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

Louisiana, as the French possessions, or claims, south of Canada were called, was meanwhile bidding fair to cover most of the continent west of the Alleghanies and north of the indeterminate Spanish region which overspread the present Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California and Mexico.

  No boundary lines could be run in those enormous western expanses; and it made little practical difference whether a given claim lay a thousand miles this way or that. But on the east it was another matter. The French pursued their settled policy of conciliating the Indians wherever they hoped to establish themselves; but though this was well, it was not enough. Narrow though the English strip of territory was, the inhabitants greatly outnumbered the French, and were correspondingly more wealthy.

  Spotswood of Virginia, in 1710, was for pushing out beyond the mountains, and Logan of Pennsylvania also called Walpole's attention to the troubles ahead; but the prime minister would take no action. On the other hand, the white population of Louisiana was ridiculously small, and their trade nothing worth mentioning; but when Anthony Crozar resigned the charter he had received for the district, it was taken up by the famous John Law, the English goldsmith's son, who had become chief financial adviser of the Regent of France; and immediately the face of things underwent a change like the magic transformations of a pantomime.

  The Regent inherited from Louis XIV. a debt which there was not money enough in all France to pay. Law had a plan to pay it by the issue of paper. Louisiana offered itself as just the thing for purposes of investment, and a pretext for the issue of unlimited "shares." Not to speak of the gold and silver, there was unlimited wealth in the unknown country, and Law assumed that it could be produced at once. Companies were formed, and thousands of settlers rushed to the promised paradise. But we have to do with the Mississippi Bubble only as it affected America. The Bubble burst, but the settlers remained, and were able to prosper, in moderation, like other settlers in a fertile country. A great area of land was occupied. Local tribes of Indians joined in a massacre of the colonists in 1729. They in turn were nearly exterminated by the French forces during the next two years, but the war aroused a new hostility among the red tribes against the French, which redounded to the English advantage. In 1740, Bienville was more than willing to make a peace, which left to France no more than nominal control of the tract of country drained by the southern twelve hundred miles of the Mississippi. The population, after all the expense and efforts of half a century, numbered about five thousand white persons, with upward of two thousand slaves. The horse is his who rides it. The French had not proved themselves as good horsemen as the English. The English colonies had at the same time a population of about half a million; their import and export trade aggregated nearly four million dollars; they had a wide and profitable trade; and the only thing they could complain of was the worthless or infamous character of the majority of the officials which the shameless corruption of the Walpole administration sent out to govern--in other words, to prey upon--them. But if this was the only subject of complaint, it could not be termed a small subject. It meant the enforcement of the Navigation Acts in their worst form, and the restriction of all manner of manufactures. Manufactures would tend to make the colonies set up for themselves, and therefore they must be forbidden:--such was the undisguised argument. It was a case of the goose laying golden eggs.

  America had in fact become so enormously valuable that England wanted it to become profit and nothing else--and all the profit to be England's.

  They still failed to realize that it was inhabited by human beings, and that those human beings were of English blood. And because the northern colonies, though the more industrious, produced things which might interfere with British goods, therefore they were held down more than the southern colonies, which grew only tobacco, sugar, rice and indigo, which could in no degree interfere with the sacred shopkeepers and mill-owners of England. An insanity of blindness and perversity seized upon the English government, and upon most of the people; they actually were incapable of seeing justice, or even their own best interests. It seems strange to us now; but it was a mania, like that of witchcraft, though it lasted thrice as many years as that did months.

  The will of England in respect of the colonies became as despotic as under the Stuarts; but though it delayed progress, it could not break down the resistance of the assemblies; and Walpole would consent to no suggestion looking toward enforcing it by arms. Stamp duties were spoken of, but not enacted. The governors raged and complained, but the assemblies held the purse-strings. Would-be tyrants like Shute of Boston might denounce woe, and Crosby of New York bellow treason, but they were fain to succumb. Paper money wrought huge mischief, but nothing could prevent the growing power and wealth of the colonies, fed, also, by the troubles in Europe. In 1727 the Irish, always friends of liberty, began to arrive in large numbers. But what was of better augury than all else was the birth of two men, one in Virginia, the other in Boston. The latter was named Benjamin Franklin: the former, George Washington.

