any other colony did to its proprietor. Penn is one of the strik
ing figures in history. Son of a famous and wealthy English
admiral who had added Jamaica to England's colonies ( 133),
he risked his inheritance, as well as all prospect of worldly
promotion, in order to join the Quakers. Happily for the
world, his resources were not taken from him after all, and he
kept the warm friendship of men so different from himself as
the royal brothers, Charles and James.

Through this friendship, Penn was selected to help some
Quaker proprietors organize the colony of New Jersey, and
thereby he became interested in trying a " Holy Experiment "
in a colony of his own. The Council for colonial affairs ( 134)
had already become jealous of proprietary grants ; but James
readily gave him the old Swedish settlements on the Delaware.
Penn, however, wished a still freer field to work in, and soon
he secured from King Charles, in consideration of a large debt
due him from the crown, a grant of wild territory west of the
Delaware between New York and Maryland.

Owing to geographical ignorance, the grant conflicted with those of
Massachusetts and Connecticut, and especially with those of New York
and Maryland. The adjustment with Maryland was not finally accom
plished until 1767, when Mason and Dixon, two English surveyors, ran
the boundary line that goes by their name commonly referred to in later
history as the dividing line between North and South.

173. Penn's charter of 1680 (Source Book, No. 102) gave
him proprietary power like that of Baltimore in Maryland,
with some limitations. Settlers were guaranteed the right of
appeal from colonial courts to the king in council, and all
colonial laws were to be subject to a royal veto. The Quaker
colony was required to tolerate the established English church,
and especial emphasis was placed upon obedience to the navi
gation laws. A unique clause renounced all authority on the



138



PENNSYLVANIA TO 1700



[174



part of the crown to tax the colonists without the consent of the
Assembly or of Parliament, an indirect assertion that Parlia
ment might tax the colony. 1

174. Pennsylvania knew none of the desperate hardships that
make so large a part of the story of the earlier colonies. The
wealthy Quakers of England and Wales helped the enterprise
cordially, and the Mennonites (a German sect somewhat re-




PBNN'S TREATY WITH THE INDIANS FOB THE PURCHASE OF PENNSYL
VANIA. From the imaginative painting by Benjamin West, now in Inde
pendence Hall, Philadelphia.

sembling Quakers) poured in a large and industrious immigra
tion. In 1687 one of their settlements voiced the first protest
in America against slavery : " Those who steal or rob men, and
those who buy or purchase them, are they not all alike?
Here is liberty of conscience . . . and here ought to be likewise
liberty of the body. ... To bring men hither or to robb or sell
them against their will, we stand against."

There were no Indian troubles, thanks to Penn's wise and just
policy with the natives. Population increased rapidly, and

1 The Delaware settlements were not covered by the charter. For them a
separate form of government was devised, though they belonged to the same
proprietor.



175] RELIGIOUS FREEDOM 139

material prosperity was unbroken. By 1700 (when only twenty
years old) the colony stood next to Virginia and Massachusetts
in wealth and numbers. Unlike other colonies, except con
quered New York, the population was at least half non-English
from the first, Welsh, German, Swedes, Dutch, French,
Danes, and Finns.

175. Penn took no thought to extend his own powers. His
ideas, for the time, were broad and noble.

"The nations want a precedent for a just and righteous government, 1 '
he wrote. ... " The people must rule." And again, in a letter to a
friend, "I propose ... to leave myself and my successors no power of
doing mischief that the will of one man may not hinder the good of a
whole country." To the expected settlers he proclaimed (1681), "You
shall be governed by laws of your own making, and live a free and, if you
will, a sober and industrious people."

The first " Frame of Government " granted by Penn to the
colonists was very liberal, but it was clumsy ; and even with
a proprietor so unselfish and settlers so good, politics were
confused by bitter quarrels for some years. Finally Penn
substituted for that first charter to the settlers a new funda
mental law, the Charter of 1701 (Source Book, 103 b). The
colonists accepted this by formal compact, and it remained
the constitution of Pennsylvania until 1776.

