The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910 Read online

  As a matter of fact, she avoided as much as possible putting this ultimatum in precise words; and the colonies were at least as reluctant to oppose a definite defiance. Diplomacy labors long before acknowledging a finality. There was on both sides a deeply-rooted determination to prevail; but an open rupture was shunned. Furthermore, a strong sentiment of loyalty existed in the colonies, which sentimentally and sometimes practically injured the logic of their attitude. They acknowledged the English king to be theirs; they addressed him in deferential and submissive terms; they wished, in some sense, to keep hold of their mother's hand, and yet they protested against the maternal prerogative.

  Their status was anomalous; and it is easy to say that they should have declared their purpose, from the first, to be an independent nation in the full sense of the world. But the logical and the natural are often at variance. Liberty is not necessarily attainable only through political independence. The colonists, if they wished to be another England in miniature, had not contemplated becoming a people foreign to England, in the sense that France or Spain was. They loved the English flag, in spite of the cross which Endicott disowned; they were proud of the English history which was also theirs. Why should they sever themselves from these? It was not until English injustice and selfishness, long endured, became at last unendurable, that the resolve to live truly independent, or to die, fired the muskets of Lexington and Concord.

  The most galling of the measures which weighed upon New England was that called the Navigation Acts. These were passed in the interests of the English trading class, and by their influence. In their original form, in 1661, they had involved no serious injury to the colonies, and had, moreover, been so slackly enforced that they were almost a dead letter.

  But after Charles II. came to the throne, they assumed a more virulent aspect. They forbade the importation into the colonies of any merchandise, except in English bottoms, captained by Englishmen, thus excluding from American ports every cargo not owned by British merchants. On the other hand, they decreed that no American produce should find its way into other than English hands, except such things as the English did not want, or could buy to better advantage elsewhere; and even these could be disposed of at no ports nearer England than the Mediterranean. Next, by an extension of the Acts, the inhabitants of one colony were forbidden to deal with those of another except on payment of duties intended to be prohibitory. And finally, the colonists were enjoined not to manufacture even for their private consumption, much less for export, any goods which English manufacturers produced. They could do nothing but grow crops, and the only reason that anything whatever was permitted to go from the colonies to foreign ports, was in order that the former might thus get money with which to pay for the forced importations from England. The result of such a policy was, of course, that money was put into the pockets of English shopkeepers, but all other Englishmen gained nothing, and the colonists lost the amount of the shopkeepers' profit, as well as the incidental and incalculable advantages of free enterprise.

  [Illustration: A Quaker in the Stocks]

  These laws pressed most severely on Massachusetts, because her shipping exceeded that of all the other colonies, and the smuggling which their geographical peculiarities made easy to them was impossible for her.

  Besides, manufacturing was never followed by the southern colonies, and their chief products, tobacco and cotton, not being grown elsewhere, could be sold at almost as good a profit in England as anywhere else.

  But if Massachusetts was the chief object of these oppressive measures, she was also more inflexible than the other colonies in insisting upon her rights. The motto of the Rattlesnake flag carried at the beginning of the Revolution--"Don't tread on Me"--expressed the temper of her people from an early period in her history. We shall shortly see how resolutely and courageously she fought her battle against hopeless odds. Meanwhile, we may inquire how and why the other colonies of the New England confederation fared better at the hands of the mother country.

  One of the most agreeable figures in our colonial history is the son of that John Winthrop who brought the first colonists to Massachusetts Bay, on June 22, 1630. He had been born at Groton, in England, in 1606, and was therefore fifty-six years old when he returned to that country as agent for Connecticut, and obtained its charter from Charles. He had been educated at Dublin, and before emigrating to the colonies had been a soldier in the French wars, and had traveled, on the Continent. After landing at Boston, he had helped his father in his duties, and had then founded the town of Ipswich in Massachusetts. None was more ardent than he in the work of preparing a home for the exiles in the wilderness; he added his own fortune to that of his father, and thought no effort too great. In him the elements were so kindly mixed that his heart was as warm and his mind as liberal as his energy was tireless; it was as if a Roger Williams had been mingled with an elder Winthrop; enthusiasm and charity were tempered with judgment and discretion. The love of creating means of happiness for others was his ruling motive, and he was gifted with the ability to carry it out; he felt that New England was his true home, because there he had fullest opportunity for his self-appointed work. It is almost an effort for men of this age to conceive of a nature so pure as this, and a character so blameless; we search the records for some weakness or deformity. But all witnesses testify of him with one voice; and it may be borne in mind that the spirit of Puritanism at that epoch was mighty in the individual as in the community, purging the soul of many self-indulgent vices which the laxity and skepticism of our time encourage; and when, in addition, there is a nation to be made on principles so lofty as those which Puritanism contemplated, one can imagine that there would be little space for the development of the lower instincts, or the unworthier ambitions. When all is said, however, Winthrop the Younger still remains a surprising and rare type; and it is an added pleasure to know that in all that he undertook he was successful (he never undertook anything for himself), and that he was most happy in a loving wife and in his children. It was a rounded life, such as a romancer hardly dares to draw; yet there may be many not less lovely, only less conspicuously placed.

