A School History of the United States · Chapter 3Part 3
This chapter is not translated yet. You are reading the original.
[Illustration: The Mayflower[1]]
[Footnote 1: From the model in the National Museum, Washington.]
[Illustration: THE MASSACHUSETTS COAST (map)]
%33. The Mayflower Compact%.—Since it was then the 11th of November, the Pilgrims, as they are now called, decided to get permission from the Plymouth Company to remain permanently. But certain members of the party, when they heard this, became unruly, and declared that as they were not to land in Virginia, they were no longer bound by the contracts they had made in England regarding their emigration to Virginia. To put an end to this, a meeting was held, November 21, 1620, in the cabin of the Mayflower, and a compact was drawn up and signed.[1] It declared
1. That they were loyal subjects of the King.
2. That they had undertaken to found a colony in the northern parts of Virginia, and now bound themselves to form a "civil body politic."
3. That they would frame such just and equal laws, from time to time, as might be for the general good.
4. And to these laws they promised "all due submission and obedience."
[Footnote 1: The compact is in Poore's Charters and Constitutions, p. 931, and in Preston's Documents Illustrative of American History, pp. 29-31. Read, by all means, Webster's Plymouth Oration.]
[Illustration: Plymouth Rock]
%34. The Founding of Plymouth%.—The selection of a site for their home was now necessary, and five weeks were passed in exploring the coast before Captain Standish with a boatload of men entered the harbor which John Smith had noted on his map and named Plymouth. On the sandy shore of that harbor, close to the water's edge, was a little granite bowlder, and on this, according to tradition, the Pilgrims stepped as they came ashore, December 21, 1620. To this harbor the Mayflower was brought, and the work of founding Plymouth was begun. The winter was a dreadful one, and before spring fifty-one of the colonists had died.[1] But the Pilgrims stood fast, and in 1621 obtained a grant of land[2] from the Council for New England, which had just succeeded the Plymouth Company, under a charter giving it control between latitudes 40° and 48°, from sea to sea.[3] It was from the same Council that for fifteen years to come all other settlers in New England obtained their rights to the soil.
[Footnote 1: In the trying times which followed, William Bradford was chosen governor and many times reëlected. He wrote the so-called "Log of the Mayflower,"—really a manuscript History of the Plymouth Plantation from 1602 to 1647,—a fragment of which is reproduced on the opposite page.]
[Footnote 2: This grant had no boundary. Each settler might have 100 acres. Fifteen hundred acres were set aside for public buildings.]
[Footnote 3: Fiske's Beginnings of New England, pp. 80-87; Palfrey's New England, Vol. I, pp. 176-232; Thatcher's History of the Town of Plymouth.]
[Illustration: Fragment of History of the Plymouth Plantation.]
%35. A Puritan Colony proposed.%—Among those who obtained such rights was a company of Dorchester merchants who planted a town on Cape Ann. The enterprise failed, and the colonists went off and settled at a place they called Naumkeag. But there was one man in Dorchester who was not discouraged by failure. He was John White, a Puritan rector. What had been done by the Separatists in a small way might be done, it seemed to White, on a great scale by an association of wealthy and influential Puritans. The matter was discussed by them in London, and in 1628 an association was formed, and a tract of land was bought from the Council for New England.
%36. The "Sea to Sea" Grant%.—Concerning the interior of our continent absolutely nothing was known. Nobody supposed it was more than half as wide as it really is. The grant to the association, therefore, stretched from three miles north of the Merrimac River to three miles south of the Charles River, along these rivers to their sources, and then westward across the continent from sea to sea.[1]
[Footnote 1: You will notice that when this grant was made in 1628 the Dutch had discovered the Hudson, and had begun to settle Albany. To this region (the Hudson and Mohawk valleys) the English had no just claim.]
As soon as the grant was obtained, John Endicott came out with a company of sixty persons, and took up his abode at Naumkeag, which, being an Indian and therefore a pagan name, he changed to Salem, the Hebrew word for "peace."
%37. The Massachusetts Charter, 1629%.—The next step was to obtain the right of self-government, which was secured by a royal charter creating a corporation known as the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England. Over the affairs of the company were to preside a governor, deputy governor, and a council of eighteen to be elected annually by the members of the company.[2]
[Footnote 2: The charter is printed in Poore's Charters and Constitutions, pp. 932-942, and in Preston's Documents, pp. 36-61.]
