THE English and French In North America 1689-1763

NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL

HISTORY OF AMERICA

EDITED

By JUSTIN WINSOR

LIBRARIAN OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY

VOL. V

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

The Riverside Press, Cambridge

[ii]

Copyright, 1887,
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.

CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

[The cut on the title shows the medal struck to commemorate the fall of Quebec.]

NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL

HISTORY OF AMERICA.

CHAPTER I.

CANADA AND LOUISIANA.

BY ANDREW McFARLAND DAVIS,

American Antiquarian Society.

THE story of the French occupation in America is not that of a people slowly moulding itself into a nation. In France there was no state but the king; in Canada there could be none but the governor. Events cluster around the lives of individuals. According to the discretion of the leaders the prospects of the colony rise and fall. Stories of the machinations of priests at Quebec and at Montreal, of their heroic sufferings at the hands of the Hurons and the Iroquois, and of individual deeds of valor performed by soldiers, fill the pages of the record. The prosperity of the colony rested upon the fate of a single industry,—the trade in peltries. In pursuit of this, the hardy trader braved the danger from lurking savage, shot the boiling rapids of the river in his light bark canoe, ventured upon the broad bosom of the treacherous lake, and patiently endured sufferings from cold in winter and from the myriad forms of insect life which infest the forests in summer. To him the hazard of the adventure was as attractive as the promised reward. The sturdy agriculturist planted his seed each year in dread lest the fierce war-cry of the Iroquois should sound in his ear, and the sharp, sudden attack drive him from his work. He reaped his harvest with urgent haste, ever expectant of interruption from the same source, always doubtful as to the result until the crop was fairly housed. The brief season of the Canadian summer, the weary winter, the hazards of the crop, the feudal tenure of the soil,—all conspired to make the life of the farmer full of hardship and barren of promise. The sons of the early settlers drifted to the woods as independent hunters and traders. The parent State across the water, which undertook to say who might trade, and[2] where and how the traffic should be carried on, looked upon this way of living as piratical. To suppress the crime, edicts were promulgated from Versailles and threats were thundered from Quebec. Still, the temptation to engage in what Parkman calls the “hardy, adventurous, lawless, fascinating fur-trade” was much greater than to enter upon the dull monotony of ploughing, sowing, and reaping. The Iroquois, alike the enemies of farmer and of trader, bestowed their malice impartially upon the two callings, so that the risk was fairly divided. It was not surprising that the life of the fur-trader “proved more attractive, absorbed the enterprise of the colony, and drained the life-sap from other branches of commerce.” It was inevitable, with the young men wandering off to the woods, and with the farmers habitually harassed during both seed-time and harvest, that the colony should at times be unable to produce even grain enough for its own use, and that there should occasionally be actual suffering from lack of food. It often happened that the services of all the strong men were required to bear arms in the field, and that there remained upon the farms only old men, women, and children to reap the harvest. Under such circumstances want was sure to follow during the winter months. Such was the condition of affairs in 1700. The grim figure of Frontenac had passed finally from the stage of Canadian politics. On his return, in 1689, he had found the name of Frenchman a mockery and a taunt.[1] The Iroquois sounded their threats under the very walls of the French forts. When, in 1698, the old warrior died, he was again their “Onontio,” and they were his children. The account of what he had done during those years was the history of Canada for the time. His vigorous measures had restored the self-respect of his countrymen, and had inspired with wholesome fear the wily savages who threatened the natural path of his fur-trade. The tax upon the people, however, had been frightful. A French population of less than twelve thousand had been called upon to defend a frontier of hundreds of miles against the attacks of a jealous and warlike confederacy of Indians, who, in addition to their own sagacious views upon the policy of maintaining these wars, were inspired thereto by the great rival of France behind them.

To the friendship which circumstances cemented between the English and the Iroquois, the alliance between the French and the other tribes was no fair offset. From the day when Champlain joined the Algonquins and aided them to defeat their enemies near the site of Ticonderoga, the hostility of the great Confederacy had borne an important part in the history of Canada. Apart from this traditional enmity, the interests of the Confederacy rested with the English, and not with the French. If the Iroquois permitted the Indians of the Northwest to negotiate with the French, and interposed no obstacle to the transportation of peltries from the upper lakes to Montreal and Quebec, they would forfeit all the commercial benefits which belonged to their geographical position. Thus their natural tendency was to join with the English. The value of neutrality was[3] plain to their leaders; nevertheless, much of the time they were the willing agents of the English in keeping alive the chronic border war.

LA PRÉSENTATION.

[After a plan in the contemporary Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760, published by the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec (réimpression), 1873, p. 13.—Ed.]

Nearly all the Indian tribes understood that the conditions of trade were better with the English than with the French; but the personal influence of the French with their allies was powerful enough partially to overcome this advantage of their rivals. This influence was exercised not only[4] through missionaries,[2] but was also felt through the national characteristics of the French themselves, which were strongly in harmony with the spirit of forest life. The Canadian bushrangers appropriated the ways and the customs of the natives. They were often adopted into the tribes, and when this was done, their advice in council was listened to with respect. They married freely into the Indian nations with whom they were thrown; and the offspring of these marriages, scattered through the forests of the Northwest, were conspicuous among hunters and traders for their skill and courage. “It has been supposed for a long while,” says one of the officers of the colony, “that to civilize the savages it was necessary to bring them in contact with the French. We have every reason to recognize the fact that we were mistaken. Those who have come in contact with us have not become French, while the French who frequent the wilds have become savages.” Prisoners held by the Indians often concealed themselves rather than return to civilized life, when their surrender was provided for by a treaty of peace.[3]

Powerful as these influences had proved with the allies of the French, no person realized more keenly than M. de Callières, the successor of Frontenac, how incompetent they were to overcome the natural drift of the Iroquois to the English. He it was who had urged at Versailles the policy of carrying the war into the province of New York as the only means of ridding Canada of the periodic invasions of the Iroquois.[4] He had joined with Frontenac in urging upon the astute monarch who had tried the experiment of using Iroquois as galley-slaves, the impolicy of abandoning the posts at Michilimakinac and at St. Joseph. His appointment was recognized as suitable, not only by the colonists, but also by Charlevoix, who tells us that “from the beginning he had acquired great influence over the savages, who recognized in him a man exact in the performance of his word, and who insisted that others should adhere to promises given to him.” He saw accomplished what Frontenac had labored for,—a peace with the Iroquois in which the allied tribes were included. The Hurons, the Ottawas, the Abenakis, and the converted Iroquois having accepted the terms of the peace, the Governor-General, the Intendant, the Governor of Montreal, and the ecclesiastical authorities signed a provisional treaty on the 8th of September, 1700. In 1703, while the Governor still commanded the confidence of his countrymen, his career was cut short by death.

[5]

The reins of government now fell into the hands of Philippe de Vaudreuil, who retained the position of governor until his death. During the entire period of his administration Canada was free from the horrors of Indian invasion. By his adroit management, with the aid of Canadians adopted by the tribes, and of missionaries, the Iroquois were held in check. The scene in which startled villagers were roused from their midnight slumber by the fierce war-whoop, the report of the musket, and the light of burning dwellings, was transferred from the Valley of the St. Lawrence to New England. Upon Vaudreuil must rest the responsibility for the attacks upon Deerfield in 1704 and Haverhill in 1708, and for the horrors of the Abenakis war. The pious Canadians, fortified by a brief preliminary invocation of Divine aid, rushed upon the little settlements and perpetrated cruelties of the same class with those which characterized the brutal attacks of the Iroquois upon the villages in Canada. The cruel policy of maintaining the alliance with the Abenakis, and at the same time securing quiet in Canada by encouraging raids upon the defenceless towns of New England, not only left a stain upon the reputation of Vaudreuil, but it also hastened the end of French power in America by convincing the growing, prosperous, and powerful colonies known as New England that the only path to permanent peace lay through the downfall of French rule in Canada.[5]

Aroused to action by Canadian raids, the New England colonies increased their contributions to the military expeditions by way of Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence, which had become and remained, until Wolfe’s success obviated their necessity, the recognized method of attack on Canada. During Vaudreuil’s time these expeditions were singularly unfortunate. Some extraneous incident protected Quebec each year.[6] It is not strange that such disasters to the English were looked upon by the pious French as a special manifestation of the interest taken in Canada by the Deity. Thanks were given in all parts of the colony to God, who had thus directly saved the province, and special fêtes were celebrated in honor of Notre Dame des Victoires.

The total population of Canada at this time was not far from eighteen thousand. The English colonies counted over four hundred thousand inhabitants. The French Governor, in a despatch to M. de Pontchartrain, called attention, in 1714, to the great disproportion of strength between the French and English settlements, and added that there could be little doubt that on the occasion of the first rupture the English would make a powerful effort to get possession of Canada. The English colonies were in themselves strong enough easily to have overthrown the French in America. In addition, they were supported by the Home Government; while Louis XIV., defeated, humiliated, baffled at every turn, was compelled supinely[6] to witness these extraordinary efforts to wrest from him the colonies in which he had taken such personal interest. Well might the devout Canadian offer up thanks for his deliverance from the defeat which had seemed inevitable! Well might he ascribe it to an interposition of Divine Providence in his behalf! Under the circumstances we need not be surprised that a learned prelate should chronicle the fact that the Baron de Longueuil, before leaving Montreal in command of a detachment of troops, “received from M. de Belmont, grand vicaire, a flag around which that celebrated recluse, Mlle. Le Ber, had embroidered a prayer to the Holy Virgin,” nor that it should have been noticed that on the very day on which was finished “a nine days’ devotion to Notre Dame de Pitié,” the news of the wreck of Sir Hovenden Walker’s fleet reached Quebec.[7] Such coincidences appeal to the imagination. Their record, amid the dry facts of history, shows the value which was attached to what Parkman impatiently terms this “incessant supernaturalism.” To us, the skilful diplomacy of Vaudreuil, the intelligent influence of Joncaire (the adopted brother of the Senecas), the powerful aid of the missionaries, the stupid obstinacy of Sir Hovenden Walker, and certain coincidences of military movements in Europe at periods critical for Canada, explain much more satisfactorily the escape of Canada from subjection to the English during the period of the wars of the Spanish Succession.

Although Vaudreuil could influence the Iroquois to remain at peace, he could not prevent an outbreak of the Outagamis at Detroit. This, however, was easily suppressed. The nominal control of the trade of the Northwest remained with the French; but the value of this control was much reduced by the amount of actual traffic which drifted to Albany and New York, drawn thither by the superior commercial inducements offered by the English.

The treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, established the cession of Acadia to the English by its “ancient limits.” When the French saw that the English pretension to claim by these words all the territory between the St. Lawrence River and the ocean, was sure to cut them off by water from their colony at Quebec, in case of another war, they on their part confined such “ancient limits” to the peninsula now called Nova Scotia. France, to strengthen the means of maintaining her interpretation, founded the fortress and naval station of Louisbourg.

About the same time the French also determined to strengthen the fortifications of Quebec and Montreal; and in 1721 Joncaire established a post among the Senecas at Niagara.[8]

In 1725 Vaudreuil died. Ferland curtly says that the Governor’s wife was the man of the family; but so far as the record shows, the preservation[7] of Canada to France during the earlier part of his administration was largely due to his vigilance and discretion. Great judgment and skill were shown in dealing with the Indians. A letter of remonstrance from Peter Schuyler bears witness that contemporary judgment condemned his policy in raiding upon the New England colonies; but in forming our estimate of his character we must remember that the French believed that similar atrocities, committed by the Iroquois in the Valley of the St. Lawrence, were instigated by the English.

The administration[9] of M. de Beauharnois, his successor, who arrived in the colony in 1726, was not conspicuous. He appears to have been personally popular, and to have appreciated fairly the needs of Canada. The Iroquois were no longer hostile. The days of the martyrdom of the Brebeufs and the Lallemands were over.[10] In the Far West a company of traders founded a settlement at the foot of Lake Pepin, which they called Fort Beauharnois. As the trade with the Valley of the Mississippi developed, routes of travel began to be defined. Three of these were especially used,—one by way of Lake Erie, the Maumee, and the Wabash, and then down the Ohio; another by way of Lake Michigan, the Chicago River, a portage to the Illinois, and down that river; a third by way of Green Bay, Fox River, and the Wisconsin,—all three being independent of La Salle’s route from the foot of Lake Michigan to the Kankakee and Illinois rivers.[11] By special orders from France, Joncaire’s post at Niagara had been regularly fortified. The importance of this movement had been fully appreciated by the English. As an offset to that post, a trading establishment had been opened at Oswego; and now that a fort was built at Niagara, Oswego was garrisoned. The French in turn constructed a fort at Crown Point, which threatened Oswego, New York, and New England.

The prolonged peace permitted considerable progress in the development of the agricultural resources of the country. Commerce was extended as much as the absurd system of farming out the posts, and the trading privileges retained by the governors, would permit. Postal arrangements were established between Montreal and Quebec in 1721. The population at that time was estimated at twenty-five thousand. Notwithstanding the[8] evident difficulty experienced in taking care of what country the French then nominally possessed, M. Varenne de Vérendrye in 1731 fitted out an expedition to seek for the “Sea of the West,”[12] and actually penetrated to Lake Winnipeg.

The foundations of society were violently disturbed during this administration by a quarrel which began in a contest over the right to bury a dead bishop. Governor, Intendant, council, and clergy took part. “Happily,” says a writer to whom both Church and State were dear, “M. de Beauharnois did not wish to take violent measures to make the Intendant obey him, otherwise we might have seen repeated the scandalous scenes of the evil days of Frontenac.”

After the fall of Louisbourg, in 1745, Beauharnois was recalled, and Admiral de la Jonquière was commissioned as his successor; but he did not then succeed in reaching his post. It is told in a later chapter how D’Anville’s fleet, on which he was embarked, was scattered in 1746; and when he again sailed, the next year, with other ships, an English fleet captured him and bore him to London.

In consequence of this, Comte de la Galissonière was appointed Governor of Canada in 1747. His term of office was brief; but he made his mark as one of the most intelligent of those who had been called upon to administer the affairs of this government. He proceeded at once to fortify the scattered posts from Lake Superior to Lake Ontario. He forwarded to France a scheme for colonizing the Valley of the Ohio; and in order to protect the claims of France to this vast region, he sent out an expedition,[13] with instructions to bury at certain stated points leaden plates upon which were cut an assertion of these claims. These instructions were fully carried out, and depositions establishing the facts were executed and transmitted to France. He notified the Governor of Pennsylvania of the steps which had been taken, and requested him to prevent his people from trading beyond the Alleghanies,[14][9] as orders had been given to seize any English merchants found trading there. An endeavor was made to establish at Bay Verte a settlement which should offset the growing importance of Halifax, founded by the English. The minister warmly supported La Galissonière in this, and made him a liberal money allowance in aid of the plan. While busily engaged upon this scheme, he was recalled. Before leaving, he prepared for his successor a statement of the condition of the colony and its needs.[15]

FAC-SIMILE OF ONE OF CÉLORON’S PLATES, 1749.

[Reduced from the fac-simile given in the Pennsylvania Archives, second series, vi. 80. Of some of these plates which have been found, see accounts in Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, i. 62, and Dinwiddie Papers, i. 95, published by the Virginia Historical Society. Cf. also Appendix A to the Mémoires sur le Canada depuis 1749 jusqu’à 1760, published by the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, 1873 (réimpression).—Ed.]

By the terms of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, France in 1748 acquired possession of Louisbourg. La Jonquière, who was at the same time liberated, and who in 1749 assumed the government under his original appointment, did not agree with the Acadian policy of his predecessor. He feared the consequences of an armed collision with the English in Nova Scotia, which this course was likely to precipitate. This caution on his part brought down upon him a reprimand from Louis XV. and positive orders to[10] carry out La Galissonière’s programme. In pursuance of these instructions, the neck of the peninsula, which according to the French claim formed the boundary of Acadia, was fortified. The conservatism of the English officer prevented a conflict. In 1750, avoiding the territory in dispute, the English fortified upon ground admitted to be within their own lines, and watched events. On the approach of the English, the unfortunate inhabitants of Beaubassin abandoned their homes and sought protection under the French flag.

Notwithstanding the claims to the Valley of the Ohio put forth by the French, the English Government in 1750 granted to a company six hundred thousand acres of land in that region; and English colonial governors continued to issue permits to trade in the disputed territory. Following the instructions of the Court, as suggested by La Galissonière, English traders were arrested, and sent to France as prisoners. The English, by way of reprisal, seized French traders found in the same region.[16] The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle had provided for a commission to adjust the boundaries between the French and the English possessions. By the terms of the treaty, affairs were to remain unchanged until the commission could determine the boundaries between the colonies. Events did not stand still during the deliberations of the commission; and the doubt whether every act along the border was a violation of the treaty hung over the heads of the colonists like the dispute as to the boundaries of Acadia, which was a constant threat of war. The situation all along the Acadian frontier and in the Valley of the Ohio was now full of peril. To add to the difficulty of the crisis in Canada, the flagrant corruption of the Intendant Bigot, with whom the Governor was in close communication, created distrust and dissatisfaction. Charges of nepotism and corruption were made against La Jonquière. The proud old man demanded his recall; but before he could appear at Court to answer the charges, chagrin and mortification caused his wounds to open, and he died on the 17th of May, 1752. Thereupon the government fell to the Baron de Longueuil till a new governor could arrive.

Bigot, whose name, according to Garneau, will hereafter be associated with all the misfortunes of France upon this continent, was Intendant at Louisbourg at the time of its fall. Dissatisfaction with him on the part of the soldiers at not receiving their pay was alleged as an explanation of[11] their mutinous behavior. He was afterward attached to the unfortunate fleet which was sent out to recapture the place. Later his baneful influence shortened the days and tarnished the reputation of La Jonquière.

In July, 1752, the Marquis Duquesne de Menneville assumed charge of the government, under instructions to pursue the policy suggested by La Galissonière. He immediately held a review of the troops and militia. At that time the number of inhabitants capable of bearing arms was about thirteen thousand. There existed a line of military posts from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi, composed of Quebec, Montreal, Ogdensburg, Kingston, Toronto, Detroit, the Miami River, St. Joseph, Chicago, and Fort Chartres. The same year that Duquesne was installed, he took preliminary steps toward forwarding troops to occupy the Valley of the Ohio, and in 1753 these steps were followed by the actual occupation in force of that region. Another line of military posts was erected, with the intention of preventing the English from trading in that valley and of asserting the right of the French to the possession of the tributaries of the Mississippi. This line began at Niagara, and ultimately comprehended Erie, French Creek,[17] Venango, and Fort Duquesne. All these posts were armed, provisioned, and garrisoned.

All French writers agree in calling the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle a mere truce. If the sessions of the commissioners appointed to determine the boundaries upon the ante-bellum basis had resulted in aught else than bulky volumes,[18] their decision would have been practically forestalled by the French in thus taking possession of all the territory in dispute. To this, however, France was impelled by the necessities of the situation. Unless she could assume and maintain this position, the rapidly increasing population of the English colonies threatened to overflow into the Valley of the Ohio; and the danger was also imminent that the French might be dispossessed from the southern tributaries of the St. Lawrence. Once in possession, English occupation would be permanent. The aggressive spirit of La Galissonière had led him to recommend these active military operations, which, while they tended to provoke collision, could hardly fail to check the movement of colonization which threatened the region in dispute. On the Acadian peninsula the troops had come face to face without bloodshed. The firmness of the French commander in asserting his right to occupy the territory in question, the prudence of the English officer, the support given to the French cause by the patriotic Acadians, the military weakness of the English in Nova Scotia,—all conspired to cause the English to submit to the offensive bearing of the French, and to avoid in that locality the impending collision. It was, however, a mere postponement[12] in time and transfer of scene. The gauntlet thrown down at the mouth of the St. Lawrence was to be taken up at the headwaters of the Ohio.

The story of the interference of Lieutenant-Governor Dinwiddie; of George Washington’s lonely journey in 1753 across the mountains with Dinwiddie’s letter; of the perilous tramp back in midwinter with Saint-Pierre’s reply; of the return next season with a body of troops; of the collision with the detachment of the French under Jumonville; of the little fort which Washington erected, and called Fort Necessity, where he was besieged and compelled to capitulate; of the unfortunate articles of capitulation which he then signed,—the story of all these events is familiar to readers of our colonial history; but it is equally a portion of the history of Canada.[19] The act of Dinwiddie in precipitating a collision between the armed forces of the colonies and those of France was the first step in the war which was to result in driving the French from the North American continent. The first actual bloodshed was when the men under Washington met what was claimed by the French to be a mere armed escort accompanying Jumonville to an interview with the English. He who was to act so important a part in the war of the American Revolution was, by some strange fatality, the one who was in command in this backwoods skirmish. In itself the event was insignificant; but the blow once struck, the question how the war was to be carried on had to be met. The relations of the colonies to the mother country, and the possibility of a confederation for the purpose of consolidating the military power and adjusting the expenses, were necessarily subjects of thought and discussion which tended toward co-operative movements dangerous to the parent State. Thus in its after-consequences that collision was fraught with importance. Bancroft says it “kindled the first great war of revolution.”

The collision which had taken place could not have been much longer postponed. The English colonies had grown much more rapidly than the French. They were more prosperous. There was a spirit of enterprise among them which was difficult to crush. They could not tamely see themselves hemmed in upon the Atlantic coast and cut off from access to the interior of the continent by a colony whose inhabitants did not count a tenth part of their own numbers, and with whom hostility seemed an hereditary necessity. It mattered not whether the rights of discovery and prior occupation, asserted by the French, constituted, according to the law of nations, a title more or less sound than that which the English claimed through Indian tribes whom the French had by treaty recognized as British subjects. The title held by the strongest side would be better than the title based upon international law. Events had already anticipated politics. The importance of the Ohio Valley to the English colonies as an outlet to their growing population had been forced upon their attention.[13] To the French, who were just becoming accustomed to its use as a highway for communication between Canada and Louisiana, the growth of the latter colony was a daily instruction as to its value.

The Louisiana which thus helped to bring the French face to face with their great rivals was described by Charlevoix as “the name which M. de La Salle gave to that portion of the country watered by the Mississippi which lies below the River Illinois.” This definition limits Louisiana to the Valley of the Mississippi; but the French cartographers of the middle of the eighteenth century put no boundary to the pretensions of their country in the vague regions of the West, concerning which tradition, story, and fable were the only sources of information for their charts. The claims of France to this indefinite territory were, however, considered of sufficient importance to be noticed in the document on the Northwestern Boundary question which forms the basis of Greenhow’s History of Oregon and California. The French were not disturbed by the pretensions of Spain to a large part of the same territory, although based upon the discovery of the Mississippi by De Soto and the actual occupation of Florida. Neither were the charters of those English colonies, which granted territory from the Atlantic to the Pacific, regarded as constituting valid claims to this region. France had not deliberately set out to establish a colony here. It was only after they were convinced at Versailles that Coxe, the claimant of the grant of “Carolana,” was in earnest in his attempts to colonize the banks of the Mississippi by way of its mouth, that this determination was reached. As late as the 8th of April, 1699, the Minister of the Marine wrote: “I begin by telling you that the King does not intend at present to form an establishment at the mouth of the Mississippi, but only to complete the discovery in order to hinder the English from taking possession there.” The same summer Pontchartrain told the Governor of Santo Domingo[20] that the “King would not attempt to occupy the country unless the advantages to be derived from it should appear to be certain.” La Salle’s expedition in 1682 had reached the mouth of the river. His Majesty had acquiesced in it without enthusiasm, and with no conviction of the possible value of the discovery. He had, indeed, stated that “he did not think that the explorations which the Canadians were anxious to make would be of much advantage. He wished, however, that La Salle’s should be pushed to a conclusion, so that he might judge whether it would be of any use.”

The presence of La Salle in Paris after he had accomplished the journey down the river had fired the imagination of the old King, and visions of Spanish conquests and of gold and silver within easy reach had made him listen readily to a scheme for colonization, and consent to fitting out an expedition by sea. When the hopes which had accompanied the discoverer on his outward voyage gave place to accounts of the disasters[14] which had pursued his expedition, it would seem that the old doubts as to the value of the Mississippi returned.[21] It was at this time that Henri de Tonty, most faithful of followers, asked that he might be appointed to pursue the discoveries of his old leader.[22] Tonty was doomed to disappointment. His influence at Court was not strong enough to secure the position which he desired. In 1697[23] the attention of the Minister of the Marine was called by Sieur Argoud to a proposition made by Sieur de Rémonville to form a company for the same purpose. The memorial of Argoud vouches for Rémonville as a friend of La Salle, sets forth at length the advantages to be gained by the expedition, explains in detail its needs, and gives a complete scheme for the formation of the proposed company. From lack of faith or lack of influence this proposition also failed. It required the prestige of Iberville’s name, brought to bear in the same direction, to carry the conviction necessary for success.

Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville was a native of Canada. He was born on the 16th of July, 1661,[24] and was reared to a life of adventure. His name and the names of his brothers, under the titles of their seigniories, are associated with all the perilous adventure of the day in their native land. They were looked upon by the Onondagas as brothers and protectors, and their counsel was always received with respect. Maricourt, who was several times employed upon important missions to the Iroquois, was known among them under the symbolic name of Taouistaouisse, or “little bird which is always in motion.” In 1697, when Iberville urged upon the minister the arguments which suggested themselves to him in favor of an expedition in search of the mouth of the Mississippi, he had already gained distinction in the Valley of the St. Lawrence, upon the shores of the Atlantic, and on the waters of Hudson’s Bay.[25] The tales of his wonderful successes on land and on sea tax the credulity of the reader; and were it not for the concurrence of testimony, doubts would creep in as to their truth. It seemed as if the young men of the Le Moyne family felt that with the death of Frontenac the days of romance and adventure had ended in Canada; that for the time being, at least, diplomacy was to succeed daring, and thoughts of trade at Quebec and Montreal were to take the place of plans for the capture of Boston and New York. To them the possibility of collision with Spaniards or Englishmen was an inducement rather than a drawback. Here perhaps, in explorations on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, courage and audacity might find those rewards and honors for which the opportunity was fast disappearing in Canada. Inspired[15] by such sentiments, the enthusiasm of Iberville overcame the reserve of the King. The grandeur of the scheme began to attract his attention. It was clear that the French had not only anticipated the English in getting possession of the upper waters of the great river, but their boats had navigated its current from source to mouth.

[This follows an engraving in Margry, vol. iv. J. M. Lemoine (Maple Leaves, 2d series, 1873, p. 1) styles him “The Cid of New France.”—Ed.]

If they could establish themselves at its entrance, and were able to control its navigation, they could hold the whole valley. Associated with these thoughts were hopes of mines in the distant regions of the upper Mississippi which might contribute to France wealth equal to that which Spain had drawn from Mexico. Visions of pearl-fisheries in the Gulf, and wild notions as to the[16] value of buffalo-wool, aided Iberville in his task of convincing the Court of the advantages to be derived from his proposed voyage.

In June, 1698, two armed vessels were designated for the expedition,—the “Badine,” which was put under the command of Iberville, and the “Marin,” under the Chevalier de Surgères. The correspondence between the Minister of the Marine and Iberville during the period of preparation shows that the Court earnestly endeavored to forward the enterprise.

Rumors were rife that summer at Rochelle that an expedition was fitting out at London[26] for the purpose of establishing a colony of French Protestants on the banks of the Mississippi. On the 18th of June Iberville wrote to the Minister to warn him of the fact. He had turned aside as a joke, he says, the rumors that his expedition was bound to the Mississippi, and he suggests that orders be sent him to proceed to the River Amazon, with which he could lay such stories at rest and deceive the English as to his movements. The instructions with which he was provided allege that he was selected for the command because of his previous record. He was left free to prosecute his search for the mouth of the river according to his own views. After he should have found it, he was to fortify some spot which should command its entrance. He was to prevent, at all hazards, any other nation from making a landing there. Should he find that be had been anticipated in the discovery, still he was to effect a landing if possible; and in case of inability to do so, he was to make a careful examination of affairs and report.

