Section 3. GOVERNMENT OF CITIES IN THE UNITED STATES.—J.H.U. Studies, III., xi.-xii., J.A. Porter, The City of Washington; IV., iv., W.P. Holcomb, Pennsylvania Boroughs; IV., x., C.H. Lovermore, Town and City Government of New Haven; V., i.-ii., Allinson and Penrose, City Government of Philadelphia; V., iii., J.M. Bugbee, The City Government of Boston; V., iv., M.S. Snow, The City Government of St. Louis; VII., ii.-iii., B. Moses, Establishment of Municipal Government in San Francisco; VII., iv., W.W. Howe, Municipal History of New Orleans; also Supplementary Notes, No. 4, Seth Low, The Problem of City Government (compare No. 1, Albert Shaw, Municipal Government in England.) See, also, the supplementary volumes published at Baltimore,—Levermore's Republic of New Haven, 1886, Allinson and Penrose's Philadelphia, 1681-1887: a History of Municipal Development, 1887.
CHAPTER VI.
THE STATE.
Section 1. The Colonial Governments.
[Sidenote: Claims of Spain to the possession of North America.] In the year 1600 Spain was the only European nation which had obtained a foothold upon the part of North America now comprised within the United States. Spain claimed the whole continent on the strength of the bulls of 1493 and 1494, in which Pope Alexander VI. granted her all countries to be discovered to the west of a certain meridian which, happens to pass a little to the east of Newfoundland. From their first centre in the West Indies the Spaniards had made a lodgment in Florida, at St. Augustine, in 1565; and from Mexico they had in 1605 founded Santa Fé, in what is now the territory of New Mexico.
[Sidenote: Claims of France and England.] France and England, however, paid little heed to the claim of Spain. France had her own claim to North America, based on the voyages of discovery made by Verrazano in 1524 and Cartier in 1534, in the course of which New York harbour had been visited and the St. Lawrence partly explored. England had a still earlier claim, based on the discovery of the North American continent in 1497 by John Cabot. It presently became apparent that to make such claims of any value, discovery must be followed up by occupation of the country. Attempts at colonization had been made by French Protestants in Florida in 1562-65, and by the English in North Carolina in 1584-87, but both attempts had failed miserably. Throughout the sixteenth century French and English sailors kept visiting the Newfoundland fisheries, and by the end of the century the French and English governments had their attention definitely turned to the founding of colonies in North America.
[Sidenote: The London and Plymouth Companies.] In 1606 two great joint-stock companies were formed in England for the purpose of planting such colonies. One of these companies had its headquarters at London, and was called the London Company; the other had its headquarters at the seaport of Plymouth, in Devonshire, and was called the Plymouth Company. To the London Company the king granted the coast of North America from 34° to 38° north latitude; that is, about from Cape Fear to the mouth of the Rappahannock. To the Plymouth Company he granted the coast from 41° to 45°; that is, about from the mouth of the Hudson to the eastern extremity of Maine. These grants were to go in straight strips or zones across the continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. Almost nothing was then known about American geography; the distance from ocean to ocean across Mexico was not so very great, and people did not realize that further north it was quite a different thing. As to the middle strip, starting from the coast between the Rappahannock and the Hudson, it was open to the two companies, with the understanding that neither was to plant a colony within 100 miles of any settlement already begun by the other. This meant practically that it was likely to be controlled by whichever company should first come into the field with a flourishing colony. Accordingly both companies made haste and sent out settlers in 1607, the one to the James River, the other to the Kennebec. The first enterprise, after much suffering, resulted in the founding of Virginia; the second ended in disaster, and it was not until 1620 that the Pilgrims from Leyden made the beginnings of a permanent settlement upon the territory of the Plymouth Company.
[Sidenote: Their common charter.] These two companies were at first organized under a single charter. Each was to be governed by a council in England appointed by the king, and these councils were to appoint councils of thirteen to reside in the colonies, with powers practically unlimited. Nevertheless the king covenanted with his colonists as follows: Also we do, for us, our heirs and successors, declare by these presents that all and every the persons, being our subjects, which shall go and inhabit within the said colony and plantation, and every their children and posterity, which shall happen to be born within any of the limits thereof, shall have and enjoy all liberties, franchises, and immunities of free denizens and natural subjects within any of our other dominions, to all intents and purposes as if they had been abiding and born within this our realm of England, or in any other of our dominions. This principle, that British subjects born in America should be entitled to the same political freedom as if born in England, was one upon which the colonists always insisted, and it was the repeated and persistent attempts of George III. to infringe it that led the American colonies to revolt and declare themselves independent of Great Britain.
[Sidenote: Dissolution of the two companies.] [Sidenote: Settlement of the three zones.] Both the companies founded in 1606 were short-lived. In 1620 the Plymouth Company got a new charter, which made it independent of the London Company. In 1624 the king, James I., quarreled with the London Company, brought suit against it in court, and obtained from the subservient judges a decree annulling its charter. In 1635 the reorganized Plymouth Company surrendered its charter to Charles I. in pursuance of a bargain which need not here concern us.[1] But the creation of these short-lived companies left an abiding impression upon the map of North America and upon the organization of civil government in the United States. Let us observe what was done with the three strips or zones into which the country was divided: the northern or New England zone, assigned to the Plymouth Company; the southern or Virginia zone, assigned to the London Company; and the central zone, for which the two companies were, so to speak, to run a race.
[Footnote 1: See my Beginnings of New England, p. 112.]