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

  [Illustration: Arresting a Woman Charged with Witchcraft]

  William cared little for England, nor were the English in love with him; but he was the most far-seeing statesman of his day, and his effect was liberalizing and beneficial. He kept Louis XIV. from working the mischief that he desired, and prevented the disturbance of political equilibrium which was threatened by the proposed successor to the extinct Hapsburg dynasty on the Spanish throne. William was outwardly cold and dry, but there was fire within him, if you would apply friction enough. He was under no illusions; he perfectly understood why he was wanted in England; and for his part, he accepted the throne in order to be able to check Louis in his designs upon the liberties of Holland. In defending his countrymen he defended all others in Europe, whose freedom was endangered.

  But if William's designs were large, they were also, and partly for that reason, unjust in particulars. He was at war with France; France held possessions in America; and it was necessary to carry on war against her there as well as in Europe. The colonists, then, should be made to assist in the operations; they must furnish men, forts, and, to some extent at least, supplies. It was easy to reach this determination, but difficult to enforce it under the circumstances. The various colonies lacked the homogeneity which was desirable to secure co-operative action from them; some of them were royal provinces, some proprietary, some were in an anomalous state, or practically without any recognizable form of government whatever. Each had its separate interests to regard, and could not be brought to perceive that what was the concern of one must in the end be the concern of all. But the greatest difficulty was to secure obedience of orders after they had been promulgated; the colonial legislatures pleaded all manner of rights and privileges, under Magna Charta and other charters; they claimed the privileges of Englishmen, and they stood upon their "natural" rights as discoverers and inhabitants of a new country. They were spread over a vast extent of territory, so that in many cases a journey of weeks would be required, through pathless forests, across unbridged rivers, over difficult mountains, by swamps and morasses --in order to carry information of the commands of the government to no more than a score or a hundred of persons. And then these persons would look around at the miles of unconquerable nature stretching out on every side; and they would reflect upon the thousands of leagues of salt water that parted them from the king who was the source of these unwelcome orders; and, finally, they would glance at the travel-stained and weary envoy with a pitying smile, and offer him food and drink and a bed--but not obedience. The colonists had imagination, when they cared to exercise it; but not imagination of the kind to bring vividly home to them the waving of a royal scepter across the broad Atlantic.

  Another cause of embarrassment to the king was the reluctance of Parliament to pass laws inhibiting the reasonable liberties of the colonies. The influence of the Lords somewhat preponderated, because they controlled many of the elections to the Commons; but neither branch was disposed to increase the power of the king, and they were, besides, split by internal factions. It was not until the mercantile interest got into the saddle that Parliament saw the expediency of restricting the productive and commercial freedom of the colonies, and the necessity, in order to secure these ends, of diminishing their legislative license.

  Meanwhile, William tried more than one device of his own. First, by dint of the prerogative, he ordered that each colony north of Carolina should appoint a fixed quota of men and money for the defense of New York against the common enemy; this order it was found impossible to carry out. Next, he caused a board of trade to be appointed in 1696 to inquire into the condition of the colonies, and as to what should be done about them; and after a year, this board reported that in their opinion what was wanted was a captain-general to exercise a sort of military dictatorship over all the North American provinces. But the ministry held this plan to be imprudent, and it fell through. At the same time, William Penn worked out a scheme truly statesmanlike, proposing an annual congress of two delegates from each province to devise ways and means, which they could more intelligently do than could any council or board in England. The plan was advocated by Charles Davenant, a writer on political economy, who observed that the stronger the colonies became, the more profitable to England would they be; only despotism could drive them to rebellion; and innovations in their charters would be prejudicial to the king's power.

  But this also was rejected; and finally the conduct of necessary measures was given to "royal instructions," that is, to the king; but to the king subject to the usual parliamentary restraint. And none of the better class of Englishmen wished to tyrannize over their fellow Englishmen across the sea.

  Under this arrangement, the appointment of judges was taken from the people; Habeas Corpus was refused, or permitted as a favor; censorship of the press was revived; license to preach except as granted by a bishop was denied; charters were withheld from dissenters; slavery was encouraged; and the colonies not as yet under royal control were told that the common weal demanded that they should be placed in the same condition of dependency as those who were. But William died in 1702, before this arrangement could be carried out. Queen Anne, however, listened to alarmist reports of the unruly and disaffected condition of the colonies, and allowed a bill for their "better regulation" to be introduced. It was now that the mercantile interest began to show its power.

