lina Assembly founded at Charleston the first public library in America,
and about the middle of the eighteenth century Franklin started a sub
scription library at Philadelphia. In 1700 there was no American news
paper. The Boston News Letter appeared in 1704, and, by 1725, eight or
nine weeklies were being published, pretty well distributed through the
colonies. Ten years later, Boston alone had five weeklies.
1 William and Mary, in Virginia, 1696 ; Yale, 1701 ; Princeton, in New Jersey,
746 ; King's, in New York (now Columbia) , 1754 ; the University of Pennsyl
vania (through the efforts of Franklin), 1755; and Brown, in Rhode Island,
1764. South of Virginia there was no educational institution of rank.
164
COLONIAL LIFE
198
It should be noted clearly that in New England such education as there
was, was open to all on fairly equal terms ; while south of Maryland,
education, high or low, was practically only for the few. No other one
fact explains so much of the difference between the masses of the people,
north and south, in following years . On the other hand, the great planters
of the south were by all odds the best educated men in America, acquainted
with literature, history, politics, and law, and with such science as the
age had, and more or less in touch with European culture and habits of
thought.
199. The schools of early Massachusetts and Connecticut demand
a longer treatment. Here was the splendor of Puritanism,
a glory that easily makes
us forget the shame of
the Quaker and witchcraft
persecutions. The public
school system of America
to-day, in its essential feat
ures, is the gift of the Puri
tans.
In Massachusetts, pri
vate schools were found
in some villages from the
building of the first rude
cabins. In 1635, five years
after Winthrop's landing,
a Boston town meeting
adopted one of these pri
vate schools as a town
school, appointing a school
master and voting from
the poor town treasury
fifty pounds (some twelve
hundred dollars to-day)
So Salem in 1637, and Cambridge in 1642. 1
FRANKLIN'S PRINTING PRESS. In the
collection of the Pennsylvania Histor
ical Society.
for its support.
*In 1645 Dorchester still a rude village adopted a code of school laws
of comprehensive nature, well illustrating educational ideals of the town.
199]
SCHOOLS AND LEARNING
165
David Isck
Life.
Such schools were a new growth in this New World, suggested,
no doubt, by the parish schools of England, but more generously
planned for the whole public, by public authority.
So far, the movement and control had been local. Next the
commonwealth stepped in to adopt these town schools and weld
them into a state system. This step, too, was taken by the men
of the first genera
tion, pioneers still
struggling for exist
ence on the fringe of
a strange and savage
continent. In 1642,
in consideration of
the neglect of many
parents to train up
their children " in
learning and labor,
which might be prof
itable to the Common
wealth" the General
Court passed a Com
pulsory Education
Act of the most
stringent character.
This law even author
ized town authorities
to take children from
their parents, if need
ful, to secure their
schooling. 1
This Act assumed
Time cuts down al)
Both great and fmall.
ifc
in the Sea
God's Voice cbty.
Xerxts the great dU
die, '
And fo nmit you & I.
Toutb forward flips
Death fooneit
Zacbetif fce
Did climb the Tree
HH Lord to fee,
A PAGE FROM THE EARLIEST KNOWN EDITION
OF THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER, the first New
England textbook not made up wholly of ex
tracts from the Bible. The first edition ap
peared about 1680, and the book held its place
until long after the Revolution.
that schools were accessible in each town. Five years later,
See extensive extracts in Source Book, No. 81. Note that these schools were
free in the sense of being open to all. Commonly they were supported in part
by taxation, but tuition was charged also to help cover the cost.
1 The Puritan purpose was good citizenship, as well as religious training.
The preamble of the similar Connecticut Act of 1644 runs: " For as much as
166 COLONIAL SCHOOLS [ 199
the commonwealth required each village to maintain at least
a primary school, and each town of a hundred houses to keep up
a grammar school (Latin school). This great law of 1647
(written with solemn eloquence, as if ; in some dim way, the
pioneers felt the grandeur of their deed) remains one of the
mighty factors that have influenced the destiny of the world. 1
NOW I Jay me down to
T pray ihc Lord my foul :o keep.
If I fhould die before I wake,
J pray the Lord my foul to take.
