CHAPTER XIV.
THE CONTINENTAL COLONIES FROM 1700 TO 1750.
118. References.
Bibliographies.—Avery, III. 426-446; Greene, Provincial America, ch. xix.; Winsor, V. passim.
Historical Maps.—Nos. 3 and 4, this volume (Epoch Maps, Nos. [3], [4]); MacCoun, and school histories already cited.
General Accounts.—Avery, III. chs. x.-xxvii.; G. Bancroft, II. 212-565; Channing, II. chs. xi.-xix.; Doyle, V.; G. Eggleston, Eighteenth Century; Frothingham, Rise of Republic, ch. iv.; Greene, as above; Hildreth, II. chs. xxii.-xxvii.; Lodge, Colonies; E. Sparks, Expansion of American People; Wilson, American People, II. chs. i.-iii; Winsor, V. chs. ii.-vi.
Special Histories.—Political: L. Kellogg, Colonial Charter; Channing, Town and County Government; A. Cross, Anglican Episcopate; Greene, Provincial Governor; C. Bishop, Elections in American Colonies; A. McKinley, Suffrage Franchise; McCrady, South Carolina.—Economic: Weeden, Economic History; E. Lord, Industrial Experiments; G. Beer, Commercial Policy; R. Paine, Ships and Sailors of Old Salem.—Nationalities: L. Fosdick, French Blood in America; J. Rosengarten, French Colonists and Exiles; S. Cobb, Palatines; F. Diffenderfer, German Immigration; L. Bittinger, Germans in Colonial Times, and German Religious Life; Sachse, German Sectarians; Wayland, German Element; C. Hanna, Scotch-Irish; McLean, Scotch Highlanders.—Financial: D. Dewey, Financial History, ch. i.; A. Davis, Currency in Massachusetts Bay; F. McLeod, Fiat Money in New England; C. MacFarlane, Pennsylvania Paper Currency; W. Shaw, Currency.—Taxation: F. Jones, Taxation in Connecticut.—Press: L. Schuyler, Liberty of Press; L. Rutherford, Zenger.—See also F. Dexter, Population in Colonies, and state histories.
Contemporary Accounts.—Hutchinson, History of Massachusetts Bay; Falckner, Curieuse Nachricht von Pennsylvania (1702); Madam Knight, Journal (1704); Fontaine, Diary (1710-1716); Mittelberger, Journey to Pennsylvania (1750-1754); Franklin, Autobiography; Woolman, Journal.
Phases of common development.
Up to 1700 the history of each colony is the history of a unit; the impulse of colonization came in successive waves, but each little commonwealth had its own interests, its own struggles, and looked forward to its own future. From 1700 to 1750, though the separate life and history of each colony continued, there were perceptible certain great phases of common development, which will be briefly outlined.
Growth of population.
Although disturbed by wars with the French and Indians, by domestic political quarrels, and by disputes with the mother country regarding the regulation of commerce and manufactures, there was a steady growth of population in British North America during the first half of the seventeenth century. The rewards of industry were sufficient, coupled with considerable religious and political freedom, to entice a continuous, though fluctuating, immigration from England and the continent of Europe. In New England, where the English stock was practically unmixed with foreign blood, the rate of progress was less pronounced than in Pennsylvania and the South, which were largely recruited from other races. In 1700, the population of New England was something, over one hundred and five thousand. By the beginning of the French and Indian War (1754) it was a little less than four hundred thousand, New Hampshire having forty thousand, Massachusetts and Maine two hundred thousand, Rhode Island forty thousand, and Connecticut a hundred and ten thousand. The middle colonies commenced the century with fifty-nine thousand; but by 1750 this had, chiefly owing to the exceptionally rapid growth of Pennsylvania after 1730, increased to three hundred and fifty-five thousand, of which New York contained ninety thousand, New Jersey eighty thousand, and Pennsylvania and Delaware one hundred and eighty-five thousand. In the Southern group there was a population of eighty-nine thousand in 1700, which had grown to six hundred and twenty-five thousand in 1763, not counting Georgia, settled in 1733, which in twenty years had acquired a population of five thousand; Maryland had a hundred and fifty-four thousand, chiefly Englishmen, but there was a liberal admixture of Germans and people of other nationalities. Virginia had nearly three hundred thousand, of whom the blacks were now in the majority. North Carolina, important in numbers only, had ninety thousand, of whom twenty per cent were slaves; South Carolina had eighty thousand, the blacks outnumbering the whites by two or three to one. The total for the thirteen colonies in 1750 is about thirteen hundred and seventy thousand.