On the morning of the 24th of October, 1698,[27] the “Badine” and the “Marin” sailed from Brest, at which port they had put in after leaving Rochelle. They were accompanied by two transports, which formed a part of the expedition. The two frigates and one of the transports arrived at Santo Domingo on the 4th of December. The other transport arrived ten days after. The frigate “François,” under Chasteaumorand, was here added to the fleet as an escort to the American coast. On the 31st of December they sailed from Santo Domingo, and on the 23d of January, 1699, at half-past four in the evening, land was seen distant eight leagues to the northeast. In the evening fires were observed on shore. Pursuing a course parallel with the coast, they sailed to the westward by day and anchored each night. The shore was carefully reconnoitred with small[17] boats as they proceeded, and a record of the soundings was kept, of sufficient accuracy to give an idea of the approach to the coast. On the 26th they were abreast of Pensacola,[28] where they found two Spanish vessels at anchor, and the port in possession of an armed Spanish force, with whom they communicated. Still following the coast to the westward, they anchored on the 31st off the mouth of the Mobile River. Here they remained for several days, examining the coast and the islands. They called one of these islands Massacre Island, on account of the large number of human bones which they found upon it. Not satisfied with the roadstead, they worked along the coast, sounding and reconnoitring; and on the 10th of February came to anchor at a spot where the shelter of some islands furnished a safe roadstead. Preparations were at once begun for the work of exploration, and on the 13th Iberville left the ships for the mainland in a boat with eleven men. He was accompanied by his brother Bienville with two men in a bark canoe which formed part of their equipment. His first effort was to establish friendly relations with the natives. He had some difficulty in communicating with them, as his party was mistaken for Spaniards, with whom the Indians were not on good terms. His knowledge of Indian ways taught him how to conquer this difficulty. Leaving his brother and two Canadians as hostages in their hands, he succeeded on the 16th in getting some of the natives to come on board his ship, where he entertained them by firing off his cannons. On the 17th he returned to the spot where he had left his brother, and found him carrying on friendly converse with natives who belonged to tribes then living upon the banks of the Mississippi. The bark canoe puzzled them; and they asked if the party came from the upper Mississippi, which in their language they called the “Malbanchia.” Iberville made an appointment with these Indians to return with them to the river, and was himself at the rendezvous at the appointed time; but they failed him. Being satisfied now that he was near the mouth of the Mississippi, and that he had nothing to fear from the English, he told Chasteaumorand that he could return to Santo Domingo with the “François.” On the 21st that vessel sailed for the islands.

On the 27th the party which was to enter the mouth of the river left the ships. They had two boats, which they speak of as biscayennes, and two bark canoes. Iberville was accompanied by his brother Bienville, midshipman on the “Badine;” Sauvolle, enseigne de vaisseau on the “Marin;” the Récollet father Anastase, who had been with La Salle; and a party of men,—stated by himself in one place at thirty-three, and in another at forty-eight.[29]

[18]

On the afternoon of the 2d of March, 1699, they entered the river,—the Malbanchia of the Indians, the Palissado of the Spaniards, the Mississippi of to-day.

After a careful examination of the mouth of the river, at that time apparently in flood, Iberville set his little party at the hard work which was now before them, of stemming the current in their progress up the stream. His search was now directed toward identifying the river, by comparison with the published descriptions of Hennepin, and also by means of information contained in the Journal of Joutel,[30] which had been submitted to him in manuscript by Pontchartrain. At the distance, according to observations of the sun, of sixty-four leagues from the mouth of the river, he reached the village of the Bayagoulas, some of whom he had already seen. At this point his last doubt about the identity of the river was dissipated; for he met a chief of the Mougoulachas clothed in a cloak of blue serge, which he said was given to him by Tonty. With rare facility, Iberville had already picked up enough of the language of these Indians to communicate with them; and Bienville, who had brought a native up the river in his canoe, could speak the language passably well. “We talked much of what Tonty had done while there; of the route that he took and of the Quinipissas, who, they said, lived in seven villages, distant an eight days’ journey to the northeast of this village by land.” The Indians drew rude maps of the river and the country, showing that when Tonty left them he had gone up to the Oumas, and that going and coming he had passed this spot. They knew nothing of any other branch of the river. These things did not agree with Hennepin’s account, the truth of which Iberville began to suspect. He says that he knew that the Récollet father had told barefaced lies about Canada and Hudson’s Bay in his Relation, yet it seemed incredible that he should have undertaken to deceive all France on these points. However that might be, Iberville realized that the first test to be applied to his own reports would be comparison with other sources of information; and having failed to find the village of the Quinipissas and the island in the river, he must by further evidence establish the truth or the falsity of Hennepin’s account. This was embarrassing. The “Marin” was short of provisions, Surgères was anxious to return, the position for the settlement had not yet been selected, and the labor of rowing against the current was hard on the men, while the progress was very slow. Anxious as Iberville was to return, the reasons for obtaining further proof that he was on the Mississippi, with which to convince doubters in France, overcame his desires, and he kept on his course up the river. On the 20th he reached the village of the Oumas, and was gratified to learn that the memory of Tonty’s visit, and of the many presents which he had distributed, was still fresh in the minds of the natives. Iberville was now, according to his reckoning, about one hundred leagues up the river. He had been able to[19] procure for his party only Indian corn in addition to the ship’s provisions with which they started. His men were weary. All the testimony that he could procure concurred to show that the route by which Tonty came and went was the same as that which he himself had pursued, and that the division of the river into two channels was a myth.[31] With bitterness of spirit he inveighs against the Récollet, whose “false accounts had deceived every one. Time had been consumed, the enterprise hindered, and the men of the party had suffered in the search after purely imaginary things.” And yet, if we may accept the record of his Journal, this visit to the village of the Oumas was the means of his tracing the most valuable piece of evidence of French explorations in this vicinity which could have been produced. “The Bayagoulas,” he says, “seeing that I persisted in wishing to search for the fork and also insisted that Tonty had not passed by there, explained to me that he had left with the chief of the Mougoulachas a writing enclosed for some man who was to come from the sea, which was similar to one that I myself had left with them.” The urgency of the situation compelled Iberville’s return to the ships. On his way back he completed the circuit of the island on which New Orleans was afterward built, by going through the river named after himself and through Lake Pontchartrain. The party which accompanied him consisted of four men, and they travelled in two canoes. The two boats proceeded down the Mississippi, with orders to procure the letter from the Mougoulachas and to sound the passes at the mouth of the river.

On the 31st both expeditions reached the ships. Iberville had the satisfaction of receiving from the hands of his brother[32] the letter which Tonty had left for La Salle, bearing date, “At the village of the Quinipissas, April 20, 1685.”[33] The contents of the letter were of little moment, but its possession was of great value to Iberville. The doubts of the incredulous must yield to proof of this nature. Here was Tonty’s account of his trip down the river, of his search along the coast for traces of his old leader, and of his reluctant conclusion that his mission was a failure. In the midst of the clouds of treachery which obscure the last days of La Salle, the form of Tonty looms up, the image of steadfast friendship and genuine devotion. “Although,” he says, “we have neither heard news nor seen signs of you, I do not despair that God will grant success to your undertakings. I wish it with all my heart; for you have no more faithful follower than myself, who would sacrifice everything to find you.”

After his return to the ships, Iberville hastened to choose a spot for a fortification. In this he experienced great difficulty; but he finally selected Biloxi, where a defence of wood was rapidly constructed and by courtesy called a fort. A garrison of seventy men and six boys was landed, with stores, guns, and ammunition. Sauvolle, enseigne de vaisseau du roy,[20] “a discreet young man of merit,” was placed in command. Bienville, “my brother,” then eighteen years old, was left second in rank, as lieutenant du roy. The main object of the expedition was accomplished. The “Badine” and the “Marin” set sail for France on the 3d of May, 1699. For Iberville, as he sailed on the homeward passage, there was the task, especially difficult for him, of preparing a written report of his success. For Sauvolle and the little colony left behind, there was the hard problem to solve, how they should manage with scant provisions and with no prospect of future supply. So serious was this question that in a few days a transport was sent to Santo Domingo for food. This done, they set to work exploring the neighborhood and cultivating the friendship of the neighboring tribes of Indians. To add to their discomforts, while still short of provisions they were visited by two Canadian missionaries who were stationed among the Tonicas and Taensas in the Mississippi Valley. The visitors had floated down the river in canoes, having eighteen men in all in their company, and arrived at Biloxi in the month of July. Ten days they had lived in their canoes, and during the trip from the mouth of the river to Biloxi their sufferings for fresh water had been intense. Such was the price paid to satisfy their craving for a sight of their compatriots who were founding a settlement at the mouth of the river. On the 15th of September, while Bienville was reconnoitring the river at a distance of about twenty-three leagues from its mouth, he was astonished by the sight of an armed English ship of twelve guns.[34] This was one of the fleet despatched by Coxe, the claimant of the grant from the English Government of the province of Carolana.[35] The rumor concerning which Iberville had written to the Minister the year before had proved true. Bienville found no difficulty in persuading the captain that he was anticipated, that the country was already in possession of the French, and that he had better abandon any attempt to make a landing. The English captain yielded; but not without a threat of intention to return, and an assertion of prior English discovery. The bend in the river where this occurred was named English Turn. The French refugees, unable to secure homes in the Mississippi Valley under the English flag, petitioned to be permitted to do so as French citizens.[36] The most Christian King was not fond of Protestant colonists, and replied that he had not chased heretics out of his kingdom to create a republic for them in America. Charlevoix states that the same refugees renewed their offers to the Duke of Orleans when regent, who also, rejected them.

Iberville, who had been sent out a second time, arrived at Biloxi Dec. 7, 1699. This time his instructions were, to examine the discoveries made by Sauvolle and Bienville during his absence, and report[21] thereon. He was to bring back samples of buffalo-wool, of pearls, and of ores.[37] He was to report on the products of the country, and to see whether the native women and children could be made use of to rear silk-worms. An attempt to propagate buffaloes was ordered to be made at the fort. His report was to determine the question whether the establishment should be continued or abandoned.[38] Sauvolle was confirmed as “Commandant of the Fort of the Bay of Biloxi and its environs,” and Bienville as lieutenant du roy. Bienville’s report about the English ship showed the importance of fortifying the entrance of the river. A spot was selected about eighteen leagues from the mouth, and a fort was laid out. While they were engaged in its construction Tonty arrived. He had made his final trip down the river, from curiosity to see what was going on at its mouth.[39]

The colony was now fairly established, and, notwithstanding the reluctance of the King, was to remain. Bienville retained his position as second in rank, but was stationed at the post on the river. Surgères was despatched to France. Iberville himself, before his return, made a trip up the river to visit the Natchez and the Taensas. He was shocked, while with the latter tribe, at the sacrifice of the lives of several infants on the occasion of the temple being struck by lightning. He reported that the plants and trees that he had brought from France were doing well, but that the sugar-canes from the islands did not put forth shoots.

With the return of Iberville to France, in the spring of 1700, the romantic interest which has attached to his person while engaged in these preliminary explorations ceases, and we no longer watch his movements with the same care. His third voyage, which occupied from the fall of 1701 to the summer of 1702, was devoid of interest. On this occasion he anchored his fleet at Pensacola, proceeding afterward with one of his vessels to Mobile. A period of inaction in the affairs of the colony follows, coincident with the war of the Spanish Succession, during which the settlement languished, and its history can be told in few words. Free transportation from France to Louisiana was granted to a few unfortunate women and children, relatives of colonists. Some Canadians with Indian wives came down the river with their families. Thus a semblance of a settlement was formed. Bienville succeeded to the command, death having removed Sauvolle from his misery in the fall of 1701. The vitality of the wretched troops was almost equally sapped, whether stationed at the fort on the spongy foothold by the river side, or on the glaring sands of the gently sloping beach at Biloxi. Fishing, hunting, searching for pearls, and fitting out expeditions to discover imaginary mines occupied the time and the thoughts of the miserable colonists; while the sages across the water still pressed upon their attention the possibility of developing the trade in buffalo-wool, on which they built their hopes of the future of the colony. Agriculture was totally neglected; but hunting-parties[22] and embassies to Indians explored the region now covered by the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee.

ENVIRONS DU MISSISSIPI, 1700.

[This is figure 3 of plate i. in R. Thomassy’s Géologie pratique de la Louisiane (1860), called “Carte des environs du Mississipi (envoyée à Paris en 1700).” He describes it (p. 208) as belonging to the Archives Scientifiques, and thinks it a good record of the topography as Iberville understood it. The material of this map and of another, likewise preserved in the Archives Scientifiques de la Marine, are held by Thomassy (p. 209) to have been unskilfully combined by M. de Fer in his Les Costes aux environs de la Rivière de Misisipi, 1701.

Thomassy also noted (p. 215) in the Dépôt des Cartes de la Marine, and found in the Bibliothèque Nationale, a copy of a map by Le Blond de la Tour of the mouths of the Mississippi in 1722, Entrée du Mississipi en 1722, avec un projet de fort, of which Thomassy gives a reproduction (pl. iii. fig. 1), and he considers it a map of the first importance in tracing the changes which the river has made in its bed. He next notes and depicts (pl. iii. fig. 2) a Plan particulier de l’embouchure du fleuve Saint-Louis, which was drawn at New Orleans, May 29, 1724, and is signed “De Pauger, Royal Engineer.” It assists one in tracing the early changes, being on the same scale as La Tour’s map.—Ed.]

Le Sueur[23] explored the upper Mississippi in search of mines. In 1700 Bienville and Saint-Denys scoured the Red River country in search of Spaniards, but saw none. In 1701 Saint-Denys was gone for six months on a trip to the same region, with the same result.[40] The records of these expeditions and the Relations of the fathers have preserved for us a knowledge of the country as it then was, and of the various tribes which then inhabited the Valley of the Mississippi. From them we obtain descriptions of the curious temples of the Natchez and Taensas; of the perpetual fire preserved in them; of the custom of offering as a sacrifice the first-fruits of the chase and the field; of the arbitrary despotism of their grand chief, or Sun; of the curious hereditary aristocracy transmitted through the female Suns;[41] of the strange custom of sacrificing human lives on the death of a Grand Sun. To be selected to accompany the chief to the other world was a privilege as well as a duty; to avoid its performance when through ties of blood or from other cause the selection was involuntary, was a disgrace and a dishonor.

We find records of the presence of no less than four of the Le Moyne brothers,—Iberville, Bienville, Sérigny, and Chateauguay. Iberville was rewarded in 1699 by appointment as chevalier of the Order of St. Louis; in 1702 by promotion to the position of capitaine de vaisseau; and in 1703 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the colony, which Pontchartrain in his official announcement calls “the colony of Mississippi.” These honors did not quite meet his expectations. He wanted a concession, with the title of count; the privilege of sending a ship to Guinea for negroes; a lead mine; in short, he wanted a number of things. He bore within his frame the seeds of disease contracted in the south; and in 1706, while employed upon a naval expedition against the English, he succumbed at Havana to an attack of yellow fever. With him departed much of the life and hope of the colony. Supplies, which during his life had never been abundant, were now sure to be scarce; and we begin to find in the records of the colony the monotonous, reiterated complaints of scarcity of provisions. These wails are occasionally relieved by accounts of courtesies exchanged with the Spanish settlements at Pensacola and St. Augustine.[24] The war of the Spanish Succession had brought Spain and France close together. The Spanish forts stood in the pathway of the English and protected Biloxi. When the Spanish commander called for help, Bienville responded with men and ammunition; and when starvation fairly stared the struggling Spanish settlement in the face, he shared with them his scant food. They in turn reciprocated, and a regular debit and credit account of these favors was kept, which was occasionally adjusted by commissioners thereto duly appointed. So few were the materials of which histories are ordinarily composed, during these years of torpor and inaction, that one of the historians of that time thus epitomizes a period of over a year: “During the rest of this year and all of the next nothing new happened except the arrival of some brigantines from Martinique, Rochelle, and Santo Domingo, which brought provisions and drinks which they found it easy to dispose of.”

France was too deeply engaged in the struggle with England to forward many emigrants. Canada could furnish but a scant population for the scattered settlements from Cape Breton to the Mississippi. The hardy adventurers who had accompanied Iberville in his search for the mouth of the Mississippi, and the families which had drifted down from Illinois, were as many as could be procured from her, and more than she could spare. The unaccustomed heat of the climate and the fatal fevers which lurked in the Southern swamps told upon the health of the Canadians, and sickness thinned their ranks. In the midst of the pressure of impending disasters which threatened the declining years of the most Christian King, the tardy enthusiasm in behalf of the colony, which his belief in its pearls and its buffalo-wool had aroused, caused him to spare from the resources of a bankrupt kingdom the means to equip and forward to the colony a vessel laden with supplies and bearing seventy-five soldiers and four priests. The tax upon the kingdom for even so feeble a contribution was enough to be felt at such a time; but the result was hardly worth the effort. The vessel arrived in July, 1704, during a period of sickness. Half of her crew died. To assist in navigating her back to France twenty soldiers were furnished. During the month of September the prevailing epidemic carried off the brave Tonty and thirty of the newly arrived soldiers. Given seventy-five soldiers as an increase to the force of a colony, which in 1701 was reported to number only one hundred and fifty persons, deduct twenty required to work the ship back, and thirty more for death within six weeks after arrival, and the net result which we obtain is not favorable for the rapid growth of the settlement. The same ship, in addition to supplies, soldiers, and priests, brought other cargo; namely, two Gray Sisters, four families of artisans, and twenty-three poor girls. The “poor girls” were all married to the resident Canadians within thirty days. With the exception of the visit of a frigate in 1701, and the arrival of a store-ship in 1703, this vessel is the only arrival outside of Iberville’s expeditions which is recorded in the Journal historique up to that date. The wars and[25] rumors of wars between the Indians soon disclosed a state of things at the South which in some of its features resembled the situation at the North. The Cherokees and Chickasaws were so placed geographically that they came in contact with English traders from Carolina and Virginia. Penicaut, when on his way up the river with Le Sueur, met one of these enterprising merchants among the Arkansas, of whom he says, “We found an English trader here who was of great assistance in obtaining provisions for us, as our stock was rapidly declining.” Le Sueur says, “I asked him who sent him here. He showed me a passport from the governor of Carolina, who, he said, claimed to be master of the river.” Thus English traders were here stumbling-blocks to the French precisely as they had been farther north. Their influence appears to have been used in stirring up the Indians to hostile acts, just as in New York the Iroquois were incited to attack the Canadians. The Choctaws, a powerful tribe, were on the whole friendly to the French. The wars in Louisiana were not so disastrous to the French as the raids of the Five Nations had proved in the Valley of the St. Lawrence. The vengeance of the Chickasaws was easily sated with a few Choctaw scalps, and perhaps with the capture of a few Indian women and children whom they could sell to the English settlers in Carolina as slaves. Hence the number of French lives lost in these attacks was insignificant.

The territory of Louisiana was no more vague and indefinite than its form of government. Even its name was long in doubt. It was indifferently spoken of as Louisiana or Mississippi in many despatches. Sauvolle was left as commander of the post when Iberville returned to France after his first voyage. In this office he was confirmed, and Bienville succeeded to the same position. True, the post was the colony then, but when Iberville was in Louisiana it was he who negotiated with the Indians; it was he of whom the Company of Canada complained for interfering with the trade in beaver-skins; it was he whom the Court evidently looked upon as the head of the colony even before he was formally appointed to the chief command. This chaotic state of affairs not only produced confusion, but it engendered jealousies and fostered quarrels. The Company of Canada found fault with Iberville for interfering with the beaver trade. The Governor of Canada claimed that Louisiana should be brought under his jurisdiction. Iberville insisted that the boundaries should be defined; and complained that the Canadians belittled him with the Indians when the two colonies clashed, by contrasting Canadian liberality with his poverty.

[26]

This follows an engraving given in Margry’s collection, vol. v. Other engravings, evidently from the same original, but different in expression, are in Shea’s Charlevoix, vol. i. etc.

Le Sueur, who by express orders had accompanied Iberville on his second voyage, was holding a fort on the upper Mississippi at the same time that “Juchereau de Saint-Denys,[42] lieutenant-général de la juridiction de Montréal,” was granted permission to proceed from Canada with twenty-four men to the Mississippi,[43] there to establish tanneries and to[27] mine for lead and copper. One Nicolas de la Salle, a purser in the naval service, was sent over to perform the duties of commissaire. The office of commissaire-ordonnateur was the equivalent of the intendant,—a counterpoise to the governor and a spy upon his actions. La Salle’s relation to this office was apparently the same as Bienville’s to the position of governor. A purser performed the duties of commissaire; a midshipman, those of commanding officer. Of course La Salle’s presence in the colony could only breed trouble; and we find him reporting that “Iberville, Bienville, and Chateauguay, the three brothers, are thieves and knaves capable of all sorts of misdeeds.” Bienville, on his part, complains that “M. de la Salle, purser, would not give Chateauguay pay for services performed by order of the minister.” This state of affairs needed amendment. Iberville had never reported in the colony after his appointment in 1703 as commander-in-chief. Bienville had continued at the actual head of affairs. In February, 1708, it was ascertained in the colony that M. de Muys had started from France to supersede Bienville, but had died on the way.

M. Diron d’Artaguette, who had been appointed commissaire-ordonnateur,[44] with orders to examine into the conduct of the officers of the colony and to report upon the condition of its affairs, arrived in Mobile in February, 1708. An attempt had apparently been made to organize Louisiana on the same system as prevailed in the other colonies. Artaguette made his investigation, and returned to France in 1711. During his brief stay the monotony of the record had been varied by the raid of an English privateer upon Dauphin (formerly Massacre) Island, where a settlement had been made in 1707 and fortified in 1709. The peripatetic capital had been driven, by the manifest unfitness of the situation, from Biloxi to a point on the Mobile River, from which it was now compelled by floods to move to higher lands eight leagues from the mouth of the river. No variation was rung upon the chronic complaint of scarcity of provisions. The frequent changes in the position of headquarters, lack of faith in the permanence of the establishment, and the severe attacks of fever endured each year by many of the settlers, discouraged those who might otherwise have given their attention to agriculture. To meet this difficulty, Bienville proposed to send Indians to the islands, there to be exchanged for negroes. If his plan had met with approval, perhaps he might have made the colony self-supporting, and thus have avoided in 1710 the scandal of subsisting his men by scattering them among the very savages whom he wished to sell into slavery. It is not to be wondered at that the growth of the colony under these circumstances was very slow. In 1701 the number of inhabitants was stated at one hundred and fifty. In 1708 La Salle reported the population as composed of a garrison of one hundred and twenty-two persons, including priests, workmen, and boys;[28] seventy-seven inhabitants, men, women, and children; and eighty Indian slaves. In 1712 there were four hundred persons, including twenty negroes. Some of the colonists had accumulated a little property, and Bienville reported that he was obliged to watch them lest they should go away.

On the 14th day of September, 1712, and of his reign the seventieth year, Louis, by the grace of God king of France and Navarre, granted to Sieur Antony Crozat the exclusive right to trade in all the lands possessed by him and bounded by New Mexico and by the lands of the English of Carolina; in all the establishments, ports, havens, rivers, and principally the port and haven of the Isle of Dauphin, heretofore called Massacre, the River St. Louis, heretofore called the Mississippi, from the edge of the sea as far as the Illinois, together with the River of St. Philip, heretofore called the Missouri, and of the St. Jerome, heretofore called the Ouabache, with all the countries, territories, lakes within land, and the rivers which fall directly or indirectly into that part of the River St. Louis. Louisiana thus defined was to remain a separate colony, subordinate, however, to the Government of New France. The exclusive grant of trade was to last for fifteen years. Mines were granted in perpetuity subject to a royalty, and to forfeiture if abandoned. Lands could be taken for settlement, manufactures, or for cultivation; but if abandoned they reverted to the Crown. It was provided in Article XIV., “if for the farms and plantations which the said Sieur Crozat wishes to carry on he finds it desirable to have some negroes in the said country of Louisiana, he may send a ship each year to trade for them directly on the coast of Guinea, taking a permit from the Guinea Company so to do. He may sell these negroes to the inhabitants of the colony of Louisiana, and we forbid all other companies and persons whatsoever, under any pretence whatsoever, to introduce any negroes or traffic for them in the said country, nor shall the said Crozat carry any negroes elsewhere.”

Crozat was a man of commercial instinct,—developed, however, only to the standard of the times. The grant to him of these extensive privileges was acknowledged in the patent to have been made for financial favors received by the King, and also because the King believed that a successful business man would be able to manage the affairs of the colony. The value of the grant was dependent upon the extent to which Crozat could develop the commerce of the settlement; and he seems to have set to work in earnest to test its possibilities. The journals of the colonists now record the arrivals of vessels with stores, provisions, and passengers. Supplies were maintained during this commercial administration upon a more liberal basis. The fear of starvation was for the time postponed, and the colonists were spared the humiliation of depending for means of subsistence upon the labor of those whom they termed savages. Merchandise was imported, and only purchasers were needed to complete the transaction. There being no possible legal competition for peltries within the limits of the colony, the market price was what the monopolist chose to pay.[29] Louis XIV. had forbidden “all persons and companies of all kinds, whatever their quality and condition, and whatever the pretext might be, from trading in Louisiana under pain of confiscation of goods and ships, and perhaps of other and severer punishments.” Yet so oblivious were the English traders of their impending fate that they continued to trade among the tribes which were friendly to them, and at times even went so far as to encroach upon the trade with the tribes allied to the French and fairly within French lines. So negligent were the coureurs de bois of their own interest, that when Crozat put the price of peltries below what the English and Spanish traders were paying, they would work their way to Charleston and to Pensacola. So indifferent were the Spaniards to a commerce not carried on in their own ships, and so thoroughly did they believe in the principles of the grant to Crozat, that they would not permit his vessels to trade in their ports. Thus it happened that La Mothe Cadillac, who had arrived in the colony in May, 1713, bearing his own commission as governor, was soon convinced that the commerce of the colony was limited to the sale of vegetables to the Spaniards at Pensacola, and the interchange of a few products with the islands. His disappointment early showed itself in his despatches. His selection for the post was unfortunate. By persistent pressure he had succeeded while in Canada in convincing the Court of the necessity for a post at Detroit and of the propriety of putting La Mothe Cadillac in charge of it. He had upon his hands at that time a chronic war with the priests, whose work he belittled in his many letters. His reputation in this respect was so well known that the inhabitants of Montreal in a protest against the establishment of the post at Detroit alleged that he was “known not to be in the odor of sanctity.” He had carried his prejudices with him to that isolated post, and had flooded the archives with correspondence, memoranda, and reports stamped with evidence of his impatience and lack of policy. The vessel which brought him to Louisiana brought also another instalment of marriageable girls. Apparently they were not so attractive as the first lot. Some of them remained single so long that the officials were evidently doubtful about finding them husbands. By La Mothe’s orders, according to Penicaut, the MM. de la Loire were instructed to establish a trading-post at Natchez in 1713. A post in Alabama called Fort Toulouse was established in 1714.

Saint-Denys in 1714 and again in 1716 went to Mexico. His first expedition was evidently for the purpose of opening commercial relations with the Spaniards. No signs of Spanish occupation were met by the party till they reached the vicinity of the Rio Grande. This visit apparently roused the Spaniards to the necessity of occupying Texas, for they immediately sent out an expedition from Mexico to establish a number of missions[30] in that region. Saint-Denys, who on his return accompanied this expedition, was evidently satisfied that the Spanish authorities would permit traffic with the posts in New Mexico.[45] A trading expedition was promptly organized by him in the fall of 1716 and despatched within a few months of his return. This expedition on its way to the presidio on the Rio Grande passed through several Indian towns in the “province of Lastekas,” where they found Spanish priests and Spanish soldiers.[46] Either Saint-Denys had been deceived, or the Spanish Government had changed its views. The goods of the expedition were seized and confiscated. Saint-Denys himself went to Mexico to secure their release, if possible. His companions returned to Louisiana. Meantime La Mothe had in January, 1717, sent a sergeant and six soldiers to occupy the Island of Natchitoches.

While the French and Spanish traders and soldiers were settling down on the Red River and in Texas, in the posts and missions which were to determine the boundaries between Texas and Louisiana, La Mothe himself was not idle. In 1715 he went up to Illinois in search of silver mines. He brought back lead ore, but no silver. In 1716 the tribe of the Natchez showed signs of restlessness, and attacked some of the French. Bienville was sent with a small force of thirty-four soldiers and fifteen sailors to bring this powerful tribe to terms. He succeeded by deceit in accomplishing what he could not have done by fighting, and actually compelled the Indians, through fear for the lives of some chiefs whom he had treacherously seized, to construct a fort on their own territory, the sole purpose of which was to hold them in awe. From that date a garrison was maintained at Natchez. Bienville, who was then commissioned as “Commandant of the Mississippi and its tributaries,” was expected to make this point his headquarters. The jealousy between himself and La Mothe had ripened into open quarrel. The latter covered reams of paper with his crisp denunciations of affairs in Louisiana, until Crozat, worn out with his complaints, finally wrote, “I am of opinion that all the disorders in the colony of which M. de la Mothe complains proceed from his own maladministration of affairs.”

[31]

No provision was made in the early days of the colony for the establishment of a legal tribunal; military law alone prevailed. By an edict issued Dec. 18, 1712, the governor and commissaire-ordonnateur were constituted a tribunal for three years from the day of its meeting, with the same powers as the councils of Santo Domingo and Martinique. The tribunal was afterward re-established with increased numbers and more definite powers.