The governor was appointed by the proprietor, and had a
veto upon all legislation. He was aided by an appointed Coun
cil, which body was not part of the legislature. The people
chos'e a one-House Assembly each year. TJiis body had com
plete control over its own sittings : the charter fixed a date for
the annual meeting, and provided that the Assembly should
be dissolved only by its own vote. Freedom of conscience was
guaranteed to all who believed in " one Almighty God " ; and
the franchise was given to all who accepted Christ as the
" Savior of the World " l and who owned 50 acres of land or
50 personal estate.

1 Pennsylvania was the only colony in which Roman Catholics had political
rights in the eighteenth century. Rhode Island disfranchised them in 1719.



140 SUMMARY FOR 1660-1690 [ 176

The provision for religious freedom was declared not subject
to amendment. All other parts of the charter could be amended
by the joint action of the proprietor and six sevenths of the
Assembly. This was the first written constitution to provide, a
definite machinery for its own amendment.

FOR FURTHER READING. Channing's History of the United States, II,
94-129, 313-340, and Andrews' Colonial Self-Government, 75-128, 162-
201. Some student may be asked to report upon Leisler's Rebellion in
New York, especially if Fiske's Dutch and Quaker Colonies is accessible.

EXERCISE. Name ten dates in the seventeenth century worthy of
memorization. Point out which ones stand for some important relation
between American and English history.

V. SUMMARY FOR THE PERIOD 1660-1690

176. The "Restoration" of Charles II began a new era for
the English race ; but the two divisions of Englishmen on
opposite sides of the Atlantic met very different fates. In
England itself, the second Stuart period (1660-1688) was a
time of infamy and peril. In America, it was singularly pro
gressive and attractive. For the first time the government of
the home land took an active part in fostering the plantations ;
and the separate colonies first began to have a common history.

177. Three great characteristics marked the period :
English territory in America was greatly expanded.

The English government established its first real "colonial
department" to regulate colonial affairs and to draw the planta
tions into a closer dependence upon England.

This new attitude of the home government, both in its wise
and unwise applications, stirred the colonists to a new insistence
upon their rights of self-government.

Thus there developed an "irrepressible conflict" between the natural
and wholesome English demand for imperial unity and the even more
indispensable American demand for local freedom. Of this struggle the
most picturesque episodes are Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia and the
Andros incident in New England. The conflict was intensified by evil
traits on both sides, by the personal despotic inclinations of James II



178] SELF-GOVERNMENT SAVED 141

and of some of his agents in the colonies, and by pettiness and ignorance
on the part of the colonists ; and each party was blind to the good on
the other side. Still the unconquerable determination of the colonists to
manage their own affairs, even though inspired in part by narrow prejudice, is
the central fact of the period. If we mark the period by one phrase we
may best call it the era of the struggle to save self-government

178. During this period, too, the view-point for our history
is shifting. Until 1660, the colonists are Englishmen enter
prising Englishmen busied in establishing themselves on scat
tered outlying frontiers. After 1690, they are Americans
colonial Americans, it is true, dependent still upon England
partly from custom, partly from affection, and largely from
need of protection against the French on the north.

TJie three marks of the period treated in tfyis chapter ( 177)
are all found, intensified, in the next seventy years, with the
addition of one new element, the incessant war with the French
and Indians. The story of the present chapter is continued
directly in the next.



CHAPTER XVII

"COLONIAL AMERICANS," 1690-1763

I. MATERIAL GROWTH

179. Despite the frequent wars, the seventy years between the
English Revolution and the American Revolution (1690-1760) were
a period of marvelous prosperity for the colonies. The older dis
tricts grew from straggling frontiers into rich and powerful com
munities marked tiy self-reliance and intense local patriotism.
A new colony, Georgia, was added on the south (1732), and new
frontiers were thrown out on the west. Population rose sixfold
-from 250,000 (132) to 1,600,000; and large non-English
elements appeared, especially in the middle colonies.

The most numerous of these were the German Protestants,
driven from their homes in South Germany by religious perse~
cution and by the wars of Louis XIV. The French armies in
these wars deliberately depopulated large districts. A striking
paragraph of Macaulay's tells the fate of one Ehine province :

' ' The commander announced to near half a million human beings that
he granted them three days' grace . . . Soon the roads and fields were
blackened by innumerable multitudes of men, women, and children flying
from their houses. . . . The flames went up from every market place,
every parish church, every county seat."