Good children muft
fear Cod all day\ Love Chrift
Parents obey, In ftcret pray,
Nc fa Ife thing fay, Mthd iitt '-e play^
By no fin ft ray , IVlaks no de!ay %
In 'doing good,
Awake, arifc, behold ihou haft,
Thy life, a leaf, thy breath, a blaft ;
At night lie down prepared to have
Thy deep, thy death, thy bed, thy grave*
A PAGE FROM THE PAISLEY EDITION OF THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER,
1781. The evening prayer appeared first in print in the second edition of
the Primer, almost a hundred years earlier.
James Eussell Lowell, after a delightful reminiscence of the
New England crossroads schoolhouse, continues :
" Now this little building, and others like it, were an original kind of
fortification invented by the founders of New England. These are the
martello-towers that protect our coast. This was the great discovery of
our Puritan forefathers. They were the first lawgivers who saw clearly,
and enforced practically, the simple moral and political truth, that knowl-
the good education of children is of singular behoof and benefit to any Common
wealth," etc. (Each Massachusetts educational statute was copied within two
or three years in New Haven and Connecticut.)
1 See Source Book, No. 82, for this Act in full, and for extracts from other
school laws of the time, See, also, extracts in No. 83 as to town schools.
200] IN NEW ENGLAND 167
edge was not an alms, to be dependent on the chance charity of private
men or the precarious pittance of a trust-fund, but a sacred debt which
the commonwealth owed to every one of its children. The opening of the
first grammar-school was the opening of the first trench against monopoly
in state and church ; the first row of pot-hooks and trammels which the
little Shearjashubs and Elkanahs blotted and blubbered across their copy
books was the preamble to the Declaration of Independence."
The Puritan plan embraced a complete state system from
primary school to " university." In 1636, a year after Boston
established the first town school, Massachusetts established her
" state university " (as Harvard truly was in the seventeenth
century, though it was named for the good clergyman who
afterward endowed it with his library). Then the law of 1647
joined primary school and university in one whole, providing
that each village of a hundred householders must maintain a
" grammar-school, with a teacher able to instruct youth so as
they may be fitted for the University."
True, this noble attempt was too ambitious. Grinding pov
erty made it impossible for frontier villages of four or five
hundred people to maintain a Latin school ; and, despite heavy
fines upon the towns that failed to do so, such schools gradually
gave way, except in one or two large places, to a few private
academies, which came to represent the later New England
idea in secondary education. Thus, the state system was
broken at the middle, and both extremities suffered. The uni
versities ceased finally to be state institutions ; and the primary
schools deteriorated sadly, especially in the period of Puritan
decline about 1700, with meager courses, short terms, and low
aims. But with all its temporary failure in its first home, the
Puritan ideal of a state system of public instruction was never
wholly lost sight of in America.
200. Population in 1775 numbered 2,500,000.! One third had
been born in Europe. The English nationality was dominant
in every colony. In the Carolinas the Huguenots were numer
ous, and in South Carolina and Georgia there was a large Ger-
!Cf. 179.
168 COLONIAL LIFE TOWARD 1775 [ 201
man population. South Carolina, too, had many Highland
Scots. 1 The largest non-English elements were found in the
Middle" colonies : Dutch and Germans in New York ; Dutch
and Swedes in Delaware ; Germans, Welsh, and Celtic Irish in
Pennsylvania. In the Carolinas, Virginia, and Pennsylvania,
the back counties were settled mainly by the Scotch-Irish (or
Presbyterian English), with a strip of German settlements be
tween them and the older tide-water counties.
Negro slaves 2 made a fifth of the whole population, and half
of that south of Mason and Dixon's line ( 171). That line
divided the population of the country into two nearly equal
halves ; but two thirds of the Whites were found on the north
side of it.
201. Labor was supplied, in the main, by free men in New
England, 3 by indentured White servants in the Middle colonies,
and by Negro slaves in the South.
The White bond servants were of several classes. The man who sold
himself into service for four or seven years in return for passage money for
himself or his family, was known as a " redemptioner," or " free- wilier. "
The German immigrants of the eighteenth century, like many of the Eng
lish settlers .( 24), came in this way. Many White convicts were trans
ported from England and condemned to a term of service, seven or four
teen years. After 1717, this class increased rapidly in number, averaging
1000 a year for the fifty years preceding the Revolution. Classed with the
convicts in law, but very different from them in character, were the
political "convicts," prisoners sold into service by the victorious
1 These came to America after the defeat at Culloden and the breaking up
of the clan system. Curiously enough, they were Tories in the Revolution.