On the 23d day of August, 1717, the Regent accepted a proposition made to him by Sieur Antony Crozat to remit the remainder of the term of his exclusive privilege. Although it must have wounded the pride of a man like Crozat to acknowledge that so gigantic a scheme, fraught with such exaggerated hopes and possibilities, was a complete failure, yet there is no record of his having undertaken to save himself by means of the annual shipload of negroes which he was authorized, under Article XIV. of his grant, to import. The late King had simply granted him permission to traffic in human beings. It remained for the Regent representing the Grand Monarque’s great-grandson to convert this permission into an absolute condition in the grant to the Company to which Crozat’s rights were assigned. The population of the colony was estimated at seven hundred of all ages, sexes, and colors, not including natives, when in March, 1717, the affairs of government were turned over to L’Epinay, the successor of La Mothe.

The charter of the Company of the West, which succeeded to Crozat’s rights, was registered on the 6th of September, 1717. The formation of the Company was based upon an ingenious attempt to fund in the shape of rentes—practically a form of annuity bonds—that portion of the debt of the kingdom then outstanding as billets d’état. Louis XIV., at his death, had left the nation encumbered with a debt generally estimated at about 2,500,000,000, but rated above 3,000,000,000 livres[47] by some writers. His necessities had compelled him to exhaust every possible means of raising money, even to pledging specifically in advance large portions of the revenue for several years. A floating debt of about 600,000,000 livres was arbitrarily scaled down by the Regent to 250,000,000, and placed in the form known as billets d’état. Even after this reduction the new securities were at a discount of from 60 to 70 per cent. It was to provide relief from this condition of affairs that the Company of the West was inaugurated. The capital stock was divided into shares of five hundred livres each. The number of shares was not limited in the original edict. Payment for them was made exclusively in billets d’état. For these billets, when surrendered to the Government in sums of one million livres, there[32] were issued to the Company rentes in perpetuity for forty thousand livres. The State was relieved from the pressure of so much of its debt as was thus used, by assuming the payment of 4 per cent interest upon the principal. To secure this interest money certain revenues of the Government were pledged. Thus the Company had an income of 4 per cent upon its capital guaranteed by Government. If the Louisiana grant was worth anything, all that could be made out of it was an additional temptation to the investor. That grant consisted of a monopoly of the commerce of the colony and of the absolute control of its affairs, the proprietorship of all lands that they should improve, and the ownership of mines. The privilege of granting lands free from all feudal obligation was expressly permitted. The protection of the Government was guaranteed to the servants of the Company. During the existence of the charter, which was for twenty-five years from the date of registration, property in Louisiana was to be exempt from taxation. With the exception of the condition to import six thousand white persons and three thousand negroes, this vast gift was practically unencumbered. To these privileges was also added the exclusive right to purchase beavers in Canada. The more readily to float the capital, the shares of aliens were exempt from the droit d’aubaine and from confiscation in time of war.

The name of Law, director-general of the bank, led the list of directors nominated in the royal edict. On the death of Louis XIV. this famous Scotchman had offered his services to the Regent, and by ready wit and plausible arguments had convinced him that measures could be taken which would help the State carry the heavy load of debt with which it was burdened. The foundation, on the 2d of May, 1716, of a private bank of issue with a capital of 6,000,000 livres, was an experimental step. The shares of this bank were to be paid for, 25 per cent in coin and 75 per cent in the billets d’état. The redemption of each bank-note was promised in coin of the same weight and standard as the coinage of its date. At a time when changes were frequent in the weight and alloy of coin, this feature made the notes of the bank nominally more stable than the coinage of the realm.

Law’s fundamental idea was that the prosperity of a community was proportionate to the amount of the circulating medium, and that good faith would cause paper to be preferred to coin for this purpose. In his communications to the Regent he recognized the relation of supply and demand to the subject. His proposition was to establish a government bank of issue which should act as the royal treasurer. The distrust of the Regent led him at first to decline this enterprise, but permission was given to Law to found a private bank. Under the conservative restrictions with which it was surrounded, the experimental bank was successful. The withdrawal of Crozat furnished opportunity to overcome the scruples of the Regent by substituting for the proposed royal bank a commercial company, whose stock, according to the original plan, was to be purchased[33] exclusively with billets d’état, which, as before shown, were to be converted into 4 per cent rentes payable half-yearly. An avenue was thus opened for the use of the billets. If holders availed themselves of it, the Government would not only be relieved from their pressure, but also from the discredit of their heavy discount. It was known that Crozat had abandoned the grant because he could not make money out of it. It was evident that capital and patience were necessary to develop the commerce of Louisiana. Of money the Company received none from original subscriptions to its stock, although by the terms of the edict the interest for the year 1717 was to be reserved as a working capital. Doubts as to whether this would be sufficient to develop the colony made investors wary at first of its subscription lists. It was soon found necessary to define the amount of capital stock. This was fixed at 100,000,000 livres by an edict registered in December, 1717. The grant in August, 1718, of the right to farm the tobacco, and the extension of this right from six to nine years in September of the same year, served to quicken popular interest in the Company.

Law’s bank having proved a pronounced success, the Regent was converted to his scheme, the shareholders of the General Bank were reimbursed, and it was converted into the Royal Bank. All limit upon the power to issue bills was by this step practically removed. The character of the coin in which the bills were to be redeemed was no longer limited to the livre of the weight and standard of the date of the note, but was changed to the livre of Tours. The very restraints which had operated to give that confidence which Law had pronounced essential for a paper-money circulation were thus removed.

In quick succession the companies of Senegal, of the East Indies, of China, and of Africa were absorbed by the cormorant Company of the West. Its title was changed to “the Company of the Indies.” The profits of the mint and the general farms were purchased, and by a series of edicts the management of nearly all the financial affairs of the kingdom were lodged in the Company. Meantime France had been deluged with a flood of notes[48] from the Royal Bank. The great abundance of money had lowered interest and revived business. To meet the various payments which the Company had assumed for the privileges which it had purchased, as well as to satisfy the increasing demand for shares, the capital was increased by a series of edicts in the fall of 1719 to 600,000 shares.[49] Outstanding debts of the Government to the extent of 1,500,000,000 livres were ordered to be redeemed, and in place thereof new rentes were to be issued to the Company at 3 per cent. After the first subscription, payment for stock had been stipulated in coin or bank-notes, in place of billets[34] d’état. The various privileges acquired by the Company had been granted one by one, and their accumulation had been slow enough to enable the public to appreciate their value and to comprehend the favor in which the Company was held by the Regent. Subscribers for new shares were therefore found with increasing ease after each new grant. The demand for the stock enabled the Company to place each new issue on the market at premiums. The later issues were at ten times the par value.

BILL OF THE BANQUE ROYALE OF LAW (1720).

Reduced from a cut in La Croix’s Dix-huitième siècle.

The price of the stock was still further inflated on the market by requiring as a condition precedent for subscriptions to the new issues, that persons desiring to subscribe should be holders of a certain number of shares of the old stock for each share of the new. Subscriptions were in turn stimulated by spreading the payments over a protracted period, on the instalment plan, thus enabling persons of small capital who wished to profit by the upward movement of the stock to operate on margins. To the competition fostered by these ingenious and at that time novel devices was now added the pressure for new shares on the part of those whose investments had been disturbed by the redemption of the rentes. Their demand that some favor be shown them in the matter of subscriptions was recognized, and edicts were issued which removed the stipulation that payments should be made in coin or bank-notes; and in their place billets d’état, notes of the common treasury, and orders on the cashier of the Company given in liquidation of Government[35] obligations, were ordered to be received. Shares rose to ten thousand francs,[50] and even higher; and those who paid for original shares in discredited billets d’état could now realize forty times their purchase-money. The temptation to those of conservative disposition to realize their profits and convert them into coin or property now burst the bubble. For a time the Company, by purchasing its own stock, was able to check the impending disaster; but in spite of all efforts of this sort, and notwithstanding edict after edict ordaining the compulsory circulation of the notes and demonetizing gold and silver, the bank, which had in the mean time been placed under control of the Company, collapsed. The promoter of the scheme, in the same year that he was controller-general of the finances of France, was a fugitive and almost a pauper.

During the progress of these events Louisiana had become the scene of active emigration, ludicrously small when compared with its great domain, but active beyond any preceding movement of population on the part of the French. On the 9th of February, 1718, three vessels despatched by the Company arrived at Dauphin Island, bearing troops and colonists, and also conveying to Bienville[51] the welcome news that he was appointed commandant-général. In September, 1717,[52] Illinois had been detached from New France and incorporated with Louisiana. Boisbriant, who was appointed to the command of that province, did not assume the government until the fall of 1718. The Company set to work honestly to develop the resources of the country. Engineers were sent over to superintend the construction of public works. The pass at the mouth of the river was to be mapped, and two little towers were ordered to be erected “at the entrance to the river, sufficiently high to be seen from afar during the day, and upon which fire can be made at night.” The coast was to be surveyed, and orders were given to effect a landing at St. Joseph’s Bay,—a step which was taken only to be followed by its prompt abandonment. Concessions were made to many distinguished men in France, with conditions attached to each that a certain number of colonists should be imported. Unfortunately for the influence of these grants upon the future of the colony, it was not required that the grantees themselves should live upon their concessions. The grant to Law, twelve miles square, was situated on the Arkansas River. By[36] agreement, he undertook to introduce fifteen hundred settlers. Vessels began now to arrive with frequency, bringing involuntary as well as voluntary emigrants. The power of the courts in France was invoked, apparently with success, to secure numbers for Louisiana, without regard to character. Vagrants and convicts, considered dangerous for French society, were thought suitable for colonists. These steps were soon followed by complaints from the colony of the worthlessness of such settlers and of the little reliance that could be placed upon them in military service.[53] Raynal, in his vigorous way, characterizes them as “the scum of Europe, which France had, as it were, vomited forth into the New World at the time of Law’s system.”

The new commanding general sent a force of mechanics and convicts in February, 1718, to clear the territory now occupied by the city of New Orleans, and to lay the foundations of a new settlement.[54] The channel at Dauphin Island having been blocked by a storm, the headquarters of the colony were removed, first to Old Biloxi, and afterward by order of the Company in 1719, to New Biloxi. During the fall of 1718 MM. Benard de la Harpe and Le Page du Pratz, whose names are associated with the annals of Louisiana, both arrived in the colony. The pages of the chroniclers of colonial events are now sprinkled with the names of ships which arrived with troops and emigrants, including young women from the hospitals and prisons of Paris. On the 6th of June, 1719, two vessels arrived direct from the coast of Guinea with “five hundred head of negroes.” The Company had entered with fervor upon the performance of the stipulation imposed by the charter.

The news of the war between France and Spain reached the colony in the spring of 1719. The inconvenience of the roadsteads occupied by the French had made them anxious to possess Pensacola. Iberville had urged upon the Government the necessity of procuring its cession from Spain if possible. So forcible were his arguments that negotiations to that end had been opened by Pontchartrain.

[37]

NOUVELLE ORLÉANS.

Although the settlement had been neglected by the Spanish Government, yet the proposition to cede it to France was rejected with pompous arguments, in which the title of Spain was asserted as dating back to the famous Bull of Alexander VI., dividing the newly discovered portions of the world between Spain and Portugal.[56] Upon receipt of the news of hostility between the two nations, Bienville promptly availed himself of the opportunity to capture the place.

[38]

[This is the “Plan de la Nouvelle Orléans” (1718-1720) in Dumont’s Mémoires historiques de la Louisiane, ii. 50, made by Le Blond de la Tour and Pauger. A plan signed by N. B[ellin] in 1744, “Sur les manuscrits du dépôt des chartes de la marine,” was included in Charlevoix’s Nouvelle France, ii. 433, and reproduced in Shea’s translation, vi. 40. In November, 1759, Jefferys published a “Plan of New Orleans, with the disposition of its quarters and canals as they have been traced by M. de la Tour in the year 1720.” He inserted this map (which included also a map of the lower Mississippi) in the History of the French Dominion in America (London, 1760), and in the General Topography of North America and West Indies (London, 1768).—Ed.]

The episodes of the capture of Pensacola by the French, its recapture by the Spaniards, the desertion of a large part of the French garrison, the successful resistance of Sérigny to the siege of Dauphin Island by a Spanish fleet, the opportune arrival of a French fleet, and the capture again of Pensacola, furnished occupation and excitement to the colonists for a few months, but had no[39] other result. The port was returned to Spain when peace was restored.[57] For several years the French at Natchitoches, and the Spaniards a few miles off at the Mission of the Adaes, had lived peacefully side by side. The French lieutenant in command of the post took advantage of the outbreak of hostilities to destroy the Spanish Mission. It was, however, immediately reoccupied by the Spaniards in force, and was permanently retained by them. In Illinois, through the arrival of a band of Missouris who had come to chant the calumet bedecked in chasubles and stoles, and tricked out in the paraphernalia of the altar, Boisbriant learned that a Spanish expedition from Santa Fé, in 1720, had been completely annihilated by these savages.

NEW ORLEANS IN 1719.

[This is reproduced from plate ii. of Thomassy’s Géologie pratique de la Louisiane. There is another cut in Gay’s Popular History of the United States, ii. 530. To M. de Vallette Laudun, or Laudreu, sometimes referred to as the Chevalier de Bonrepos, is ascribed the authorship of a Description du Mississipi, écrite de Mississipi en France à Mademoiselle D. ... (Paris, 1720), the writer being the captain of the ship “Toulouse.” It was reprinted as Relation de la Louisiane, écrite à une dame par un officier de marine, in the Relations de la Louisiane et du fleuve Mississipi, published at Amsterdam in 1720, which corresponds to vol. v. of Bernard’s Recueil des voyages au nord. It was reprinted as Journal d’un voyage à la Louisiane fait en 1720 par M. ..., capitaine de vaisseau du roi, both at Paris and La Haye in 1768 (Carter-Brown, vol. iii. nos. 280, 1,641).—Ed.]

Far more important in their effect upon the prosperity of the colony than any question of capture or occupation which arose during these hostilities were the ordinances passed by the Company of the West, on the 25th of April, 1719, in which were announced the fixed prices at which supplies[40] would be furnished to inhabitants at different points, and the arbitrary amounts that would be paid at the same places for peltries, tobacco, flour, and such other articles as the Company would receive. Gayarré summarizes the condition of the colonists under these rules as follows: “Thus the unfortunates who were sent to Louisiana had to brave not only the insalubrity of the climate and the cruelty of the savages, but in addition they were held in a condition of oppressive slavery. They could only buy of the Company at the Company’s price. They could only sell to the Company for such sum as it chose to pay; and they could only leave the colony by permission of the Company.” Whites brought from Europe and blacks brought from Africa “worked equally for one master,—the all-powerful Company.”

Through a title based upon La Salle’s occupation in 1685, strengthened by the explorations of Bienville and Saint-Denys in 1700, the subsequent journeys of Saint-Denys in 1701, 1714, and 1716, and the occupation of Natchitoches, the French laid claim to a large part of what now constitutes Texas. Benard de la Harpe left Dauphin Island toward the end of August, 1718, with fifty men, to establish a post on his concession at Cadodaquais. He settled on land of the Nassonites, eighty leagues in a straight line from Natchitoches. He was instructed to open up trade with the neighboring Spaniards, and through him Bienville forwarded a letter to the Spanish Governor. A correspondence ensued between La Harpe and the Governor at Trinity River, in which each expressed doubts as to the right of the other to be where he was. La Harpe closed it with an assurance that he could be found in command of his fort, and could convince the Governor that he knew how to defend it. No overt act followed this fiery correspondence, and La Harpe shortly after went on an extended tour of exploration to the northward and westward of his concession. We hear no more of this post from French sources; but Spanish authorities assert that after the Mission at Adaes was broken up, the Spaniards returned with an armed force and the French retired to Natchitoches. That post was then put under charge of Saint-Denys. Great stress was laid at Paris upon the necessity for occupying the coast to the west of the mouth of the Mississippi, and positive orders had been issued to that effect by the King on the 16th of November, 1718. Nothing was done, however, until 1720, when six men were landed one hundred and thirty leagues west of the Mississippi and left to perish. In 1721 these orders were reiterated, and La Harpe was appointed “commandant and inspector of commerce of the Bay of St. Bernard.” On August 16 he sailed to take possession of that bay. His equipment and his force were totally inadequate for the purpose. He made a landing at some point on the coast; but finding the Indians hostile, he was obliged to abandon the expedition. With this futile attempt all efforts on the part of the French to occupy any point on the coast of Texas ceased. On the other hand, they remained in uninterrupted possession of Natchitoches;[58][41] and the Spaniards, though they continued to occupy Adaes as long as the French were at Natchitoches, never renewed their attempts on the region of the Osage and the Missouri.

NEW ORLEANS AND THE MISSISSIPPI.

[This is a part of the “Carte de la Côte de la Louisiane, par M. de Sérigny en 1719 et 1720,” as given in Thomassy’s Géologie pratique de la Louisiane, 1860.—Ed.]

During the year 1721 the mortality of the immigrants on the passage over seriously affected the growth of the colony. Among other similar records it is reported that in March two vessels arrived, having on board forty Germans,—all that remained out of two hundred. The same month the “Africaine” landed one hundred and eighty negroes out of two hundred and eighty on board when she sailed, and the “Duc du Maine” three[42] hundred and ninety-four out of four hundred and fifty-three. The pains of the poor creatures did not end with the voyage. Some of them “died of hunger and suffering on the sands of Fort Louis.” Enfeebled by the confinement and trials of a protracted ocean voyage, immigrants and slaves alike were landed on the beach at Biloxi, where neither suitable food nor proper shelter was furnished them.[59] Indeed, so great was the distress for food in 1721, that the very efforts put forth to increase the population were a source of embarrassment and suffering. There were not provisions enough left at Biloxi in September to maintain the garrison; and once again, after more than twenty years’ occupation by the French, the troops at Biloxi were dispersed among the Indians for subsistence.

The engineers who were watching the action of the Mississippi kept a record of their soundings. They attributed the changes which they observed to the scouring action of the water, and suggested methods[60] for keeping up the strength of the current by restraining the river within limits. Their observations confirmed Bienville in the opinion that New Orleans could be reached directly by vessel; thus avoiding the wretched anchorage, fifteen miles from shore,[61] and the expensive and troublesome transfer from ship to barge, and from barge to boat, only to effect a landing by wading, at a spot which was still several days of difficult travel from the natural highway of the country.

The news of the collapse of the Royal Bank and of the flight of Law reached the colony in June, 1721. The expectation that the troubles of the mother country would react upon the fortunes of the colony created great excitement; but the immediate result fell short of the anticipation. Affairs in the territory of Law’s concession were in great confusion. The Alsatians and Germans whom he had placed upon it, finding themselves neglected and the future of the grant doubtful, came down to New Orleans in the expectation of being sent back to Europe. The colony did not willingly relinquish its hold on any of its settlers. These industrious laborers, who had been imported to till the soil, were placated by the grant of concessions along the Mississippi at a point about twenty miles above New Orleans. By their skill in market-gardening they secured the control of that business in the little town which almost in spite of the Company had sprung up on the banks of the river. Bienville, supported by Pauger, one of the engineers, had for some time favored New Orleans as headquarters. The views of the Company on this point had fluctuated. In 1718 the instructions were, to try to open the river to vessels. In 1720 Ship Island, the Alibamons, and the Ouabache (Ohio) were the points they proposed to fortify. In 1721 Pauger prepared a plan for the proposed city of New Orleans. At that time there were only a few cabins there. It was necessary to[43] cut down brush and trees to run the lines. Settlers were attracted by these proceedings, but jealousy stopped the work for a while. Charlevoix, who visited the place in 1722, says that the transfer of the stores of the Company from Biloxi to New Orleans began about the middle of June of that year.

The “Aventurier” arrived in the roadstead in the latter part of May, 1722, bringing orders to make New Orleans the principal establishment of the colony. She was taken up the river by the engineers La Tour and Pauger, and orders were given that all ships should thereafter enter the Mississippi. The “Aventurier” reached New Orleans July 7, and on the 5th of August the departure of Bienville from Biloxi for New Orleans is recorded.

Exchange and currency had proved to be serious drawbacks to the prosperity of Canada. Louisiana was destined to undergo a similar experience. Paper money and card money were issued by the Company. Arbitrary ordinances requiring the presentation of these bills for redemption within a stated time were suddenly promulgated. The price at which the silver dollar should circulate was raised and lowered by edict. Copper money was also forced into circulation. The “Aventurier” had some of this coin on board when she made her famous trip to New Orleans. It was imported, conformably to the edict of June, 1721. The inhabitants were enjoined to receive it without demur, as the Company would take it on the same terms as gold and silver.

To provide for the adjustment of disputes, the colony was divided into nine districts, and judicial powers were conferred upon the commanders of the districts. The jurisdiction of the Superior Council was made exclusively appellate. A similar appellate court, subordinate, however, to the Superior Council, was provided for Illinois.

By ordinance issued May 16, 1722, by the commissioners of the Council, with consent of the Bishop of Quebec, the province of Louisiana was divided into three spiritual jurisdictions. The first comprised the banks of the Mississippi from the Gulf to the mouth of the Ohio, and included the region to the west between these latitudes. The Capuchins were to officiate in the churches and missions of this district, and their Superior was to reside in New Orleans. The second district comprised all the territory north of the Ohio, and was assigned to the charge of the Jesuits, whose headquarters were to be in Illinois. The district south of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi was assigned to the Carmelites. The residence of their Superior was ordinarily to be at Mobile. Each of the three Superiors was to be a grand vicar of the Bishop of Quebec.

By ordinance of the Bishop of Quebec, issued Dec. 19, 1722, the district of the Carmelites was added to that of the Capuchins. The Carmelites then returned to France. In the month of December, 1723, the northern boundary of this district was changed to Natchez, and all the country north of that point, to the east and to the west, was put under charge of the Jesuits.

[44]

On the 27th of June, 1725, the Company, to allay the fears of the Capuchins, issued a new ordinance, in which they declared that the Capuchins alone should have the right to perform ecclesiastical functions in their district, and that no priest or monk of other brotherhood should be permitted to do so except with their consent. By request of the Capuchins, this was confirmed by patent from the King, dated the 25th of July, 1725.

The Capuchins had neither the numbers nor the influence essential for so great a work. For this reason the Company assigned the care of the French posts of the district to the Capuchins, and the charge of the Indian missions to the Jesuits; and an agreement was made, Feb. 26, 1726, with the Jesuit fathers, in which the latter undertook to furnish missionaries for the required work. In consequence of this arrangement it became necessary for the Jesuits to have an establishment in New Orleans. Permission to have such establishment was granted by the Company, on condition that they should exercise no ecclesiastical function except by consent of the Capuchins. Beaubois, the Jesuit Superior, disregarded this injunction, and undertook to override the Capuchins, who would have returned to France if he had not been recalled.

On the 13th of September, 1726, the Company entered into a contract with the Ursulines, in which the latter agreed to provide six nuns for the hospital and to educate the girls of New Orleans. The nuns, who were furnished in pursuance of this agreement, sailed from France Feb. 23, 1727. After a perilous voyage, five months in length, they arrived at New Orleans and at once entered on their work.

In 1724 the accumulated complaints of the several officers with whom Bienville had come into collision produced his downfall. La Harpe came to his rescue in a memorial upon the importance of the country and the necessity of maintaining the colony. Louisiana was not to be held responsible for frauds on the Company, nor for lack of system and bad management in its affairs. The Company itself had “begun by sending over convicts, vagrants, and degraded girls. The troops were made up of deserters and men indiscriminately picked up in the streets of Paris. The warehouses were openly robbed by clerks, who screened their knaveries by countless false entries. Disadvantageous bargains were made with companies of Swiss and Germans, of miners, and manufacturers of tobacco,[62] which turned out absolutely without value because the Company did not carry them out. A vast number of burdensome offices were created. The greater part of the directors who were sent out thought only of their own interests and of how they could thwart M. de Bienville, a man more familiar with the country than they were. If he proposed to bring ships[45] up the river, they obstinately opposed him, fearing that they would then no longer be able to maintain traffic with the Spaniards and thus amass fortunes.” La Harpe’s interposition may have subsequently influenced opinions as to Bienville’s merits, but at the time it had no apparent result. In February, 1724, Bienville received positive orders to return to France. The brief interval which elapsed before he sailed gave him an opportunity to associate his name with the issue of the harsh and arbitrary code of fifty-four articles regulating the conduct of the unfortunate slaves in the colony, and imposing penalties for violations of law.

On his return to France, Bienville presented a memorial in vindication of his course. Eight years before this he had urged upon the Marine Council that he was entitled to promotion. The recapitulation of his services, with which he opened his letter, is used again in substance in the memorial: “For thirty-four years Sieur de Bienville has had the honor of serving the King, twenty-seven of them as lieutenant du roy and as commandant of the colony. In 1692 he was appointed midshipman. He served seven years as such, and made seven sea-voyages in actual service on armed vessels of the navy. During these seven years he participated in all the combats waged by his brother, the late Sieur d’Iberville, upon the shores of New England, at Newfoundland, and at Hudson’s Bay; and among others in the action in the North against three English vessels. These three vessels, one of which had fifty-four guns and each of the others forty-two, attacked the said Sieur d’Iberville, then commanding a frigate of forty-two guns. In a combat of five hours he sank the fifty-four-gun ship, and took one of the others; while the third, disabled, slipped away under cover of the night. The said Sieur de Bienville was then seriously wounded in the head.”[63] He then refers to his services in the exploring expedition and in the colony, closing with the statement that his father was killed by the savages in Canada, and that seven of his brothers died in the French naval service.

In support of his memorial, and to refute statements that there would be an Indian outbreak if he should return, several representatives of the Indian tribes of the colony, moved thereto by Bienville’s relatives, were admitted to an audience with the Superior Council, and there pronounced themselves friendly to him. It was thus that the red men, on whom he had relied for food at some time in nearly every year since he landed in Louisiana, rewarded him for his friendly interest in their behalf,—him who had been the advocate of the plan for exiling them to Santo Domingo, there to be exchanged for negroes; who had subdued the eight hundred warriors of the Natchez by treacherously seizing and holding their principal chiefs; who, on the 1st of February, 1723, wrote that an important advantage over the Chickasaws had been gained without the loss of a French life, “through the care that I took to set these barbarians against each other.”

[46]

All efforts of Bienville for reinstatement were thrown away. The Council were of opinion that much of the wrangling in the colony was due to the Le Moynes. M. Périer was appointed governor; and in order that his administration might have a fair chance, several of Bienville’s relatives were deprived of office in the colony. Under the new Government, events moved on as before. The quiet of colonial life was undisturbed except for the wrangling of the officials, the publication of company orders, and the announcement of royal edicts. In a memorial forwarded by the commander of Dauphin Island and Biloxi, a highly colored picture is shown of the chaotic condition of affairs. “The army was without discipline. Military stores and munitions of war were not protected. Soldiers deserted at pleasure. Warehouses and store-ships were pillaged. Forgers, thieves, and murderers went unpunished. In short, the country was a disgrace to France, being without religion, without justice, without discipline, without order, and without police.”

Bienville had steered clear of serious Indian complications. He had settled by deceit, without a blow and almost without troops, what in place of more stirring events had been called the “first war of the Natchez.” On the occasion of a second collision, in 1723, he had simply appeared upon the scene with a superior force, and dictated terms to the natives. During Périer’s term of office signs of uneasiness among the natives and of impending trouble began to show themselves. Warnings were given to several of the inhabitants of Natchez that danger was to be apprehended from the neighboring tribe. The commander of the post wilfully neglected these warnings, which were repeatedly brought to his knowledge. On the 29th of November, 1729, the Natchez Indians rose, and slaughtered nearly all the male inhabitants of the little French village.[64] The scene was attended with the usual ingenious horrors of an Indian massacre. A prolonged debauch succeeded. The Yazoos, a neighboring tribe, surprised and slaughtered the little garrison which held the post in their country. Even the fathers in charge of the spiritual affairs of the posts were not spared.[65] Except for this uprising of the Yazoos, the example of the Natchez tribe was not contagious. News was quickly conveyed up and down the river, and but little damage happened to travellers between Illinois and Louisiana.

[47]

FORT ROSALIE.

[“Plan du Fort Rozalie des Natchez,” in Dumont’s Mémoires historiques de la Louisiane, ii. 94. There is also a plan of Fort Rosalie in Philip Pittman’s Present State of European Settlements on the Mississippi (London, 1770), p. 40.—Ed.]