120. Attacks on the Charters (1701-1749).
Attack on the New England charters.
For many years the New England charters were in imminent danger of annulment, the purpose apparently being to place the colonies under a viceregal government. Those of Connecticut and Rhode Island were the liberal documents granted to them early in their career; electing their own governors, they were practically independent of the mother-country, and the general movement against the charters had these two especially in view. From 1701 to 1749, the charters were seriously menaced at various times; but on each occasion the astute diplomacy of the colonial agents in England succeeded in warding off the threatened attack. Worthy of especial mention in this connection are Sir Henry Ashurst, the representative of Connecticut, and Jeremiah Dummer, his successor. In 1715, at a time when it was proposed to annex Rhode Island and Connecticut to the unchartered royal province of New Hampshire, Dummer issued his now famous Defence of the American Charters, in which he forcibly argued,—(1) That the colonies "have a good and undoubted right to their respective charters," inasmuch as they had been irrevocably granted by the sovereign "as premiums for services to be performed." (2) "That these governments have by no misbehavior forfeited their charters," and were in no danger of becoming formidable to the mother-land. (3) That to repeal the charters would endanger colonial prosperity, and "whatever injures the trade of the plantations must in proportion affect Great Britain, the source and centre of their commerce." (4) That the charters should be proceeded against in lower courts of justice, not in parliament. Dummer's presentment of the case was regarded by the friends of the colonies as unanswerable, and was largely instrumental in causing an ultimate abandonment of the ministerial attack on the New England charters.
The Carolinas become royal provinces.
In 1728, as a consequence of popular disturbances in the Carolinas, a writ of quo warranto was issued against the charter, and the proprietors sold their interests to the Crown. A royal governor was now sent out to each province. Heretofore, North Carolina had been nominally ruled by a deputy serving under the South Carolina governor.
121. Settlement and Boundaries (1700-1750).
Boundary disputes.
Boundary disputes were a constant source of intercolonial irritation. There were long and vexatious boundary wrangles between Connecticut and her neighbors, Rhode Island, New York, and Massachusetts. In 1683 an agreement reached between Connecticut and New York was the basis of the present line, surveyed in 1878-1879; it was 1826 before the final survey between Connecticut and Massachusetts; the quarrel between Connecticut and Rhode Island was protracted and heated, the line between them not being definitively established until 1840. Wentworth, the first royal governor of New Hampshire (1740-1767), made large land-grants, which overlapped territory claimed by New York, and thus brought on a protracted boundary controversy between those two provinces. Patents covering both sides of Lake Champlain were alike issued by New York and New Hampshire; the settlers east of the lake organized in revolt, under the cognomen of Green Mountain Boys, and were preparing to set up a government of their own, when the Revolution broke out, and in 1777 the unacknowledged government of Vermont was formed. A settlement of the boundary was not reached until Vermont was admitted to the Union (1791). The boundary disputes of New York with Massachusetts and Connecticut were settled prior to the Revolution. In 1737 a boundary commission adopted the present line between Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The same commission established the present western boundary of Maine. In a contest between Massachusetts and Rhode Island, the former claimed a portion of the latter's territory, on the ground that it was included in the old Plymouth patent; but in the final settlement Rhode Island retained possession. The Penn and Baltimore families long wrangled over the boundaries between Pennsylvania and Maryland. An agreement was reached in 1732, and ratified by a convention in 1760: under its terms, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, two eminent London mathematicians, ran the famous "Mason and Dixon line" (1767), separating the southern colonies from the northern. The boundary line between the Carolinas was not defined until 1735-1746. To the north and west, English boundary disputes with the French led to protracted and harassing wars; while to the south, Georgia's claims clashed with those of the Spaniards in Florida, and during the war between Spain and England occasion was taken by Oglethorpe (1740), governor of Georgia, to invade Spanish territory (page [262]).
Spotswood's enterprising spirit.