Six ships were now fitted out, and in them 406 men, women, and children, with 140 head of cattle, set sail for Massachusetts. They reached Salem in safety and made it the largest colony in New England.
%38. Why the Puritans came to New England.%—It was in 1625 that Charles I. ascended the throne of England. Under him the quarrel with the Puritans grew worse each year. He violated his promises, he collected illegal taxes, he quartered troops on the people, he threw those into prison who would not contribute to his forced loans, or pressed them into the army or the navy. His Archbishop Laud persecuted the Puritans with shameful cruelty.
Little wonder then that in 1629 twelve leading Puritans met in consultation and agreed to head a great migration to the New World, provided the charter and the government of the Massachusetts Bay Company were both removed to New England. This was agreed to, and in April, 1630, John Winthrop sailed with nearly one thousand Puritans for Salem. From Salem he moved to Charlestown, and later in the year (1630) to a little three-hilled peninsula, which the English called Tri-mountain or Tremont. There a town was founded and called Boston.
The departure of Winthrop was the signal, and before the year 1630 ended, seventeen ships, bringing fifteen hundred Puritans, reached Massachusetts. The newcomers settled Charlestown, Boston, Roxbury, Dorchester, Watertown, and Newtown (now Cambridge). New England was planted.[1]
[Footnote 1: Read Fiske's Beginnings of New England, pp. 75-105. Eggleston's Beginners of a Nation, pp. 188-219.]
%39. New Hampshire and Maine.%—When it became apparent that the Plymouth colony was permanently settled, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, whose interest in New England had never lagged, together with John Mason obtained (1622) from the Council for New England a grant of Laconia, as they called the territory between the Merrimac and the Kennebec rivers, and from the Atlantic "to the great river of Canada." Seven years later (1629) they divided their property. Mason, taking the territory between the Merrimac and Piscataqua rivers, called it New Hampshire because he was Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire in England. Gorges took the region between the Piscataqua and the Kennebec, and called it Maine. After the death of Mason (1635) his colony was neglected and from 1641 to 1679 was annexed to Massachusetts. The King separated them in 1679, joined them again in 1688, and finally parted them in 1691, making New Hampshire a royal colony.
Gorges took better care of his part and (in 1639) was given a charter with the title of Lord Proprietor of the Province or County of Maine, which extended, as before, from the Piscataqua to the Kennebec, and backward 120 miles from the ocean. But after his death the province fell into neglect, and the towns were gradually absorbed by Massachusetts, which, in 1677, bought the claims of the heir of Gorges for £1250 and governed Maine as lord proprietor under the Gorges charter.
%40. Church and State in Massachusetts.%—Down to the moment of their arrival in America the Puritans had not been Separatists. They were still members of the Church of England who desired to see her form of worship purified. But the party under Endicott had no sooner reached Salem than they seceded, and the first Congregational Church in New England was founded.
Some in Salem were not prepared for so radical a step, and attempted to establish a church on the episcopal model; but Endicott promptly sent two of the leaders back to England. Thus were established two facts: 1. The separation or secession of the Colonial Church from that of England. 2. That the episcopal form of worship would not be tolerated in the colony.
In 1631 another step was taken which united church and state, for it was then ordered that "no man shall be admitted to the freedom of this body politic, but such as are members of some of the churches within the limits of the same."
This was intolerance of the grossest kind, and soon became the cause of troubles which led to the founding of Rhode Island and Connecticut.
%41. The Planting of Rhode Island.%—There came to Salem (from Plymouth), in 1633, a young minister named Roger Williams. He dissented heartily from the intolerance of the people of Massachusetts, and, though a minister of the Salem church, insisted
1. On the separation of church and state.
2. On the toleration of all religious beliefs.
3. On the repeal of all laws requiring attendance on religious worship.
To us, in this century, the justice of each of these principles is self-evident. But in the seventeenth century there was no country in the world where it was safe to declare them. For doing so in some parts of Europe, a man would most certainly have been burned at the stake. For doing so in England, he would have been put in the pillory, or had his ears cut off, or been sent to jail. That Williams's teachings should seem rank heresy in New England was quite natural. But, to make matters worse, he wrote a pamphlet in which he boldly stated
1. That the soil belonged to the Indians.
2. That the settlers could obtain a valid title only by purchase from the Indians.
3. That accepting a deed for the land from a mere intruder like the King of England was a sin requiring public repentance.