According to Dumont, the Choctaws and Natchez had conspired to attack the French simultaneously at New Orleans and Natchez, and the attack at Natchez was made in advance of the day agreed upon for the outbreak. At this, he says, the Choctaws were exasperated, and announced that they were willing to move in conjunction with the French upon Natchez. According to their own professions, however, their friendship[48] for the French was uninterrupted, and they denied any previous knowledge of the outbreak at Natchez. Whatever the motive which prompted it, a joint military campaign against the Natchez was now organized with the Choctaws. All the credit in the affair was gained by the Indians. They were first in the field, and they did all the open fighting. When the French tardily arrived on the spot, instead of the surprise, the sudden attack, the rapid flight, and the complete victory or defeat which had hitherto characterized most Indian warfare, they found the Natchez behind rude fortifications, within which they had gathered all their people, together with the women and children captured at the recent attack on the village. The French were compelled to approach these defences with all the formalities of a siege. At the end of what Périer bombastically terms “six days of open trenches and ten days of cannonade,” the Natchez on the 26th of February, 1730, surrendered the captive women, children, and slaves to the Choctaws, withdrew their entire force, and fled to the opposite bank of the Mississippi. The knowledge that the French captives were with the Indians probably hampered the French in their attack.

The services of tribes friendly to the French were secured during the summer to harass the miserable Natchez; and on the 1st of August the Governor could proudly report that by this means he had been able since their migration to kill a hundred and fifty. “Lately,” he says in one of his despatches, “I burned four men and two women here, and the others I sent to Santo Domingo.” Smarting under the disgrace cast upon their reputation by the fruitless results of this campaign, the French felt the necessity for subduing the fugitive Natchez, who still preserved their tribal organization and their independence. An alleged negro insurrection the next summer furnished opportunity for hanging “ten or a dozen of the most culpable” of the negroes, and further demonstrated the necessity for some attempt to recover the prestige of the French name.

In the month of November, 1730, Périer started on a crusade against his foes. The force which he ultimately brought together for this expedition is said to have been a thousand men, of whom seven hundred were French. In January, 1731,[66] he succeeded in running down the Natchez in their fort, situated a short distance from the river on the west side, where he besieged and finally captured—according to his own account—four hundred and fifty women and children and forty-five men. Again the greater part of the warriors of the tribe escaped him. The captives were sent to Santo Domingo, where they were sold as slaves.

The resources of the colony were now better understood. Buffalo-wool, pearls, and mines were no longer relied upon. Prosperity had eluded the grasp of the greater part of the settlers; but if agricultural experiments had not proved remunerative as they had been handled, they had at least[49] demonstrated the fertility of the soil. The hopes of commercial success, with so scant a population and under the restrictions of the monopoly, were shown to be delusive. The climate had proved a severe trial to the health of the settlers.[67] Perhaps the character of the immigrants, their improvident habits, and their reckless exposure had much to do with it, and had made the test an unfair one. At all events the experience of the Company was but a repetition of that of Crozat; and in 1731 the rights granted in the charter were surrendered to the King. During Périer’s administration a change was made in the character of the girls sent over to the colony. In 1728 there arrived a ship bearing a considerable number of young girls who had not been taken from the houses of correction. They were cared for by the Ursulines until they were married.

It is not easy to follow the growth of the colony. When Crozat turned matters over to the Company, there were said to be seven hundred inhabitants; but four years afterward the Company officials, in one of their reports, put this number at four hundred. The official estimate in 1721 was five thousand four hundred and twenty, of whom six hundred were negroes. La Harpe, in his memorial, puts the population in 1724 at five thousand whites and three thousand blacks. At the time of the retrocession to the King the white population was estimated at five thousand, and the negroes at over two thousand.

The treasury notes of the Company at that time constituted the circulating medium of the colony. Fifteen days were allowed, during which their use could be continued. After that their circulation was prohibited, with appropriate penalties.

The Government signalized its renewal of the direct charge of the colony by efforts to build up its commerce. Bienville succeeded in securing his appointment as governor, and in 1733 returned to Louisiana. The finances of the colony having undergone the disturbance of the withdrawal of the paper money of the Company, the Government consulted the colonial officers as to issuing in its place some card money. These gentlemen recommended that the issue should be postponed for two years. The impatience of the Government could, however, be restrained but a year, when the entering wedge of two hundred thousand livres was ordered,—the beginning of more inflation. In 1736 Bienville, owing to the unfriendly attitude of the Chickasaws, felt the necessity of success in some movement against them, if he would retain the respect and friendship of the Choctaws. He therefore made an imposing demonstration against the Chickasaw villages. According to his own account, he had with him over twelve hundred men, who in an attack on one of the villages were repulsed with such severe loss that the whole party were glad to get back to the shelter of their permanent forts, without the satisfaction of knowing that they had either killed or wounded one of the enemy.

[50]

The Chickasaws had apparently learned the value of earthworks as defences, from their experience, if not from the English traders. Some of these traders were in the village at the time of the attack, and hoisted the English flag over their cabins. By throwing up the earth around their houses, the Indians had converted each habitation into a fortification. Unfortunately for the objects of the expedition, Bienville learned, on his return to Mobile, that a coöperating column, organized in Illinois, and composed mainly of Northern Indians, which had marched under young Artaguette against the same enemy, had been completely worsted, and their leader was reported killed.

If the movement against the Chickasaws was demanded by the condition of affairs before this demonstration, the repulse made a renewal of it at an early day a positive necessity. A strong force of men was sent over from France under an officer trusted by the Court, and in 1739 an advance was made with twelve hundred white soldiers and twenty-four hundred Indians, by way of the Mississippi instead of the Tombigbee. They were joined at a point near the present site of Memphis by a company under Céloron, and by a detachment from Fort Chartres under Buissonière. Five months were consumed in exploring a road which was supposed to have been already laid out before they started. During this time all the provisions of the expedition were consumed, and the main army was obliged to return without having seen the enemy. The extensive preparations for the expedition had, however, a moral effect. In March a company of Canadians and Northern Indians, which had reported at the appointed rendezvous, penetrated alone to the Chickasaw villages. The chiefs of that tribe, believing that this corps was supported by the expedition, sued for peace, which the French gladly granted them.

Every military effort put forth by Bienville since his return to Louisiana had resulted disastrously. The old story of accusation and counter-accusation between the resident officials of the colony continued during his second term as before. Chagrined at his lack of success, and mortified by evident distrust of his abilities shown by the Court, he tendered his resignation and pathetically wrote: “If success proportionate to my application to the business of the Government and to my zeal in the service of the King had always responded to my efforts, I should gladly have consecrated the rest of my days to this work; but a sort of fatality has pursued me for some time, has thwarted the greater part of my best-laid plans, has often made me lose the fruit of my labors, and perhaps, also, a part of the confidence of Your Highness.” On the 10th of May, 1743, he was relieved by the Marquis de Vaudreuil, and he then returned to France. He was at that time sixty-two years of age, and never revisited the scene of nearly forty-four years of active life in the service of the Government. He was called the “Father of the Colony,” and a certain romantic affection attaches to his memory, based rather upon his professed good-will than upon any success shown in his management of affairs.

[51]

During the remainder of the life of the colony, under the administration of M. de Vaudreuil until he was called to Canada, and after that under M. de Kerlerec, his successor, there was no material change in the condition of affairs. All attempts at recapitulation of events resolve themselves into dreary reiterations of what has already been told again and again. Tobacco and rice continued to be the staple products of the colony. Hopes were still maintained that something might be made by cultivating the indigo-plant. The sugar-cane was introduced in 1751.

There was more of tampering with the currency. Incredible as it may seem, there was scarcity of provisions at this late day, and appeals to France for food.[68] The friendly Choctaws were again incited to war against their traditional enemies, the Chickasaws, and strife was also stirred up among themselves. Another warlike expedition boldly marched to the Chickasaw villages and came back again. Criminations and recriminations between governor and commissaire-ordonnateur continued to the end, with few intermissions and with as lively a spirit as characterized the fiercest days of Bienville’s chronic fights. There was another shipment of girls as late as 1751. The character of the troops remained as before, and deserters continued to be a source of annoyance. Even the children of the colonists were affected by their surroundings, if we may believe an anonymous writer,[69] who says, “a child of six years of age knows more of raking and swearing than a young man of twenty-five in France.”

Illinois, separated from the cabals of the little courts at Quebec and New Orleans, showed some signs of prosperity.[70] In 1711 Father Marest wrote: “There was no village, no bridge, no ferry, no boat, no house, no beaten path; we travelled over prairies intersected by rivulets and rivers, through forests and thickets filled with briers and thorns, through marshes where we plunged up to the girdle.” The character of the returns expected by the French from this country had been shown by the expeditions of Le Sueur and La Mothe Cadillac. A few boat-loads of green earth had been sent to France by Le Sueur for assay, but no mines were opened. La Mothe brought down a few specimens of silver ore which had been found in Mexico, and some samples of lead from the mines which were shown him fourteen miles west of the river; but he discovered no silver mines. Nevertheless, the Company had great faith in this region. Their estimate of the dangers to which it was exposed may be gathered from the instructions to Ordonnateur Duvergier in the fall of 1720. He was told where the principal fortifications were to be maintained. Illinois, the directors said, being so far inland, would require a much smaller fort. Communication was to be opened up with that post by land. Positive commands were given to hold a post on the Ohio River, in order to occupy the territory in advance of[52] the English, and prevent them from getting a foothold there. “Illinois is full of silver, copper, and lead mines, which ought to produce considerable returns if worked. The Company has sent to the colony a number of miners to open the mines and to begin work there as an example to the owners of concessions and to the inhabitants. The troop of Sieur Renault, composed of people accustomed to work of this sort, went to the colony at the same time; but the two troops, according to last reports, are not yet at Illinois.”

About the same time it was ordered that “the establishment made by Boisbriant,” originally a few leagues below the village of the Kaskaskias, but apparently afterward transferred to a point about the same distance above the village, should be “called Fort de Chartres.”[71]

In 1721 Charlevoix traversed this region. Speaking of the so-called fort at St. Joseph, near the foot of Lake Michigan, he says: “The commandant’s house, which is but a sorry one, is called a fort from its being surrounded with an indifferent palisade,—which is pretty near the case with all the rest.” The route of Charlevoix was up the St. Joseph across a portage to the Kankakee, and down that river, the Illinois, and the Mississippi, to Fort Chartres, the next French station which he mentions.[72] He describes it as standing about a musket-shot from the river. He heard of mines both copper and lead. Renault, or Renaud, as he is generally called, who was working the lead mines, still hoped for silver. Even after this we hear occasionally of alleged mineral discoveries and revived hopes of mines; but neither the Company nor the Government were destined to reap any great revenue from this source.

The duties of Boisbriant and of his successors were almost exclusively limited to adjudicating quarrels, administering estates, watching Indians, and granting provisional titles to lands or setting off rights in the common fields of the villages. The history of these years is preserved in fragments of church-registers, in mouldy grants of real estate, or in occasional certificates of marriage which have by chance been saved. No break occurred in this monotony till the joint movement against the Chickasaws, of young[53] Artaguette from Fort Chartres and of Vinsennes from his post on the Wabash in 1736. The troops from these posts, who were to move from the North at the same time that Bienville should approach from the South, following their orders, met and advanced at the appointed time. Their prompt obedience brought them to the spot in advance of the dilatory Bienville, and enabled the Chickasaws, as has been previously stated, to meet the columns separately and defeat them in detail. A column from this fort was also in the body of troops from the North which co-operated in the second attack on these Indians.

During this uneventful time the little colony grew, and the settlers enjoyed a moderate degree of prosperity. A contented population of about two thousand whites,[73] to whom grants of land had been freely made for purposes of settlement or cultivation, was mainly engaged in agricultural pursuits. Side by side with them the natives were gathered in villages in which were established Jesuit missions. The fertile soil readily yielded to their efforts at cultivation more than they could consume, and each year the surplus products were floated down to New Orleans. Bossu asserted that all the flour for the lower country came from Illinois. Vaudreuil, before leaving the colony for Canada, reported[74] that boats came down the river annually with provisions; but as late as 1744 he still harped on the discovery of new copper and lead mines. Of the real agricultural value of the country there could not at that time have been any just appreciation. As a mining region it had proved to be a failure.

[54]

PLAN OF FORT CHARTRES.

[Taken from Lewis C. Beck’s Gazetteer of the States of Illinois and Missouri, (Albany, 1823). The plan was draughted from the ground in 1823. Key: a,a,a, etc., exterior wall (1447 feet); B, gate; C, small gate; D,D, houses of commandant and commissary, 96×30 feet each. E, well; F, magazine; G,G, etc., barracks, 135×36 feet; H,H, storehouse and guard-house, 90×24 feet. I, small magazine; K, furnace; L,L, etc., ravine. Area of fort, 4 acres.—Ed.]

The little fort needed repairs;[75] and La Galissonière, with his usual sagacity, wrote, “The little colony of Illinois ought not to be left to perish. The King must sacrifice for its support. The principal advantage of the country is its extreme productiveness; and its connection with Canada and Louisiana must be maintained.” Apparently the urgency of La Galissonière produced some results. Macarty, the officer who had command of the post at the time of the collision between the French and the English at the headwaters of the Ohio, arrived at Fort Chartres in the winter of 1751-1752. Bossu, who accompanied him, writes from the fort: “The Sieur Saussier, an engineer, has made a plan for constructing a new fort here, according to the intention of the Court. It will bear the same name with the old one, which is called Fort de Chartres.” In January, 1755, Bossu arrived a second time at the post, having in the mean time made a trip to New Orleans. He says: “I came once more to the old Fort Chartres, where I lay in a hut till I could[55] get a lodging in the new fort, which is almost finished. It is built of freestone, flanked with four bastions, and capable of containing a garrison of three hundred[76] men.” The construction of this fort was the final effort of France in the Valley of the Mississippi. It proved to be of even less value than the fortress at Louisbourg, upon which so much money was wasted, for it fell into the hands of the enemy without the formality of a siege. On the other side of the river, Bournion, who in 1721 bore the title of “Commandant du Missouri,” founded Fort Orleans on an island in the Missouri, and left a garrison[77] there, which was afterward massacred. Misère, now known as St. Genevieve, was founded about 1740.

As events drifted on toward the end of the French occupation, the difficulties of the French Government elsewhere compelled the absolute neglect of Louisiana. Kerlerec writes in 1757 that he has not heard from the Court for two years; and in 1761 the French ambassador, in a memorial to the Court at Madrid, states that for four years no assistance had been furnished to the colony. An estimate of the population made in 1745 places the number of inhabitants at six thousand and twenty, of whom four thousand were white. Compared with the number at the time of the retrocession by the Company, it shows a falling off of a thousand whites. It is probable that the white population was even less at a later day. It is not strange that the feeble results of this long occupation should have led the Most Christian King to the determination to present the colony to his very dear and much-loved cousin, the King of Spain,—an act which was consummated in 1762, but not made public at the time. Its influence was not felt until later.

The outline of events in Canada which we have previously traced carried us to a point where the first collision in the Valley of the Ohio between the troops of the two great nations who were contending for the mastery of the northern portion of the continent had already taken place. News of this contest reached New Orleans, and reports of what was occurring at the North served to fill out the Louisiana despatches. From this source we[56] learn that the Chevalier de Villiers,[78] a captain stationed at Fort Chartres, solicited the privilege of leading an expedition to avenge the death of his brother Jumonville, who had been killed by the Virginian force under Washington. The request was granted; and thus the troops from the East and from the West participated in these preliminary contests in the Valley of the Ohio.[79]

It is not within the proposed limits of this sketch to follow in detail the military events with which each of the few remaining years of French domination in America were marked. The death-struggle was protracted much longer than could have been anticipated. The white population of the English colonies is said to have been over ten times greater than that of Canada in 1755; and yet these odds did not fairly express the difference between the contending Powers.[80] The disproportion of the aid which might be expected from the mother countries was far greater. The situation was the reverse of what it had been in the past. England began to show some interest in her colonies. She was prosperous, and the ocean was open to her cruisers. The French experiments at colonization in America had proved a source of expense so great as to check the sympathy and crush the hopes of the Court. The vessels of France could only communicate with her colonies by eluding the search of the English ships widely scattered over the sea. Although no formal declaration of war was made until 1756, England did not hesitate to seize French merchant-vessels and to attack French men-of-war, and she backed the pretensions of her colonists with solid arguments clad in red coats and bearing glittering bayonets. France shipped a few soldiers and some stores to Canada. Some of her vessels succeeded in running the gauntlet of the English cruisers, but more were driven ashore or captured. The native Canadians, more French than Frenchmen themselves, rallied to the support of the Government which had strangled every sign of independent life in their country. Old men and children joined the ranks to repel the invader; and again we have the story repeated of scant crops improperly harvested because of lack of field hands, and thereafter actual suffering for food in this old and well-established colony. The experiences of Braddock and of Dieskau were needed to teach Europeans the value of the opinions of provincial officers in matters of border warfare. Temporary successes during several years inspired hopes in the minds of the French and thwarted the progress of the English. Nevertheless, the strength of the English began to tell, especially along the seaboard, where their supremacy was more conspicuous. The line of French forts across the neck of the Acadian peninsula fell without serious opposition, and it was determined to remove from the country a population which would neither take the oath of allegiance to His Britannic[57] Majesty, nor preserve neutrality in time of war. Their forcible deportation followed; and in their wanderings some of these “neutral French” even penetrated to the distant colony of Louisiana, where they settled on the banks of the Mississippi.[81] Such was the demoralization of the official class of peculators in Canada that those refugees who escaped to the protection of its Government were fed with unwholesome food, for which the King had been charged exorbitant prices by his commissaries. The destruction of the fort at Oswego postponed for that year the efforts of the English to interrupt the communication between the valleys of the Ohio and the St. Lawrence. The destruction of Fort William Henry temporarily protected Montreal; the check sustained by Abercromby was of equal military value. But in 1758 Louisbourg, with its garrison and stores was lost, the little settlements in Gaspé were ravaged, and France was deprived of the last foot of territory on the North Atlantic seaboard. Quebec thus became accessible to the enemy by way of the sea without hindrance.

Distrust and jealousy pervaded the Government councils in Canada. Pierre François, Marquis of Vaudreuil, the successor of Duquesne in 1755, and Montcalm, whose cordial co-operation was essential, were at swords’ points. With each succeeding year the corrupt practices of Intendant Bigot were more openly carried on. With famine stalking through the streets of Montreal and Quebec, with the whole population living on short rations, and bread-stuffs at incredible prices, the opportunity for this wide-awake Intendant to make money was never better. If accounts are to be trusted, he availed himself of his chance; and out of the sufferings and dire necessities of this sorely pressed people he amassed a fortune.[82] All this was to the advantage[58] of England. Every point that she gained in the struggle she kept. From each reverse that she sustained she staggered up, surprised that the little band of half-starved Canadian troops should have prevailed again, but with renewed determination to conquer. The only value of success to Canada was to postpone the invasion, and for the time being to keep the several columns which threatened Montreal from co-operation. With so feeble a force the French could not hope to maintain the widely scattered forts which they held at the beginning of hostilities. In 1759 they were threatened by hostile columns counting more than the entire number of Canadians capable of bearing arms. All hope of aid from France was crushed by the Minister, who wrote: “In addition to the fact that reinforcements would add to the suffering for food which you already experience, it is very much to be feared that they would be intercepted by the English on passage.” Such was the mournful condition of affairs when Wolfe sailed up the St. Lawrence, expecting to find Quebec ready to fall into his hands. To his surprise, the place was held by a force thoroughly capable of defending it against the combined strength of his soldiers and sailors. Fortune favored him, and Quebec was gained.

The resistance of the French during one more campaign was probably justifiable, but was a mere matter of form. Without hope of assistance from France, without means of open communication with any other French possession, without supplies of ammunition or of food, there was really nothing left to fight for. Even the surrounding parishes of Canada had yielded to the pressure of events, after the failure to recapture Quebec. When, therefore, the English columns converged upon Montreal in 1760, the place capitulated, and the French flag disappeared from Canada.

At the mouth of the Mississippi French occupation was not disturbed until the boundaries were adjusted in accordance with the terms of the Treaty of Peace signed at Paris in February, 1763. No reference was made in the treaty nor in the preliminary convention to the fact that France had already granted to Spain her title to the whole of Louisiana. Knowledge of this remarkable act was kept secret for a few years longer. England, by the terms of the treaty of Paris, became the acknowledged mistress of all that portion of the American continent which lies east of the middle of the Mississippi River, with the exception of the island on which was built the city of New Orleans. Ample provision was made to protect the rights of French citizens who might wish to remove from the country. The privilege of religious worship according to the forms of the Roman Catholic[59] Church was guaranteed to those who should remain, as far as the laws of England would permit.

The era of colonial history which this chapter covers is coincident with a period of decline in France. The transmission of the throne in the line of descent was not, however, interfered with, nor were the traditions of colonial policy changed. The causes of the rise and fall of the colonies of European Powers at that time are to be found in the history of European politics; and European politics in turn were largely influenced by the desire to control territory in the New World. The life of French colonies was in close contact with European events. If the pulse of the English settlements did not throb in such sympathy with the mother country, it was because there was a fundamental difference in the methods by which English colonies had been formed and in the conditions of their growth. A colony was not looked upon at that time as forming a part of the parent State. It was a business venture, entered into directly by the State itself, or vicariously by means of a grant to some individual or company. If the colony did not earn money, it was a failure. Spain had derived wealth from ventures of this sort. Other nations were tempted into the pursuit of the same policy in the hope of the same result.

To preserve the proper relations to the parent State, the colony should have within itself elements of wealth which should enrich its projectors; it should absorb the productions of the State which founded it; and in no event ought it to come into competition with its progenitor. The form of the French government was so logical that its colonies could be but mimic representations of France. Priests and nuns, soldiers and peasants, nobles and seigniors, responded to the royal order, and moved at the royal dictation in the miniature Court at Quebec much the same as at Paris. There was so little elasticity in French life that the French peasant, when relieved from the cramp of his surroundings, still retained the marks of pressure. Without ambition and without hope, he did not voluntarily break away from his native village. If transported across the water, he was still the French peasant, cheerful in spirit, easily satisfied, content with but little, and not disposed to wrestle for his rights. The priest wore his shovel-hat through the dense thickets of the Canadian forests, and clung to his flowing black robe even though torn to a fringe by the brambles through which it was trailed. Governor and council, soldier, priest, and peasant, all bore upon their persons the marks that they were Frenchmen whose utmost effort was to reproduce in the wilds of America the artificial condition of society which had found its perfect expression in Versailles. Autocratic as was Frontenac, unlikely as he was to do anything which should foster popular notions of liberty, or in any way endanger monarchical institutions,—even he drew down upon himself a rebuke from the Court for giving too much heed to the people in his scheme of reorganization.

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From his palace in France the Grand Monarque dictated the size and shape of a Canadian farm. He prescribed the localities which new-comers ought to select. They must not stray too far from villages; they must clear lands in spots contiguous to settlements. He could find men who would go to Canada, but there was no emigration of families. Soldiers in the colony were offered their discharge and a year’s pay if they would marry and settle. Premiums were offered the colonists for marrying, and premiums for children. “The new settler,” says Parkman, “was found by the King, sent over by the King, and supplied by the King with a wife, a farm, and sometimes with a house.” Popular meetings were in such disfavor that not until 1717 were the merchants permitted to establish an exchange at Quebec. His Majesty, while pulling the wires which moved the puppets of European politics, still found time to express his regrets that the “King’s officers had been obliged to come down from Frontenac to Quebec to obtain absolution,” and to convey his instructions to the Bishop of Quebec to suppress several fête-days which interfered with agricultural labors. Cared for thus tenderly, it would seem that Canada should have thriven. Had the measures put forth been wisely directed toward the prosperity of the colony, it might have done so; but Louis XIV. was not working for the benefit of Canada; his efforts were exclusively in behalf of France. In 1706 his Minister wrote: “It is not for the interest of the parent State that manufactures should be carried on in America, as it would diminish the consumption of those in France; but in the mean time the poor are not prohibited from manufacturing stuffs in their own houses for the relief of themselves and their families.” Generous monarch! The use of the spinning-wheel and the loom was not forbidden in the log-cabins in Canada, even if this did clash somewhat with French trade. “From this permission,” says Heriot, “the inhabitants have ever since continued to fabricate coarse linen and druggets, which has enabled them to subsist at a very small expense.” Coin was almost unknown much of the time; and the paper money and bills of exchange, upon which the colony depended for a circulating medium, were often seriously depreciated.

The spirit of organization and inquisition which infested the Government pervaded all things temporal and spiritual. Trade in peltries could only be carried on by those having permits from the Government or from the firm or company which for the time being had the monopoly. All trade at outlying posts was farmed out by the governors. Young men could not stray off into the woods without violating a royal edict. Such solicitude could only produce two results,—those who endured it became automatons; those who followed their inclinations and broke away from it were proscribed as bushrangers. From the day when Champlain founded the city of Quebec down to the time when the heroic Montcalm received his death-wound on the Plains of Abraham, the motives which had influenced the French in their schemes of colonization had been uniform and[61] their methods identical. Time enough had elapsed to measure the success of their efforts.

French colonization in America had reached three degrees of prosperity. In Acadia, under English rule, freed from military service in the ranks of the country to which they naturally owed allegiance, and with their rights as neutrals recognized by the English, the French colonists had prospered and multiplied. Originally a band of hunters and fishers, they had gradually become an agricultural population, and had conquered prosperity out of a soil which did not respond except to the hand of patience and industry. Exempt from the careful coddling of His Most Christian Majesty, they had evoked for themselves a government patriarchal in its simplicity and complete for their needs. In Louisiana, under the hothouse system of commercial companies and forced immigration, the failure had been so complete that even those who participated in it could see the cause. In Canada there was neither the peaceful prosperity of Acadia nor the melancholy failure of Louisiana. Measured by its own records, the colony shows steady growth. Compared with its rivals, its laggard steps excite surprise and demand explanation. The Acadians were French and Catholics. Neither their nationality nor their religion interfered with their prosperity. They had, however, been lucky enough to escape from the friendly care of the French Government. It is but a fair inference that the Canadians also would have thriven if they could have had a trial by themselves.

The history of England during the corresponding period showed no such uniform motive, no such continuous purpose as to her colonies. From the time of their foundation the English colonies became practically independent States, with which the Home Government, during the long period of political disturbances which intervened, seldom interfered. The transmission of the crown by descent was interrupted. A parliament displaced and executed a king. A protector temporarily absorbed his power. The regular order of the descent of the crown in the restored royal family was again interrupted. The crowned ruler of England was a fugitive on the Continent, and Parliament by act prescribed who should govern England, and afterward how the crown should be transmitted. The causes that produced English emigration, whether political or religious, varied with these events, and emigration was correspondingly affected; but whatever the extent and whatever the character of this influence, the emigration from England was, as a rule, a voluntary emigration of families. Young men might be tempted by the fascinating freedom of a wild life in the woods; but the typical emigrant was the father of a family. He abandoned a home in the old country. He took with him his wife, his family, and his household goods. Much of the furniture brought over by the sturdy emigrants of that time is still treasured by their descendants. The strong mental individuality which thus led men with families to cut adrift from[62] the struggles and trials in England, only to encounter the dangers and difficulties of pioneer life in a new country, found expression in various ways in the affairs of the colonies, oftentimes to the vexation of the authorities.

The New France was a reproduction of the Old France, with all, and more than all, the restrictions which hampered the growth and hindered the prosperity of the parent State. The New England had inherited all the elements of prosperity with which the Old England was blessed, and had even more of that individuality and freedom of action on the part of its citizens which seems to form so important an element of success. Out of the heterogeneous mixture of proprietary grants, colonial charters, and commissions, some of which were granted to bodies which sought exclusive privileges, while others were based upon broad, comprehensive, and liberal views; out of the conflicting interests and divergent opinions of fugitive Congregationalists, Quakers, and Catholics; out of a scattered, unorganized emigration of men entertaining widely different views upon politics and religion,—these aggressive, self-asserting colonists evolved the principle of the right of the inhabitants to a voice in the affairs of their government; and whether provision was made for it in the charter or not, houses of burgesses, general courts, and assemblies were summoned to make laws for the various colonies. Charters were afterward annulled; laws which contained offensive assertions of rights were refused the royal assent: but the great fundamental truth remained,—that the colonies were self-supporting. They had proved their capacity, and they constantly showed their determination, to govern themselves. Each movement of the emigrant away from the coast became a permanent settlement which required organization and control. Out of the unforeseen and unexpected conditions which were constantly occurring came the necessity for local government, to be administered by officers chosen by the little settlements.