No man of his time was more energetic in pushing the confines of settlement and encouraging development than Governor Spotswood of Virginia (1710-1722), a stalwart soldier who had fought under Marlborough. He built iron furnaces, introduced German vine-growers, made peace with the Indians, and established several excellent mission schools for them upon the frontier; under his administration the fur-trade spread far inland, and he did much to extend topographical knowledge of Virginia by fostering exploration.
The mountain borderers.
The Shenandoah valley, opened to settlement by Spotswood, became, after 1730, a notable home for Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, driven by English persecution from their home in Ulster. They were by this time coming over to America in two steady streams, one pouring in at Philadelphia, and the other at Charleston, S. C. Those arriving at Philadelphia pushed westward to the mountains, and drifting southwestward through the long parallel valleys of the Alleghany range, met in the Shenandoah and kindred valleys those of their brethren who had gone up into the hills of Carolina. It was from these frontier valley homes that the migration into Kentucky and Tennessee proceeded a generation later, led by such daring spirits as Boone, Sevier, and Robertson.
122. Schemes of Colonial Union (1690-1754).
Governmental plans.
Schemes for a union of the colonies, to provide for the common defence and settle intercolonial differences, were numerous enough, after the example set by the New England Confederacy (Chapter VII.). They emanated almost entirely, however, from the government party, and chiefly for this reason were regarded with popular suspicion. In 1690 a continental congress had been held at New York for the purpose of treating with the Iroquois against the common enemy, New France (page [206]). In 1697 William Penn laid before the Board of Trade a plan providing for a high commissioner, appointed by the king, to preside over a council composed of two delegates from each province, and to act as commander-in-chief in times of war. The scheme aroused much opposition from colonial pamphleteers, and failed of adoption; other plans which were promulgated from time to time, for the next sixty years, were in the main adaptations of Penn's, some of them providing for two or three strongly centralized provinces, each to be presided over by a Viceroy, assisted by a council of colonial delegates.
Neighborhood congresses.
While the Board of Trade, distracted by doubts whether the colonies could be more firmly held as separate governments or under a viceregal union, was engaged in considering the various propositions submitted to it, several neighborhood congresses were held by the provinces themselves, chiefly to treat with Indians or for purposes of defence. But these congresses were in no sense popular meetings; they were composed of the official class, and had little more effect on the people than to accustom them to the spectacle of colonial union for matters of common interest.
The second colonial congress.
In 1754 the Lords of Trade recommended a second general congress of the colonies, to treat with the Iroquois again; they also favored "articles of union and confederation with each other for the mutual defence of his Majesty's subjects and interests in North America, as well in time of peace as war." The congress was held at Albany. Only seven of the colonies were represented,—New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. The convention adopted a plan of union prepared by Franklin, providing for a general government that should be self-sustaining and control federal affairs,—war, Indians, and public lands,—while the colonial governments were to retain their constitutions intact. |Its plan of union rejected.| The plan was rejected by the colonial assemblies. Franklin himself wrote: "The Crown disapproved it, as having too much weight in the democratic part of the constitution, and every assembly as having allowed too much to prerogative." The defeat of the Albany plan marks the end of efforts at union on the part of the official class. The next movement came from the people themselves, as the result of oppression on the part of the mother-country.
123. Quarrels with Royal Governors (1700-1750).
Quarrels between governors and assemblies.
The history of the English continental colonies during the first half of the seventeenth century was largely made up of petty bickerings between the popular assemblies and the royal governors. The salary question was the most prominent feature of these disputes. Acting under orders from the Crown, the governor in each colony insisted on being paid a regular salary at stated intervals; but the assembly as persistently refused, and desiring to keep him dependent upon them, voted from time to time such sums as they chose. The principle at stake was important: a fixed salary grant would have been in the nature of a tax imposed by the Crown. Had the assembly been complaisant, the government would have been thrown into the hands of the royal governor and council, through their absolute power to veto laws. The acrimonious contention was greatly disturbing to all material interests, but it served as a most valuable constitutional training school for the Revolution.
The salary question in Massachusetts.