  The old argument, that every nation may claim the services of its own subjects, wherever they are, was revived; and that England ought to be the sole buyer and seller of American trade. All the oppressive and irritating commercial regulations were put in force, and all colonial laws opposing them were abrogated. Complaints under these regulations were taken out of the hands of colonial judges and juries, on the plea that they were often the offenders. Woolen manufactures, as interfering with English industry, were so rigorously forbidden, that a sailor in an American port could not buy himself a flannel shirt, and the Virginians were put to it to clothe themselves at all. Naturally, the people resisted so far as they could, and that was not a little; England could not spare a sufficient force to insure obedience to laws of such a kind. "We have a right to the same liberties as Englishmen," was the burden of all remonstrances, and it was supported by councilors on the bench and ministers in the pulpit. The revenues were so small as hardly to repay the cost of management. It is hard to coerce a nation and get a profit over expenses; and the colonies were a nation--they numbered nearly three hundred thousand in Anne's reign --without the advantage of being coherent; they were a baker's dozen of disputatious and recalcitrant incoherencies. The only arbitrary measure of taxation that was amiably accepted was the post-office tax, which was seen to be productive of a useful service at a reasonable cost; and an act to secure suitable trees for masts for the navy was tolerated because there were so many trees. The coinage system was no system at all, and led to much confusion and loss; and the severe laws against piracy, which had grown to be common, and in the profits of which persons high in the community were often suspected and sometimes proved to have been participants, were less effective than they certainly ought to have been; but they, and the bloody and desperate objects of them, added a picturesque page to the annals of the time.

  Concerning the condition of the several colonies during the years following the Revolution of 1688, it may be said, in general, that it was much better in fact than it was in theory. There were narrow and unjust and short-sighted laws and regulations, and there were men of a corresponding stamp to execute them; but the success such persons met with was sporadic, uncertain, and partial. The people were grown too big, and too well aware of their bigness, to be ground down and kept in subjection, even had the will so to afflict them been steady and virulent--which it cannot be said to have been. The people knew that, be the law what it might, it could, on the whole, be evaded or disregarded, unless or until the mother country undertook to enforce it by landing an army and regularly making war; and England had too many troubles of her own,
and also contained too many liberal-minded men, to attempt such a thing for the present. The proof that the colonies were not seriously or consistently oppressed is evident from the fact that they all increased rapidly in population and wealth, notwithstanding their "troubles"; and it was not until England had settled down under her Georges, and that Providence had inspired the third of that name with the pig-headedness that cost his adopted subjects so dear, that the Revolution became a possibility. Yet even now there was no lack of talk of such an eventuality; the remark was common that in process of time the colonies would declare their independence. But perhaps it was made rather with intent to spur England to adopt preventative measures in season, than from a real conviction that the event would actually take place.

  New York, at the time of William's accession, had been under the control of Andros, who at that epoch commanded a domain two or three times as large as Britain. Nicholson was his lieutenant; and on the news of the Revolution Jacob Leisler, a German, who had come over in 1660 as a soldier of the Dutch West India Company, and had made a fortune, unseated Nicholson and proclaimed William and Mary. Supported by the mass of the Dutch inhabitants, but without other warrant, he assumed the functions of royal lieutenant-governor, pending the arrival of the new king's appointee. In the interests of order, it was the best thing to do. But he made active enemies among the other elements of the cosmopolitan population of New York, and they awaited an opportunity to be avenged on him. This came with the arrival of Henry Sloughter in 1691, with the king's commission. Sloughter can only be described as a drunken profligate. At the earliest moment, Leisler sent to know his commands, and offered to surrender the fort. Sloughter answered by arresting him and Milborne, his son-in-law, on the charge of high treason--an absurdity; but they were arraigned before a partisan court and condemned to be hanged --they refusing to plead and appealing to the king. It is said that Sloughter did not intend to carry the sentence into effect; but the local enemies of Leisler made the governor drunk that night, and secured his signature to the decree. This was on May 14, 1691; on the 15th, the house disapproved the sentence, but on the 16th it was carried out, the victims meeting their fate with dignity and courage. In 1695, the attainder was reversed by act of parliament; but it remains the most disgraceful episode of William's government of the colonies.

  Meanwhile, Sloughter was recalled, and Fletcher sent out. He was not a sodden imbecile, but he was ill-chosen for his office. He described the New Yorkers of that day as "divided, contentious and impoverished" and immediately began a conflict with them. His attitude may be judged from a passage in his remarks to the assembly soon afterward: "There never was an amendment desired by the council board but what was rejected. It is a sign of a stubborn ill-temper.... While I stay in this government I will take care that neither heresy, schism, nor rebellion be preached among you, nor vice and profanity be encouraged. You seem to take the power into your own hands and set up for everything." This last observation was probably not devoid of truth; nor was a subsequent one, "There are none of you but what are big with the privileges of Englishmen and Magna Charta." That well describes the colonist of the period, whether in New York or elsewhere. It had been said of New Yorkers, however, that they were a conquered people, who had no rights that a king was bound to respect; and the grain of truth in the saying may have made the New Yorkers more than commonly anxious to keep out the small end of the wedge. Bellomont's incumbency was mild, and chiefly memorable by reason of his having commissioned a certain William Kidd to suppress piracy; but Kidd--if tradition is to be believed: --certainly his most unfair and prejudiced trial in London afforded no evidence of it--found more pleasure in the observance than in the breach, and became the most famous pirate of them all. There is gold enough of his getting buried along the coasts to buy a modern ironclad fleet, according to the belief of the credulous. A little later, Steed Bonnet, Richard Worley, and Edward Teach, nicknamed Blackbeard, had similar fame and fate.