  CHAPTER ELEVENTH

  QUEM JUPITER VULT PERDERE

  There are times when, upon nations as upon individuals, there comes a wave of evil tendency, which seems to them not evil, but good. Under its influence they do and think things which afterward amaze them in the retrospect. But such ill seasons are always balanced by the presence and opposition of those who desire good, whether from selfish or altruistic motives. And since good alone has a root, connecting it with the eternal springs of life, therefore in the end it prevails, and the movement of the race is on the whole, and in the lapse of time, toward better conditions.

  England, during the Eighteenth Century, came under the influence of a selfish spirit which could not but lead her toward disaster, though at the time it seemed as if it promoted only prosperity and power. She thought she could strengthen her own life by restricting the natural enterprise and development of her colonies: that she could subsist by sucking human blood. She believed that by compelling the produce of America to flow toward herself alone, and by making America the sole recipient of her own manufactures, she must be immeasurably and continually benefited; not perceiving that the colonies could never reach the full limit of their productiveness unless freedom were conceded to all the impulses of their energy, or that the greater the number of those nations who were allowed freely to supply colonial wants, the greater those wants would become.

  Moreover, selfishness is never consistent, because it does not respect the selfishness of others; and England, at the same time that she was maintaining her own trade monopolies, was illicitly undermining the similar monopolies of other nations. She promoted smuggling in the Spanish West Indies, and made might right in all her dealings with foreign peoples. The assiento--the treaty giving her exclusive right to supply the West Indian islands with African slaves--was actively carried out, and the slave-trade reached enormous proportions; it is estimated that from three to nine millions of Africans were imported into the American and Spanish colonies during the first half of the Eighteenth Century, yielding a revenue for their importation alone of at least four hundred million dollars. But the profit did not end there; for their labor on the plantations in the southern colonies (where alone they could be used in appreciable numbers) multiplied the production and diminished the cost of the articles of commerce which those colonies raised. There were individuals, almost from the beginning, who objected to slavery on grounds of abstract morality; and others who held that a converted African should cease to be a slave. But these opinions did not impress the bulk of the people; and laws were passed classing negroes with merchandise. "The trade is very beneficial to the country" was the stereotyped reply to all humanitarian arguments. The cruelties of transportation in small vessels were regarded as an unavoidable, if disagreeable, necessity; it was pointed out that the masters of slaves would be prompted by self-interest to treat them well after they were landed; and it was obvious that negroes, after a generation of captivity, were less remote from civilization than when f
resh from Africa.

  The good to balance this ill was supplied by the American colonies. Their resistance to English selfishness may have been in part animated by selfishness of their own; but it none the less had justice and right behind it. In any argument on fundamental principles, the colonists always had the better of it. Their rights as free men and as chartered communities were indefeasible, were always asserted, and never given up.

  They did not hesitate to disregard the more unjust of England's exactions and restrictions; it was only by such defiance that they maintained their life. And against the importation of slaves there was a general feeling, even among the Southern planters; because, not to speak of other considerations, they multiplied there to an alarming extent, and the fact that they cheapened production and lowered prices was manifestly as unwelcome to the planters as it was favorable to English traders.

  But in order to be effective, the protest of a people--their enlightenment, their virtue and patriotism, their courage and philosophy, their firmness and self-reliance, their hatred of shams, dishonesty and tyranny--must be embodied and summed up in certain individuals among them, who may thus be recognized by the community as their representatives in the fullest sense, and therefore as their natural champions and leaders.