At times, in Boston, excitement over this perennial quarrel ran to a high pitch, and now and then it looked as though the assembly would be obliged to yield; but the men of Massachusetts were of stubborn clay, and never displayed more bravery than when the governor, backed by writs from England, threatened them the loudest. In 1728, the assembly, defended itself, saying it was "the undoubted right of all Englishmen, by Magna Charta, to raise and dispose of money for the public service of their own free accord, without compulsion." The Privy Council at last yielded the point (1735), and left the Massachusetts governor free to receive whatever the assembly chose to grant. In some of the colonies this salary question resulted in frequent deadlocks, in which all public business was at a standstill.
124. Governors of Southern Colonies.
Other differences.
Other differences between the governors and their assemblies hinged on claims of prerogative, fees for issuing land-titles, issues of paper money, official attempts to favor the Church of England at the expense of dissenters, and levies of men and money for the public defence. There were also special grievances in many of the provinces. |South Carolina's experience.| In South Carolina (1704-1706), the proprietors attempted to exclude all but Church of England men from the assembly. This led to a bitter controversy, in which the dissenters successfully appealed to the House of Lords, and legal proceedings were commenced by the Crown for the revocation of the Carolina charter; but they were not then pushed to an issue. In 1719 the meddlesome executive policy of the proprietors resulted in a popular uprising, in which the governor was deposed. Later, the authorities (1754-1765) attempted to resist the issue of paper money, and also to reduce representation in the assembly, while at the same time the home government introduced some offensive regulations regarding land patents. Popular indignation again expressed itself in bloody turbulence, and the colony fell into great disorder.
North Carolina.
In North Carolina the scattered colonists maintained a vigorous resistance to arbitrary authority; the tone of official life was low; corruption in office was common; contests over questions of public policy often led to rioting and anarchy; bloodshed was not infrequent in such times of popular disturbance. In the far western valleys there was for a long period no pretence of law or order, and criminals of every sort found a safe refuge there; while pirates—until Blackbeard's capture by Governor Spotswood of Virginia in 1718—freely used the deep-coast inlets as snug harbors, from which they darted out with rakish craft to attack passing merchant-vessels. From 1704 to 1711 there was practically no government in the province, owing to an insurrection headed by Thomas Carey, whom Governor Spotswood finally arrested (1710) and sent prisoner to England.
Virginia.
During the administration of Governor Nicholson (1698-1705) the Virginia assembly had quietly gained control of the financial machinery, by making the treasurer an officer of its own appointment. When, therefore, the customary eighteenth-century wrangling commenced, the assembly was master of the situation. The burgesses refused to vote money for public defence until the governors yielded their claims of prerogative, and land-title fees.
125. Governors of Middle Colonies.
Pennsylvania.
Nowhere was the weary disagreement between governor and assembly so harmful to provincial interests as in Pennsylvania. There were elements in the contention there not existing elsewhere. The Penn family, as the proprietors, resisted the proposed inclusion of their lands in tax levies for the conduct of military operations, while the assembly for many years would vote no money for such purposes or pay the governor's salary, except on the condition that the proprietary estates paid their share in the cost of defence. The proprietors finally yielded (1759). Other points of difference were,—the assertion of the gubernatorial prerogative of establishing courts, and proprietary opposition to the reckless issues of paper money frequently ordered by the assembly. The Quakers were opposed to warfare on principle; they would neither take up arms themselves in defence of the borderers from the French and Indians, nor, except when driven to it in times of great distress, vote money to equip or pay volunteers. They had, too, a great objection to levying and paying taxes; and in this they found strong allies in the Germans, who had now come over in large numbers, chiefly to settle on wild lands in the interior of the province. Most of the Germans and Quakers would go to almost any length in compromise with the Indian and French invaders who were mercilessly destroying the pioneer settlements. The proprietors and their governors fretted and threatened; the English government sent over order after order to the stubborn legislators; the borderers plied the deputies with heart-rending appeals for aid: yet the assembly long maintained its obstinate course, now and then grudgingly voting insufficient issues of depreciated bills of credit.
New York.
Lord Cornbury, who succeeded the Earl of Bellomont as governor of New York and New Jersey (1702), was not a man to inspire respect, being profligate and overbearing; he opposed popular interests, winning especial hatred through his petty persecution of dissenters from the Church of England. He was recalled in 1708, in response to general denunciation of his course. His successors were in continuous and often acrimonious controversy with their assemblies, but generally succeeded in inducing the deputies to contribute with more or less liberality to the conduct of expeditions against the French and Indians.
New Jersey.