  Their business, like others of great profit, incurred great risks.

  Of Lord Cornbury, the next governor, Bancroft remarks, with unwonted energy, that "He joined the worst form of arrogance to intellectual imbecility," and that "happily for New York, he had every vice of character necessary to discipline a colony into self-reliance and resistance." He began by stealing $1,500 appropriated to fortify the Narrows; it was the last money he got from the various assemblies that he called and dissolved, and the assemblies became steadily more independent and embarrassing. In 1707, the Quaker speaker read out in meeting a paper accusing him of bribe taking. Cornbury disappears from American history the next year; and completed his career, in England, as the third Earl of Clarendon.

  Under Lovelace, the assembly refused supplies and assumed executive powers; when Hunter came, he found a fertile and wealthy country, but nothing in it for him: "Sancho Panza was but a type of me." He was a man of humor and sagacity, and perceived that "the colonists are infants at their mother's breasts, but will wean themselves when they come of age." Before he got through with the New Yorkers, he had reason to suspect that the weaning time had all but arrived.

  New Jersey passed through many trivial vicissitudes, changes of ownership, vexed land-titles, and royal encroachments. For several years the people had no visible government at all. They did not hold themselves so well in hand as did New York, and were less audacious and aggressive in resistance; but in one way or another, they fairly held their own, prospered and multiplied. Pennsylvania enjoyed from the first more undisturbed independence and self-direction than the others; at one time it seemed to be their ambition to discover something which Penn would not grant them, and then to ask for it. But the great Quaker was equal to the occasion; no selfishness, crankiness, or whimsicality on their part could wear out his patience and benevolence. In the intervals of his imprisonments in England he labored for their welfare. The queen contemplated making Pennsylvania a royal province, but Penn, though poor, would not let it go except on condition it might retain its democratic liberties. The people, in short, kept everything in their own hands, and their difficulties arose chiefly from their disputes as to what to do with so much freedom. It was a colony where everybody was equal, without an established church, where any one was welcome to enter and dwell, which was destitute of arms or defense or even police, which yet grew in all good things more rapidly than any of its sister colonies. The people waxed fat and kicked, but they did no evil in the sight of the Lord, whatever England may have thought of them; and after the contentious little appendage of Delaware had finally been cut off from its big foster sister (though they shared the same governors until the Revolution) there is little more to be said of either of them.

  The Roman Catholic owners of Maryland fared ill after William came into power; he made the colony a royal province in 1691, and for thirty years or more there were no more Baltimores in the government. Under Copley, the first royal governor, the Church of England was declared to be established; but dissenters were afterward protected; only the Catholics were treated with intolerance in the garden themselves had made. The people soon settled down and became contented, and slowly their numbers augmented. But the Baltimores were persistent, and the fourth lord, in 1715, took advantage of his infancy to compass a blameless reconciliation with the Church of England, thereby securing his installation in the proprietary rights of his forefathers, from which the family was not evicted until the Revolution of the colonies in 1775 opened a new chapter in the history of the world.

  Virginia recovered rapidly from Berkeley, and suffered little from Andros, who was governor in 1692, but with his fangs drawn, and an experience to remember. The people still eschewed towns, and lived each family in its own solitude, hospitable to all, but content with their own company. The love of independence grew alike in the descendants of the cavaliers and in the common people, and the wide application of the suffrage equalized power, and even enabled the lower sort to keep the gentry, when the fancy took them, out of the places of au
thority and trust. Democracy was in the woods and streams and the blue sky, and all breathed it in and absorbed it into their blood and bone. They early petitioned William for home rule in all its purity; he permitted land grants to be confirmed, but would not let their assembly supplant the English parliament as a governing power. He sought, unsuccessfully, to increase the authority of the church; for though the bishop might license and the governor recommend, the parish would not present. It was a leisurely, good-natured, careless, but spirited people, indifferent to commerce, content to harvest their fields and rule their slaves, and let the world go by. A more enviable existence than theirs it would be hard to imagine. All their financial transactions were done in tobacco, even to the clergyman's stipend and the judge's fee. No enemy menaced them; politics were rather an amusement than a serious duty; yet in these fertile regions were made the brains and characters which afterward, for so many years, ruled the councils of the United States, or led her armies in war. They lay fallow for seventy-five years, and then gave the best of accounts of themselves. England did not quite know what to make of the Virginians; to judge by the reports of the governors, they were changeable as a pretty woman. But they were simply capricious humorists, full of life and intelligence, who did what they pleased and did not take themselves too seriously. They indulged themselves with the novel toy, the post-office; and founded William and Mary College in 1693. This venerable institution passed its second centennial with one hundred and sixty students on its roll; but, soon after, it "ceased upon the midnight, without pain." Anybody may have a college in these days.