees 30 minutes.

[14] This plan, the Grand Model, as it was called, was intended to introduce a queer sort of nobility or landed aristocracy into America. At the head of the state was to be a "palatine." Below him in rank were "proprietaries," "landgraves," "caciques," and the "leetmen" or plain people. Read Fiske's Old Virginia and her Neighbours, Vol. II, pp. 271-276.

[15] Read Fiske's Old Virginia and her Neighbours, Vol. II, pp. 310-319.

[16] Read Fiske's Old Virginia and her Neighbours, Vol. II, pp. 361-369.

[17] Ever since the early voyages of discovery Spain had claimed the whole of North America, and all of South America west of the Line of Demarcation. But in 1670 Spain, by treaty, acknowledged the right of England to the territory she then possessed in North America. No boundaries were mentioned, so the region between St. Augustine and the Savannah River was left to be contended for in the future. England, in the charter to the proprietors of Carolina (1665), asserted her claim to the coast as far south as 29°. But this was absurd; for the parallel of 29° was south of St. Augustine, where Spain for a hundred years had maintained a strong fort and settlement. The possessions of England really stopped at the Savannah River, and sixty-two years passed after the treaty with Spain (1670) before any colony was planted south of that river.