Governor Belcher of New Jersey (1748-1757), who had been worsted in a heated salary contest in Massachusetts (1730-1741), and had profited by experience, was now one of the few executives who understood how to handle an assembly. By an obliging temper he readily secured the passage of such revenue bills as were essential to the proper defence of the colony in the French and Indian war, and avoided serious dispute.
126. Governors of New England Colonies.
Phipps's difficulties in Massachusetts.
The brief term of Sir William Phipps (1692-1695), as governor of Massachusetts,—a province then extending all the way from Rhode Island to New Brunswick, with the exception of New Hampshire,—was filled with bitterness and disappointment. At the outset of his career and the inauguration of the new charter (page [176]), the assembly in the absence of any provision under that head, enacted that taxes were only to be levied in the province with the consent of the assembly. Had this rule been accepted by the Crown it would have left little occasion for quarrels between governor and people; its rejection by the home government left the door open to a train of events which ended, eighty-four years later, in continental independence. The witchcraft delusion (page [190]) had stirred the colony to its centre, and Phipps gained no friends from his attitude in that affair; he angered Boston and crippled its political influence by securing the passage of a law (1694) that deputies to the assembly must be residents of the districts they represented; and his temper was so testy that at the time of his recall he was engaged in a quarrel with nearly every leading man in the province.
The Earl of Bellomont, and Massachusetts.
The Earl of Bellomont came over in 1698 as governor of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. In November the General Court of Massachusetts invited him to visit Boston "so soon as the season of the year might comfortably admit his undertaking so long and difficult a journey." In the following spring (1699) he responded to the call. In Massachusetts Bellomont won favor by siding, as he had in New York, with the popular party, and recommending to his government the introduction of many reforms. In Rhode Island, where he tarried by the way, he found much to dissatisfy him, and reported the people as being ignorant, in a state of political and moral disorder, with an indifferent set of public officials, who were corrupt and abetted the pirates who swarmed in Narragansett Bay. Bellomont promptly devoted himself to the suppression of these sea-robbers, and in the year of his own death (1701) brought the notorious Kidd to the gallows. Bellomont's conciliatory attitude towards Massachusetts did not please the English Board of Trade, which sent him warning that the colonists had "a thirst for independency," as was particularly exemplified in their "denial of appeals."
Connecticut and Rhode Island free from disputes.
Connecticut and Rhode Island were left with their old charters and their popularly elected governors, and thus were happily spared those quarrels over salaries, prerogatives, and fees which elsewhere in the colonies aroused so much ill-feeling. Governor Fletcher of New York was commissioned to take military control of Connecticut. He went to Hartford (1693) to assert his right; but meeting with rude treatment, felt impelled to return home, and little more was heard from him. Like Massachusetts, Connecticut was successful in preventing legal appeals to England.
The Mason claim in New Hampshire.
In New Hampshire—which was separated from Massachusetts in 1741 and became a royal province—there had been more than a century of dispute between the settlers and the proprietors respecting the Mason claim, and much confusion had at times arisen. The matter was at last ended by the purchase of the claim by a land company (1749), which released all of the settled tracts.
127. Effect of the French Wars (1700-1750).
War with French and Indians.
The aggressions of the French and their policy of inciting the northern and western Indians to murderous attacks on the slowly advancing English frontier, kept the colonies which abutted on New France in an almost constant state of excitement. Those provinces which had no Indian frontier, such as Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, and the Carolinas,—which latter had, however, several desperate local Indian uprisings to quell,—experienced but little alarm over the common danger, viewed schemes of union with indifference, and contributed but grudgingly to the funds and expeditions for general defence. Pennsylvania was open to attack along an extended border; the Germans and Quakers being opposed to making war on Indians, her frontier suffered greatly from frequent raids of the enemy. New York, being on the highway between the Atlantic coast and the Great Lakes and Canada, was the scene of many bloody encounters. No other province was so greatly exposed, and on none did the cost of the prolonged and desperate contest between the French and English in America so heavily fall. In 1706, during Queen Anne's war (1702-1713), the French made an unavailing attack on Charleston, South Carolina. In the capture of Port Royal (1710), New England men chiefly participated, and they were otherwise prominent throughout the war. In King George's War (1744-1748), New Englanders alone took part, although New York and a few other colonies contributed to the army chest. Louisburg was captured in 1745 by New England troops, who were highly elated at their brilliant conquest. England, too busy with her own affairs, could not well send protection the following year, when a French fleet threatened New England; a curious chapter of marine disasters alone saved the Americans from being severely punished in retaliation. This doubtless unavoidable neglect on the part of the mother-country, and the final surrender of Louisburg to the French by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), tended still further to strain the relations between England and her colonies on the American continent.