Emerson, in speaking of the first tax assessed upon themselves by the people of Concord in Massachusetts, accounts for the peculiar developments of colonial life in New England in the following words: “The greater speed and success that distinguishes the planting of the human race in this country over all other plantations in history owe themselves mainly to the new subdivisions of the State into small corporations of land and power. It is vain to look for the inventor; no man made them. Each of the parts of that perfect structure grew out of the necessities of an instant occasion; the germ was formed in England.”

The pioneer penetrated the forest; he took with him the school-house and the church. Out of the necessities of instant occasions grew, in New England at least, the town-meeting,—the complete expression of a government whose foundations are laid in the people.

Before leaving the colony, in 1754, the Marquis Duquesne summoned the Iroquois to a council. In the course of an address which he then delivered he said: “Are you ignorant of the difference between the King[63] of England and the King of France? Go, see the forts that our King has established, and you will see that you can still hunt under their very walls. They have been placed for your advantage in places which you frequent. The English, on the contrary, are no sooner in possession of a place than the game is driven away. The forest falls before them as they advance, and the soil is laid bare so that you can scarce find the wherewithal to erect a shelter for the night.” No more powerful contrast of the results in North America of the two methods of colonization could be drawn than is presented in the words of the French Governor.

CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF LOUISIANA HISTORY.

CHARLEVOIX’ Nouvelle France[83] and the account of his personal adventures in the Journal d’un voyage, etc., have been much quoted by early writers. The extent and value of Dr. Shea’s work in annotating his translation of this history can only be appreciated by careful study. Through this means the translation is more valuable for many purposes of research than the original work.[84]

In 1831 the Journal historique de l’établissement des Français à la Louisiane was published at New Orleans and at Paris. It consists of an anonymous historical narrative, to which is appended a memorial signed by Benard de La Harpe. It is generally quoted as “La Harpe.” The narrative is founded largely upon the journals of Le Sueur and La Harpe, though it is evident that the author had other sources of information. Within its pages may be found a record of all the expeditions despatched by the colony to the Red River region and to the coast of Texas.[85] The work of compilation was done by a clear-headed, methodical man. Margry quotes from the work, and attributes its authorship to “le Chevalier de Beaurain, géographe du roy.”[86] Manuscript copies of this work, under the title Journal historique concernant l’établissement des Français à la Louisiane, tiré des mémoires de Messieurs D’Iberville et De Bienville, commandants pour le roy au dit pays, et sur les[64] découvertes et recherches de M. Benard de la Harpe, nommé aux commandement de la Baye St. Bernard, are to be found in some of our libraries.[87]

Following the engraving in Shea’s Charlevoix, vol. i. [but now, 1893, thought to be Le Jeune].

The historians of Canada give but brief and inaccurate accounts of the early history of Louisiana. Ferland repeats the errors of Charlevoix even to the “fourth voyage of Iberville.” Garneau leaves the Natchez in possession of their fort at the end of the first campaign.[88]

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Judge François-Xavier Martin, in the History of Louisiana from the Earliest Period, 2 vols. (New Orleans, 1827-1829), followed closely the authorities accessible to him when he wrote; his work is a complete, and in the main accurate, compendium of the materials at his command. A new edition was published at New Orleans in 1882, entitled: The History of Louisiana from the Earliest Period. With a Memoir of the Author by W. W. Howe. To which is appended, Annals of Louisiana from 1815 to 1861, by J. F. Condon.

Charles Gayarré is the author of two distinct works which must not be confounded. Louisiana, its Colonial History and Romance,[89] is a history of colonial romance rather than a history of the colony. The Histoire de la Louisiane[90] is an essentially different book. It is mainly composed of transcripts from original documents, woven together with a slender thread of narrative. He states in his Preface that he has sought to remove from sight his identity as a writer, and to let the contemporaries tell the story themselves. References to Gayarré in this chapter are exclusively made to the Histoire, which was brought down to 1770. His final work (reprinted in 1885) was in English, and was continued to 1861.[91] In this edition two volumes are given to the French domination, one to the Spanish, and one to the American.[92]

A little volume entitled Recueil d’arrests et autres pièces pour l’établissement de la compagnie d’occident was published in Amsterdam in 1720. It contains many of the important edicts and decrees which relate to the foundation and growth of this remarkable Company.

The presence of Le Page du Pratz in the colony for sixteen years (1718 to 1734) gives to his Histoire de la Louisiane[93] a value which his manifest egotism and whimsical theories cannot entirely obscure. It was an authority in the boundary discussions.[94]

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MOUTHS OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

[Part of a map in Le Page du Pratz’ Histoire de la Louisiane (1758), i. 139. Cf. also the Carte des embouchures du Mississipi, by N. Bellin, given (1744) in Charlevoix’ Nouvelle France, iii. 442. In the same volume (p. 469) is the “Partie de la coste de la Louisiane et de la Floride,” giving the coast from the mouths of the Mississippi to Apalache Bay. In 1759 Jefferys gave in the margin of his reproduction of La Tour’s map of New Orleans a map of the Mississippi from Bayagoula to the sea, and of the east mouth of the river, with the fort La Balise.—Ed.]

Dumont, whose Mémoires historiques sur la Louisiane[95] were edited by M. L. Le M. (said to have been L’Abbé Le Mascrier), was in the military service in the colony. In the Journal historique, etc., mention is made of a sub-lieutenant Dumont de Montigny[96][67] at the post at Yazoo. The author was stationed at this post, and accompanied La Harpe up the Arkansas. The statement made in biographical works that Butel Dumont,[97] who was born in 1725, was the author, is manifestly incorrect. Both Dumont and Le Page were contributors to the Journal œconomique, a Paris periodical of the day. We are able positively to identify him as Dumont de Montigny, through an article on the manner in which the Indians of Louisiana dress and tan skins, in that journal, August, 1752. Dumont had a correspondence with Buache the cartographer[98] on the subject of the great controversy of the day,—the sea of the west and the northwest passage. Dumont was fond of a good-sounding story;[99] and his book, like that of Le Page depends for its value largely upon the interest of his personal experiences. Another book of the same class is the Nouveaux voyages aux Indes occidentales,[100] by M. Bossu. The author, an army officer, was first sent up the Tombigbee, and afterward attached to the forces which were posted in Illinois, and was there when Villiers marched on Fort Necessity. He was in the colony twelve years, and bore a good reputation.

The work entitled État présent de la Louisiane, avec toutes les particularités de cette province d’Amérique, par le Colonel Chevalier de Champigny (A la Haye, 1776), has been generally quoted as if Champigny were the author. In an editorial introduction Champigny says the text and the notes were furnished him in manuscript by an English officer. In the body of the work the statement is made by the author that he accompanied the English forces which took possession of the colony after its cession to England. This work is cited by Mr. Adams in the boundary discussion.

The Mémoire historique et politique de la Louisiane, by M. de Vergennes, minister of Louis XVI. (Paris, 1802), contains a brief historical sketch of the colony, intended only for the eye of His Majesty. Its wholesome comments on the French troops and on French treatment of the Indians are refreshing to read.[101] They would not have been so frank, perhaps, if the work had been intended for publication.

In his Early Voyages Up and Down the Mississippi (Albany, 1861) Dr. Shea has collected, translated, and annotated various relations concerning the voyages of Cavelier, De Montigny de Saint-Cosme, Le Sueur, Gravier, and Guignas.[102]

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A number of the relations in the Lettres édifiantes et curieuses cover portions of the period and territory of this chapter. These have been collected and translated by Bishop Kip in the Early Jesuit Missions (Albany, 1866). To avoid repetition, he has made certain abridgments. Some of the material thus left out has value to the student of the early history of Illinois.[103]

Major Amos Stoddard, in his Sketches Historical and Descriptive of Louisiana (Philadelphia, 1812), furnished an unostentatious and modest book, which has been freely quoted.

The Relation du voyage des dames religieuses Ursulines de Rouen, etc. (Paris, 1872), with an introduction and notes by Gabriel Gravier, is an exact reprint of a publication at Rouen in 1728 of certain letters of Marie Madeleine Hachard, sœur Saint-Stanislas, to her father. The account of the tedious journey of the nuns from Paris to Orient, and of their perilous voyage to New Orleans, was worth preservation. M. Gravier has performed his part of the work with the evident satisfaction which such a task would afford a bibliophile and an antiquary. His introductory chapter contains a condensed history of Louisiana down to 1727, and is strongly fortified with quotations. He acknowledges himself to be indebted to M. Boimare for a great number of valuable unpublished documents relating to the foundation of New Orleans. Greater familiarity with his subject would have enabled him to escape several errors of date and of statement into which he has been led by authorities whose carelessness he apparently did not suspect. The memorial concerning the Church in Louisiana (note 1, p. 113 et seq.) is a document of great value and interest. M. Gravier (p. lvi) states that the Relation is substantially the same as the Relation du voyage des fondatrices de la Nouvelle Orléans, écrite aux Ursulines de France, par la première supérieure, la mère St. Augustin, which was reprinted by Dr. Shea in an edition of one hundred copies in 1859, under the general title of Relation du voyage des premières Ursulines à la Nouvelle Orléans et de leur établissement en cette ville [1727], par la Rev. Mère St. A. de Tranchepain; avec les lettres circulaires de quelquesunes de ses sœurs, et de la dite mère (62 pp.).

The History of the American Indians, particularly those Nations adjoining to the Mississippi, East and West Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina, and Virginia, etc., by James Adair, who was forty years in the country, is a work of great value, showing the relations of the English traders to the Indians, and is of much importance to the student of Indian customs.[104]

The Géologie pratique de la Louisiane, by R. Thomassy (New Orleans and Paris, 1860), contains copies of some rare documents which were first made public in this volume.

The Histoire de la Louisiane[105] by M. Barbé Marbois is so brief in its treatment of the period covered by this chapter that very little can be gained from consulting that portion of the book.

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A work entitled De la puissance Américaine, by M. Guillaume-Tell Poussin, was published at Paris in 1843. A translation was printed at Philadelphia in 1851. The writer, from his familiarity with this country, was especially fitted to give a French view of our history. His chapter on Louisiana shows that he had access to the treasures of the Paris Archives. Its value, however, is diminished by the fact that he is inexact in his details.

Daniel Coxe, the son of Dr. Coxe, the claimant of the Carolana grant, published in London in 1722 A Description of the English Province of Carolana, by the Spaniards call’d Florida, and by the French La Louisiane.[106] The body of the text is devoted to a description of the attractions of the province to the emigrant. The preface contains an account of the entrance of the Mississippi by the vessel which was turned back by Bienville. The appendix is an argument in favor of the claimant’s title to the grant, and of England’s title to the Mississippi Valley. It contains a curious story of a Massachusetts expedition to New Mexico in 1678, and a claim that La Salle’s guides were Indians who accompanied that expedition.[107]

The official correspondence concerning the Louisiana boundary question may be found in Waite’s American State Papers and Public Documents (Boston, 1815-1819), vol. xii. The temperate statements of Don Pedro Cevallos are in strong contrast with the extravagant assumptions of Luis de Orris, who even cites as authority the mythical Admiral Fonte.[108] Yoakum, in his History of Texas (New York, 1856), goes over this ground, and publishes in his appendix an interesting document from the archives of Bexar.

Illinois in the Eighteenth Century, by Edward G. Mason (Fergus Historical Series, no. 12), Chicago, 1881, has two papers dealing with the topics of this chapter: “Kaskaskia and its parish records” and “Old Fort Chartres.” The recital of the grants, the marriages, and the christenings at Kaskaskia and St. Anne brings us close to Boisbriant, Artaguette, and the other French leaders whose lives are interwoven with the narrative of events in Illinois. The description of Fort Chartres is by far the best extant. The work of rescuing from oblivion this obscure phase of Illinois history has been faithfully performed.

The following works have been freely used by writers upon the early history of Illinois and the Illinois villages and forts:—

The Administration of the Colonies, by Thomas Pownall, 2d ed. (London, 1765). The appendix, section 1, deals with the subject of this chapter.

A Topographical Description of North America, by T. Pownall (London, 1776). Appendix, no. 4, p. 4, Captain Harry Gordon’s Journal, describes the fort and villages.

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COXE’S CAROLANA.

[Part of the Map of Carolana and of the River Meschacebe, in Daniel Coxe’s Description of the English Province of Carolana, London, 1742—Ed.]

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Thomas Hutchins has also published two books,—An Historical Narrative and Topographical Description of Louisiana, etc. (Philadelphia, 1784), and A Topographical Description, etc. (London, 1778).

Captain Philip Pittman prepared a report on The Present State of the European Settlements on the Mississippi. It was published in London, in 1770. It is embellished with charts of the river and plans of several of the forts and villages.[109]

Also Sketches of History, Life and Manners in the West, by James Hall (Philadelphia, 1835), who visited the fort in 1829.

The Early History of Illinois, by Sidney Breese, contains an interesting description of French life in Illinois.[110] See also a chapter on the same subject in Davidson and Stuvé’s Complete History of Illinois (Springfield, 1874). The History of the Discovery and Settlement of the Mississippi Valley, by John W. Monette (New York, 1846), also has an elaborate sketch of the settlement of Louisiana and Illinois.[111]

Mississippi as a Province, Territory, and State, by J. F. H. Claiborne (1880), devotes considerable space to the Province.

Extracts from a memoir by M. Marigny de Mandeville may be found in several of the histories of Louisiana of colonial times. In a note in Bossu[112] it is stated that such a work was published in Paris in 1765.

The story of Saint-Denys’ experiences in Mexico is told in H. H. Bancroft’s North Mexican States, p. 612 et seq., in which the sources of information are mainly Mexican and Spanish. The hero of Penicaut’s romances, viewed from this standpoint, becomes a mere smuggler.

Under the title Historical Collections of Louisiana, etc., Mr. B. F. French, in the years 1846-1875, inclusive, published seven volumes containing reprints and translations of original documents and rare books. Mr. French was a pioneer in a class of work the value of which has come to be fully appreciated. His Collections close a gap on the shelves of many libraries which it would be difficult otherwise to fill. The work was necessarily an education to him, and in some instances new material which came to his hands revealed errors in previous annotations.[113] The value of the work would have been increased if abridgments and omissions had been noted.[114] The translation of the Journal[72] historique, etc., given in the collection was made from the manuscript copy in the library of the American Philosophical Society at Philadelphia.[115] The Penicaut relation differs materially from the copy published by Margry.[116] The labors of Mr. French, as a whole, have been of great service to students of American history.[117]

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The fourth and fifth volumes[118] of Pierre Margry’s Découvertes et établissements des Français dans l’ouest et dans le sud de l’Amérique septentrionale contain the material upon which so much of this chapter as relates to Iberville’s expeditions is founded. We have here Iberville’s correspondence with the minister, his memorials, the instructions given to him, and his reports.[119] There are also some of Bienville’s despatches, and the correspondence with the engineer about New Orleans and about the bar at the mouth of the river. The publication of these volumes has enabled us to correct several minor errors which have been transmitted from the earlier chroniclers. Interesting as the volumes are, and close as their scrutiny brings us to the daily life of the celebrated explorer, it is not easy to understand why their contents should have been shrouded with such a profound mystery prior to their publication.[120]

The periodicals and tracts of the eighteenth century contain many historical articles and geographical discussions, from which historical gleaners may yet procure new facts.[121] The manuscripts in the Archives at Paris have by no means been exhausted. Harrisse, in his Notes pour servir à l’histoire, etc., de la Nouvelle France (Paris, 1872), gives an account of the vicissitudes which they have undergone. He traces the history of the formation of the Archives of the Marine and of the Colonies and points out the protecting and organizing care, which Colbert during his ministry devoted through intelligent deputies to the arranging of those documentary sources, among which the modern historian finds all that the Revolution of 1789 has left to him.

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The copies which from time to time have been procured from France for the State Archives of Louisiana have so generally disappeared, particularly during the Federal occupation, that but a small portion of them still remains in the State Library.[122]

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EDITORIAL NOTES.

JOHN LAW.

Copied from the head of a full-length portrait in Het Groote Taferel. Rigaud’s portrait of Law is engraved in Alphonse Courtois’ Histoire des banques en France, 2d ed. (Paris, 1881). Cf. also the print in Mouffle d’Angerville’s Vie privée de Louis XV. (Londres, 1781), vol. 1. p. 53.

I. Law and the Mississippi Bubble.—The literature of the Mississippi Scheme is extensive, and includes the relations of Law’s system to general monetary science. The Mississippi excitement instigated the South Sea Scheme in England. Holland, also, was largely affected, and gave, as well as England and France, considerable additions to the contemporary mass of brochures which grew out of these financial revolutions. Law’s own pleas and expositions, as issued in pamphlets, are the central sources of his own views or pretensions, and are included in the Œuvres de J. Law, published at Paris in 1790. These writings are again found in Daire’s Économistes financiers; where will also be met the Essai politique sur le commerce of Melon, Law’s secretary,—a production which Levasseur styles an allegorical history of the system,—and the Réflexions politiques sur les finances et le commerce of Dutot, another of Law’s partisans, who was one of the cashiers of the Company of the Indies, and undertook to correct what he thought misconceptions in Melon; and he was in turn criticised by an opponent[76] of Law, Paris Duverney, in a little book printed at the Hague in 1740, as Examen du livre intitulé, etc.

Law’s proposal for his Mississippi Company is also included in a Dutch collection of similar propositions, printed at the Hague in 1721 as Verzameling van alle de projecten en conditien van de compagnien van assuratie, etc.

There are various Lettres patentes, Édits, Arrests, Ordonnances, etc., issued separately by the French Government, some of which are included in a volume published at Amsterdam in 1720,—Recueil d’arrests et autres pièces pour l’établissement de la compagnie d’occident. Others will be found, by title at least, in the Recueil général des anciennes lois Françoises (Paris, 1830), vol. xxi., with the preambles given at length of some of the more important. Neither of these collections is complete, nor does that of Duhautchamp take their place; but all three, doubtless, contain the chief of such documents.

A few of the contemporary publications may be noted:—

Some Considerations on the Consequences of the French settling Colonies on the Mississippi, from a Gentleman [Beresford] of America to his Friend in London, London, 1720 (Carter-Brown, vol. iii. no. 275).

Impartial Inquiry into the Right of the French King to the Territory west of the Mississippi (London, n. d.).

The Chimera; or, the French way of paying National Debts laid open (London, 1720).

Full and Impartial Account of the Company of the Mississippi ... projected and settled by Mr. Law. To which is added a Description of the Country of the Mississippi and a Relation of the Discovery of it, in Two Letters from a Gentleman to his Friend (London, 1720). In French and English (cf. Carter-Brown, vol. iii. no. 276). This is an incentive to the speculation.

Historische und geographische Beschreibung des an dem grossen Flusse Mississippi in Nord America gelegenen herrlichen Landes Louisiana, etc. (Leipsic, 1720) 8vo. It has a map of Louisiana. There was a second edition the same year in 12mo, with Ausführliche beginning a title otherwise the same (Carter-Brown, vol. iii. nos. 277, 278). It has an appendix, Remarques über den Mississippischen Actien-Handel, which is a translation of a section on Louisiana in Aanmerkigen over den koophandel en het geldt, published at Amsterdam (Muller, Books on America, 1872, nos. 915, 916; 1877, no. 1817).

Le banquerotteur en desespoir; Das ist, der versweifflende Banquerottirer, etc., with a long explanation in German of the lament of a victim, dated 1720, without place, and purporting to be printed from a Dutch copy (cf. Carter-Brown, ii. 258).

Het Groote Tafereel der Dwaasheid, vertoonende de opkomst, voortgang en ondergang der Actie, Bubbel en Windnegotie in Vrankryk, Engeland en de Nederlanden, gepleegt in dem Jaare DDCCXX. (1720). This is a folio volume of satire, interesting for its plates, most of which are burlesques; but among them are a full-length portrait of Law, another of Mrs. Law in her finery, and a map of Louisiana. There is a copy in Harvard College Library. Cf. Carter-Brown, vol. iii. no. 270; Muller, Books on America (1872), no. 1503.

There is in the Boston Public Library a contemporary manuscript entitled, Mémoire d’après les voyages par Charles Le Gac, directeur de la Comp. des Indes à la Louisiane, sur la Louisiane, sa géographie, la situation de la colonie Française, du 26 aoust 1718 au 6 mars 1721, et des moyens de l’améliorer. Manuscrit redigé en 1722. Le Gac was the agent of Law’s Company during these years.

The earliest personal sketch which we have noted is a Leven en character van J. Law (Amsterdam, 1722).

A Sketch of the Life and Projects of John Law was published in Edinburgh in 1791, afterward included in J. P. Wood’s Ancient and Modern State of the Parish of Cramond (Edinburgh, 1794), and the foundation of the later Life of John Law of Lauriston, published by Wood at Edinburgh in 1824. This may be supplemented in some points by Chambers’s Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen.

Professor Smyth found, when he assigned one of his Lectures on Modern History (no. 27) to Law and his exploits, that he got at that time the best exposition for his system in English from Steuart’s Political Economy. The latest summarized statement in English will be found in Lalor’s Cyclopædia of Political Science, vol. ii. (1883), and a good one in Mackay’s Popular Delusions. The general historians of England, more particularly Stanhope, do not tell the story of the great imitatory pageant of the South Sea Scheme without more or less reference to Law. Those of the United States necessarily recount the train of events in Paris, of which Louisiana was the background. A few English monographs, like J. Murray’s French Financiers under Louis XV., and an anonymous book, Law, the Financier, his Scheme and Times (London, 1856), cover specially the great projector’s career; while the best key to his fate at the hands of magazinists will be found in Poole’s Index to Periodical Literature (pp. 728, 854), where a popular exposition by Irving is noted, which having appeared in the Knickerbocker Magazine (vol. xv. pp. 305, 450), has since been included in the[77] volume of his works called Wolfert’s Roost, and other Papers.

In France the treatment of the great delusion has been frequent. The chief source of later writers has been perhaps Duhautchamp’s Histoire du systéme des finances (à la Haye, 1739), which, with his account of the Visa, makes a full exposition of the rise and fall of the excitement by one who was in the midst of it. His fifth and sixth volumes contain the most complete body of the legislation attending the movement. Forbonnais’ Recherches et considérations sur les finances de France à l’année 1721 (Basle, 1758) is a work of great research, and free from prejudice. The Encyclopédie méthodique (1783) in its essays on commerce and banking contributes valuable aid, and there is a critical review in Ch. Ganilh’s Essai sur le revenu public (Paris, 1806). To these may be added Bailly’s Histoire financière de la France (Paris, 1830); Eugène Daire’s “Notice historique sur Jean Law, ses écrits et les opérations du système,” in his Économistes financiers du dix-huitième siècle (1843); Théodore Vial’s Law, et le système du papier-monnaie de 1716 (1849); A. Cochut’s Law, son système et son époque (1853); J. B. H. R. Capefigue’s Histoire des grandes opérations financières (Paris, 1855), vol. i. p. 116; J. P. Clément’s Portraits historiques (1856); and le Baron Nervo’s Les finances Françaises (Paris, 1863). L. A. Thiers’ encyclopedic article on Law was translated and annotated by Frank S. Fiske as Memoir of the Mississippi Bubble, and published in New York in 1859. This is perhaps the best single book for an English reader, who may find in an appendix to it the account of the Darien Expedition from the Encyclopædia Britannica, and one of the South Sea Scheme from Mackay’s Popular Delusions. Thiers’ French text was at the same time revised and published separately in Paris in 1858. Among other French monographs P. E. Levasseur’s Recherches historiques sur le système de Law (Paris, 1854, and again, 1857) is perhaps the most complete treatment which the subject has yet received. We may further add Jules Michelet’s “Paris et la France sous Law” in the Revue de deux mondes, 1863, vol. xliv.; and the general histories of France, notably Martin’s and Guizot’s, of which there are English versions; the special works on the reign of Louis XV., like De Tocqueville’s; P. E. Lémontey’s Histoire de la Régence (Paris, 1832); J. F. Marmontel’s Régence du duc de Orléans (1805), vol. i. p. 168; and the conglomerate monograph of La Croix, Dix-huitième siècle (Paris, 1875), chap. viii. Law finds his most vigorous defender in Louis Blanc, in a chapter of the introduction to his Révolution Française.

The Germans have not made their treatment of the subject very prominent, but reference may be made to J. Heymann’s Law und sein System (1853).

The strong dramatic contrasts of Law’s career have served the English novelist Ainsworth in a story which is known by the projector’s name; but the reader will better get all the contrasts and extraordinary vicissitudes of the social concomitants of the time in the Mémoires of St. Simon, Richelieu, Pollnitz, Barbier, Dangeau, Duclos, and others.

The familiarity of Mr. Davis with the subject has been of great assistance to the Editor in making this survey.

II. The Story of Moncacht-Apé.—The writer of this chapter has, in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, April 25, 1883, printed a paper on the story of Moncacht-Apé,—an Indian of the Yazoo tribe, who claimed to have made a journey from the Mississippi to the Pacific about the year 1700, which paper has also been printed separately as The Journey of Moncacht-Apé. The story, which first appeared in Le Page du Pratz’ contributions to the Journal œconomique, and first took permanent form in Dumont’s Mémoires in 1753, was made in part to depend for its ethnological interest on the Yazoo marrying a captive Indian, who tells him a story of bearded white men being seen on the Pacific coast. That the Yazoo himself encountered on the Pacific coast a bearded people who came there annually in ships for dye-wood, is derived from the fuller narrative which Le Page du Pratz himself gives in his Histoire de la Louisiane published five years later, in 1758.

Mr. Davis does not find any consideration of the verity of the story till Samuel Engel discussed it in his Mémoires et observations géographiques, published at Lausanne in 1765, which had a chart showing what he conceived to be the route of the Indian, as Le Page du Pratz had traced it, in tracking him from the Missouri to the streams which feed the Columbia River. The story was later examined by Mr. Andrew Stewart in The Transactions of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, i. 198 (1829), who accepted the tale as truthful; and Greenhow, in his History of Oregon (Boston, 1844, p. 145), rejects as improbable only the ending as Dumont gives it. In 1881, when M. de Quatrefage rehearsed the story in the Revue d’anthropologie, vol. iv., he argued that the bearded men must have been Japanese. It was this paper of the distinguished French anthropologist which incited Mr. Davis to the study of the narrative; and it is by his discrimination that we are reminded how the story grew to have the suspicious termination, after Le Page had communicated it to Dumont; so that in Mr. Davis’s judgment one is “forced[78] to the unwilling conclusion that the original story of the savage suffered changes at Le Page’s hands.” The story has since been examined by H. H. Bancroft in his Northwest Coast, i. 599 et seq., who sees no reason to doubt the truth of the narrative.

There is an account of the early maps of the country west of Lake Superior and of the headwaters of the Mississippi in Winchell’s Geological Survey of Minnesota, Final Report, vol. i., with a fac-simile of one of 1737. Between 1730 and 1740 Verendrye and his companions explored the country west and northwest of Lake Superior, and reached the Rocky Mountains. Mills, Boundaries of Ontario, p. 75, says he failed to find in the Moniteur, September and November, 1857, the account of Verendrye’s discoveries by Margry, to which Garneau refers.

[79]

CARTOGRAPHY

OF

LOUISIANA AND THE MISSISSIPPI BASIN UNDER THE FRENCH DOMINATION.

BY THE EDITOR.

THE original spelling of the name Mississippi, the nearest approach to the Algonquin word, is Mêché Sébè,[123] a form still commonly used by the Louisiana creoles. Tonty suggested Miche Sepe; Father Laval, Michisepe, which by Father Labatt was softened into Misisipi. Marquette added the first s in Missisipi, and some other explorer a second in Mississipi, as it is spelled in France to-day. No one knows who added a second p in Mississippi, for it was generally spelled with one p when the United States bought Louisiana.[124]

In Vol. IV. of the present History the earliest maps of the Mississippi Basin are enumerated, and fac-similes or sketches of the following may be seen in that volume:—

1672-73 (p. 221). An anonymous map of the course of the Mississippi, which is also to be found in Breese’s Early Hist. of Illinois. Other early maps, without date, are noted in Vol. IV. at pp. 206, 215.

1673-74 (pp. 208, 212, 214, 218). Joliet’s maps; and (p. 220) Marquette’s map, which has since been reproduced in Andreas’s Chicago, i. p. 47.

1682-84-88 (pp. 227, 228, 230, 231). Franquelin’s maps,—the last of which has since been reproduced in Winchell’s Geological Survey of Minnesota, Final Report, i. pl. 2.

1683-97 (pp. 249, 251, 252, 253). Hennepin’s maps, also to be found in Winchell and Breese.

1685 (p. 237). Minet’s map; and without date (p. 235) the map of Raudin. The map which accompanied Joutel’s Journal in 1713 also gave the topography of the time of Lasalle. (See p. 240.)

