In the series of books on American history, upon which I have for many years been engaged, the present volumes come between "The Discovery of America" and "The Beginnings of New England." The opening chapter, with its brief sketch of the work done by Elizabeth's great sailors, takes up the narrative where the concluding chapter of "The Discovery of America" dropped it. Then the story of Virginia, starting with Sir Walter Raleigh and Rev. Richard Hakluyt, is pursued until the year 1753, when the youthful George Washington sets forth upon his expedition to warn the approaching Frenchmen from any further encroachment upon English soil. That moment marks the arrival of a new era, when a book like the present—which is not a local history nor a bundle of local histories—can no longer follow the career of Virginia, nor of the southern colonies, except as part and parcel of the career of the American people. That "continental state of things," which was distinctly heralded when the war of the Spanish Succession broke out during Nicholson's rule in Virginia, had arrived in 1753. To treat it properly requires preliminary consideration of many points in the history of the northern colonies, and it is accordingly reserved for a future work.
It will be observed that I do not call the present work a "History of the Southern Colonies." Its contents would not justify such a title, inasmuch as its scope and purpose are different from what such a title would imply. My aim is to follow the main stream of causation from the time of Raleigh to the time of Dinwiddie, from its sources down to its absorption into a mightier stream. At first our attention is fixed upon Raleigh's Virginia, which extends from Florida to Canada, England thrusting herself in between Spain and France. With the charter of 1609 (see below, vol. i. p. 145) Virginia is practically severed from North Virginia, which presently takes on the names of New England and New Netherland, and receives colonies of Puritans and Dutchmen, with which this book is not concerned.
From the territory of Virginia thus cut down, further slices are carved from time to time; first Maryland in 1632, then Carolina in 1663, then Georgia in 1732, almost at the end of our narrative. Colonies thus arise which present a few or many different social aspects from those of Old Virginia; and while our attention is still centred upon the original commonwealth as both historically most important and in personal detail most interesting, at the same time the younger commonwealths claim a share in the story. A comparative survey of the social features in which North Carolina, South Carolina, and Maryland differed from one another, and from Virginia, is a great help to the right understanding of all four commonwealths. To Maryland I find that I have given 107 pages, while the Carolinas, whose history begins practically a half century later, receive 67 pages; a mere mention of the beginnings of Georgia is all that suits the perspective of the present story. The further development of these southern communities will, it is hoped, receive attention in a later work.
As to the colonies founded in what was once known as North Virginia, I have sketched a portion of the story in "The Beginnings of New England," ending with the accession of William and Mary. The remainder of it will form the subject of my next work, already in preparation, entitled "The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America;" which will comprise a sketch of the early history of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, with a discussion of the contributions to American life which may be traced to the Dutch, German, Protestant French, and Scotch-Irish migrations previous to the War of Independence.
To complete the picture of the early times and to "make connections" with "The American Revolution," still another work will be needed, which shall resume the story of New England at the accession of William and Mary. With that story the romantic fortunes of New France are inseparably implicated, and in the course of its development one colony after another is brought in until from the country of the Wabenaki to that of the Cherokees the whole of English America is involved in the mightiest and most fateful military struggle which the eighteenth century witnessed. The end of that conflict finds thirteen colonies nearly ripe for independence and union.
The present work was begun in 1882, and its topics have been treated in several courses of lectures at the Washington University in St. Louis, and elsewhere. In 1895 I gave a course of twelve such lectures, especially prepared for the occasion, at the Lowell Institute in Boston. But the book cannot properly be said to be "based upon" lectures; the book was primary and the lectures secondary.
The amount of time spent in giving lectures and in writing a schoolbook of American history has greatly delayed the appearance of this book. It is more than five years since "The Discovery of America" was published; I hope that "The Dutch and Quaker Colonies" will appear after a much shorter interval.
Cambridge, October 10, 1897.