The same conservative and loyal temper which had made them cling to the
exiled House of Stuart in England made them in America adherents of King
George.
2 In 1619, while Virginia was still the only English colony on the continent,
she received her first importation of Negro slaves, twenty in number. As late
as 1648, there we.re only 300 in her population of 15,000. By 1670 the number
had risen to 2000 (out of a total of 40,000) . A century later nearly half her
population was Black ; while in South Carolina, more than half was Black.
In Maryland the proportion was about a fourth, and in New York a seventh.
3 Indentured servants had nearly disappeared from New England (except for
the apprenticeship of minors) ; but they were still numerous in Virginia.
202] THE PEOPLE AND THEIR WORK 169
parties, each in turn, during the English civil wars of the seventeenth
century. 1
202. The condition of White servants was often a deplorable
servitude. The colonial press, up to the Revolution, teems
with advertisements offering rewards for runaway servants.
More than seventy such notices are contained in the " News
paper Extracts" published in the New Jersey Archives for
Day run-away from his Mafier
Abraham Anderhn of Ktfy-Marblekead, a white Man Servant, a-
bout r 6 Years of Age, with ftiort brmvnifti (Irak Hair, he is pretty
clear fldn'd, {omcthing freckled, and I ihir.k, on his left Foot the top of
' one of his middle Toes is cm off*. He carried off with him a ftriped
vvorued and wool jacket, two tow and linnen Shirts, one pair of tow
and linnen Trowfcrs, and one pair of (ow and linren ilriped Breeches,
two pair of iightift coloured blue Hote, and a new CaiW Hat : His
Name is Florence Syhffttf al'us AW Carter : Whcfoever {hail apprehend
nd take up faki Fellow, and him deliver to his ahovefaid Waller in
Neta^Mfirbhkead, in the County of York, or to Capt. Jifoua Bfln^i in
Talmetttb, Ihall have FOUR. POUNDS, lawful Money, as a Reward,
and all neccffary 'Charges paid.
Auguft 25. >7'v Abrabom
ADVERTISEMENT FROM THE Boston Weekly News Letter, September 18,
1755. A photograph of the original, which is in the collection of the
Massachusetts Historical Society.
that little colony, for only the two years, 1771, 1772. This
must have meant one runaway servant to each 1000 of the
population ; and probably not half the runaways are in those
advertisements. One runaway is described as " born in the
1 Often the convicts were not hardened criminals, but rather the victims of
the atrocious laws in England at the time. Many were intelligent and capable.
In Maryland in 1773 a majority of all tutors and teachers are said to have been
convicts. Some of them (like a much larger part of the redemptioners) , after
their term of service, became prosperous and useful citizens. Even in aristo
cratic Virginia, a transported thief rose to become attorney-general. Charles
Thomson, Secretary of the Continental Congress, was a " redemptioner," as
was also one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. So, too, was
Zenger ( 191) ; and many members of colonial legislatures could be named who
came to America as " bond servants."
170 COLONIAL LIFE TOWARD 1775 [ 203
colony" about 50 years old, and as having " served in the last
ivar [French War] and a carpenter by trade"
There are still more significant and gruesome notices by
jailers, proving that it was customary to arrest a vagrant
workingman on suspicion of his being a runaway, and then, if
no master appeared to claim him within a fixed time, to sell
him into servitude for his jail fees ! Some of these White " serv
ants " are described as fitted with " iron collars." American
law and custom permitted these barbarities upon the helpless
poor in the days of Lexington and Bunker Hill. 1
203. Negroes were not numerous enough in the North (except
perhaps in New York) to affect the life of the people seriously.
In the South, Black slavery degraded the condition of the inden
tured White "servant," and more serious still made it
difficult for him to find profitable and honorable work when
his term of service had expired. As early as 1735, the result
appeared in the presence of the class known later as "Poor
Whites." In that year William Byrd ( 165) declared that
these " Ethiopians " " blow up the Pride and ruin the Industry
of our White People, who, seeing a Kank of poor Creatures
below them, detest work for Fear it should make them look
like Slaves."
In Virginia, as a rule, slavery was mild ; while in South Carolina and
Georgia it was excessively brutal. In those two colonies the rice planta
tions called constantly for fresh importations of savage Africans. In all
colonies with a large slave population there were cruel " Black Laws,"
to keep slaves from running away ; and everywhere the general attitude
of the law toward the slave was one of indifference to human rights.