In the opinion of the people of New England such doctrine could not fail to bring down on Massachusetts the wrath of the King. When, therefore, a little later, Endicott cut the red cross of St. George out of the colors of the Salem militia, the people considered his act a defiance of royal authority, attributed it to the teachings of Williams, and proceeded to punish both. Endicott was rebuked by the General Court (or legislature) and forbidden to hold office for a year. Williams was ordered to go back to England. But he fled to the woods, and made his way through the snow to the wigwam of the Indian chief, Massasoit, on Narragansett Bay, and there in the summer of 1636 he founded Providence. About the same time another teacher of what was then thought heresy, Anne Hutchinson, was driven from Massachusetts, and with some of her followers went southward and founded Portsmouth and Newport, on the island of Rhode Island. For a while each of these settlements was independent, but in 1643 Williams went to London and secured a patent from Parliament which united them under the name of "The Incorporation of Providence Plantations on the Narragansett Bay in New England."
%42. Connecticut begun.%—In the same year that Roger Williams began his settlement at Providence, several hundred people from the towns near Boston went off and settled in the Connecticut valley. For a long time past there had been growing up in Massachusetts a strong feeling that the law that none but church members should vote or hold office was oppressive. This feeling became so strong that in 1635 some hardy pioneers from Dorchester pushed through the wilderness and settled at Windsor. A party from Watertown went further and settled Wethersfield. These were small movements. But in 1636 the Newtown congregation, led by its pastor, Thomas Hooker, walked to the Connecticut valley and founded Hartford. The congregations of the Dorchester and Watertown churches soon followed, while a party from Roxbury settled at Springfield. During three years these four towns were part of Massachusetts. But in 1639, Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield adopted a constitution and formed a little republic which in time was called Connecticut. Their "Fundamental Orders of Connecticut" was the first written constitution made in America. Their republic was the first in the history of the world to be founded by a written constitution, and marks the beginning of democratic government in our country.
%43. The New Haven Colony.%—Just at the time these things were happening in the Connecticut valley, the beginnings of another little republic were made on the shores of Long Island Sound. One day in the summer of 1637 there came to Boston a company of rich London merchants under the lead of an eloquent preacher named John Davenport. The people of Boston would gladly have kept the newcomers at that town. But the strangers desired to found a state of their own, and so, after spending some months in seeking for a spot with a good harbor, they left Boston in 1638 and founded New Haven. In 1639 Milford and Guilford were laid out, and Stamford was started in 1640. Three years later these four towns joined in a sort of federal union and took the name of the New Haven colony.[1]
[Footnote 1: Fiske's Beginnings of New England, pp. 134-137.]
[Illustration: NEW ENGLAND AND NEW NETHERLAND]
%44. "The United Colonies of New England."%—There were now five colonies in New England; namely, Plymouth, or the "Old Colony," Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Haven. Geographically, they were near each other. But each was weak in numbers, and if left without the aid of its neighbors, might easily have fallen a prey to some enemy. Of this the settlers were well aware, and in 1643 four of the colonies, Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New Haven[1] united for defense against the Indians and the Dutch, who claimed the Connecticut valley and so threatened the English colonies on the west.
[Footnote 1: Rhode Island was not allowed to come in, for the feeling against the followers of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson was still very strong.]
The name of this league was "The United Colonies of New England," and it was the first attempt in America at federal government. All its affairs were managed by a board of eight commissioners,—two from each colony,—who must be church members. They had no power to lay taxes or to meddle with the internal concerns of the colonies, but they had entire control over all dealings with Indians or with foreign powers.
%45. The Year 1643.%—The year 1643 is thus an important one in colonial history. It was in that year that the New Haven colony was founded; that the league of The United Colonies of New England was formed; and that Roger Williams obtained the first charter of Rhode Island.