  America has never lacked such men, adapted to her need; and at this period they were coming to maturity as Franklin and Washington. They will be with us during the critical hours of our formative history, and we shall have opportunity to measure their characters. Meanwhile there is another good man deserving of passing attention; not born on our soil, but meriting to be called, in the best sense, an American. In the midst of a corrupt and self-seeking age, he was unselfish and pure; and while many uttered pretty sentiments of philanthropy, and devised fanciful Utopias for the transfiguration of the human race, he went to work with his hands and purse as well as with his heart and head, and created a home and happiness for unhappy and unfortunate people in one of the loveliest and most fertile spots in the western world. If he was not as wise as Penn, he was as kind; and if his colony did not succeed precisely as he had planned it should, at any rate it became a happy and prosperous settlement, which would not have existed but for him. He had not fully fathomed the truth that in order to bestow upon man the best chance for earthly felicity, we must, after having provided him with the environment and the means for it, let him alone to work it out in his own way. But he had such magnanimity that when he found that his carefully-arranged and detailed schemes were inefficient, he showed no resentment, and did not try to enforce what had seemed to him expedient, against the wishes of his beneficiaries; but retired amiably and with dignity, and thus merited the purest gratitude that men may properly accord to a man.

  James Edward Oglethorpe was already five years old when the Eighteenth Century began. He was a Londoner by birth, and had a fortune which he did not misuse. He was a valiant soldier against the Turks; he was present with Prince Eugene at the capitulation of Belgrade; and he sat for more than thirty years in Parliament. He died at the age of ninety; though there is a portrait of him extant said to have been taken when he was one hundred and two. If long life be the reward of virtue, he deserved to survive at least a century.

  The speculative fever in England had brought about much poverty; and debtors were lodged in jail in order, one might suppose, to prevent them from taking any measures to liquidate their debts. Besides these unhappy persons, there were many Protestants on the Continent who were persecuted for their faith's sake. England compassionated these persons, having learned by experience what persecution is; and did not offer any objection to a scheme for improving the lot of debtors in her own land, if any feasible one could be devised.

  General Oglethorpe had devised one. He was then, according to our reckoning, a mature man of about seven-and-thirty; he had visited the prisons, and convinced himself that there was neither political economy nor humanity in this method of preserving the impecunious class. Why not take them to America? Why not found a new colony there where men might dwell in peace and comfort, with the aim not of amassing wealth, but of living sober and useful lives? On the southern side of South Carolina there was a region fitted for such an enterprise, which, owing to its proximity to the Spanish colony at St. Augustine, had been vexed by border quarrels; but Oglethorpe, with his military experience, would be able to keep the Spaniards in their place with one hand, while he was planting gardens for his proteges with the other. Thus his colony would be useful on grounds of high policy, as well as for its own ends. And in order additionally to conciliate the good will of the home government, controlled as it was by mercantile interests chiefly, the silk-worm should be cultivated there, and England thus saved the duties on the Italian fabrics. Should there be slaves in the new Eden?--On all accounts, No: first because slavery was intrinsically wrong, and secondly because it would lead to idleness, if not to wealth, among the colonists. For the same reason, land could only pass to the eldest son, or failing male issue, back to the state; if permission were given to divide it, or to sell it, there would soon be great landed properties and an aristocracy.

  Nor should the importation of rum be permitted, for if men have rum, they are prone to drink it, and drunkenness was incompatible with the kind of existence which the good General wished his colonists to lead. In a word, by removing temptations to vice and avarice, he thought he could make his people forget that such evils had ever belonged to human nature. But experiments founded upon the innate impeccability of man have furnished many comedies and not a few tragedies since the world began.

  The Oglethorpe idea, however, appealed to the public, and became a sort of fashionable fad. It was commended, and after Parliament had voted ten thousand pounds toward it, it was everywhere accepted as the correct thing. The charter was given in June, 1732, and a suitable design was not wanting for the corporation seal--silkworms, with the motto, Non Sibi, sed Aliis. This might refer either to the colonists or to the patrons, since the latter were to receive no emoluments for their services, and the former were to work for the sake, in part at least, of vindicating the nobility of labor. It is true that the silkworm is an involuntary and unconscious altruist; but we must allow some latitude in symbols; and besides, all executive and legislative power was given to the trustees, or such council as they might choose to appoint.