The worst phases of the law were not often appealed to in actual prac
tice ; but in New York in 1741, during a panic due to a supposed plot for
a slave insurrection, fourteen negroes were burned at the stake (with
legal formalities) and a still larger number were hanged, all on very
flimsy evidence.
204. Dependence upon slave labor helped to keep industry
purely agricultural in the South, since the slave was unfit for
1 The class should read the six advertisements reproduced in Source Book,
No. 117, and present other points learned by such reading.
206] NORTH AND SOUTH 171
manufactures or for the work of a skilled artisan. Tobacco
raising was the chief employment in the tidewater districts of
Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, and rice cultivation
in South Carolina and Georgia.
These tidewater staples were grown mainly on large planta
tions; and the Virginia planter in particular sought to add
estate to estate, and to keep land in his family by rigid laws
of entail. 1 Between this class of large planters and the " Poor
Whites," however, there was always a considerable number of
small farmers in Virginia ; and in North Carolina this element
was the main one. The western counties of all the colonies
were occupied exclusively in small farming.
205. In the Middle colonies, foodstuffs were raised on a large
scale. These colonies exported to the West Indies (both Eng
lish and French) most of the bread, flour, beer, beef, and pork
used there. In these colonies, too, immigrant artisans from
Germany early introduced rudimentary manufactures, linen,
pottery, glassware, hats, shoes, furniture.
206. In New England, occupations were still more varied.
The majority of the people lived still in agricultural villages and
tilled small farms; but they could not wring all their subsist
ence from the scanty soil. Each farmer was a " Jack-at-all-
trades." In the winter days, he hewed out clapboards, staves,
and shingles ; and in the long evenings, at a little forge in the
fireplace, he hammered out nails and tacks from a bar of iron.
Even in the towns, all but the merchant and professional
classes had to be able to turn their hands to a variety of work
if they would prosper. Mr. Weeden tells of a certain John
Marshall, a constable at Braintree, and a commissioned officer
in the militia company there, who "farmed a little, made
laths in the winter, was painter, carpenter, and messenger, and
burned bricks, bought and sold live-stock," and who managed
by these varied industries to earn about four shillings a day.
*" En tail" is a legal arrangement to prevent land from being sold or
willed away out of a fixed line of inheritance. Entail is found only where
primogeniture (inheritance by the oldest son) is the rule.
172
COLONIAL LIFE TOWARD 1775
[207
A COLONIAL FOOT-STOVE.
Manufactures appeared, though, with one exception, on a
smaller scale than in Pennsylvania. The exception was ship
building. New England built ships for both American and
English markets. With her splendid timber at the water's
i edge, Massachusetts could
launch an oak ship at
about half the cost of a
like vessel in an English
shipyard ; and in 1775 at
least a third of the vessels
flying the English flag had
been built in America.
The swift-sailing schooner,
perfected in this period
(page 119), was peculiarly
a New England creation.
Another leading industry
was the fisheries, cod,
mackerel, and finally, as these bred an unrivaled race of sea
men, the whale fisheries of both polar oceans.
New England, too, was preeminently the commercial section.
Her schooners, often from villages like Gloucester, carried
almost all the trade between colony and colony for the whole
seaboard. And in centers like Boston and Newport (as also
in New York and Philadelphia in the Middle colonies) there
grew up an aristocracy of great merchants (in the old English
meaning of the word), with warehouses, offices, wharves, and
fleets of tall-masted ships * on every sea, and agents or corre
spondents in all parts of the world. One favorite " circle of ex
change " was the " three cornered route " : (1) New England
merchants carried rum to Africa, to exchange for Negro slaves ;
(2) these they sold largely in the West Indies for sugar ; and
(3) this sugar they brought home, to make into more rurn.
207. All the colonies imported their better grades of clothing
and of other manufactures from England. The southern
1 See cut on page 396.
208]
TRADE AND MONEY
173
Golorrte theBflaflor AallU lav
equal to n
accepted ky il:
labor curtate to Kim una.LLIIU3U.ck. pay tn&trtj
and Fcr a.<ny Stock set a/ny time In tke^at^D
Tr e A f . t ty B o R en uc. ISf ev
Kbrttarv-tke iiurd J^q'o
j\ (~ i s~* ,
planters dealt through agents in England, to whom they con
signed their tobacco. For the other colonies the "circle of
exchange " was a trifle more complex. They imported from
England more than they sold there. But they sold to the
West Indies more than they bought, receiving the balance in
money, mainly
French and Spanish
coins, with which
they settled the bal
ances against them in
England.