%46. New Charters.%—During the next twenty years no changes took place in the boundaries of the colonies. This was the period of the Civil War in England, of the Commonwealth, of the rule of Cromwell and the Puritans; and affairs in New England were left to take care of themselves. But in 1660 Charles II. was restored to the throne of England, and a new era opens in colonial history. In 1661 the little colony of Connecticut promptly acknowledged the restoration of Charles II. and applied for a charter. The application was more than granted; for to Connecticut (1662) was given not only a charter and an immense tract of land, but also the colony of New Haven.[1] The land grant was comprised in a strip that stretched across the continent from Rhode Island to the Pacific and was as wide as the present state.[2] In 1663 Rhode Island was given a new charter.
[Footnote 1: In 1660, after the restoration of Charles II., Edward Whalley and William Goffe (the regicides, "king-killers," as they were called), two of the judges who had condemned Charles I. to be beheaded, fled to New Haven and were protected by the people. This act had much to do with the annexation of New Haven to Connecticut.]
[Footnote 2: Read Fiske's Beginnings of New England, pp. 192-196. Many of the New Haven colonists were disgusted by the union of their colony with Connecticut, and in June, 1667, migrated to New Jersey, where they founded "New-Ark" or Newark.]
In 1684 the King's judges declared the Massachusetts charter void, and James II. was about to make New England one royal colony, when the English people drove him from the throne. William and Mary in 1691 granted a new charter and united the Plymouth colony, Massachusetts, Maine, and Nova Scotia, in one colony called Massachusetts Bay. This charter was in force when the Revolution opened.
1. The first colony established by the Plymouth Company (1607, on the coast of Maine) was a failure.
2. Captain John Smith explored the New England coast and mapped it (1613), but did not succeed in planting any colonies.
3. The permanent settlement of New England began with the arrival of a body of Separatists in the Mayflower (1620), who founded the colony of Plymouth.
4. The Separatist migration from England was followed in a few years by a great exodus of Puritans, who planted towns along the coast to the north of Plymouth, and obtained a charter of government and a great strip of land, and founded the colony of Massachusetts Bay.
5. Religious disputes drove Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson out of Massachusetts, and led to the founding of Rhode Island (1636).
6. Other church wrangles led to an emigration from Massachusetts to the Connecticut valley, where a little confederacy of towns was created and called Connecticut.
7. Some settlers from England went to Long Island Sound and there founded four towns which, in their turn, joined in a federal union called the New Haven Colony.
8. In time, New Haven was joined to Connecticut, and Plymouth and Maine to Massachusetts; New Hampshire was made a royal colony; and the four New England colonies—Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut—were definitely established.
9. The territory of Massachusetts and Connecticut stretched across the continent to the "South Sea," or Pacific Ocean.
%47. North and South Carolina.%—You remember that away back in the sixteenth century the French under Jean Ribault and the English under Ralegh undertook to plant colonies on what is now the Carolina coast. They failed, and the country remained a wilderness till 1653, when a band of emigrants from Virginia made the first permanent settlement on the banks of the Chowan and the Roanoke. In 1663 some Englishmen from Barbados began to settle on the Cape Fear River, just at the time when Charles II. of England gave the region to eight English noblemen, who, out of compliment to the King, allowed the name of Carolina given it by Ribault to remain. In 1665 the bounds were enlarged, and Carolina then extended from latitude 29° 00' to 36° 30', the present south boundary of Virginia, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
[Illustration: CAROLINA AS GRANTED BY King Charles II]
There was at first no intention of dividing the territory, although, after Charleston was founded (1670), North Carolina and South Carolina sometimes had separate governors. But in 1729 the proprietors sold Carolina to the King, and it was then divided into two distinct and separate royal provinces.
%48. New York.%—An event of far greater importance than the chartering of Carolina was the seizure of New Netherland. After the conquest of New Sweden, in 1655, the possessions and claims of the Dutch in our country extended from the Connecticut River to the Delaware River, and from the Mohawk to Delaware Bay. Geographically, they cut the English colonies in two, and hampered communication between New England and the South. To own this region was therefore of the utmost importance to the English; and to get it, King Charles II., in 1664, revived the old claim that the English had discovered the country before the Dutch, and he sent a little fleet and army, which appeared off New Amsterdam and demanded its surrender. The demand was complied with; and in 1664 Dutch rule in our country ended, and England owned the seaboard from the Kennebec to the Savannah.