The survivors of such devastation made the first German
immigrants to America. This immigration began to arrive about
1690. It went mainly to New York and the Carolinas and
especially to Pennsylvania ( 173). To the latter colony alone
more than 100,000 Germans came between 1700 and 1775. A
smaller but highly valuable contribution to American blood
was made by the Huguenots, driven from France after 1683 by

142



180]



NEW FRONTIERS



143



the persecution of Louis XIV. They came mainly to the
Caroliiias ; but some settled in New England, New York, and
Virginia. The names Paul Revere, Peter Faneuil, and Governor
Bowdoin suggest the services of their sons in Massachusetts.

180. Another immigration of this period belongs especially
to a new section the Scotch-Irish settlement in the "West."
The first frontier in
America was the " tide
water " region, extending
some fifty miles up the
navigable streams. Near
the mouth of such rivers,
or on the harbors along
the coast, arose the first
line of cities, Boston,
Portsmouth, Providence,
New York, Philadelphia,
Annapolis, Charleston.
By 1660 (that is, by the
end of the first half cen
tury of colonization),
when the first frontier
had been transformed
into settled areas, a sec
ond thin frontier had
pushed on fifty or a hundred miles farther inland, to the eastern
foothills of the Appalachians. Here, during the next half cen
tury, at the head of navigation and on sites of abundant water
power, appeared a second line of towns, Trenton, Princeton,
Richmond, Raleigh, Columbia.

So far, frontier had kept in touch with settled area. But,
about 1700, a third frontier leaped the first range of mountains,
into the long, narrow valleys running north and south between
the Alleghenies and the Blue Ridge, leaving a hundred miles of
tangled wilderness between itself and civilization. This region
was the beginning of a new " section " in our history. It was




THE WATERCOURSE FALL LINE.



144 COLONIAL AMERICANS, 1690-1763 [ 180

our first "West." Moreover, it was made by a neiv type of
American settler, the Presbyterian Scotch-Irish. These were really
neither Scotch nor Irish in blood, but Saxon English. For
centuries their fathers had lived in the Lowlands of Scotland
as frontiersmen against the Celtic Scots of the Highlands. In
the reigns of Elizabeth and James they had colonized north
eastern Ireland, frontiersmen against the Catholic and Celtic
Irish. But after the English Revolution, the new navigation
laws crushed their linen manufactures, the chief basis of
their prosperity there, and the English laws against the
Irish Catholics bore heavily also upon these Presbyterian " dis
senters " from the English Church. So, about 1700, with hearts
embittered toward England, they began once more to seek new
homes, this time in America. In both Scotland and Ireland
there had been some mixture of blood, but the dominant strain
was still English.

TJie volume of this immigration increased rapidly, and it has
been estimated that between 1720 and 1750 it amounted to an
average of 12,000 a year. In numbers and in significance, the
Presbyterian English of the West rank in our nation-making along
side the Episcopalian English of Virginia and the Congregational
English of New England.

Non-English elements have played a great part in the making of
America. In the colonial day, Frenchman, Dutchman, German, gave us
much of our blood and even our thought ; and later, Norseman, German,
Irishman, and, last of all, Slav and Latin, have made the sinews of our
national life. But after all, the forces that have shaped that life have been
English, especially the three English elements just mentioned.

The Scotch-Irish came to America mainly through the ports
of Philadelphia in the north and Charleston in the south.
Many stopped in the settled areas ; but a steady stream passed
on directly to the mountains and over them. Reaching the
Appalachian valleys in the far north and south, the two currents
drifted toward each other, until they met in the Shenandoah
Valley in western Virginia. And thence, just before the
American Revolution, under leaders like Boone and Robertson,



181] CONQUEST OF NEW FRANCE 145

they began to break through the western wall, to make a fourth
frontier at the western foothills and farther west, in what we
now call Kentucky and Tennessee.

Until about 1850, the Scotch-Irish were the typical American frontiers
men, especially in the great middle West and Southwest. They showed a
marvelous power to assimilate other elements that mingled with them,
German, French, Welsh, and even the real Irish and real Scotch, when
these came, in small numbers, just before the Revolution. They have
furnished too, many leaders to our national life, such as Andrew Jack
son and " Stonewall " Jackson, Horace Greeley, Jefferson Davis, Patrick
Henry, William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson.