208. This drain of
coin to England was
incessant through the
whole colonial period.
No coins were struck
in the colonies, of
course, except for the
" Pine-Tree Shilling,"
of Massachusetts
( 141); and there
were no banks, to is
sue currency. Trade
was largely carried on,
not by money, but by
barter; and in all col
onies, especially in
the first century,
debts were settled and
taxes were paid in produce ("pay") at a rate for each kind
fixed by law. (Cf . 164 for tobacco in Virginia.)
Wages and salaries were paid in the same way. The follow
ing record of a vote by a Plymouth town meeting in 1667 hints
at the difficulty of getting " good pay " in such a method :
"That the same of fifty pounds shalbee alowed to Mr. Cotton [the
minister] for this present yeare (and his wood). To be raised by way of
MASSACHUSETTS PAPER MONEY OF 1690. From
a bill in the collection of the Massachusetts
Historical Society.
174
COLONIAL LIFE TOWARD 1775
[209
Rate [assessed as a tax] to be payed in such as god gives, ever onely to be
minded that a considerable parte of it shalbee payed in the best pay."
Toward the end of the colonial period the accounts of Harvard
show that a student, afterward president of the college, paid
his tuition with " an old cow " which had to be accepted at
the same value as a young and good cow.
MOUNT VERNON, the home of George Washington and a typical Southern
mansion. From a photograph.
In the need of a " circulating medium " (especially during
the French and Indian Wars, when the governments needed
funds), nearly all the colonies at some time after 1690 issued
paper money. The matter was always badly handled, and great
depreciation followed, with serious confusion to business. In
consequence, the English government finally forbade any more
such issues, to the great vexation of many people in America.
209. The South had few towns, none south of Baltimore,
except Charleston. The ordinary planters lived in white
frame houses, with a long porch in front, set at intervals of a
mile or more apart, often in parklike grounds. The small class
of wealthy planters lived on vaster estates, separated from
210]
NORTH, SOUTH, AND WEST
175
neighbors by grander distances. In any case, a true "planta
tion" like a medieval manor, was a unit, apart from the rest of the
ivorld. The planter's importations from Europe were unladen
at his own wharf, and his tobacco (with that of the neighboring
small farmers) was taken aboard. Leather was tanned ; clothing
for the hundreds of slaves was made ; blacksmithing, wood
working, and other industries needful to the little community,
were carried on, sometimes under the direction of White
foremen. The mistress supervised weaving and spinning ; the
master rode over his
fields to supervise culti
vation. The two usually
cared for the slaves,
looked after them in
sickness, allotted their
daily rations, arranged
"marriages." The cen
tral point in the planta
tion was the imposing
mansion of brick or wood,
with broad verandas, sur
rounded by houses for
foremen and other assist
ants and by a number of
offices. At a distance was a little village of Negro cabins.
The chief bond with the outer world was the lavish hospitality
between the planter's family and neighbors of like position
scattered over many miles of territory.
210. A wholly different society was symbolized by even the
exterior of New England. Here the small farms were sub
divided into petty fields by stone fences, gathered from the
soil. All habitations clustered in hamlets, which dotted the
landscape. Each was marked by the spire of a white church,
and, seen closer, each was made up of a few wide, elm-shaded
streets with rows of small but decent houses in roomy yards.
And yet, even in New England, people were expected to
THE " OLD SHIP " MEETING HOUSE at
Hingham, Massachusetts, built in 1681.
From a recent photograph.
176
COLONIAL LIFE TOWARD 1775
211
dress according to their social rank ; and inferiors were made
to " keep their places," in churches and public inns. The club
room and the inn parlor were for the gentry only : the trades
man and his wife found places in the kitchen or tap room.
211. The symbol of the West was neither the broad-veran-
dahed country mansion nor the town of elm-shaded streets
clustering about a white
spire. Rather it was a
stockaded fort, with scat
tered log cabins, in their
stump-dotted clearings,
spotting the forest for miles
about it.
As early as 1660, in