The King had already granted New Netherland to his brother the Duke of York, in honor of whom the town of New Amsterdam was now renamed New York.
%49. New Jersey.%—The Duke of York no sooner received his province than he gave so much of it as lay between the Delaware and the ocean to his friends Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, and called it New Jersey, in honor of Sir George Carteret, who had been governor of the island of Jersey in the English Channel. The two proprietors divided it between them by the line shown on the map (p. 56). In 1674 Berkeley sold West Jersey to a company of Quakers, who settled near Burlington. A little later, 1676, William Penn and some other Quakers bought East Jersey. There were then two colonies till 1702, when the proprietors surrendered their rights, and New Jersey became one royal province.
%50. The Beginnings of Pennsylvania.%—The part which Penn took in the settlement of New Jersey suggested to him the idea of beginning a colony which should be a refuge for the persecuted of all lands and of all religions.
[Illustration]
Now it so happened that Penn was the son of a distinguished admiral to whom King Charles II. owed £16,000, and seeing no chance of its ever being paid, he proposed to the King, in 1680, that the debt be paid with a tract of land in America. The King gladly agreed, and in 1681 Penn received a grant west of the Delaware. Against Penn's wish, the King called it Pennsylvania, or Penn's Woodland. It was given almost precisely the bounds of the present state.[1] In 1683 Penn made a famous treaty with the Indians, and laid out the city of Philadelphia.
[Footnote 1: There was a long dispute, however, with Lord Baltimore, over the south boundary line, which was not settled till 1763-67, when two surveyors, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, came over from England and located it as at present. In later years, when all the Atlantic seaboard states north of Maryland and Delaware had abolished slavery, this "Mason and Dixon's Line" became famous as the dividing line between the slave and the free Atlantic states.]
%51. The Three Lower Counties: Delaware.%—If you look at the map of the British Colonies in 1764, you will see that Pennsylvania was the only English colony which did not have a seacoast. This was a cause of some anxiety to Penn, who was afraid that the settlers in Delaware and New Jersey might try to prevent his colonists from going in and out of Delaware Bay. To avoid this, he bought what is now Delaware from the Duke of York.
The three lower counties on the Delaware, as the tract was called, had no boundary. Lawfully it belonged to Lord Baltimore. But neither the Dutch patroons who settled on the Delaware in 1631, nor the Swedes who came later, nor the Dutch who annexed New Sweden to New Netherland, nor the English who conquered the Dutch, paid any regard to Baltimore's rights. At last, after the purchase of Delaware, the heirs of Baltimore and of Penn (1732) agreed on what is the present boundary line. After 1703 the people of the three lower counties were allowed to have an assembly or legislature of their own; but they had the same governor as Pennsylvania and were a part of that colony till the Revolution.[1]
[Footnote 1: For Pennsylvania read Janney's Life of William Penn or Dixon's History of William Penn; Proud's or Gordon's Pennsylvania; Lodge's Colonies, pp. 213-226.]
%52. Georgia.%—The return of the Carolinas to the King in 1729 was very soon followed by the establishment of the last colony ever planted by England in the United States. The founder was James Oglethorpe, an English soldier and member of Parliament. Filled with pity for the poor debtors with whom the English jails were then crowded, he formed a plan to pay the debts of the most deserving, send them to America, and give them what hundreds of thousands of men have since found in our country,—a chance to begin life anew.
[Illustration]
Great numbers of people became interested in his plan, and finally twenty-two persons under Oglethorpe's lead formed an association and secured a charter from King George II. for a colony, which they called Georgia. The territory granted lay between the Savannah and the Altamaha rivers, and extended from their mouths to their sources and then across the country to the Pacific Ocean. Oglethorpe had selected this tract in order that his colonists might serve the patriotic purpose of protecting Charleston from the Spanish attacks to which it was then exposed.
Money for the colony was easily raised,[1] and in November, 1732, Oglethorpe, with 130 persons, set out for Charleston, and after a short stay there passed southward and founded the city of Savannah (1733). It must not be supposed that all the colonists were poor debtors. In time, Italians from Piedmont, Moravians and Lutherans from Germany, and Scotchmen from the Highlands, all made settlements in Georgia.
