The Crime of Caste in Our Country

by Benjamin Rush Davenport

Bancroft remarks that “in the early history of the United States, popular assemblies burst everywhere into life, with a consciousness of their importance and immediate efficiency.” This development of freedom was attained in Virginia even earlier than in Massachusetts.

Virginia’s first struggle against usurping pretension was in 1624, when James I. sent out royal commissioners with orders “to enquire into the state of the plantation.” The colonists protested against the commissioners’ proposal of absolute governors, and demanded the liberty of their Assembly; “for nothing,” they said, “can conduce more to the public satisfaction and public utility.” And the Assembly succeeded in retaining its rights.

Thirty years later, a domestic attempt at usurpation was met with equal firmness. Samuel Cotton, the elected governor of the colony, had a quarrel with the Assembly, and arbitrarily proclaimed it dissolved. The representative defied his authority, and speedily forced him to yield. For even in that colony in America, where existed more of the inclination to class distinction than in many other of the colonies, the same spirit of hatred to “caste,” and the exercise of any assumed superiority was deep-rooted, and thus early gave evidence of its presence.

At the foundation of Virginia’s sister colony of Maryland, the king expressly covenanted that neither he nor his successors would lay any imposition, custom, or tax upon the inhabitants of the province. The proprietors had the right to establish a colonial aristocracy, but it was never exercised. “Feudal institutions,” says Bancroft, “could not be perpetuated in the lands of their origin, far less renew their youth in America. Sooner might the oldest oaks in Windsor forest be transplanted across the Atlantic, than antiquated social forms. The seeds of popular liberty, contained in the charter, would find in the New World the soil best suited to quicken them.” One of the early acts of the Provincial Assembly of Maryland was the framing of a declaration of rights. And yet, it was in Baltimore, the metropolis of the State of Maryland, that the first resistance was offered to the soldiers of the people, who were going to enforce the will of the majority upon the minority. Maryland, while, from proximity to the Federal capital, was less inclined toward the secession movement, was still sufficiently influenced by the aristocratic slave-holding part of her population as to be the scene of the first actual resistance to the will of the people in 1861.

The same spirit animated the pioneers of Connecticut, where Hooker declared that “the foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people.” When John Clark and William Coddington founded the settlement of Newport, it was “unanimously agreed upon” among their people that the body politic should be “a Democracie or popular government.” The colonization of Pennsylvania—“the holy experiment,” as Penn called it—was inaugurated by its great leader with a solemn pledge of “liberty of conscience and civil freedom.” And similar incidents accompanied the birth of nearly every new colony.

As Massachusetts grew to be the most prosperous of the northern colonies, she “echoed the voice of Virginia like deep calling unto deep. The State was filled with the hum of village politicians; the freemen of every town on the Bay were busily inquiring into their liberties and privileges.” [Bancroft.] The American spirit, which was to leaven the world with a new ideal of liberty, found its philosophers and statesmen in the farms and hamlets of the young and simple community. It found, of course, its critics and its doubters. Lechford, a Boston lawyer, prophesied that “elections cannot be safe long here,” where manhood suffrage was the rule. John Cotton spoke against the accepted principle of rotation in office; but neither could stem the current of democratic doctrine, because the early settlers of America still retained the scars of their recent conflict with the aristocrats of Europe. Their arrival in the then wilderness of America had been too recent to obliterate the impression made on their minds by “caste” in Europe.

In 1635, there was a short-lived possibility that the aristocratic system of Britain might be transplanted to Massachusetts. Henry Vane, younger son of a titled English family, emigrated to the colony, where he was kindly received, and elected governor a few years after; and two noblemen, Lord Brooke and Lord Say-and-Seal, expressed their intention to follow him if the colonists would agree to establish a second chamber of their legislature and constitute them hereditary members of it. But the burgesses, easily perceiving the trend of such a proposal, declined it, courteously but decidedly.

Aristocracy never found a foothold in any of the colonies. The only approach to it was the privileges accorded in some of them to the “proprietors,” and these were, while they lasted, regarded with some jealousy. For instance, when Pennsylvania, after Braddock’s defeat at Fort Duquesne, decided to raise £50,000 for self-defence by an estate tax, the proprietors—heirs of William Penn—claimed exemption from the levy; but, though Governor Morris approved the claim, the Assembly refused it.

Bancroft thus characterizes the elemental beginnings of the American nation: “Nothing came from Europe but a free people. The people, separating itself from all other elements of previous civilization; the people, self-confident and industrious; the people, wise by all traditions that favored its culture and happiness—alone broke away from European influence, and in the New World laid the foundations of our Republic.” And periodically, as we see from the records of our nation, the might of the majority has been exercised to suppress anything like the attempted institution of “caste” in our country. This often-recurring crime begins to upraise its head, slowly at first, after each defeat, but eventually its growth becomes sufficiently great to attract the attention of the “Common People,” and, as a result, receives its punishment, so justly due.

And the same historian adds: “Of the nations of Europe, the chief emigration was from that Germanic race most famed for the love of personal independence. The immense majority of American families were not of ‘the high folk of Normandie,’ but were of ‘the low men,’ who were Saxons. This is true of New England; it is true of the South.”