Unlike the country east of the mountains, this new " West "
had its real unity from north to south. Politically, it is true,
the settlers were divided by the old established colonial boundary
lines, running east and west ; but, from New York to Georgia,
the people of this frontier were one in race, religion, and habits
of life, hard, dogged farmers, reckless fighters and hunters,
tall and sinewy of frame, saturnine, restless, dauntless of
temper. Other immigrants to the New World had forced
themselves into the wilderness, for high reasons, with gallant
resolution, against natural inclination. But these men loved the
wild for itself. Unorganized and uncap tained, armed only with
ax and rifle (in the use of which weapons they have never been
equaled), they rejoiced grimly in their task of subduing a con
tinent. First of American colonists, too, did they in earnest
face away from the Old World in their thought, and begin to
look west toward the glorious destiny of the new continent.

II. THE CONQUEST OF NEW FRANCE

181. From 1689 to 1763, with only short pauses for breath,
France and England wrestled for the splendid prize of the Missis
sippi Valley. This incessant war with the French and their
dread Eed allies made a somber background for all other move
ments in the English colonies. It was never for a moment to
be forgotten by the daring frontiersman who shifted his home



146 COLONIAL AMERICANS, 1690-1763 [ 182

in search of better and cheaper land, or by the Assemblyman
who wrangled with a royal governor for larger self-government.

For the most part the campaigns were fought on European
fields (Modern World, 470-497) ; but at bottom the conflict
was not determined on the battlefield. Two systems of coloniza
tion were at war in America ; and free individualism won over
despotic centralization ( 16). A despotic French governor
could wield effectively all the resources of New France,
though this advantage was offset in part by the corruption that
always threatens such a system ; l while among the English,
dissensions between colony and colony, and, within a given
colony, between governor and Assembly, many times cost dear.
But in the long run, the despotic governor proved no match for the
democratic town meeting. Had the French ever succeeded in seiz
ing Boston, they could never have held it not even as long as
King George did a few years later. On the other hand, the Eng
lish needed only one decisive victory. For, despite the noble
patriotism of a few great French leaders, the mass of French
colonists had too little political activity to care greatly what
country they belonged to, provided only they were treated
decently.

182. The closing chapter of the struggle was "the Great
French War" of 1754-1763, often called "the French and In
dian War." Here the interest centers around two heroic
antagonists, Montcalm and Wolfe. All grade students know
the romantic story. England's command of the seas made it
impossible for France to send Montcalm the reinforcements he
pled for; and Wolfe's victory at Quebec settled forever the
fate of the continent.

By the final treaties of 1763, England received Florida from
Spain, and Canada and the eastern half of the Mississippi
Valley from France. The rest of the valley France ceded to
her ally Spain, and, except for some West India Islands, she
ceased herself to be an American power. North America was

1 Canada, says Parkman, " was the prey of official jackals." For illustra
tions, see Thwaites' France in America, 220-221.




1664-1689




1713-1754




EUROPEAN POSSESSIONS

IN
AMERICA, 1664-1775



English
| ] French

| | Spanish



184] NEW NAVIGATION ACTS 147

left to the vigorous English commonwealths and to decaying
Spain, with a dividing line, temporarily, at the great central
river. The continent was destined to be English in speech and
civilization.



III. ENGLISH CONTROL VS. AMERICAN LIBERTY

183. The seventy years from the English Revolution to the
American Revolution have been called "a forgotten half century."
In internal development there are no brilliant episodes, no
heroic figures, and no new principles. Much was done, how
ever, in extending institutions already established. The central
theme is the continuance of that inevitable conflict that ap
peared in the preceding period ( 177). Under the pressure of
ceaseless war, England felt, even more keenly than before, the
need of controlling her colonies ; and the colonies, realizing
dimly their growing strength, felt more and more their right to
regulate their own affairs.

The project* of the English government to extend its influ
ence in the colonies had two phases, commercial and political.

184. Several new Navigation Acts extended the old commercial
policy of the home country. To the " enumerated articles " to
be exported only through England ( 138), rice was added in
1706, and copper, naval stores, 1 and beaver skins in 1722.

