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

  In the next century, Champlain, one of the great explorers and the first governor of Canada, laid the corner-stone of Quebec; it became at once the center of Canadian trade which it has ever since remained. This was in 1608. In respect of enterprise as explorers, the French easily surpassed the farm-loving, home-building, multiplying colonists of England. But England took advantage of French discoveries, and stayed, and prevailed.

  God makes men help each other in their own despite.

  Richelieu said in 1627 that the name, New France, designated the whole continent of America from the North Pole down to Florida. The Jesuits, who arose as a counteracting force to Luther and the Reformation, supplanted the Franciscans as missionaries among the heathen, and performed what can only be called prodigies of self-sacrifice and intrepidity. Loyola was a worthy antagonist of Calvin, and the first achievements of his followers were the more striking. But the magnificent exploits of these men were not the preliminary of commensurate colonization. The spirit of Calvin inspired large bodies of men and women to establish themselves in the wilderness in order to cultivate his doctrines without interference; the spirit of Loyola embodied no new religious principle; it simply kindled individuals to fresh exertions to promulgate the unchanging dogmas of the Roman Church. The Jesuits were leaders without followers; their mission was to bring the Church to the heathen, and the heathen into the Church; and the impressiveness of their activity was due to the daring and faith which pitted units against thousands, and refused to accept defeat. They were the knight-errantry of religion. The fame of their deeds inspired enthusiasm in France, so that noble women gave up their luxurious lives, for the sake of planting faith in the inhospitable immensities of the Canadian forests; but the mass of the common people were not stimulated or attracted; the profits of the fur-trade employed but a handful; and the blood of the Jesuit martyrs--none more genuine ever died--was poured out almost without practical results. Our estimate of human nature is exalted; but there are no happy communities to-day which owe their existence to the Jesuit pioneers. The priests themselves were wifeless and childless, and the family hearthstone could not be planted on the sites of their immolations and triumphs. Nor were the disciples of Loyola aided, as were the Calvinists, by persecution at home. All alike were good Catholics. But had the Jesuits advocated but a single principle of human freedom, France might have been mistress of America to-day.

  So, under the One Hundred Assistants, as the French colonizing Company of the early Seventeenth Century was called, missions were dotted throughout the loneliness and terror of the wilderness; Breboeuf and Daniel did their work and met their fate; Raymbault carried the cross to Lake Superior; Gabriel Dreuilettes came down the Kennebec; Jogues was tortured by the Mohawks; Lallemand shed his blood serenely; Chaumont and Dablon built their chapel where now stands Syracuse; and after all, there stood the primeval forests, pathless as before, and the red men were but partially and transiently affected. The Hundred Assistants were dissolved, and a new colonial organization was operating in 1664; soldiers were sent over, and the Jesuits, still unweariedly in the van, pushed westward to Michigan, and Marquette and Joliet, two young men of thirty-six and twenty-seven, discovered the Mississippi, and descended it as far as Des Moines; but still, all the inhabitants of New France could easily have mustered in a ten-acre field. Then, in 1666 came Robert Cavelier La Salle, a cadet of a good family, educated in a Jesuit seminary, but destined to incur the enmity of the order, and at last to perish, not indeed at their hands, but in consequence of conditions largely due to them. The towering genius of this young man--he was but just past his majority when he came to Montreal, and he was murdered by his treacherous traveling companion, Duhaut, on a branch of Trinity River in Texas, before he had reached the age of five and forty--his indomitable courage, his tact and firmness in dealing with all kinds of men, from the Grand Monarch to the humblest savage, his great thoughts and his wonderful exploits, his brilliant fortune and his appalling calamities, both of which he met with an equal mind:--these qualities and the events which displayed them make La Salle the peer, at least, of any of his countrymen of that age. What must be the temper of a man who, after encountering and overcoming incredible opposition, after being the victim of unrelenting misfortune, including loss of means, friends, and credit, of deadly fevers, of shipwreck,--could rise to his feet amid the destruction of all that he had labored for twenty years to build up, and confidently and cheerfully undertake the enterprise of traveling on foot from Galveston in Texas to Montreal in Canada, to ask for help to re-establish his colony? It is a formidable journey to-day, with all the appliances of steam and the luxury of food and accommodation that science and ingenuity can frame; it would be a portentous trip for the most accomplished modern pedestrian, assisted though he would be by roads, friendly wayside inns and farms, maps of the route, and hobnailed walking boots. La Salle undertook it with thousands of miles of uncharted wilderness before him, through tribes assumed to be hostile till they proved themselves otherwise, with doubtful and quarreling companions, and shod with moccasins of green hide. Even of the Frenchmen whom he might meet after reaching Illinois, the majority, being under Jesuit influence, would be hostile. But he had faced and conquered difficulties as great as these, and he had no fear. At the time the scoundrel Duhaut shot him from ambush, he was making hopeful progress. But it was decreed that France was not to stay in America. La Salle discovered the Ohio and the Illinois, built Fort Crevecoeur, and started a colony on the coast of Texas; he received a patent of nobility, and lost his fortune and his life. The pathos of such a death lies in the consideration that his plans died with him. It was the year before the accession of William of Orange; and the first war with France began two years later.