[Footnote 1: The House of Commons gave £10,000.]
%53. The Thirteen English Colonies.%—Thus it came about that between 1606 and 1733 thirteen English colonies were planted on the Atlantic seaboard of what is now the United States. Naming them from north to south, they were: 1. New Hampshire, with no definite western boundary; 2. Massachusetts, which owned Maine and a strip of territory across the continent; 3. Rhode Island, with her present bounds; 4. Connecticut, with a great tract of land extending to the Pacific; 5. New York, with undefined bounds; 6. New Jersey; 7. Pennsylvania and 8. Delaware, the property of the Penn family; 9. Maryland, the property of the heirs of Lord Baltimore; 10. Virginia, with claims to a great part of North America; 11. North Carolina, 12. South Carolina, and 13. Georgia, all with claims to the Pacific.
1. The English seized New Netherland (1664), giving it to the Duke of York; and the Duke, after establishing the province of New York, gave New Jersey to two of his friends, and sold the three counties on the Delaware to William Penn.
2. Meanwhile the King granted Penn what is now Pennsylvania (1681).
3. The Carolinas were first chartered as one proprietary colony, but were sold back to the King and finally separated in 1729.
4. Georgia, the last of the thirteen English colonies, was granted to Oglethorpe and others as a refuge for poor debtors (1732).
English.
Failures:
1579. Gilbert. 1584. }Ralegh, Roanoke Island. 1587. }
Successes:
1606. London Company, Plymouth Company. 1607. Virginia settled. 1609. Boundary of London Company changed. Origin of Virginia claim. 1620. Landing of the Pilgrims. Plymouth colony. 1622. Grant to Mason and Gorges. 1628. Land bought for Massachusetts Bay colony. 1629. Mason and Gorges divide their grant into Maine and New Hampshire. 1632. Maryland patent granted. 1639. Connecticut constitution (Windsor. Hartford. Wethersfield) 1643. New Haven colony organized (New Haven. Milford. Guilford. Stamford.) 1643. Rhode Island chartered. 1662. Connecticut chartered. (Connecticut. New Haven.) 1663. Rhode Island rechartered. 1663. Carolina patent granted. After 1729 North and South Carolina. 1664. New Netherland conquered and New York founded. 1664. New Jersey granted to Berkeley and Carteret. 1681. Pennsylvania granted to Penn. 1682. Three counties on the Delaware bought by Penn. 1691. Plymouth and Maine (and Nova Scotia) united with Massachusetts. 1732. Georgia chartered.
Dutch. 1613. Begin to colonize New Netherland
Swedes. 1638. South Company makes settlement on the Delaware. 1655. Conquered by the Dutch.
%54. The Early French Possessions% on our continent may be arranged in three great areas: 1. Acadia, 2. New France, 3. Louisiana, or the basin of the Mississippi River.
ACADIA comprised what is now New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and a part of Maine. It was settled in the early years of the seventeenth century at Port Royal (now Annapolis, Nova Scotia), at Mount Desert Island, and on the St. Croix River.
NEW FRANCE was the drainage basin of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. As far back as 1535 Jacques Cartier explored the St. Lawrence River to the site of Montreal. But it was not till 1608 that a party under Champlain made the first permanent settlement on the river, at Quebec.
The French settlers at once entered into an alliance with the Huron and Algonquin Indians, who lived along the St. Lawrence River. But these tribes were the bitter enemies of the Iroquois, who dwelt in what is now central New York, and when, in consequence of this alliance, the French were summoned to take the warpath, Champlain, with a few followers, went, and on the shore of the lake which now bears his name, not far from the site of Ticonderoga, he met and defeated the Iroquois tribe of Mohawks in July, 1609.
The battle was a small affair; but its consequences were serious and lasting, for the Iroquois were thenceforth the enemies of the French, and prevented them from ever coming southward and taking possession of the Hudson and the Mohawk valleys. When, therefore, the French merchants began to engage in the fur trade with the Indians, and the French priests began their efforts to convert the Indians to Christianity, they were forced to go westward further and further into the interior.