Vernon's expedition to the West Indies.
Admiral Vernon's expedition against the French in the West Indies in 1740 was participated in by men from nearly all the English colonies, island and continental. A campaign against the Spanish settlements in Florida was undertaken by Oglethorpe during the same year (page [262]). The Carolinas gave somewhat tardy aid to Georgia in this daring enterprise.
128. Economic Conditions.
Paper money and finance.
Massachusetts was the first of the colonies to issue paper money. This was in 1690, to aid in fitting out an expedition against Canada. The other provinces followed at intervals. Affairs had come to such a pass by 1748 that the price in paper of £100 in coin ranged all the way from £1100 in New England to £180 in Pennsylvania. The royal governors in all the colonies, acting under instructions from home, were generally persistent opponents of this financial expedient. Governor Belcher of Massachusetts, in a proclamation against the practice (1740), said it gave "great interruption and brought confusion into trade and business," and "reflected great dishonor on his Majesty's government here." In 1720, Parliament passed what was known as "the Bubble Act," designed to break up all private banking companies in the United Kingdom chartered for the issue of circulating notes; this Act was made applicable to the colonies in 1740, and reinforced in 1751, the last-named Act forbidding the further issue of colonial paper money except in cases of invasion or for the annual current expenses of the government, these exceptional cases to be under control of the Crown. In 1763 all issues to date were declared void; although ten years later (1773), provincial bills of credit were made receivable as legal tender at the treasuries of the colonies emitting them. The controversy between the colonies and the home government over these issues of a cheap circulating medium developed much bitterness on the part of the former, who deemed the practice essential to their prosperity; and it was one of the many causes of the Revolution.
Acts of Navigation and Trade.
Another constant source of irritation were the parliamentary Acts of Navigation and Trade (page [104]). In the continental colonies there was no popular sentiment against smuggling or other interference with the operation of these obnoxious laws. In no colony were the Acts strictly observed; had they been enforced they would have worked unbearable hardship. Massachusetts particularly offended the Board of Trade by openly refusing to provide for their more rigorous execution; coupling its stubborn behavior with the bold assertion, quite contrary to ministerial ideas, that the colonists were "as much Englishmen as those in England, and had a right, therefore, to all the privileges which the people of England enjoyed."
129. Political and Social Conditions (1700-1750).
Virginia ideas versus New England ideas.
In the colonies, as afterwards in the States, there was a continual contest for supremacy between Virginia, where political power was lodged in the aristocratic class, and New England, where there was a voluntary recognition of aristocracy, but where the body of the people ruled. Virginia ideas strongly influenced North Carolina on the south, and Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania on the north. The tone of life in South Carolina was purely southern, with no trace of Virginian characteristics; New York, also free from Virginian methods, was strongly influenced by New England ideas.
Political affairs in the South;
The governing class in Virginia were of strong English stock, and when occasion for political action offered, were ready for it, proving themselves good soldiers and statesmen, and furnishing some of the most powerful leaders in the revolt against the mother-country. Their protracted fights with the French and Indians inured them to habits of the camp; while quarrels with their governors, and bickerings with the home government over the Navigation Acts (page [104]) and the impressment of seamen, furnished schooling in constitutional agitation. By the middle of the eighteenth century the majority of Virginians were natives of the soil, and their attachment to England was weaker than that of their fathers; while the considerable foreign element weakened the bond of union with the mother-country. In Maryland general hostility to the Church of England and its impolitic attempt to suppress dissent, was an important factor in widening the breach. North Carolina continued to be distinguished for disorder and a low state of morals, education, and wealth, and produced no great leaders in the opposition to Great Britain. The people, having a keen perception of their rights, were eager enough in the patriot cause; but there was a large Tory party, and consequently fierce internal dissensions characterized the history of the colony throughout the Revolutionary agitation. Being dependent on England for trade and supplies, the aristocratic planters of South Carolina were drawn much closer to the mother-country than in any other continental colony. The Tory element was powerful, yet the best and strongest men of the slave-holding class were patriots, and furnished several popular leaders of ability,—the colony ranking second only to Virginia, in the southern group, during the struggle with the home government. Georgia was but newly settled, and the English colonists were still strongly attached to their native country; she was therefore more loyal than her neighbors. The settlers from New England, with the political shrewdness peculiar to their section, succeeded in committing Georgia to the patriot cause; but the mass of the people remained lukewarm, and when English rule was overturned there was much lawlessness. The community was immature, and had not yet learned the art of self-government.