  France, after all drawbacks, was far from being a foe to be slighted. The English colonists outnumbered hers, but hers were all soldiers; they had trained the Indians to the use of firearms, had taught them how to build forts, and by treating them as equals, had won the confidence and friendship of many of them. The English colonies, on the other hand, had as yet no idea of co-operation; each had its own ideas and ways of existence; they had never met and formed acquaintance with one another through a common congress of representatives. They were planters, farmers and merchants, with no further knowledge of war than was to be gained by repelling the attacks of savages, and retaliating in kind. They had the friendship of the Five Nations, and they received help from English regiments. But the latter had no experience of forest fighting, and made several times the fatal mistake of undervaluing their enemy, as well as clinging to impracticable formations and tactics. The English officers did not conceal their contempt for the "provincial" troops, who were not, indeed, comely to look at from the conventional military standpoint, but who bore the brunt of the fighting, won most of the successes, and were entirely capable of resenting the slights to which they were unjustly subjected. What was quite as important, bearing in mind what was to happen in 1775, they learned to gauge the British fighting capacity, and did not fear, when the time came, to match themselves against it.

  King William's War lasted from 1689 to 1697. Louis XIV. had refused to recognize William as a legitimate king of England, and undertook to champion the cause of the dethroned James. The conduct of the war in Europe does not belong to our inquiry. The proper course for the French to have adopted in America would have been to encourage the English colonies to revolt against the king; but the statesmanship of that age had not conceived the idea of colonial independence. Besides, the colonies would not at that epoch have fallen in with the scheme; they might have been influenced to rise against a Stuart, but not against a William. There was no general plan of campaign on either side. There was no question as yet about the western borders. There was but one point of contact of New France and the English colonies--the northern boundaries of New England and New York. The position of the English, strung along a thousand miles of the Atlantic coast, did not favor concentration against the enemy, and still
less was it possible for the latter, with their small force, to march south and overrun the country. What could be done then? Obviously, nothing but to make incursions across the line, after the style of the English and Scottish border warfare. Nothing could be gained, except the making of each other miserable. But that was enough, since two kings, neither of whom any of the combatants had seen, were angry with each other three thousand miles away. Louis does not admit the right of William, doesn't he?--says the Massachusetts farmer to the Canadian coureur des bois; and without more ado they fly at each others' throats.

  The successes, such as they were, were chiefly on the side of the French.

  Small parties of Indians, or of French and Indians combined, would steal down upon the New York and New England farms and villages, suddenly leap out upon the man and his sons working in their clearings, upon the woman and her children in the hut: a whoop, a popping of musket shots and whistling of arrows, then the vicious swish and crash of the murderous tomahawk, followed by the dexterous twist of the scalping-knife, and the snatching of the tuft of hair from the bleeding skull. That is all--but, no: there still remains a baby or two who must be caught up by the leg, and have its brains dashed out on the door-jamb; and if any able-bodied persons survive, they are to be loaded with their own household goods, and driven hundreds of miles over snows, or through heats, to Canada, as slaves. Should they drop by the way, as Mrs. Williams did, down comes the tomahawk again. Or perhaps a Mrs. Dustin learns how to use the weapon so as to kill at a blow, and that night puts her knowledge to the proof on the skulls of ten sleeping savages, and so escapes. Occasionally there is a more important massacre, like that at Schenectady, or Deerfield. But these Indian surprises are not only revolting, but monotonous to weariness, and, as they accomplished nothing but a given number of murders, there is nothing to be learned from them. They are meaningless; and we can hardly imagine even the Grand Monarch, or William of Orange, being elated or depressed by their details.