1688 (p. 232). The map of Coronelli and Tillemon; and (p. 233) that of Raffeix.

1702 (p. 394). The map in Campanius.

1703-1709 (pp. 258, 259, 260, 261). Maps in Lahontan.

It is in continuation of this series, which includes others not here mentioned, that the following enumeration is offered of the cartographical results which controlled and developed the maps of the eighteenth century.

The plates of the maps of Nicolas Sanson, who had died in 1667,[125] were towards the end of that century in the hands of Hubert Jaillot, who was later a royal geographer of France.[126] He published in Paris, in 1692, what passes for Sanson’s Amérique Septentrionale, with adaptations to contemporary knowledge of American geography. It naturally augments the claims of the French to the disputed areas of the continent. It was reissued at Amsterdam not long after as “Dressée sur les observations de M^rs de l’Academie Royale des Sciences.” The plate was long in use in Amsterdam, and I have noticed reissues as late as 1755 by Ottens.

The English claims to the westward at this time will be seen in “The Plantations of England in America,” contained in Edward Wells’ New Sett of Maps, London, 1698-99.[127]

The most distinguished French cartographers[80] of the early part of the eighteenth century were the father and son, Claude and Guillaume Delisle. The father, Claude, died in 1720 at 76; the son, six years later, in 1726, at 51.[128] Their maps of Amérique Septentrionale were published at Paris of various dates in the first quarter of the century, and were reissued at Amsterdam.[129] Their Carte de la Louisiane et du Cours du Mississipi appeared first at Paris in 1703, and amended copies appeared at various later dates.[130] Thomassy[131] refers to an original draft by Guillaume Delisle, Carte de la rivière du Mississipi, dressée sur les mémoires de M. Le Sueur, 1702, which is preserved in the Archives Scientifiques de la Marine, at Paris. Thomassy (p. 211) also refers to an edition of Delisle’s Carte de la Louisiane, published in June, 1718, by the Compagnie d’Occident. Gov. Burnet wrote of this map to the Lords of Trade[132], that Delisle had taken from the borders of New York and Pennsylvania fifty leagues of territory, which he had allowed to the English in his map of 1703.

There is an Amsterdam edition (1722) of Delisle’s Carte du Mexique et de La Floride, des Terres Angloises et des Isles Antilles, du Cours et des Environs de la Rivière de Mississipi, measuring 24 × 19 inches, which includes nearly the whole of North America.

Nicholas de Fer was at this time the royal geographer of Belgium, 1701-1716.[133] We note several of his maps:—

Les Costes aux Environs de la Rivière de Misissipi, par N. de Fer, 1701. This extends from Cape Roman (Carolina) to the Texas coast, and shows the Mississippi up to the “Nihata” village. There is a copy in the Sparks MSS., vol. xxviii.

Le Vieux Mexique avec les Costes de la Floride, par N. de Fer, 1705. This extends south to the Isthmus of Panama. There is a copy in the Sparks MSS., vol. xxviii.

Le Canada ou Nouvelle France, Paris, 1705. There is a copy in the Sparks MSS., vol. xxviii. It shows North America from Labrador to Florida, and includes the Mississippi valley. The region west of the Alleghanies is given to France, as well as the water-shed of the lower St. Lawrence.

De Fer also published, in 1717, Le Golfe de Mexique et les provinces et isles qui l’environne [sic].

In 1718 his Le Cours du Mississipi ou de Saint Louis was published by the Compagnie d’Occident.

Making a part of Herman Moll’s New and exact Map of the Dominions of the King of Great Britain on the Continent of North America, measuring 24 × 40 inches, issued in 1715, was a lesser draft called Louisiana, with the indian settlements and number of fighting men according to the account of Capt. T. Nearn.[134]

When Moll, in 1720, published his New Map of the North Parts of America claimed by France under the name of Louisiana, Mississippi, Canada, and New France, with the adjoining territories of England and Spain (measuring 24 × 40 inches), he said that a great part of it was taken from “the original draughts of Mr. Blackmore, the ingenious Mr. Berisford, now residing in Carolina, Capt. Nairn, and others never before published.” He adds that the southwest part followed a map by Delisle, published in Paris in June, 1718.[135]

In 1719 the Sieur Diron made observations for a map preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, Fleuve Saint Louis, ci-devant Mississipi, showing the course of the river from New Orleans to Cahokia, which was not drawn, however, till 1732.[136] About the same time (1719-20) the surveys of M. De Sérigny were used in another map, preserved in the Archives Scientifiques de la Marine, Carte des[81] Côtes de la Louisiane depuis les bouches du Mississipi jusqu’à la baie de Saint-Joseph. Part of the gulf shore of this map is reproduced in Thomassy (plate ii.).

The year 1719 is also assigned to John Senex’s Map of Louisiana and the river Mississipi, most humbly inscribed to Law of Lawreston, measuring 22 X 19 inches.[137]

Gerard van Keulen published at Amsterdam, in 1720, a large map, in two sheets, Carte de la Nouvelle France ou se voit le cours des grandes Rivières Mississipi et S. Laurens, with annotations on the French fortified posts.

At Paris, in November, 1720, De Beauvilliers took the observations of La Harpe and drafted a Carte nouvelle de la parte de l’ouest de la province de la Louisiane.[138]

The map of Coxe’s Carolana, 1722, is given in fac-simile on an earlier page (ante, p. 70).

The Memoirs of John Ker of Kersland (London, 1726) contain a “new map of Louisiana, and the river Mississipi.”[139]

The map in La Potherie’s Histoire de l’Amérique Septentrionale (Paris, 1722, vol. ii.), called “Carte généralle de la Nouvelle France,” retains the misplacement of the mouths of the Mississippi, as La Salle had conceived them to be on the western shore of the gulf, giving the name “Baye de Spiritu Sancto” to an inlet more nearly in the true position of its mouths.

Thomassy[140] points out that William Darby, in his Geographical Description of Louisiana (2d ed. 1817), in reproducing Jean Baptiste Homann’s map of Louisiana, published at Nuremberg as the earliest of the country which he could find, was unfortunate in accepting for such purpose a mere perversion of the earlier and original French maps. Homann, moreover, was one of those geographers of easy conscience, who never or seldom date a map, and the German cartographer seems in this instance to have done little more than reëngrave the map which accompanied the Paris publication of Joutel’s Journal historique, in 1713. Homann’s map, called Amplisimæ regionis Mississipi seu Provinciæ Ludovicianæ a Hennepin detectæ anno 1687, was published not far from 1730, and extending so as to include Acadia, Lake Superior, and Texas, defines the respective bounds of the English, French, and Spanish possessions.[141]

When Moll published his New Survey of the Globe, in 1729, he included in it (no. 27) a map of New France and Louisiana, showing how they hemmed in the English colonies.

Henry Popple’s Map of the British Empire in America, with the French and Spanish Settlements adjacent thereto, was issued in London in twenty sheets, under the patronage of the Lords of Trade, in 1732; and reissued in 1733 and 1740.[142] A reproduction was published at Amsterdam, about 1737, by Covens and Mortier. Popple’s map was for the Mississippi valley, in large part based on Delisle’s map of 1718.

Jean Baptiste D’Anville was in the early prime of his activity when the Delisles passed off the stage, having been born in 1697, and a long life was before him, for he did not die till 1782, having gained the name of being the first to raise geography to the dignity of an exact science.[143] He had an instinct for physical geography, and gained credit for his critical discrimination between conflicting reports, which final surveys verified. His principal Carte de la Louisiane was issued as “Dressée en 1732; publiée en 1752.”[144] His map of Amérique Septentrionale usually bears date 1746-48; and a new draft of it, with improvements, was published at Nuremberg in 1756.

A map made by Dumont de Montigny about 1740, Carte de la province de la Louisiane, autrefois le Mississipi, preserved in the Dépôt de la Marine at Paris, is said by Thomassy (p. 217) to be more valuable for its historical legends than for its geography.

In 1744 the maps of Nicolas Bellin were attached to the Nouvelle France of Charlevoix, and they include, beside the map of North America, a Carte de la Louisiane, Cours du Mississipi, et pais voisins.[145] Bellin’s Carte des embouchures[82] du fleuve Saint-Louis (1744) is based on a draft by Buache (1732), following an original manuscript (1731) preserved in the Archives Scientifiques de la Marine, in Paris.

Bellin also dates in 1750 a Carte de la Louisiane et des pays voisins, and in an atlas of his, Amérique Septentrionale, Atlas maritime, published in 1764 by order of the Duc de Choiseul, Bellin includes various other and even earlier maps of Louisiana.[146]

Thomassy[147] also refers to a MS. map in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Carte de la Coste et Province de la Louisiane, dated at New Orleans, October 5, 1746, which is not, however, of much value.

There is a “Carte de la Louisiane” in Dumont de Montigny’s Mémoires historiques de la Louisiane, vol. i. (1753), a fac-simile of which is given herewith. It perhaps follows the one referred to above.

LOUISIANA. (Dumont.)

[83]

There is on a later page a fac-simile of the map, showing the carrying-place between the St. Lawrence and Mississippi valleys, which appeared in the London (1747 and 1755) editions of Cadwallader Colden’s History of the Five Indian Nations of Canada.

The controversy over the bounds of the French and English possessions, which was so unproductive of results in 1755, caused a large number of maps to be issued, representing the interests of either side. The French claimed in the main the water-shed of the St. Lawrence and the lakes, and that of the Mississippi and its tributaries. The English conceded to them a southern limit following the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa, thence across Huron and Michigan, to the Illinois, descending that river to the Mississippi; and consequently denied them the southern water-shed of the St. Lawrence and most of the eastern water-shed of the Mississippi.

On the French side the following maps may be named:—

The great D’Anville map, Canada, Louisiane, et les terres anglaises, which was followed in the next year (1756) by D’Anville’s Mémoire on the same map; Robert de Vaugondy’s Partie de l’Amérique Septentrionale qui comprend le Cours de l’Ohio, la N^lle Angleterre, la N^lle York, New Jersey, Pensylvanie, Maryland, Virginie, Caroline; Carte Nouvelle de l’Amérique Angloise contenant le Canada, la Nouvelle Ecosse ou Acadie, les treize Provinces unies, avec la Floride, par Matthieu Albert Lotter, published at Augsburg, without date; Carte des possessions Angloises et Françoises du Continent de l’Amérique Septentrionale, published by Ottens at Amsterdam, 1755; Carte de l’Amérique Septentrionale, par M. Bellin, 1755; in the same year the Partie Orientale, et partie Occidentale de la Nouvelle France ou du Canada, likewise by Bellin;[148] and the Carte de la Louisiane par le Sieur Bellin, 1750, sur de nouvelles Observations on a corrigé les lacs, et leurs environs, 1755; Canada et Louisiane, par le Sieur le Rouge, ingénieur géographe du Roi, Paris, 1755, with a marginal map of the Mississippi River.

In the English interests there were several leading maps: A new and accurate map of North America (wherein the errors of all preceding British, French, and Dutch maps respecting the rights of Great Britain, France, and Spain, and the limits of each of His Majesty’s Provinces are corrected), by Huske. This was engraved by Thomas Kitchin, and published by Dodsley at London, 1755. It gives the names of the French trading posts and stations. John Huske also printed The Present State of North America, Part I., London, 1755, which appeared in a 2d edition the same year with emendations, giving Huske’s map, colored, leaving the encroachments of the French uncolored. It was also reprinted in Boston, in the same year.[149]

Another is A map of the British Colonies in North America, with the roads, distances, limits, and extent of the settlements. This is John Mitchell’s map, in six sheets, engraved by Kitchin, published in London by Jefferys and Faden, 1755. John Pownall, under date of February 13, 1755, certifies to the approval of the Lords of Trade.[150] It was reëngraved, with improvements, a year or two later, at Amsterdam, by Covens and Mortier, under the title Map of the British and French Dominions in North America, on four sheets, with marginal plans of Quebec, Halifax, Louisbourg, etc.[151]

Lewis Evans issued his General Map of the Middle British Colonies in America in 1755,[152][84] and it was forwarded to Braddock after he had taken the field, for his assistance in entering upon the disputed territory of the Ohio Valley,—indeed, its publication was hastened by that event, the preface of the accompanying pamphlet being dated Aug. 9, 1755.

HUSKE’S MAP, 1755.

This is sketched from the colored folding map in John Huske’s Present State of North America, &c., second edition, London, 1755. The easterly of the two pricked (dots) lines marks the limits within which the French claimed to confine the English seaboard colonies. Canada, or the region north of the St. Lawrence, east of the Ottawa, and south of the Hudson Bay Company and New Britain, together with the islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the northerly coasts of Newfoundland (to dry fish upon), constitute all that the British allowed to France. The stars represent the forts which they had established in the disputed territory; while the circle and dot show the frontier fortified posts of the English, as Huske gives them. The English claimed for the province of New York all the territory north of the Virginia line, west of Pennsylvania, and west of the Ottawa, and south of the Hudson Bay Company’s line. Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia extended indefinitely westward. The northern line of Virginia was established by the charter of 1606; the southern bounds mark where the Carolina charter of 1665 begins, and the bounds of Spanish Florida denote that charter’s southern limit, the territory being divided by the subsequent grant of Georgia. The space between the pricked line, already mentioned, and the other pricked line, which follows the Mississippi River to the north, is the land which is called in a legend on the map the hereditary and conquered country of the Iroquois, which had been ceded by them to the British crown by treaties and a deed of sale (1701), and confirmed by the treaties of Utrecht and Aix-la-Chapelle. Cf. Description of the English and French territories in North America, being an explanation of a new map, shewing the encroachments of the French, with their Forts and Usurpations on the English settlements; and the fortifications of the latter. Dublin, 1755 (Carter-Brown, iii. 1056).

Jefferys pirated Evans’ map, and published it in 1758, “with improvements by I. Gibson,” and in this form it is included in Jefferys’ General Topography of North America and the West Indies, London, 1768. Pownall, who was accused of procuring the dedication of the original[85] issue by “a valuable consideration” (Mass. Hist. Coll., vii. 136), called Jefferys’ reproduction badly done, and reissued Evans’ work in 1776, under the following title: A map of the Middle British Colonies in North America, first published by Mr. Lewis Evans of Philadelphia in 1755, and since corrected and improved, as also extended ... from actual surveys now lying at the Board of Trade, by T. Pownall, M. P., Printed and published for J. Almon, London, March 25, 1776. In this form the original plate was used as “Engraved by James Turner in Philadelphia,” embodying some corrections, while the extensions consisted of an additional engraved sheet, carrying the New England coasts from Buzzard’s to Passamaquoddy Bay.

A French copy, with amendments, was published in 1777.[153]

The map was also reëngraved in London, “carefully copied from the original published at Philadelphia by Mr. Lewis Evans.” It omits the dedication to Pownall, and is inscribed “Printed for Carrington Bowles, London; published, Jan. 1, 1771.” It has various legends not on Evans’ map, and omits some details, notwithstanding its professed correspondence. Evans had used the Greek character [Greek: ch] to express the gh of the Indian names, which is rendered in the Bowles map ch.

Another plate of Evans’ map was engraved in London, and published there by Sayer and Bennett, Oct. 15, 1776, to show the “seat of war.” It covers the same field as the map of 1755, and uses the same main title; but it is claimed to have been “improved from several surveys made after the late war, and corrected from Governor Pownall’s late map, 1776.” The side map is extended so as to include Lake Superior, and is called “A sketch of the upper parts of Canada.” Smith (1756) says: “Evans’ map and first pamphlet were published in the summer, 1755, and that part in favor of the French claim to Frontenac was attacked by two papers in the N. Y. Mercury, Jan. 5, 1756. This occasioned the publication of a second pamphlet the next spring, in which he endeavors to support his map.”[154]

Evans’ pamphlet is called Geographical, historical, political, philosophical, and mechanical essays. The first, containing an analysis of a general map of the middle British colonies in America; and of the country of the confederate Indians [etc.]. Philadelphia, 1755. iv. 32 pp. 4º. A second edition, with the title unchanged, appeared the same year, while “Part ii.” was published in the following year.[155]

By Gen. Shirley’s order N. Alexander made a map of the frontier posts from New York to Virginia, which is noted in the Catal. of the King’s maps (British Museum), ii. 24. This may be a duplicate of a MS. map said by Parkman (i. p. 422) to be in the Public Record office, America and West Indies, lxxxii., showing the position of thirty-five posts from the James River to Esopus on the Hudson.

Le Page du Pratz gave a “Carte de la Louisiane, par l’Auteur, 1757,” in his Histoire de la Louisiane (vol. i. p. 138), a part of which map is reproduced herewith. See also ante, p. 66.

In the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1757, p. 74, is “A map of that part of America which was the principal seat of war in 1756,” defining the Ottawa River as the bounds under the treaty of Utrecht.

Janvier’s L’Amérique, in 1760, carried the bounds of Louisiana to the Pacific.

Pouchot, in a letter dated at Montreal, April 14, 1758, describes a map, which he gives in his Mémoires, vol. iii., where it is called “Carte des frontières Françoises et Angloises dans le Canada depuis Montreal jusques au Fort Du Quesne.” It is reproduced in Dr. Hough’s translation of Pouchot, in the Pennsylvania Archives, second series, vi. p. 409, and in N. Y. Col. Hist., vol. x.

In 1760 Thomas Jefferys included a map of Canada and the north part of Louisiana in The Natural and Civil History of the French Dominion in North and South America, purporting to be “from the French of Mr. D’Anville, improved with the back settlements of Virginia and course of the Ohio, illustrated with geographical and historical remarks,” with marginal tables of “French Incroachments,” and “English titles to their settlements on the Continent.” This map ran the northern bounds of the English possessions along the St. Lawrence, up the Ottawa, across the lakes, and down the Illinois and the Mississippi. The northern bounds of Canada follow the height of land defining the southern limits of the Hudson Bay Company.

After the peace of 1763, Jefferys inserted copies of this map (dated 1762) in the Topography of North America and the West Indies (London, 1768), adding to it, “the boundaries of the Provinces since the Conquest laid down as settled by the King in Council.” The map of[86] 1762 is reproduced in Mills’ Boundaries of Ontario.[156]

Jefferys also gave in the same book (1768) a map of the mouths of the Mississippi and the neighboring coasts, which, he says, was taken from several Spanish and French drafts, compared with D’Anville’s of 1752 and with P. Laval’s Voyage à Louisiane.

LOUISIANA. (Le Page du Pratz.)

CHAPTER II.

NEW ENGLAND, 1689-1763.

BY JUSTIN WINSOR,

The Editor.

ANDROS, with Joseph Dudley and other satellites, made safe in Castle William, the revolution in New England was accomplished, and the veteran Simon Bradstreet was at the head of the old government on its sudden restoration (1689) to power.

The traditions of the charter-days were still strong among the country people, and their deputies in the resuscitated assembly brought into Boston the old spirit of independence to enliven the stifled atmosphere which the royal governor had spread upon the town. The new government was proposedly a provisional one to await the result of the revolution which seemed impending in England. If the policy of unwavering adherence to the old charter had been pursued with the constancy which characterized the advocacy of Elisha Cooke, the popular tribune of the day, the current of the New England history for the next few years might possibly have been changed. The sturdy assumption of political power did not follow the bold revolution which had prepared the way for it, and, professing dependence upon the royal will, all thoughts were now addressed to placate the new monarch, and regain by law what they had failed to achieve by a dogged assertion of right. King William, of whose accession they soon were notified, unhesitatingly, but for temporary service, confirmed the existing rulers.[157]

A command came for Andros to be sent to England, with a presentation of charges against him, and it was obeyed.[158] Increase Mather had already gone there to join Ashurst, the resident agent of the colony, and the people were not without hope that through the urgency of these representatives the restitution of the old charter might be confirmed. Subsequently Elisha Cooke and Thomas Oakes were despatched to reinforce the others. Mather, either because he felt the project a vain one, or because he hoped, under a new deal, to be better able to direct affairs,[88] was favoring a new charter.

This follows the map in the Amsterdam ed. (1688) of Richard Blome’s L’Amérique, traduit de l’Anglois. This is a different map (on a larger scale) from the one in the original English edition of Blome. See reference to the map given in Mather’s Magnalia (1702) in Vol. III. p. 345. This map is reproduced in Cassell’s United States, i. pp. 492, 516.

Douglass, with some excess, again speaks of Mather’s map (Summary, etc., i. 362) “as composed from some old rough drafts of the first discoverers, with obsolete names not known at this time, and has scarce any resemblance of the country,” and he calls Cyprian Southack’s maps and charts even worse. For Southack see Mem. Hist. of Boston.

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Plymouth, which had never had a royal charter, was endeavoring, through the agency of Ichabod Wiswall,[159] the minister of Duxbury, who had been sent over to protect their interests, to make the most of the present opportunity and get a favorable recognition from the king. Between a project of annexation to New York and Mather’s urging of an alternative annexation to the Bay, the weaker colony fared hard, and its ultimate fate was fashioned against its will. In the counsels of the four agents Cooke was strenuous for the old charter at all hazards, and Oakes sustained him. Mather’s course was professedly a politic one. He argued finally that a chance for the old charter was gone, and that it would be wiser to succumb in season to the inevitable, in order better to direct progress. When it came to a petition for a new charter, Oakes so far smothered his sentiments as to sign it with Mather; but Cooke held out to the last.

ELISHA COOKE, THE ELDER.

This follows a red-chalk drawing in the gallery of the American Antiquarian Society, which had belonged to the Rev. William Bentley, of Salem, who was born in Boston in 1759, and died in Salem in 1819.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts was governing itself, and had enough to do[90] in looking after its frontiers, particularly at the eastward, where the withdrawal of the troops which Andros had placed there became the signal for Indian outbreaks. New Hampshire, weak in her isolation, petitioned to be taken under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, and was (March 19, 1690) for the time being annexed.[160] Connecticut, destined to save her charter by delays and a less fiery spirit, entered upon a career characterized in the main by dignified quiet. Though she participated in some of the tumult of the recurrent Indian wars, and let her bitterness against episcopacy sometimes lead to violent acts, she had an existence of much more content than fell to the lot of the other New England colonies.[161]

The first momentous event which the restored governments had to encounter was the disastrous expedition which Phips led against Quebec, in 1690. With confident hope, the fleet on the 8th of August sailed from Boston harbor, and the whole community for three months waited for news with great solicitude. Scarce three weeks had passed when Sewall records (August 28) that they got from Albany intelligence of the Mohawks’ defection, which, as he writes, “puts a great damp here to think that our fleet should be disappointed of their expected aid.”[162] Apprehension of some more imminent danger grew throughout the colony. In September they placed watches at night throughout Boston, and gave as watchwords “Schenectady” and “Salmon Falls,”—fearful reminders.[163] One night at Charlestown there was an alarm because Indians were seen in their back fields,—they proved to be runaway servants. Again, the home guard, eight companies, trained another day. At last tidings came from Plymouth of certain losses which the contingent of that colony, among the forces acting at the eastward, had suffered, news whereof had reached them. This and other matters were made the grounds of an attempt to found a regular channel of communicating the current reports, which in a little sheet called Publick Occurrences was issued at Boston, Thursday, September 25, the precursor of the American newspaper. It told the people of various incidents of their every-day life, and warned them of its purpose to prevent false reports, and to correct the spirit of lying, “which prevails among us.” It represented that “the chief discourse of this month” was the ill-success of the expedition, which, under the command of Gen. Winthrop, of Connecticut, had attempted to advance on Montreal by way of Lake Champlain, to distract the enemy’s attention in that direction while Phips ascended the St. Lawrence.[164]

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About six weeks later, on Friday, November 7, word came to the governor from Salem of the disastrous events in the St. Lawrence and the discomfiture of Phips.[165]

The unfortunate expedition had cost Massachusetts £50,000, and while the colony was devising an illusory scheme of paper money as a quick way of gathering taxes, Phips slipped off to England, with the hope that his personal explanations would assist in inducing the home government to lend a helping hand in some future attempt.

When Phips reached England he found that Mather had done good work in preventing the reinstalling of Andros, as at one time was threatened.[166]

Memorials and counter-memorials, printed and manuscript, were pressed upon Parliament, by which that body was now urged to restore, and now implored to deny, the vacated charter. It was at this juncture that Mather, with two other agents, petitioned the king for a new charter; and the law officers reporting favorably, the plan had already been committed to the Lords of Trade at the time when Phips appeared in London. With the assent of the king, the framing of a new charter was entrusted to Sir George Treby, the Attorney General, who was instructed to fortify the royal prerogative, and to make the jurisdiction include not only Massachusetts, but the territory of New Plymouth and all that region, or the better part of it, lying east of the present State of New Hampshire, and stretching from the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.

It was the dawn of a new existence, in which the province, as it now came to be called, was to be governed by a royal governor, sent to enforce the royal prerogative, to administer the navigation laws in the interests of British merchants, to gratify the sectaries of the Established Church, and to embarrass the old-fashioned theocracy. The chief power reserved to the people was that of the purse,—an important one in any event, and one that the legislative assembly knew how to wield, as the years which followed proved.

Mather professed to think the new charter—and it perhaps was—the best result, under the circumstances, to be attained. He talked about the colony still having a chance of assuming the old charter at some[92] more opportune moment. Cooke, the champion of the old conditions, was by no means backed in his opposition by a unanimity of feeling in the colony itself; for many of the later comers, generally rich, were become advocates of prerogative, and lived in the hope of obtaining more consequence under a changed order of society. Connecticut and Rhode Island were content, meanwhile, with the preservation of their own chartered autonomy, such as it was.

Thus affairs were taking a turn which made Phips forget the object of his visit. Mather seems to have been prepared for the decision, and was propitiated also by the promise of being allowed to nominate the new governor and his subordinates. Phips had been Mather’s parishioner in Boston, and was ambitious enough to become his creature, if by doing so he could secure preferment. So Sir William Phips was commissioned Governor; and as a sort of concession to the clerical party, of which Mather himself was the leader in Boston, William Stoughton was made Lieutenant-Governor. Isaac Addington became Secretary. Bradstreet was appointed first assistant. Danforth, Oakes, and Cooke, the advocates of the old charter, were forgotten in the distribution of offices.

On Tuesday, January 26, 1692, Robin Orchard came to Boston from Cape Cod, bringing tidings that Capt. Dolberry’s London packet was at anchor in the harbor now known as Provincetown, and that she had brought the news of the appointment of Phips under a new charter.[167]

Boston was at this time the most considerable place in the New World, and she probably had not far from 7,000 inhabitants; while Massachusetts, as now constituted, included 75 towns, of which 17 belonged to Plymouth. Within this enlarged jurisdiction the population ranged somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000,—for estimates widely vary. Out of this number twenty-eight persons had been chosen to make the governor’s council, but their places were to be made good at subsequent elections by the assembly, though the governor could negative any objectionable candidate; and the joint approval of the governor and council was necessary to establish the members of the judiciary. The acts of the legislature could for cause be rejected by the Privy Council any time within three years, and to it they must be regularly submitted for approval; and this proved to be no merely formal action. It meant much.

These conditions created a new political atmosphere for Massachusetts. Religion and politics had in the old days gone hand in hand, and the little book which Joshua Scottow, one of the old patriarchs, now printed, Old Men’s Tears, forcibly reminded them of the change. The community was more and more engrossed with trade; and those that concerned[93] themselves with politics were not near so closely of one mind as formerly; and there was lacking that invigorating motive of saving their charter which had so unified the thoughts and banded the energies of the community in former years.

On the 14th of May, 1692, the “Nonesuch” frigate cast anchor in Boston harbor. When Phips and Mather disembarked, eight companies of soldiers received and escorted them to their respective houses. “Made no volleys, because ‘twas Satterday night,” says Sewall, recording the event.[168] The ceremony of inauguration was no sooner over than all parties began to take their bearings; and Mather, not long after,[169] in an election sermon, took occasion to defend the policy of his recent mission. It remained to be seen how much the province was to gain from its closer connection with the home government. Was it to claim and secure larger assistance in repressing Indian outbreaks and repelling French encroachments?—for these things were brought home to them by the arrival of every messenger from the frontiers, by the surveillance under which they had put all Frenchmen who chanced to be in their seaports, and by the loads of wine-casks which paraded the streets of Boston when the “Swan” (September 20, 1692) brought in a French prize. It was not till October 23d that Cooke and Oakes reached home, and the old-charter party had once more its natural leaders; Cooke, at least, bringing to it the influence of wealth.[170]

THE PROVINCE SEAL.

This is the form of the Great Seal of Massachusetts, used in the time of George I. It was recut, and the name of the monarch changed under George II. This last design will be found in the Massachusetts House Doc., no. 345 (1885), being a report on the Arms and Great Seal of Massachusetts. Here, as in the Heraldic Journal, vols. i. and ii., the private seals of the royal governors are given, which were used in sealing military commissions.

