In New England and also in some parts of New York and New Jersey, there was the custom of holding land in common—upland, meadow, and woodland were apportioned out for use to the different members of the community. The church was a great binding force among them, so that the meeting-house was the center about which the people settled, and they were kept all the more closely together by the hostile savages.
But in a new country where land was plentiful and easy to obtain and laws difficult of enforcement, the customs of an old and thickly peopled country could not long hold, and particularly so if unsuited to the needs of the new country. Yet such were enduring enough in this country as to have wielded quite an influence.
The People.
"The primitive land systems lasted long enough to exert a considerable influence upon the people. If we consider extreme examples this becomes evident. The inhabitant of the town community was trained to association with his fellows. Measures were taken to promote village life; laws were made in Connecticut, in 1650, against consolidating house-lots, and the dwellers in Andover were forbidden to live upon their plow-land, lest their hogs and cattle should injure the common meadows. Artisans were secured by the community. Newark, for example, reserved a lot for the miller, another for the town's tailor, another for the boatman, and so on. A town in one case kept a flock of sheep for the public benefit. The habit of coöperation promoted voluntary associations. We find one New England mill owned by seven shareholders, another by thirteen, and a third by fourteen. The towns in New England and New York made by-laws, and regulated their internal concerns in field and town meetings. The system was productive of no end of petty wrangling and neighborhood feuds, but it cultivated a democratic feeling and taught each man to maintain his right.
"On the other hand, the Southern planter lived in some isolation, but his public interests were as extensive as his county or his province. This state of society begot self-reliance, and produced more leading statesmen than the other; but the people lacked the New England cohesion and susceptibility to organization, without which the statesmanship of the Revolution would have been in vain. The Southerner, from his isolation and from other causes, became hospitable, eager for society, and in general spontaneously friendly and generous; the New England people became close-fisted and shrewd in trade, it is a trait of village life. But the benevolence of New England was more effective than that of the South, because it was organized and systematic. The village life of the extreme North trained the people to trade, and led to commercial development; and it made popular education possible. The sons of the great planters at the South were averse to commerce; they were also the most liberally educated and polished in manners of all the colonists; but the scattered common people could have no schools, and were generally rude and ignorant, even when compared with the lower class of New Englanders, who stood a chance of getting some rough schooling, besides a certain education from the meeting-house and the ever-recurring town debates."[221]
Slavery.
For a long time but a few women were brought over in the slave ships and many of the slaves were from wild tribes in Africa and so they were fierce and dangerous. They committed many crimes and were severely punished. Some of the punishments were most cruel, as the hanging in chains, and burning. Other punishments were whipping, cropping the ears, hamstringing, branding in the face, and slitting the nose. As slavery could be much more profitably used in the South, there were, of course, more negroes taken there, and so it was the home of much of the cruel treatment. But the North had it share in such, as is shown in the following quotations:
"In colonies where the statutes did not warrant extraordinary penalties on slaves, the administration of law went to the limit of severity. In Massachusetts hanging was the worst penalty for murder, but the obsolete common-law punishment specially assigned to women who were guilty of petty treason was revived in 1755, in order to burn alive a slave-woman who had killed her master in Cambridge; earlier still the old lex talionis had been put in force, that a negro woman might die by fire in Boston for arson causing death. In New Jersey, even in that part of the province in which Quakerism should have softened the spirit of the people, negroes were burned in many instances. New York, without the excuse of serious danger—for her negroes were not more than a sixth of the population—had a code barely less fierce than that of South Carolina, where the multitude of the slaves was a perpetual danger to the whites. Some of the revolting penalties inflicted on slaves in New York with the sanction of law-courts are striking proofs of the small advance the men of that time had made from positive barbarism."[222]
"Though in the beginning he refused to harbor or tolerate negro-stealers, the Massachusetts Puritan of that day, enraged at the cruelty of the savage red men, did not hesitate to sell Indian captives as slaves to the West Indies. King Phillip's wife and child were thus sold and there died. Their story was told in scathing language by Edward Everett. In 1703 it was made legal to transport and sell in the Barbadoes all Indian male captives under ten, and Indian women captives. Perhaps these transactions quickly blunted whatever early feeling may have existed against negro slavery, for soon the African slave-trade flourished in New England, as in Virginia, Newport being the New England center of the Guinea trade. From 1707 to 1732 a tax of three guineas a head was imposed in Rhode Island on each negro imported—on 'Guinea blackbirds.' It would be idle to dwell now on the cruelty of that horrid traffic, the sufferings on board the slavers from lack of room, of food, of water, of air. But three feet three inches was allowed between decks for the poor negro, who, accustomed to a free, out-of-door life, thus crouched and sat through the passage. No wonder the loss of life was great. It was chronicled in the newspapers and letters of the day in cold, heartless language that plainly spoke the indifference of the public to the trade and its awful consequence. I have never seen in any Southern newspapers advertisements of negro sales that surpass in heartlessness and viciousness the advertisement of our New England newspapers of the eighteenth century. Negro children were advertised to be given away in Boston, and were sold by the pound as was other merchandise. Samuel Pewter advertised in the Weekly Rehearsal in 1737 that he would sell horses for ten shillings pay if the horse sale were accomplished, and five shillings if he endeavored to sell and could not; and for negroes 'sixpence a pound on all he sells, and a reasonable price if he does not sell.'"[223]
The Dutch of New Netherlands had negro slaves but it would seem they differed from the English colonists in that they treated their slaves with kindness. Masters were placed under bonds and they were not permitted to whip their slaves without authorization from the government.