  There were no French farms or small villages to be attacked in requital, so it was necessary for the English to proceed against Port Royal or Quebec. The aged but bloodthirsty Frontenac was governor of Canada at this time, and proved himself able (aided by the imbecility of the attack) to defend it. In March of 1690 a sort of congress had met at Albany, which sent word to the several colonial governors to dispatch commissioners to Rhode Island for a general conference for adopting measures of defense and offense.

  The delegates met in May or the last of April, at New York, and decided to conquer Canada by a two-headed campaign; one army to go by way of Lake Champlain to Montreal, while a fleet should proceed against Quebec. Sir William Phips of Massachusetts was off to Port Royal within four weeks, and took it without an effort, there being hardly any one to defend it.

  But Leisler of New York and Winthrop of Connecticut quarreled at Lake Champlain, and that part of the plan came to a disgraceful end forthwith.

  A month or so later, Phips was blundering pilotless into the St. Lawrence, with two thousand Massachusetts men on thirty-four vessels. Their coming had been prepared for, and when they demanded the surrender of the impregnable fortress, with a garrison more numerous than themselves, they were answered with jeers; and it is painful to add that they turned round and set out for home again without striking a blow. A storm completed their discomfiture; and when Phips at last brought what was left of his fleet into harbor, he found the treasury empty, and was forced to issue paper money to pay his bills.

  No further talk of "On to Quebec" was heard for some time. Port Royal was retaken by a French vessel. Parties of Indians, encouraged by the Jesuits, again stole over the border and did the familiar work. Schuyler, on the English side, succeeded in making a successful foray in 1691; and a fort was built at Pemaquid--to be taken, five years afterward, by Iberville and Castin. In 1693 an English fleet, which had been beaten at Martinique, came to Boston with orders to conquer Canada; but as it was manned by warriors half of whom were dying of malignant yellow fever, Canada was spared once more. The only really formidable enemies that Frontenac could discover were the Five Nations, whom he tried in vain to frighten or to conciliate. He himself, at the age of seventy-four, headed the last expedition against them, in the summer of 1696. It returned without having accomplished anything except the burning of villages and the laying waste of lands. The following year peace was signed at Ryswick, a village in South Holland. France had done well in the field and by negotiations; but England had sustained no serious reverses, and having borrowed money from a group of private capitalists, whom it chartered as the Bank of England in 1694, was financially stronger than ever. Louis accepted the results of the English Revolution, but kept his American holdings; and the boundaries between these and the English colonies were not settled. The Five Nations were not pacified till 1700. The French continued their occupation of the Mississippi basin, and in 1699 Lemoine Iberville sailed for the Mississippi, and built a fort on the bay of Biloxi. Communication was now established between the Gulf of Mexico and Quebec. The English, through the agency of a New Jerseyman named Coxe, and a forged journal of exploration by Hennepin, tried to get a foothold on the great river, but the attempt was fruitless. Fruitless, likewise, were French efforts to find gold, or, indeed, to establish a substantial colony themselves in the feverish Louisiana region. Iberville caught the yellow plague and never fully recovered; and the desert-girded fort at Mobile seemed a small result for so much exertion.

  In truth, on both sides of the Atlantic, peace existed nowhere except on the paper signed at Ryswick; and in 1702 William saw that he must either fight again, or submit to a union between France and Spain, Louis XIV.

  becoming, by the death without issue of the Spanish king, sovereign of both countries, to the upsetting of the European balance of power. Spain had become a nonentity; she had no money, no navy, no commerce, no manufactures, and a population reduced by emigration, and by the expulsion of Jews and Moors, to about seven millions: nothing remained to her but that "pride" of which she was always so solicitous, based as it was upon her achievements as a robber, a murderer, a despot and a bigot. She now had no king, which was the least of her losses, but gave her the power of disturbing Europe by lapsing to the French Bourbons.