In the sermon to which reference has just been made, Mather showed that, however he had carried many of his own points, he had failed in some that much troubled him. The change in the qualification of electors from church membership to the condition of freeholders was alarming to those of the old theocratic sentiments. It meant a diminution of their influence, and that the 120 churches in New England (of which 80 were in Massachusetts) were to direct much less than formerly the legislation of the people. The possible three years which a law might[94] live before the home-veto came must be made the most of. Using his influence with Phips, Mather dictated the choice of the first corporation of Harvard College, freshly chartered under the new rule, and without waiting for the confirmation of the Privy Council, who might well be thought to be opposed to a charter for the college which did not provide some check in a board of visitors, he caused himself, very likely in a passive way, to be made its first Doctor of Divinity, but his admirers and creatures knew the reward he expected. We think, however, to-day less of the legislation which gave such a title to their great man than we do of the smaller ambitions by which the assembly of the province about the same time were originating our public-school system.

The governor, in his communication to the General Court, reminded them of the royal recommendation that they should fix by law a fitting salary for the chief executive. It raised a point that Elisha Cooke was in wait for. Under his instigation, the plan was devised of substituting an annual grant, which might be raised or lowered, as circumstances warranted, and as was necessary to vindicate one of the few rights left to them by the charter. It was the beginning of a conflict that recurred with each successive governor as he attempted to force or cajole the representatives into some recognition of the royal wish.

The baleful influence of the Mathers—for the son Cotton was now conspicuous—conduced to commit the unwary Phips to instituting a court, which disgraced itself by the judicial murders attending the witchcraft frenzy; and in the midst of all, Sir Francis Wheeler’s crippled fleet arrived from the West Indies (June 11, 1693), having lost more than half its men by disease. The fear of infection almost caused a panic among the inhabitants of Boston when, two days later, Wheeler anchored his frigates off Noddle’s Island. Ten days afterwards their commander was entertained at Cambridge by the governor, and by Mather as president of the college.

Connecticut was in the mean while serving both Massachusetts on the east and New York on the west. She sent troops to help defend the eastern dependencies of the Bay. On the retreat of Winthrop’s expedition, New York appealed to Connecticut for help, and she afforded it; but when Governor Fletcher, of New York, came to Hartford and claimed command of her militia, she resisted his pretensions, and, as the story goes, drowned the reading of his proclamation by a vigorous beating of drums.[171] Fitz-John Winthrop was sent to England to compose matters, and it ended in Connecticut placing 120 men at the disposal of the New York governor, while she retained command of her home forces, and Winthrop became in turn her governor.

Phips too went to England, but on a mission not so successful. His testy character had early imperilled his administration. He got into a quarrel[95] with Fletcher, of New York, and he yielded to passions which brought undignified encounters even in the public streets. Representations of such conduct did not fail to reach the king, and Phips was commanded to appear in his own defence. His friends had endeavored to force an address through the House of Representatives, praying the king not to remove him; but it was defeated by the united action of members from Boston, many of whom represented country towns. The governor’s friends resorted to a specious device which appealed to the local pride of the country; and, by the urgency of Mather and others, a bill requiring the representatives to be residents of the town they sat for was forced through the House.[172] With an assembly constituted under the new rule, a bare majority was secured for the address, and Phips took it with him.

Before much progress could be made in the investigation, after his arrival in London, he died on February 18, 1694-5.[173] The news did not reach Boston till early in May. “People are generally sad,” says Sewall. “Cousin Hall says the talk is Mr. Dudley will be governor,” and the next day mourning guns were fired at the Castle.[174]

Joseph Dudley’s hour of pride was not yet come, though he had intrigued for appointment even before Phips’s death. The protests of Ashurst and Constantine Phipps, the colony’s agents in London, were effectual; and the king was by no means prepared as yet to alienate the feelings of his New England subjects in order to gratify the avenging spirit of Dudley. That recusant New Englander was put off with the lieutenant-governorship of the Isle of Wight, a position which he held for nine years.

The government in Boston upon Phips’s leaving had legally fallen into the hands of that old puritan, the lieutenant-governor, William Stoughton, and in his charge it was to remain for four years and more (November, 1694, to May 26, 1699). It was a period which betokened a future not significant of content. It was not long before Thomas Maule could call the ministers and magistrates hard names, and with his quick wit induce a jury to acquit him.[175] But the spirit of Parliament could not be so easily thwarted. As colonists, they had long known what restrictive acts the mother country could impose on their trade in the interests of the stay-at-home merchants, who were willing to see others break the soil of a new country, whose harvests they had no objection to reap. The Parliament of the Commonwealth had first (1651) taken compulsory steps,[96] and the government of the Restoration was not more sparing of the colonists. King William’s Parliament increased the burden, and the better to enforce observance of its laws they established a more efficient agency of espionage than the Plantation Committee of the Privy Council had been, by instituting a new commission in the Lords of Trade (1696), and had followed it up by erecting a Court of Admiralty (1697) to adjudicate upon its restrictive measures.[176] About the same time (1696) they set up Nova Scotia, which had been originally included in the Massachusetts charter of 1691, as a royal province. The war which was waging with France served somewhat to divert attention from these proceedings. French privateers were hovering round the coast, and Boston was repairing her defences.[177] Not a packet came into the Bay from England, but there was alarm, and alertness continued till the vessel’s peaceful character was established. News was coming at one time of Frontenac’s invasion of New York, and at another of Castin’s successes at the eastward. In August, 1696, when Captain Paxton brought word to Boston of Chub’s surrender of Pemaquid, five hundred men were mustered, but they reached Penobscot only to see the French sailing away, and so returned to Boston unrewarded. The enemy also fell on the Huguenot settlement at Oxford, Mass., and the inhabitants abandoned it.[178] When the aged Bradstreet was buried,[179] they had to forego the honor they would pay his memory in mourning guns, because of the scarcity of powder; and good people rejoiced and shivered as word came in June of the scalping exploit of Hannah Dustin at Haverhill, in the preceding March. In the autumn (November 4) there was nothing in all this to prevent the substantial loyalty of the people showing itself in a celebration of the king’s birthday. The Boston town house was illuminated, and the governor and council went with trumpets to Cotton Hill[180] to see the fireworks “let fly,” as they said. No word had yet come of the end of the war, which had been settled by the peace of Ryswick in September. A month later (December 9, 1697) Captain Gillam arrived at Marblehead from London, and the next day, amid the beat of drum and the blare of trumpet, between three and four in the afternoon, the proclamation of the peace was made in Boston. The terms of that treaty were not reassuring for New England. A restitution of captured lands and ports on either side was made by it; but the bounds of Acadia were not defined, and the Sagadahock country became at once disputed ground. The French claimed that it had been confirmed to them by the treaties of St. Germain (1632) and Breda (1668); but the Lords of Trade urged the province to rebuild the forts at Pemaquid, and maintain an ascendency on the spot.

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BELLOMONT.

This follows a contemporary engraving preserved in Harvard College library, which is inscribed: “His Excellencie Richard Coote. Earle of Bellomont, Governour of New England, New York and New Hampshire, and Vice Admirall of those seas.” Cf. the picture of doubtful authenticity in the Memorial History of Boston, ii. p. 175.

As early as August, 1695, word had come that Richard Coote, the Earl of Bellomont, was to be the new governor of Massachusetts. Later it was said that he would not arrive till spring; and when spring came the choice had not even been determined upon. It was not till November, 1697, that he was commissioned governor of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. He landed in New York on the 2d of[98] April, 1698, and on the 12th a sloop reached Boston, bringing tidings of his arrival, and three days later the council received a communication from him. For a year and more he stayed in New York, sending his instructions to Stoughton, who as lieutenant-governor directed the council’s action. On the 26th of May, 1699, the governor reached Boston;[181] and it was not long before he manifested his sympathy with the party of which Elisha Cooke was the leader. This gentleman, who was so obnoxious to the Mather party, had been negatived by Phips, when chosen to the council; but on Phips’s withdrawal, his election had escaped a veto, and he now sat at the council board. Mather had succeeded, in 1697, in forcing upon the legislature a charter, in the main of his own drafting, which gave to Harvard College the constitution that he liked, but he manœuvred in vain to secure his own appointment from the General Court to proceed to England to solicit the sanction of the Privy Council; and it was not long before he found that the new governor had vetoed his charter, and in 1701 the assembly legislated him out of office, as the president of the college.

This first blow to the dominance of the Mathers was reassuring, and Bellomont was a leader for the new life to rally about.[182] He was a man of complacent air. He liked, if we may believe him, to hear sermons well enough to go to King’s Chapel on Sundays, and to the meeting-house for the Thursday lectures. He could patronize the common people with a sufficient suavity; and when the General Court, after their set purpose,[99] voted him a present instead of a salary, if he was not much pleased, he took his £1,000 as the best substitute he could get for the £1,200 which he preferred.

Boston, with its 7,000 inhabitants, was not so bad a seat of a viceroyalty, after all, for a poor earl, who had a living to make, and was debarred the more lucrative methods of trade. He reported back to the Lords of Trade abundant figures of what he found to be the town’s resources and those of his government; but the favor which he was receiving from the good people might have been less had they known that these same reports of his set forth his purpose to find Englishmen, rather than New Englanders, for the offices in his gift.

We have also at this time the report which the scurrilous Ned Ward made of the puritan town and its people;[183] but it is not well to believe all of his talk about the innocence of doves and the subtile wiles of serpents, though life in Boston was not without its contrasts, as we look back upon it now. Samuel Sewall, her first abolitionist, was even then pointing the finger of doom to the insidious evil in his Selling of Joseph. Not altogether foreign to the thoughts of many were the political possibilities of the coming century, when on New Year’s Day, 1701, the bellman’s clangor was heard, as he toned Sewall’s memorial verses through the streets. There was a certain fitness in the century being ushered in, for New England at least, by the man who was to make posterity best acquainted with its life, and who as a circuit judge, coursing statedly the country ways, saw more to portray than any one else. Sewall was an honest man, if in many respects a petty one. He had figured in one of the noblest spectacles ever seen in the self-willed puritan capital, when on a fast day, January 14, 1697, he had stood up in the meeting-house, and had listened with bowed head to the reading of his penitential confession for the sin of his complicity in the witchcraft trials. Stoughton, the lieutenant-governor, and chief justice of those trials, was quite another type of the puritan fatalist, from whom it was futile to expect a like contrition; and when, at a later day (December 25, 1698), Stoughton invited to dinner the council and omitted Sewall, who was one of them, one might fancy the cause was in no pleasant associations with the remembrance of that scene in Parson Willard’s meeting-house. It is characteristic of Sewall that this social slight oppressed him for fear that Bellomont, who had not yet come, might hear of it, and count him less! But poor Sewall was a man whom many things disturbed, whether it was that to mock him some one scattered a pack of playing-cards in his fore-yard, or that some of the godly chose to wear a wig![184]

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SAMUEL SEWALL.

This follows the steel engraving in Sewall Papers, vol. i. There is another likeness in N. E. H. & Gen. Reg., i. 105. Cf. also Higginson’s Larger Hist. United States, p. 208.

The smiting of the Mathers, to which reference has been made, was a business of serious moment to those theocrats. Whoever was not in sympathy with their protests fared badly in their mouths. “Mr. Cotton Mather,” records Sewall (October 20, 1701), “came to Mr. Wilke’s shop, and there talked very sharply against me, as if I had used his father worse than a neger; spoke so loud that people in the street might hear him.” There is about as near an approach to conscious pleasantry as we ever find in Sewall when, writing, some days later, that he had sent Mr. Increase Mather a haunch of very good venison, he adds, “I hope in that I did not treat him as a negro.”

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The Mathers were praised highly and blamed sharply in their lifetime, and have been since. There can be little dispute about what they did and what they said; they were outspoken enough to make their motives and feelings palpable. It is as one makes or refuses allowances for their times that the estimate of their value to their generation is scaled. None ever needed allowances more. They had no conception of those influences which place men in relation to other times than their own. There was in their minds no plane higher than the existence around them,—no plane to which the man of all times leads his contemporaries. Matherism, which was to them their life, was to others a domination, the long-suffering of which, by their coevals, to us of to-day is a study. It would be unjust to say that this mighty influence had not been often of great good; but the gentle observer of an historic character does not contentedly witness outbursts of selfish arrogance, canting humiliation, boastful complacency, to say nothing of social impertinences and public indelicacies, and the bandying of opprobrious epithets in controversy. With this there was indeed mingled much for which New England had reason to be grateful. Increase Mather had a convenient astuteness, which was exerted not infrequently to her no small gain. He had learning, which usually left his natural ability and his education free from entanglements. It was too often quite otherwise with his son Cotton, whose reading smothered his faculties, though he had a native power that occasionally got the upper hand. Between them they gathered a library, which, as John Dunton said, was the glory of New England. The awe which Increase inspired knew little of that lurking rebellion which the too pitiful arrogance of Cotton incited; for the father was essentially a strong and politic man, and though his domination was waning outwardly in 1700, he had the ability to compel the Boston press into a refusal to print the Gospel Order Revised, which his opponents had written in answer to his Order of the Gospel, and to force his adversaries to flee to New York to find a printer.[185]

The old Mather theocracy was attacked on two sides. There was, in the first place, the defection within the old New England orthodoxy, by which an independent spirit had established a church. From the published manifesto of its principles this came to be known as the “Manifesto Church,” and it had invited Benjamin Colman home from England to become its pastor,[186] who, to avoid difficulties, had been ordained in England. He first preached in November, 1699. In the second place, the organization of the Church of England, which had begun in Andros’s time, was gathering strength, though Sewall got what comfort he could from the fact that Mr. Maccarty’s shop and others were not closed on Christmas Day. Attempts had been made to divert the funds of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England from their application to the needs of the Indians, to strengthen the new Episcopal movement; and the failure to do this, as well as a spirit to emulate the missionary[102] enterprise of the French, had instigated the formation of a new Society in England for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts; but it was not long before its resources were turned into channels which nurtured the Episcopal movement and the royal authority. Strong contrasts to the simplicity of the old order were increasing; and it was not without misgivings that the old people had seen Benjamin Wadsworth, the new associate pastor of the First Church, inducted (1696) into office with an unusual formal parade. Thus the humble manners of the past were becoming in large degree a memory; and when, a little later (June 1, 1702), the new queen was proclaimed, and the representatives were allowed to precede the ministers in the procession, the wail in Sewall’s diary, as well as when he notices the raising of colors at the Castle on the Lord’s Day, betokens in another way the order of things which the new charter was making possible.

While in Massachusetts the defection grew, in Connecticut the old order was entrenching itself in the founding of Yale College, first at Saybrook, and later at New Haven, which was destined, as Harvard declined in the estimation of the orthodox, to become the rallying-point of the old school.[187]

In Rhode Island matters went on much as the heterogeneous composition of that colony necessarily determined. Bellomont could find little good to report of her people, and the burden of his complaint to the Lords of Trade touched their propensity to piracy, their evasion of the laws of trade, and the ignorance of the officials.

Bellomont had returned to his government in New York when, on the 5th of March, 1701, he died. It took ten days for the news to reach Boston (March 15), and four days later (March 19) word came by the roundabout channel of Virginia of the declaration of war between England and France. In the midst of the attendant apprehension, on April 7th, mourning guns were fired for the dead governor at the Sconce and at the Castle, and the artillery company gave three volleys in the middle of the town, Col. Townshend, as Sewall in his antipathy does not fail to record, wearing a wig!

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When Bellomont had left for New York in May, 1700, the immediate charge of the government had again fallen upon Stoughton. He did not long survive his chief, and died July 7, 1701, in his seventieth year,[188] and from this time to the coming of Dudley the council acted as executive.

It was on Joseph Dudley, to a large party the most odious of all New Englanders, the ally of Andros, that the thoughts of all were now turned. It was known that he had used every opportunity to impress upon the king his fitness to maintain the royal prerogative and protect the revenue in New England. The people of Boston had not seen him for about ten years. In 1691 he had landed there on his way to New York, where he was to serve as a councillor; and during that and the following year he had made some unobtrusive visits to his home in Roxbury, till, in 1693, he was recalled to England to be made lieutenant-governor of the Isle of Wight. With the death of Bellomont his hopes again rose. Ashurst, as the senior of the Massachusetts agents, still opposed him, though his associate, Constantine Phipps,[189] was led to believe that the king might do worse than appoint the aspirant. Dudley was not deficient in tact, and he got some New Englanders who chanced to be in England to recommend him; and a letter, which he used to some purpose, came not surprisingly, considering his lineage, from Cotton Mather, saying quite enough in Dudley’s praise. Elisha Cooke and his friends were not ignorant of such events, and secured the appointment of Wait Winthrop as agent to organize a fresh opposition to Dudley’s purposes. It was too late. The letters which Dudley offered in testimony were powerful enough to remove the king’s hesitancy, and Dudley secured his appointment, which, on the death of the king a few days later, was promptly confirmed by Anne.[190]

The news of the king’s death and the accession of the queen reached Boston, by way of Newfoundland, on the 28th of May, 1702.[191] The new monarch was at once proclaimed from the town house, and volleys of guns and the merriment of carouse marked a new reign. How New England was to find the change was soon sharply intimated. Amid it all tidings came of the capture of three Salem ketches by the Cape Sable Indians. Later in the same day the eyes of Madam Bellingham, the relict of an early governor, were closed in death, severing one of the last links of[104] other days. Her death was to most a suggestive accompaniment of the mischance which now placed in the governor’s chair the recusant son of Thomas Dudley, that other early governor.

A fortnight later (June 10, 1702), the ship “Centurion,” having Joseph Dudley on board, put in at Marblehead, and the news quickly travelled to Boston. The next day a committee of the council went in Captain Croft’s pinnace to meet him, and they boarded the “Centurion” just outside Point Alderton. Dudley received them on deck, arrayed in a very large wig, as Sewall sorrowfully noted while making him a speech. They saw another man whom they had not heard of, one Thomas Povey, who was to be their lieutenant governor, and to have charge of their Castle. They saw, too, among the passengers, George Keith, the whilom quaker, who was come over on £200 salary, very likely paid by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, to convert as many as he could to prelacy.[192] Sewall was not happy during that day of compliments. The party landed at Scarlet’s Wharf amid salvos of artillery, and under escort of the council and the town regiment they proceeded to the town house, where the commissions were published and all “had a large treat,” as Sewall says. Major Hobby’s coach, with six horses, was at the door, a guard of horsemen wheeled into ranks, and so Dudley went to that Roxbury home, whence, as many remembered, he had been taken to be imprisoned.

Dudley was not deficient in confidence and forwardness; but he had no easy task before him. He naturally inclined to the faction of which Byfield and Leverett were leaders; but the insidious and envious Cotton Mather, taking him into his confidence, warned him of these very people. Dudley told them of the warning, and it was not long before the sanctimonious Mather was calling his excellency a “wretch.”

When Dudley made his opening address to the General Court,[193] he could not refrain from saying some things that were not very conciliatory. There were two points on which he raised issues, which he never succeeded in compassing. One of these was a demand for a stated salary. The assembly answered it with a present of £500 against the £1,000 which they had given to Bellomont. No urgency, no threats, no picturing the displeasure of the Crown, could effect his purpose.[194] The war which he waged with the representatives never, as long as the province existed, ended in a peace, though there was an occasional truce under pressure of external dangers.

Another of Dudley’s pleas was for the rebuilding of the fort at Pemaquid,[105] to secure possession of the disputable territory between the Kennebec and Acadia.[195] The deputies were immovable. If the Crown wished to secure that region, it must do it by other sacrifices than those of New England.

Thus thwarted, Dudley could make them feel that the royal governor had some prerogatives; and so he rejected the councillors which the deputies accredited. All of this thrust and parry was of course duly reported by Dudley to the home government. The situation was perplexing in the extreme, quite as much so to the governor as to the people, who reluctantly received him. It was for the interests of both that the war against the French should not flag, and money was necessary, but the governor claimed the direction of expenditures, while the representatives stood aloof and firm on the “privilege and right of English subjects to raise and dispose of money, according to the present exigency of affairs.” With the clergy and the ministers, Dudley was not less unhappily placed. His interests turned him to the church people, but they could not find that his profession had any constancy. His lineage placed him with the Congregationalists, and he once had the ministry in view, but his sympathies went altogether with the new school, of which Stoddard, of Northampton, was leader in the west, while Colman, the Leveretts, and the Brattles were the spokesmen in Boston. In the election of a president for Harvard, Dudley favored Leverett, the successful candidate, and made a Latin speech at his installation,[196] and Cotton Mather writhed at the disappointment of his own hopes. The governor encountered (1708), for his decisive opposition to the Mathers, a terrible but overwrought letter from the father, and a livelier epistle from the son. He showed in his reply a better temper, if nothing more.[197] In the opinion of all honest patriots, of whatever party, Dudley was later found in company which raised suspicions. The conflict with France begat, as wars do, a band of miscreants ever ready to satisfy their avarice by trading with the enemy and furnishing them with arms. Dudley did not escape suspicion, and he experienced some of the bitterest abuse in talk and pamphlet,[198] though the council and the House, the latter after some hesitancy, pronounced the charges against him a “scandalous accusation.” It can hardly be determined that he was implicated, and Palfrey gives him the benefit of the doubt.[199]

JEAN BAPTISTE HERTEL, SEIGNEUR DE ROUVILLE.

This likeness of the leader of the assault on Deerfield follows one given in Daniel’s Nos Gloires Nationales, i. p. 278, where is an account of the Hertel family. He was thirty-four at the time of his attack.

The war was a fearful one. In 1703, month by month fresh tidings of its horrors among the frontier towns reached Boston. In January it was of Berwick, in Maine. In February came sad tidings from Haverhill. In March there was the story of Deerfield, and how Hertel de Rouville had[106] dashed upon the village. With the early summer Dudley went to Canso to confer with the Indians (June 20); and not long after (July 8), Bombazeen, a noted Indian, appeared in Boston with rumors of the French landing near Pemaquid. In August there were sad messages from Wells, and Capt. Southack was sent off by sea with chaplain and surgeon. With all this need of her troops at home, the colony also despatched two companies of foot to help the British forces at Jamaica. Samuel Sewall mourned as ever, when on Sunday (April 23, 1704) great guns at the Castle signalized the Coronation-Day. “Down Sabbath! Up St. George!” he says. The very next day the first number of the Boston News-Letter (April 24)[200] brought to the minister’s study and to his neighbor’s keeping-room the gossip and news of the town which was witnessing this startling proof of progress. Ten days later Dudley signed Benjamin Church’s instructions (May 4), and the old soldier, whose exploits in Philip’s war were not forgotten, set off by land to Piscataqua, where he was met by Cyprian Southack in his brigantine, who carried him to the eastern garrisons. In the News-Letter, people read of the tribulations at Lancaster; of the affairs at Port Royal; of the new cannon which Dudley got from England for the Castle; of the French captives, whose presence in Boston so disturbed the selectmen that they petitioned the governor to restrain the strangers, and whose imagined spiritual needs prompted Cotton Mather to print in his tentative French his Le vrai patron des saines paroles.

News of this sort was varied by a rumor (December 18, 1705), which a sloop from the English Plymouth had brought, that Sir Charles Hobby was to be made governor,—which meant that the agents of the colony in London were trying to oust Dudley with a new man; but in this they failed.

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The war made little progress. The expedition against Port Royal in 1707 was a failure, and the frontier towns were still harassed. The news of Marlborough’s victories was inspiriting, and Boston could name a part of its main thoroughfare after the great soldier; but while she planted guns on her out-wharves and hoisted a tar-barrel to her beacon’s top, and while Colonel Vetch marshalled her troops,[201] she waited in vain for the English army to arrive, in concert with which the New England forces were to make a renewed attack on Port Royal in 1709. Rhode Island sent her war-vessels and two hundred men, and they too lay listlessly in Nantasket roads. Schuyler, of Albany, meanwhile started to conduct four Mohawks or Maqua chiefs to England, where he hoped to play upon the imagination of the queen; and in August, while the weary New Englanders were waiting for the signal to embark, Schuyler brought the savages to Boston, and Colonel Hobby’s regiment was mustered for their diversion.[202] Very likely they were taken to see the “celebrated Cotton Mather,” as the man who had not long before “brought in another tongue to confess the great Saviour of the world,” as he himself said of a tract in the language of the Iroquois, which he had printed in Boston (1707) and supplied to the Dutch and English traders among that people. Distractions and waiting wore away the time; but the English forces never came, and another Port Royal attempt proved wretchedly futile.

That autumn (October, 1709) the New England governors met at Rehoboth, and prepared an address to the queen urging another attempt. In the face of these events the Massachusetts colony had to change its London agent. Sir Henry Ashurst died, and the House would have chosen Sir William Ashurst against Dudley’s protest, if Sir William would have accepted. They now selected their own Jeremiah Dummer, but against his desires.

The year 1710 opened with rumors from Albany about preparations in Canada for an onset along the frontier, and it was not till July (15) that flags and guns at the Castle and Sconce, with drum-beats throughout the streets, told the expectant Bostonians that General Nicholson, who was to head a new expedition, had arrived. It was candle-light before he landed, and the letters and despatches at once busied the government. A little later the council (July 24) entertained that commander, with Vetch and Hobby, at the Green Dragon Tavern; and four days afterwards Governor Saltonstall, from Connecticut, reached Boston, and the contingent of that colony, three hundred men, was on the spot in four weeks from the warning. In September the armament sailed,—twelve ships-of-war and twenty-four transports, of which fourteen carried Massachusetts[108] troops, two New Hampshire, three Rhode Island, and five those of Connecticut. On the 26th of October (1710), Nicholson and his force were back in Boston, flushed with the triumph which the capitulation of Port Royal had given them.[203] The town had need of some such divertissement. There had been a scarcity of grain, and when Captain Belcher attempted to despatch a ship laden with it the mob cut her rudder, and the excitement had not passed without more or less inflaming of the passions. The circle of Matherites had also disturbed the equanimity of the liberals in theology by an anonymous document, Question and Proposals, which aimed at ecclesiasticising everybody and everything,—a stroke of a dying cause. There was an antagonist equal to the occasion in John Wise, of Ipswich, and the Mather dynasty had less chance of revival after Wise’s book The Churches’ Quarrel Espoused was launched upon the town.[204]

Nicholson, again in England, had urged the new tory government under Bolingbroke to make a more determined assault on Canada, and Dummer had united with him in a petition to the queen[205] for a royal armament to be sent for the work. Their plea was recognized and what seemed a great force was despatched. Nicholson, with the van of the fleet, arrived on the 6th of June, 1711,[206] and a convention of the New England governors was straightway called at New London to arrange for the campaign. The plan was for Nicholson to lead four thousand men by way of Albany, and the Connecticut contingent of three hundred and sixty men was to make part of this force. The royal ships came straggling into Boston harbor. On the 24th General Hill, who brought under his command seven of Marlborough’s veteran regiments, arrived, and the next day Sewall and others of the council boarded the “Devonshire” and exchanged courtesies with Hill and the admiral of the fleet, Sir Hovenden Walker. The Boston regiments mustered and escorted them to the town house, and the veterans were thrown into a camp on Noddle’s Island. The next six weeks were busy ones, with preparations and entertainments. Mr. Borland, a wealthy merchant, took Hill into his house. The governor offered official courtesies. The transports as they came up into the inner harbor presented a “goodly, charming prospect,” as Sewall thought.[207]

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Commencement at Cambridge came on July 4, and all the dignitaries were there. One day some Connecticut Indians exhibited themselves before the admiral, and on another some Mohawks danced on board the flag-ship. By the end of the month, everything was as nearly ready as could be,[208] and the fleet sailed (July 30). They went proudly away, hastened somewhat by large desertions, which the patrolling of the roads leading from Boston had not prevented.

BRITISH SOLDIERS, 1701-1714.

Fac-simile of a cut (pl. xxviii.) in Luard’s Hist. of the Dress of the British Soldier, London, 1852, p. 94. It represents the soldiers of Marlborough’s wars.