in the Middle Colonies;
The Navigation Acts and the impressment of seamen bore hard on Pennsylvania, and there was no lack of complaint against other forms of ministerial interference with colonial rights. But the Quakers, who were chiefly of the shopkeeping and trading class, had not experienced the long and painful struggle for existence that had been the lot of most of the other colonists. They had been prosperous from the beginning; and being conservative, timid, and slow in disposition and action, were not easily persuaded to make material sacrifices for the sake of political sentiment. Thus Pennsylvania was an uncertain factor in the revolt. New Jersey, with no Indian frontier, no foreign trade, and but light taxes, had few causes for complaint against England. Her rulers were thrifty, conservative farmers, who were disposed to be loyal; yet as they were of pure English descent, and tenacious of their liberties, they were gradually drawn into an attitude of opposition to English rule. New York was the only one of the middle group of colonies which stood stoutly against England. Since the days of Andros the people "caught at everything to lessen the prerogative." New York city, as the second commercial port on the coast, was naturally a seat of opposition to the navigation laws. But the Tory minority were nowhere more active or determined than in New York.
and in New England.
The New Englanders were pure in race, simple and frugal in habit, enterprising, vigorous, intelligent, and with a high average of education. They were small freeholders, possessed of a democratic system which had powers of indefinite expansion, and were trained in a political school well calculated to produce great popular leaders. Their political principles, developed by a century and a half of contention with the home government, pervaded the colonial revolt, and were carried out in the national government in which it resulted. The New England Confederation of 1643 bore fruit in the Stamp-Act congress of 1765, and still more in the Confederation of 1781 and the Constitution of 1787.
130. Results of the Half-Century (1700-1750).
Although the period 1700-1750 has not the interest of the previous half century of colonization, it has great constitutional importance. |The colonial spirit.| The rugged individuality of the founders of the colonies,—New England, middle, and southern,—was beginning to give way to a distinctly American character. The colonies lived separate lives; there was little intercommunication, but their interests were much the same, their relations with the mother-country were the same, and in the intercolonial wars they learned to act side by side. More than this, they all enjoyed a greater degree of personal freedom and local independence than was known anywhere else in the world. They had no consciousness of any desire to become independent. They had their own assemblies, made their own laws, and disregarded the Acts of Trade. In population the colonies increased between 1650 and 1700 from about 100,000 to 250,000; during the period 1700-1750 they grew to 1,370,000. A few passable towns were built,—Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. Their means were small, their horizon narrow, but their spirit was large.
The English Ohio Company.
As the year 1750 approached, there came upon the colonies two changes, destined to lead to a new political life. In the first place, the colonies at last began to overrun the mountain barrier which had hemmed them in on the west, and thus to invite another and more desperate struggle with the French. The first settlement made west of the mountains was on a branch of the Kanawha (1748); in the same season several adventurous Virginians hunted and made land-claims in Kentucky and Tennessee. Before the close of the following year (1749) there had been formed the Ohio Company, composed of wealthy Virginians, among whom were two brothers of Washington. King George granted the company five hundred thousand acres, on which they were to plant one hundred families and build and maintain a fort. The first attempt to explore the region of the Ohio brought the English and the French traders into conflict; and troops were not long in following, on both sides.
New colonial policy.
At the same time the home government was awaking to the fact that the colonies were not under strict control. In 1750 the Administration began to consider means of stopping unlawful trade. Before the plan could be perfected the French and Indian War broke out, in 1754. The story of that war and of the consequences of simultaneously dispossessing the French enemies of the colonies, and tightening the reins of government, belongs to the next volume of the series,—the Formation of the Union.