More important was a new kind of restriction upon American
industry, a series of attempts to restrict or prohibit manufac
tures. In 1696, a parliament of William III forbade any colony
to export, even to England or to any other colony, any ivoolen
manufacture. In 1732, exportation of hats 2 was forbidden.
Legislation of this sort had no such excuse as the earlier navi
gation laws. The motive now was plain jealousy on the part
of English manufacturers.

1 England compensated the colonies by paying generous bounties upon such
materials sent to her.

2 Making hats from beaver skins had been a prominent industry in somt
northern colonies and in Pennsylvania.



148



ATTEMPTS AT ENGLISH CONTROL



[ 184



Bad as this was, the restrictions upon manufacturing so far
were indirect : no colony had been forbidden to make any article
for its own consumption. But in 1750 (almost at the close of the
period) the erection or use of iron mills was prohibited altogether.
Unlike the unpleasant features of the earlier commercial restric
tions, too, this law could not be evaded. The half dozen iron




COLONIAL FIREPLACE AND UTENSILS, " BROADHEARTH," Saugus, Massa
chusetts. In this house, built in 1646, lived the first iron founder in
America. The works were situated near by and were successfully carried
on for a hundred years. Cf. page 75.

mills that had appeared in the northern colonies were closed,
and all manufacture of iron ceased, except for nails, bolts, and
the simpler household and farm implements, such as in that
day were turned out at the village smithy.

These English laws of 1696, 1732, and 1750 were selfish and
sinister, the most ominous feature in all American colonial
history. They must have become bitterly oppressive ere long,
had the colonists continued under English rule ; and at the time
they fully deserved the condemnation visited upon them by the



186] ROYAL PROVINCES 149

great English economist, Adam Smith: "Those prohibitions
are only impertinent badges of slavery, imposed upon [the colo
nies] without sufficient reason by the groundless jealousy of the
manufacturers of the mother country." l

185. Another source of justifiable irritation was the "Sugar
Act" of 1733 (Source Book, No. 100, c). This Act placed
duties on sugar and molasses from "foreign plantations" so
high as to prevent the colonists from getting these articles any
longer from the French West Indies, except by smuggling.
The purpose of the law was to compel the colonies on the
continent to buy their sugar from another English colony,
Jamaica, where the sugar planters were in financial distress :
it aimed to take from the mass of American colonists for the
benefit of a specially privileged class of colonists. It is said
that the law was suggested by a Boston merchant who owned
plantations in Jamaica.

186. Attempts by the English government at closer political
control first took the form of efforts to make colonies into royal
provinces. For sixty years Virginia had been the only royal
province. In 1685 New York was added to this class, when
its proprietor became king. William III, at the opening of
his reign, made Massachusetts practically a royal government
( 153) ; and, by a stretch of authority, he cut off New Hamp
shire from Massachusetts and gave it that kind of government.

Then came a series of attempts to change all colonies into
royal provinces. In the remaining charter and proprietary
colonies the Board of Trade found many just grounds for com
plaint. Besides the old offenses (evasion of navigation laws,
refusals to permit appeals to England, discrimination against
the English Church, etc.), the Board was annoyed by Rhode
Island's stubborn persistence in a shameful trade with pirates ;
by the refusal of Connecticut to let royal officers command her

1 Unhappily the colonists seem to have felt aggrieved quite as much by the
well-intended, if not always tactful, efforts of England to preserve American
forests from careless and greedy destruction, and to prevent the issue of dis
honest colonial paper money.



150 ATTEMPTS AT ENGLISH CONTROL [ 187

militia in war against the French ; and by the absence in Penn
sylvania and New Jersey of all militia. Experience had shown
that English courts could not be depended upon to annul colo
nial charters ( 148, 152) ; and so, in 1701, the Board recom
mended, in a strong paper, that the eight charter and proprietary
governments be " reunited " to the crown by act of parliament.

A bill to this effect passed two readings, with little opposi
tion ; but the hurried departure of King William for a cam
paign in Ireland forced a timely adjournment of parliament.
The following year another bill was being prepared, when the
death of the King compelled parliament to dissolve. In the
next reign these efforts were renewed. But time had been