  William himself was close to death, and died before the opening year of the war was over. Louis was alive, and was to remain alive for thirteen years longer; but he was sixty-four, was becoming weary and discouraged, and had lost his ministers and generals. On the English side was Marlborough; and the battle of Blenheim, not to speak of the European combination against France, showed how the game was going. But the peace of Utrecht in 1713, though it lasted thirty years, was not based on justice, and could not stand. Spain was deprived of her possessions in the Netherlands, but was allowed to keep her colonies, and the loss of Gibraltar confirmed her hatred of England. Belgium, Antwerp and Austria were wronged, and France was insulted by the destruction of Dunkirk harbor. England embarked with her whole heart in the African slave trade, securing the monopoly of importing negroes into the West Indies for thirty years, and being the exclusive dealer in the same commodity along the Atlantic coast. Half the stock in the business was owned by the English people, and the other half was divided equally between Queen Anne and Philip of Spain. The profits were enormous. Meanwhile the treaty between Spain and England allowed and legitimatized the smuggling operations of the latter in the West Indies, a measure which was sure to involve our colonies sooner or later in the irrepressible conflict. England, again, got Hudson's Bay, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, but not the Mississippi valley, from France. Boundary lines were not accurately determined; and could not be until the wars between 1744 and 1763 finally decided these and other matters in England's favor. The most commendable clause in the treaty was the one inserted by Bolingbroke that defined contraband, and the rights of blockade, and laid down the rule that free ships should give freedom to goods carried in them.

  Anne, a daughter of James II., but a parti
san of William, succeeded him in 1702 at the age of thirty-seven; she was herself governed by the Marlboroughs and Mrs. Mashamam--an intelligent woman of humble birth, who became keeper of her majesty's privy purse. The war which the queen inherited, and which was called by her name, lasted till the final year of her reign. Only New England on the north and Carolina on the south were participants in the fray on this side, and no great glory or advantage accrued to either. New York was sheltered by the neutrality of the Five Nations, and Pennsylvania, Virginia and the rest were beyond the reach of French operations.

  The force raised by South Carolina to capture St. Augustine had expected to receive cannon for the siege from Jamaica; but the cannon failed them, and they retreated with nothing to show but a debt which they liquidated in paper. They had better luck with an expedition to sever the Spanish line of communication with Louisiana; the Spanish and Indians were beaten in December, 1705, and the neighboring inhabitants along the Gulf emigrated to South Carolina. Then the French set out to take Charleston; but the Huguenots were mindful of St. Bartholomew and of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and they set upon the invaders when they landed, and slew three out of every eight of them. The South Carolinians were let alone thereafter.

  In the north, the French secured the neutrality of the Senecas, but the English failed to do the like with the Abenakis, and the massacring season set in with marked severity on the Maine border in the summer of 1703. It was in the ensuing winter that the Deerfield affair took place; the crusted snow was so deep that it not only gave the French and Indian war party good walking down from Canada, but enabled them to mount up the drifts against the palisades of the town and leap down inside. The sentinels were not on guard that morning, though, warned by the Mohawks, the people had been looking for the attack all winter long. What is to be said of these tragedies? When we have realized the awful pang in a mother's heart, wakened from sleep by that shrill, triumphant yell of the Indian, and knowing that in a moment she will see her children's faces covered with the blood and brains from their crushed skulls, we shall have nothing more to learn from Indian warfare. How many mothers felt that pang in the pale dawn of that frosty morning in Deerfield? After the war party had done the work, and departed exulting with their captives, how many motionless corpses, in what ghastly attitudes, lay huddled in the darksome rooms of the little houses, or were tossed upon the trodden snow without, the looks of mortal agony frozen on their features? But you will hear the howl of the wolves by-and-by; and the black bear will come shuffling and sniffing through the broken doors; and when the frightful feast is over, there will be, in place of these poses of death, only disordered heaps of gnawed bones, and shreds of garments rent asunder, and the grin of half-eaten skulls. Nothing else remains of a happy and innocent community.