  When there was need for a man to go to England and plead before the king for Connecticut--of which, for fourteen consecutive years thereafter, he was annually elected governor--who but Winthrop could be selected? He went with all the prayers of the colony for his good fortune; and it was of good omen that he met there, in the council for the colonies appointed by the king, Edward Hyde, first Earl of Clarendon and Lord Chancellor, then in the prime of his career, and two years younger than Winthrop; and William Fiennes, Viscount Saye and Sele, who was in the eightieth and final year of his useful and honorable career, and who, in 1632, had obtained a patent for land on the Connecticut river. Through his influence the interest of the Lord Chamberlain was secured, and Clarendon himself was cordial for the charter. With such support, the way was easy, and the document was executed in April of 1662. It gave the colonists all the powers of an independent government. There was no reservation whatever; their acts were not subject even to royal inspection. Nevertheless, Charles, by effecting the amalgamation of New Haven with Hartford, not altogether with the consent of the former, arbitrarily set aside the provision of the federation compact which forbade union between any of its members except with the consent of all; and thereby he asserted his jurisdiction (if he chose to exercise it) over all the colonies. He could give gracious gifts, but on the understanding that they were of grace, not obligation. In the oppression of Massachusetts, this served as an unfortunate precedent.

  Nor must it be forgotten that the happiness of Connecticut was in part due to the fact that, as a matter of high policy, it was desired to conciliate her at Massachusetts's expense. Massachusetts was much the strongest of the colonies; her tendency to disaffection was known in England; and it seemed expedient to place her in a position isolated from her sisters. Were all of them equally wronged, their union against the oppressor was inevitable. Connecti
cut and Rhode Island could be of small present value to England from the commercial standpoint, and their heartfelt loyalty seemed cheaply purchased by suffering that value to accumulate. Charles could be lavish and reckless, and he was constitutionally "good-humored"--that is, he liked to have things go smoothly, and if anybody suffered, wished the fact to be kept out of his sight. But he was incapable of generosity, in the sense of voluntarily sacrificing any selfish interest for a noble end; and if he patted Connecticut on the back, it was only in order that she might view with toleration his highway robbery of her sister.

  All this, however, need not dash our satisfaction at the advantages which Connecticut enjoyed, and the good they did her. The climate and physical nature of the country required an active and wholesome life in the inhabitants, while yet the conditions were not so severe as to discourage them. They were of a rustic, hardy, industrious temper, of virtuous and godly life, and animated by the consciousness of being well treated. They lived and labored on their farms, and there were not so many of them that the farms crowded upon one another, though the population increased rapidly. Each of them delighted in the cultivation of his private "conscience"; and, in the absence of wars and oppressions, they argued one with another on points of theology, fate, freewill, foreknowledge absolute. They were far from indifferent to learning, but they liked nothing quite so well as manhood and integrity. The Connecticut Yankee impressed his character on American history, and wherever in our country there has been evidence of pluck, enterprise and native intelligence, it has generally been found that a son of Connecticut was not far off. They were not averse from journeying over the earth, and many of them had the pioneer spirit, and left their place of birth to establish a miniature Connecticut elsewhere; their descendants will be found as far west as Oregon, and their whalers knew the paths of the Pacific as well as they did the channels of Long Island Sound. Tolerant, sturdy, pious, shrewd, prudent and brave, they formed the best known type of the characteristic New Englander, as represented by the national figure of Uncle Sam. They were sociable and inquisitive, yet they knew how to keep their own counsel; and the latch-string hung out all over the colony, in testimony at once of their honesty and their hospitality. Few things came to them from the outer world, and few went out from them; they were industrially as well as politically independent. They were economical in both their private and their public habits; no money was to be made in politics, partly because every one was from his youth up trained in political procedure; every town was a republic in little. The town meeting was open to all citizens, and each could have his say in it, and many an acute suggestion and shrewd criticism came from humble lips. It is in such town meetings that the legislators were trained who then, and ever since, have become leading figures in the statesmanship of the country. In England, a hereditary aristocracy were educated to govern the nation; in the colonies, a nation was educated to govern itself. Our system was the sounder and the safer of the two. But the professional politician was then unthought of; he came as the result of several conditions incident to our national development; he has perhaps already touched his apogee, and is beginning to disappear. The nation has awakened to a realization that its interests are not safe in his hands.

