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.