  In November the general conducted his hundred or more human derelicts to Port Royal, and, going up the stream, chose the site for his city of Savannah, and laid it out in liberal parallelograms. While it was building he tented beneath a quartette of primeval pines, and exchanged friendly greetings and promises with the various Indian tribes who sent deputies to him. A year from that time, the German Protestant refugees began to arrive, and started a town of their own further inland. A party of Moravians followed; and the two Wesleys aided to introduce an exalted religious sentiment which might have recalled the days of the Pilgrims.

  For the present, all went harmoniously; the debtors were thankful to be out of prison; the religious folk were happy so long as they might wreak themselves on their religion; and the silk-culture paid a revenue so long as England paid bounties on it. But the time must come when the colonists would demand to do what they liked with their own land, and other things; when they would import rum by stealth and hardly blush to be found out; when some of the less democratically-minded decided that there were advantages in slaves after all; and when some of the more independent declared they could not endure oppression, and migrated to other colonies.

  After struggling a score of years against the inevitable, the trustees surrendered their trusteeship, and the colony came under the management of the Second George. Oglethorpe had long ere this retired to England, after having kept his promise of reducing the Spaniards to order; and at his home at Cranham Hall in Essex he continued to be the friend of man until after the close of the American Revolution.

  The war with Spain, of which Oglethorpe's unsuccessful attack upon St.

  Augus
tine and triumphant defense of his own place was but a very minor feature, raged for a while in the West Indies with no very marked advantage to either contestant, and then drew the other nations of Europe into the fray. Nothing creditable was being fought for on either side.

  England, to be sure, had declared war with the object of expunging Spain from America; but it had been only in order that she herself might replace Spain there as a monopolist. France came in to prevent England from enjoying this monopoly. The death of the Austrian king and a consequent dispute as to the succession added that power to the melee. Russia received an invitation to join, and this finally led to the Peace of Aix La Chapelle in 1748, which replaced all things in dispute just where they were before innumerable lives and enormous treasure had been expended. But the Eighteenth was a fighting Century, for it was the transition period from the old to the new order of civilized life.

  The part borne by the American colonies in this struggle was quite subordinate and sympathetic; but it was not the less interesting to the Americans. In 1744 the Six Nations (as the Five had been called since the accession of the Tuscaroras) made a treaty of alliance with the English whereby the Ohio valley was secured to the latter as against the French-- so far, that is, as the Indians could secure it. But the Pennsylvanians understood that more than Indian treaties would be needed against France, and as their country was likely to be among the first involved, they determined to raise money and men for the campaign. There were, of course, men in Pennsylvania who were not of the Quaker way of thinking; but even the Quakers forbore to oppose the measure, and many of them gave it explicit approval. The incident gains its chief interest however from the fact that the man most active and efficient in getting both the funds and the soldiers was Benjamin Franklin, the Boston boy, in whose veins flowed the blood of both Quaker and Calvinist, but who was himself of far too original a character to be either. He was at this epoch just past forty, and had been a resident of Philadelphia for some twenty years, and a famous printer, writer, and man of mark. He hit upon the scheme--which, like so many of his, was more practical than orthodox--of persuading dollars out of men's pockets by means of a lottery. He knew that, whatever a fastidious morality might protest, lotteries are friendly to human nature; and if there be any part of human nature with which Franklin was unacquainted, it has not yet been announced. Having got the money, his next care was for the men; and his plans resulted in assembling an organized force of ten or twelve thousand militiamen. But the energy and ingenuity of this incomparable Franklin of ours could be equaled only by his modesty; he would not accept a colonelcy, but shouldered his musket along with the rank and file; and doubtless the company to which he belonged forgot the labors of war in their enjoyment of his wit, humor, anecdotes, parables, and resources of all kinds.