  Calvinism prevailed in the colony, as in Massachusetts; but there were many of the colonists who did not attend at the meeting-house on the Sabbath, not because they were irreligious or vicious, but either because they lived far from the rendezvous, or because they did not find it a matter of private conscience with them to sit in a pew and listen to a sermon. Moreover, it was the rule among Calvinists that no one could join in the Communion service who had not "experienced religion"; and many excellent persons might entertain conscientious doubts whether this mysterious subjective phenomenon had taken place in them. Pending enlightenment on that point, they would naturally prefer not to sit beside their more favored brethren during the long period of prayer and discourse, only to be obliged to walk out when the vital stage of the proceedings was reached. But it was also the law that only children of communicants should receive baptism; and since not to be baptized was in the religious opinion of the day to court eternal destruction, it will easily be understood that non-communicating parents were rendered very uneasy. What could they do? One cannot get religion by an act of will; but not to get it was to imperil not only their own spiritual welfare, but that of their innocent offspring as well; they were damned to all posterity. The matter came up before the general court of Connecticut, and in 1657 a synod composed of ministers of that colony and of Massachusetts --New Haven and Plymouth declining to participate--sat upon the question, and softened the hard fate of the petitioners so far as to permit the baptism of the children of unbaptized persons who engaged to rear them in the fear of the Lord. This "half-way covenant," as it came to be termed, did not suit the scruples of Calvinists of the stricter sort; but it gave comfort to a great many deserving folk, and probably did harm to no human soul, here or hereafter.

  Short are the annals of a happy people; until the Revolutionary days began, there is little to tell of Connecticut. The collegiate school which half a generation later grew into the college taking its name from its chief benefactor, Elihu Yale, had its early days in the village at the mouth of the Connecticut river, named, after Lord Saye and Sele, Saybrook.

  The institution of learning called after the pious and erudite son of the English butcher of Southwark, founded on the banks of the river Charles near Boston, had come into existence more than sixty years before; but Yale followed less than forty years after the granting of the Connecticut charter. New England people never lost any time about securing the means of education.

  The boundaries of Rhode Island were the occasion of some trouble; though one might have supposed that since the area which they inclosed was so small, no one would have been at the pains to dispute them. But in the end, Roger Williams obtained the little he had asked for in this regard, while as to liberties, his charter made his community at least as well off as was Connecticut. Their aspiration to be allowed to prove that the best civil results may be coincident with complete religious freedom, was realized. Charles gave them everything; liberty for a people who thought more of God than of their breakfasts, and whose habitation was too small for its representation on the map to be seen without a magnifying glass, could not be a dangerous gift. The charter was delivered in 1663 to John Clarke, agent in England for the colony, and was taken to Rhode Island by the admirable Baxter in November of that year. All the two thousand or more inhabitants of the colony met together to receive the precious gift; Baxter, placed on high, read it out to them with his best voice and delivery, and then held it up so that all might behold the handsomely engrossed parchment, and the sacred seal of his dread majesty King Charles. What a picture of democratic and childlike simplicity! With how devout and earnest an exultation did the people murmur their thanks and applause! The crowd in their conical hats and dark cloaks, the chill November sky, the gray ripples of Narragansett Bay, the background of forest trees, of which only the oaks and walnuts still retained the red and yellow remnants of their autumn splendor; the quaint little ship at anchor, with its bearded crew agape along the rail; and Baxter the center of all eyes, holding up the charter with a sort of holy enthusiasm! Such a scene could be but once; and time has brought about his revenges. With what demeanor would the throng at the fashionable watering place greet a messenger from the English sovereign to-day! John Clarke, the Bedfordshire doctor, to whose fidelity and persistent care the colony owed much, fully participated in the contagion of goodness which marked the New England emigrants of the period. He served his fellow colonists all his life, and at his death left them all he had; and it seems strange that he should have been one of the founders of aristocratic Newport, and its earliest pastor. But it is not the only instance of the unexpected use to which we sometimes put the bequests of our ancestors.

  The early vicissitudes of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont are hardly of importance enou
gh to warrant a detailed examination. Vermont was not settled till well into the Eighteenth Century. Maine had been fingered by the French, and used as a base of operations by fishermen, long before its connection with Massachusetts; the persistency of Gorges complicated its position for more than forty years. After his death, and in the irresponsiveness of his heirs, the few inhabitants of the region were constrained to shift for themselves; in 1652 the jurisdiction was found to extend three miles north of the source of the Merrimack, and Massachusetts offering its protection in enabling a government to be formed, and acting upon the priority of its grant, annexed the whole specified region. But more than twenty years afterward, in 1677, the English committee of the privy council examined the charter, and found that Massachusetts had no jurisdiction over Maine and New Hampshire (the separate existence of which last had scarcely been defined). The direct object of this decision of the committee was to provide the bastard son of Charles, Monmouth, with a kingdom of his own; no one knew anything about the resources or possibilities of the domain, and, omne ignotum pro magnifico, it was surmised that it would yield abundant revenues. But Massachusetts did not want the Duke for a neighbor; and while Charles was considering terms of purchase, she bought up the Gorges claim for some twelve hundred pounds.

  The Maine of that epoch was not, of course, the same as that of to-day; the French claimed down to the Kennebec, and the Duke of York, not content with New York, asserted his ownership from the Kennebec to the Penobscot; so that for Massachusetts was left only what intervened between the Kennebec and the Piscataqua. Being proprietor of this, she made it a province with a governor and council whom she appointed, and a legislature derived from the people; the province not relishing its subordination, but being forced to submit. Two years later, in 1679, New Hampshire was cut off from Massachusetts and made the first royal province of New England.