Nicholson dallied in Boston for a week or two, eating good dinners, and then started for New York, to take the conduct of the land expedition, Saltonstall accompanying the Connecticut troops as far as Albany. Much farther no one of the land forces went, for word reached them of the sad disaster on the St. Lawrence and of the withdrawal of Walker’s fleet. The New England part of it came straggling back to Boston in October to find the town suffering under the loss of a great fire, which had happened on the night of October 2-3; most unmistakably the result, as Increase Mather told them in a sermon,—and perhaps believed,—of the way in which, during the fitting of the fleet, they had carried bundles on the Lord’s Day, and done other servile work! The cause of the expedition’s failure can be more reasonably indicated: delay in starting, an ill-organized method of supplies, bad pilotage, and incompetent leaders. Walker and Hill sailed direct for England, and in October, while the deputies of the province were bolstering their courage in asking the monarch for another attempt, the English mind was being filled with charges of want of proper coöperation on the part of the New Englanders as the all-sufficient cause of the disaster. Dummer, in London, vindicated his people as well as he could in a Letter to a Noble Lord concerning the late expedition to Canada.[209]

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In August of the following year (1712) Bolingbroke made a truce with France, the news of which reached Boston from Newfoundland in October (24th). It resulted in the following spring (March 31, 1713) in the Treaty of Utrecht, by which England acquired Acadia with its “ancient limits,” whatever they might be, for we shall see it was a question. The news arrived amid another corn panic. Two hundred angry and perhaps hungry men broke open Arthur Mason’s storehouse and seized the stock of grain. Capt. Belcher sent off another shipload, despite the remonstrance of the selectmen; but the mob stopped short of pulling down Belcher’s house about his ears. “Hardest fend off,” was his word.

Peace secured, Dudley despatched from Boston, November 6, 1713, John Stoddard and John Williams to proceed to Albany, thence by Lake Champlain to Quebec, to negotiate with Vaudreuil for the restoration of prisoners.[210]

The Mason claim[211] to the province of New Hampshire had been bought by Samuel Allen, a London merchant, and he had become its governor; but the active ruler was his son-in-law, John Usher, who had been the treasurer of Andros’s government, and also, as lieutenant-governor, lived in the province. Memories of old political affiliations had not conduced to make his relations with Sir William Phips, of the neighboring jurisdiction, very agreeable. When Bellomont came he was commissioned to take New Hampshire within his government; and it had fallen in the same way to Dudley’s care. This Boston governor found himself popular in New Hampshire, whose people had opposed the reinstatement of Usher, though this had been accomplished in their spite. Dudley and Usher recriminated, and told their respective grievances, and both made their counter-charges to the home government.[212] Affairs went uncomfortably enough till George Vaughan became the successor of Usher, who now withdrew to Medford, in Massachusetts, where he died at the age of eighty, in 1726.

Upon Rhode Island, Dudley had looked longingly. She would have been brought under his commission but for the exertion of William Penn, then her agent in London. Still, under pretence of consolidating the military strength of the colonies as occasion might require, there was a clause in the commission of Dudley which he construed as giving him command of the Rhode Island militia. Dudley early (September, 1702) went to Newport, and ordered a parade of the militia. Gov. Cranston cited their charter as being against any such assumption of power; and the troops were not paraded.[213] Dudley told the Board of Trade that the colony was[111] “a receptacle of rogues and pirates;” and the people of Rhode Island renewed their fortifications, and sent out their solitary privateer to cruise against French and Spanish. At Dudley’s instigation the Board of Trade (1705) prepared charges of evading the revenue against the colony. Dudley gathered evidence to sustain them, and struggled hard to push the wiry colony to the wall, hoping to crush her charter, and pave the way for a general government for New England, to be the head of which he had not a little ambition. In this Dudley had a confederate in Lord Cornbury, now governor of New York. To him had been similarly given by his commission the control of the Connecticut militia, but a timely prudence saved that colony. Fitz-John Winthrop was now governor,—a second dilution of his race, as Palfrey rather hazardously calls him,—and blameless in purpose always. Dudley’s concert with Cornbury, aimed to crush the charters of both Rhode Island and Connecticut, that each conspirator might get something from the wreck to add to his jurisdiction, utterly failed. In England Sir Henry Ashurst labored to thwart the machinations of Dudley’s friends. In Connecticut Dudley found malcontents who furnished him with allegations respecting the colony’s appropriating unfairly the lands of the Mohegans,[214] and getting a commission appointed to investigate he was made its president. He then proceeded in his own fashion. He omitted to warn Connecticut of the meeting of the court, judged the case peremptorily, and ordered the restitution of the lands. The colony exercised its right of appeal, and prolonging the investigation to 1743 got Dudley’s decision reversed.[215] Gov. Fitz-John Winthrop, of Connecticut, died in Boston while on a visit, November 27, 1707, and was commemorated by Cotton Mather in a funeral sermon, called in his pedantic manner Winthropi justa. The vacant chair was now taken by Gurdon Saltonstall, who did his generation great service and little harm. The policy of Connecticut soon felt his active nature.[216] Her frontier towns towards New York were guarded, and Massachusetts found she had an efficient ally in her warfare at the eastward.

Connecticut, which was steadily rising above 20,000 in population in Saltonstall’s time,—though estimates vary,—was growing more rigorous in observance and creed in contrast to the strengthening of liberalism in Massachusetts. Saltonstall favored the Saybrook platform, which put the management of church affairs in a “consociation of ministers,”—a sort of presbytery. Though a general accord in religious views linked her people[112] together, she harbored some strange sectaries, like the Rogerenes of New London, who were allied in some respects with the Seventh Day Baptists of Westerly, just over the Rhode Island line.

GURDON SALTONSTALL.

This follows the original picture at Yale College by an unknown artist. There is a photograph of it in Kingsley’s Yale College, i. 33. There is another engraving in Hollister’s Connecticut, ii. 584. There is an engraving by Doolittle noted in the Catal. Cab. Mass. Hist. Soc., p. 30.

The annexed autograph is from a MS. in Harvard College library [5325.23], entitled: A Memorial offered to the General Assembly of his Majesties Colony of Connecticut hold in Hartford, May y^e 10th, 1716, By Gurdon Saltonstall, Esq., one of the Trustees in Trust of the Mohegan Fields in the Township of New London, for the use of Cesar, Sachem of Mohegan & his Indians, upon the occasion of y^e sd Cesar’s Complaint to y^e sd Assembly of wrong done him and his Indians in and upon the sd Fields.

It was during Dudley’s time that the emission of paper money had begun to have a portentous aspect. These financial hazards and disputes,[113] as turning people’s thoughts from old issues, had the effect to soften some of the asperities of Dudley’s closing years of service.[217] He ceased to wrangle for a salary, and omitted to reject Elisha Cooke when again returned by the House in 1715 as a member of the council.[218] Massachusetts had grown much more slowly than her neighbors, and five or six thousand of her youth had fallen in the wars. This all meant a great burden upon the survivors, and in this struggle for existence there was no comforting feeling for Dudley that he had helped them in their trials. The puritan class was hardly more content. Sewall’s diary shows the constant tribulation of his representative spirit: sorrowed at one time by the rumor of a play in the council chamber; provoked again on the queen’s birthday at the mocking of his efforts to check the drinking of healths with which it was celebrated on Saturday night; and thankful, as he confessed again, that he heard not the salutes on the Lord’s Day, which were paid to Nicholson when he finally set sail for England.

It was the 15th of September (1714) when news came of the death of Queen Anne. A sloop sent from England with orders was wrecked on Cohasset rocks, and the government was left in ignorance for the time being of the course which had been marked out for it. Dudley’s commission legally expired six months after the sovereign’s demise, if nothing should be done to prolong it. As the time came near, a committee of the council approached him to provide for the entrance of the “Devolution government,” as Sewall termed the executive functions, which then under the charter devolved on the council. Dudley met the issue with characteristic unbending; and some of his appointees knew their places well enough to reject the council’s renewal of their commission, being still satisfied with Dudley’s, as they professed. His son Paul besought the ministers to pray for his father as still the chief executive, and intrigued to prevent the proclamation of the council for a fast being read in the pulpits. In March what purported to be a copy of an order for his reinstatement reached Dudley by way of New York. It was quite sufficient; and with an escort of four troops of horse clattering over Boston neck, he hurried (March 21, 1715) to the town house, where he displayed and proclaimed his new commission. His further lease of power, however, was not a long one.

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WILLIAM DUMMER.

After a likeness owned by the Misses Loring, of Boston.

There were new times at the English court when the German George I. ruled England; when he gave his ugly Killmansegge and Schulenberg places among the English peeresses, and the new Countess of Darlington and Duchess of Kendall simpered in their uncouth English. The Whig lords must now bend their gouty knees, and set forth in poor German or convenient—perhaps inconvenient—Latin what the interests of distant New England required. We may well suspect that this German dullard knew little and cared less when it was explained to him that the opposing factions of the private and public bank in his American province of Massachusetts Bay were each manœuvring for a governor of their stripe. We may well wonder if he was foolish enough to read the address of the ministers of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, or the address even of the General Court, which came to him a little later. His advisers might have rejoiced that Increase Mather, pleading his age, had been excused from becoming the bearer of these messages, or of that of the ministers, at least.[219]

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JEREMIAH DUMMER.

After a likeness owned by the Misses Loring, of Boston. It was at one time in the Mass. Hist. Soc. gallery. (Cf. Proceedings, ii. 289, 296, 300, 302.) It has been ascribed to Sir Godfrey Kneller.

The friends of a private bank carried their point far enough to secure to Col. Elisha Burgess the coveted commission, who, however, was better satisfied with the thousand pounds which the friends of a public bank were willing to pay him, and so he declined the appointment. The same power that paid the money now got the commission issued to Col. Samuel Shute, and the news which reached Boston (April 21, 1715) of Burgess’ appointment was swiftly followed by the tidings of Shute’s ascendency,[116] which meant, it was well known, that Jonathan Belcher, of Cambridge, and Jeremiah Dummer had been successful in their diplomacy in this, as well as in the displacing of Tailer as lieutenant-governor by William Dummer. The latter was Dudley’s son-in-law, and the appointment gilded the pill which the late governor was prepared to swallow.

The good people of Massachusetts had not long got over their thanksgiving for the suppression of the Scottish rebellion when, just about sunset, October 3, 1716, a gun in the harbor told of Shute’s arrival. Two days later, at the town house, he laid his hand on the Bible, “kissing it very industriously,” as Sewall records, and swore to do his duty. On the following Sunday he attended King’s Chapel, and on Thursday he was present at the usual lecture of the Congregationalists, when he heard Cotton Mather preach.[220] He seemed very docile, and doubtless smiled when Mather’s fulsome address to him was paraded in a broadside; very docile, too, when he yielded to Sewall’s entreaty one evening that he would not go to a dancing-master’s ball and scandalize his name. But on November 7 (1716), in his set speech to the legislature, there were signs of trouble. New England had peace on her frontiers, and that was not conducive to quiet in her domestic politics. The conflict came, and Shute was hardly equal to it. The legislature could look to a support nearly unanimous of almost a hundred thousand people in the province, being not much short of a quarter of the entire population of the English colonies; and a people like the New Englanders, who could annually export £300,000 worth of products, were not deficient at least in business courage.

Shute’s instructions as to the demands he should make were not novel. It was the old story of a fixed salary, a house to live in, the command of the Rhode Island militia, the rebuilding of Pemaquid, and the censorship of the press. The governor brought their financial plight to the attention of the House, and they voted more bills of credit. He told them of other things which he and the king expected of them, and they did nothing. So he prorogued them.

It was incumbent on the Crown governor to encourage the production of naval stores, as a means of diverting attention from manufactures, which might injure the market in the colonies for English products. One Bridger had already made himself obnoxious, and been suspected of malfeasance as “surveyor-general of woods,” in Dudley’s time, and it was far from conciliatory to a people who found the Crown’s right to mast-timber burdensome[221] that Bridger appeared in the train of Shute with a new commission. The surveyor was arraigned by the younger Elisha Cooke, who was now succeeding to his father’s leadership, and Shute defending him, a rather lively contention followed, which was not quieted till Dummer, in England, finally got Bridger removed.[222] To one of Shute’s speeches the House made a reply, and Shute threatened he would prevent their printing it.

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ELISHA COOKE, THE YOUNGER.

This follows a red-chalk drawing once owned by the Rev. Wm. Bentley, of Salem, and now in the gallery of the American Antiquarian Society. Cooke was born in Boston in 1678, and died in 1737. His only publication appears to be the following: Mr. Cook’s just and seasonable vindication, respecting some affairs transacted in the late general assembly at Boston. [Boston, 1720.] The second impression, corrected. [Boston, 1720.] Sabin, iv. 16,305; Brinley, no. 1,474.

Its appearance, nevertheless, in the News-Letter established the freedom of the press in Massachusetts.[223] The governor informed the Board of Trade that the province was bound to wrest from him as much of his representative prerogative as it could, and its action certainly seemed sometimes to have no other purpose than to establish precedents which might in some turn of fortune become useful. The House chose the younger Cooke speaker in palpable defiance, and when he was disapproved the members refused to go into another ballot, and the governor prorogued them. When the new House assembled they contented themselves with publishing a protest, and chose another speaker; and then they diminished the “present” which they voted to the governor. It seems clear that the House, in a rather undignified way, revelled in their power, and often went beyond the limits of propriety. The charter required that all acts should be reviewed by the Crown for approval. The House dodged the necessity by passing resolves. Dummer in England[118] knew that such conduct only helped the Board of Trade to push the plan of confederating all the provinces under a governor-general, and intimated as much. The House was in no temper to be criticised by its own agent, and voted to dismiss Dummer. The council in non-concurring saved him; but the House retaliated by dropping his allowance.

The council was not without its troubles. Shute refused to attend its meetings on Christmas. Sewall, ever alert at any chance of spurning the day, “because,” as he chose to think, “the dissenters had come a great way for their liberties,” broadly intimated that the council still could pass its bills on that day, and the governor might take whatever day he chose to sign them. It was certainly not a happy era in Massachusetts. The legislature was not altogether wise or benign, and Shute did nothing to make them so.[224]

The frontiers, for a space, had but a hazardous peace. In August, 1717, Shute had gone to Arrowsick (Georgetown, Me.) to hold a conference with the Indians, and had learned from a letter received there from Sebastian Rasle, the Jesuit missionary at Norridgewock, that any attempt to occupy the lands beyond the Kennebec would lead to war, and as we shall see the war came.[225] Meanwhile, life in Boston was full of change and shadow. Pirates beset the people’s shipping, and when the notorious “Whidaw” was cast away on Cape Cod (1717) they heard with some satisfaction of the hundred dead bodies which were washed ashore from the wreck. There was consequently one less terror for their coasters and for the paltry sloops which were now beginning to venture out for whales from Cape Cod and Nantucket.[226] There was occasion, indeed, to foster and protect that and all industries, for the purchasing power of their paper money was sinking lower and lower, to the disturbance of all trade. When the province sought to make the English manufacturers afford some slight contribution to restoration of prosperity by imposing a duty of one per cent. on their manufactures sent over, the bill was negatived by the king, with threats of loss of their charter if any such device were repeated. In the same spirit Parliament tried to suppress all iron-working in the province;[227] but after much insistence the people were allowed the boon of making their own nails![228] Some Scotch Irish had come over in 1718, and though[119] most of them went to New Hampshire and introduced the potato,[229] enough remained in Boston to teach the art of linen-making. Spinning under this prompting became a popular employment, and Boston appointed a committee to consider the establishment of spinning schools.[230] Perhaps they could spin, if they could not forge; and Boston, with her 12,000 to 15,000 inhabitants to be clothed and fed, needed to do something, if Parliament would permit. Her spirit was not always subdued. In 1721 she instructed her representatives not to be deterred by frown or threat from maintaining their charter privileges. “When you come to grant allowances,” she said, “do not forget the growing difficulties that we at this day labor under, and that poverty is coming upon us as an armed man.”[231] The General Court emphasized its call for frugality by forbidding the extravagant outlay for funerals, which was becoming the fashion.[232] There might have been some scandal at the haberdashery trade which the profuse habits of bestowing upon their parsons gloves and rings made a possible circumstance, to say the least, in more than one minister’s house. But a little innocent truck in the study was not the ministers’ most pressing diversion. Cotton, or rather Doctor Cotton Mather, as he had been called since Glasgow, in 1712, had given him a Doctorate of Divinity, bid for an ally against the liberals.[233] When he and his father assisted in the ordination of the new Baptist minister, Elisha Callender, in 1718; and when Dudley, two years before his death,[234] joined Sewall in open attacks on Leverett and the government of Harvard College, there is little doubt where the sympathy of the Mathers lay.[235] They had hopes, too, that the new Connecticut college would register their edicts, since they could no longer enforce them at Cambridge. Sewall found the Lord’s Supper unsuggestive[120] of charity, when the deacon offered the cup to Madam Winthrop before it was served to him; and we, to-day, had much rather see him riding about the country on his circuit, distributing tracts and sermons to squires and hostlers, and astonishing the children, as he rode into the shire-towns under the escort of the sheriff and his men.

But Yale College, of which so much was hoped by the lingering puritanism, soon surprised them, when Timothy Cutler, its rector, with one of its tutors, and other Connecticut ministers, embraced Episcopacy in 1722. Governor Saltonstall was powerless to prevent it, when at Commencement the story of that defection was told. Cutler went to England, received Episcopal ordination, and came to Boston in 1724 to take charge of one of its English churches.[236]

But before this the care of the body as well as of souls had proved a source of dispute with the ministers. Cotton Mather had read in the Transactions of the Royal Society, to which he was sometimes a contributor himself, of the method which was employed in Turkey of disarming the small-pox of some of its terrors by the process of inoculation.[237] That disease was now raging. While the town was moving the governor to send the “Seahorse,” man-of-war, down to Spectacle Island, because she had the pest among her crew, Mather urged Dr. Zabdiel Boylston to make trial of the Turkish method. The selectmen of Boston and the town meeting opposed it. The House forbade it by bill; but the council hesitated. One of the most active of the physicians of Boston strenuously objected. This was William Douglass, who had been a student of medicine at Leyden and Paris, and who had come to Boston three years before. Other physicians were likewise in opposition. The passions were excited by the controversy; the press was divided; and Mather, who about this time was finding the people “bloody and barbarous,” the town “spiteful,” and the country “poisoned,”[238] had a grenado thrown through his window.[239]

What with the political, financial, theological, and sanitary disturbances of Shute’s time, and the freedom of the press, which the governor had been foolish enough to give them the opportunity of making the most of, the intellectual activity of the people had never before occasioned so great a fecundity of print. The Boston man of the early part of the eighteenth century resorted to the type-setter as readily as he gossiped, and that was easily enough. In 1719 there were five printing-presses running in[121] Boston,[240] and the Exchange was surrounded with booksellers’ shops. The practice of sales of books at auctions had begun in 1717 with the disposing of the library of the Rev. Ebenezer Pemberton, or at least its catalogue is thought to be the first of such a sale. Thomas Fleet was selling his doggerel ballads, and the boys and girls of New England first knew who Mother Goose was when her nursery tales were published by Fleet in 1719. The News-Letter had been published for fifteen years, but not three hundred were yet sold at an impression. Wm. Brooker, succeeding Campbell as postmaster, felt it necessary to divide the town and give the News-Letter a chance for an altercation, when in 1719 (Dec. 21) he began the Boston Gazette. James Franklin had printed this paper for Brooker, but the printing being taken from him he startled the town with the New England Courant, which first appeared on Aug. 17, 1721. The new sheet was bold and saucy,—a sort of free lance, to which people were not accustomed; and while it gave little news and had few advertisements, its columns swarmed with what the staid citizens called impertinences. It wildly attacked the new inoculation theory, and elicited a public rebuke for its scandalous conduct from Increase Mather, who was in turn attacked by it.[241]

The Mathers, Elisha Cooke, Sewall, and above all Jeremiah Dummer in his Defence of the New England Charters,[242] published not a little of a terse and combative strain, which the student to-day finds needful to read, if he would understand the tides and eddies of the life of the time. Boston was also nourishing some reputable chroniclers of her own story. Thomas Prince, who after his graduation had gone to England, had returned in 1717, yet to live forty years ministering to his people of the Old South, gathering the most considerable of the early collections of books and papers, illustrating in good part the history of New England,[243] and contributing less than we could wish to such stores from his own writing. Dr. William Douglass, as we have seen, had dipped into the controversies of the day, practised his pen in the public journals, not always temperately or with good taste, and thirty years later was to vent so much prejudice in his Summary of the British Settlements that, though the book is suggestive, it is an unsafe guide to the student. Thomas[122] Hutchinson, much the best of our colonial historians, was now a boy of six or seven in the forms of Master Bernard’s grammar school.

THOMAS PRINCE.

This follows an oil painting in the cabinet of the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester. There is also of Prince a mezzotint engraving of a painting, of which there is a heliotype in the Mem. Hist. Boston, ii. 221. A portrait after a painting by John Greenwood is noted in the Catal. Cabinet, Mass. Hist. Soc., no. 26. Cf. Proceedings, i. 448.

But war was again imminent. As early as 1709 it had been considered advisable to build a line of defences across Boston neck, and up to 1718 much money had been spent upon it. The peaceful aspect of the affairs at that moment had been an inducement to disband the watch which they had kept there; but in 1721 it had been again set. Gov. Phillips, of Nova Scotia, had been in Boston to talk over the situation at the eastward, for the warnings of Rasle rendered a continuance of quiet doubtful. The younger Castin had been seized and taken to Boston,[244] and bloodshed could hardly be averted; for though peace existed between England and France, there was little question but the encroachments and ravages of the Indians were instigated from Quebec. Sewall tried to arrest the progress of events, and published his Memorial relating to the Kennebec Indians,—an argument for persuasion rather than for force. On July 25, 1722, Gov. Shute and his council declared war against[123] the eastern Indians, and a harrowing struggle began.[245] On the 1st of January, 1723, guns at the Castle before sunrise told the town that Shute had sailed for England, and when the people were astir Boston Light was sinking behind him. He went to arraign the colony in person before the Privy Council, and never returned to his government. The conduct of affairs, meanwhile, fell to Dummer, the lieutenant-governor, who made Cotton Mather inexpressibly happy by what the divine called his wise and good administration.

BOSTON LIGHT AND THE PROVINCE SLOOP.

Sketched from an old mezzotint, “W. Burgis del. and fecit,” and inscribed: “To the merchants of Boston this view of the Light House is most humbly presented By their Humble Serv^t, W^m. Burgis.” Its date is probably not far from 1712. See Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, vii. 97.

New Hampshire had been included in Shute’s commission, but Vaughan, the lieutenant-governor, claimed that during Shute’s stay in Boston his direct authority lapsed, and his lieutenant was the resident executive. The strife and bickering which followed this assumption had been among Shute’s tribulations, which were somewhat mitigated when influence at London secured the displacement of Vaughan by John Wentworth.[246]

The charters of Rhode Island and Connecticut did not order their enactments[124] to be submitted to the royal supervision, a requirement which at one time there was danger would be made,[247] but which was in good part prevented by the ready reasoning of Dummer in his Defence of the New England Charters. One act of Rhode Island, published at this time, seemingly invalidates that colony’s claim for unfailing toleration. In the edition of her laws printed in 1715 there is one which disfranchises Romanists. No one is able to find beyond dispute when, in the chaotic mass of her enactments, it became a law. To relieve the pride of her people from any imputation so contrary to the professed purport of all her history, Arnold, the historian of Rhode Island, has labored to show that the wording of the statute was simply the interpretation of a committee; but it was an interpretation that successive editors kept up till after the close of the Revolutionary War.[248]

In Massachusetts matters were not much improved under the rule of Dummer. An issue soon arose. The House insisted that Walton and Moody, commanders at the eastward, should be suspended, and refused supplies till it was done. Dummer claimed that as commander-in-chief he had the responsibility of such a change. He was forced, however, to yield, and appointed Thomas Westbrooke in the place of Walton, who, having obeyed the governor rather than the House, found he must retire without the pay which he had earned.

In England Shute was presenting to the king his memorial against the province.[249] When the House heard of it they appropriated £100 to hire counsel for the defence; but the upper branch gave the resolve a negative. So the House sent an address to the king,[250] in which the council would not join. The House would then despatch a new agent; the council was content with Dummer; a compromise was reached, by which Elisha Cooke was sent to join Dummer. Shute and his opponents were in due time heard before the Privy Council. The aspect of affairs grew threatening. A Boston man, John Colman, wrote home that the charter was in danger.[251] It ended in the sealing of a new explanatory and supplemental charter,[252] in which Shute’s demands were fairly met, in that there was in it an undeniable expression of the right of the governor to reject a speaker, while the House itself was denied the right to adjourn beyond two days. With this new order Col. Samuel Vetch had hopes of[125] succeeding Shute; but the old governor was not displaced. The General Court prudently accepted the new charter, January 15, 1725.

INCREASE MATHER.

This follows a corresponding likeness in Cotton Mather’s Parentator, Boston, 1724 (Harv. Col. lib., 10397.17). Cf. Edmund Calamy’s ed. of Memoirs of the life of the late Rev. Increase Mather, London, 1725 (Ibid., 10397.16). Engravings are noted in the Catal. Cab. MS. Hist. Soc., p. 35; and of the painted portraits in the same catalogue, no. 23 is of Mather. There is an original painting in the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester, which is engraved in the Mem. Hist. of Boston, i. 587.

While the provincial charter had been thus in jeopardy, the father of it died. The most conspicuous of New Englanders in his day, though his fame is somewhat overshadowed by his son’s, breathed his last, when Increase Mather died, on August 23, 1723, at the advanced age of eighty-four. When he was buried, a hundred and threescore scholars of Harvard College walked in such a procession as never before attended the burial of a New England divine. In most respects he was the greatest of a race which was born with traits of prowess. His learning was large, far better assimilated than that of the son, and his power over men far happier and more consistent. His industry was enormous; he sometimes worked in[126] his study sixteen hours out of the twenty-four. What Cotton Mather called the “tonitruous cogency” of his pulpit discourse was often alarming to the timid, but not always effective for the mass. The people grew to be disenthralled in large numbers. There was a growing belief that there could be graces even in dogma,—a gospel that never a Mather preached. The rude Bay Psalm Book, and the nasal cadence of the meeting-house, were beginning to pass when the Franklins, in that obnoxious sheet the Courant, were printing the hymns of Isaac Watts.

A year after the father died, there was a new election of president of Harvard College. Cotton Mather was as anxious as before. The governing board picked out in succession three Boston ministers, and never seem to have considered Cotton Mather. Their first choice was Joseph Sewall, of the Old South, a son of the Judge; “chosen for his piety,” as the disappointed man sneeringly wrote in his diary. The “miserable” college, when Sewall declined, chose the minister of the Manifesto Church, a direct thrust at Matherism; but no choice was accepted till Benjamin Wadsworth was elected. The college had another conflict when Timothy Cutler, after receiving Episcopal ordination in England, came to Boston, and by virtue of his new position as a Church of England ministrant set up his claim to a seat in the Board of Overseers. He sought in vain. Mather meantime was contriving to fortify himself, and determined to have a synod to organize some resistance to this increasing antagonism. Dummer entertained a petition to that end, but John Checkley, one of Cutler’s friends, ferreted out the scheme, and there followed a sharp rebuke from the lords justices, who pronounced the calling of such a body the prerogative of the crown, and the movement came to naught. This same John Checkley, a polemical churchman, in Boston, who kept a toy shop, united with it the publishing of tracts, in which the prevailing theology was attacked. In 1719 he had reprinted Charles Leslie’s Short and Easy Method with the Deists, and later accompanied Cutler and his friends to England. While there he caused another edition of Leslie to be printed (1723), but added to it his own Boston imprint, and what was more important, he appended a Discourse concerning Episcopacy, which seems to have been a refashioning of another of Leslie’s treatises, by which Checkley had pointedly demonstrated the schism of all ordination except an Episcopal one. With a stock of this book he came back to Boston, and at the “Sign of the Crown and Blue gate, over against the west end of the town house,” he began to sell them. The magistrates found in some expressions “a false and scandalous libel” on themselves. A trial followed with an appeal, which dragged its slow length along; and in the midst of it Checkley delivered a memorable speech in his own defence. It ended in his being fined fifty pounds.

Checkley left Boston not long after for England; and came back again to settle in Providence, and administer the rites of the church as he believed they should be administered.

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During all this wearisome contention in Boston, there is a glimpse of the humaner, and perhaps more godly, spirit in the gathering of men together under the lead of Joseph Marion to effect the insuring of neighbors’ worldly possessions from the chances of fire and the sea. It is not unlikely that this first trial of a system which to-day contributes so much to the sum of our happiness began then to indicate that mutual helpfulness might conduce as much to Christian comfort as keeping eyes alert for “scandalous libels.”

But there was no way yet, except by keeping other eyes alert along a musket barrel, to meet the dangers of the frontier. When the authorities erected (1724) Fort Dummer[253] near a spot where Brattleboro’ now stands, they made the first English settlement in what is to-day Vermont. On the 22d of August (1724), as Sewall records, “the ‘Sheerness’ comes up and Captain Harmon with his Neridgwack scalps, at which there is great shouting and triumph. The Lord help us to rejoice with trembling!” Another diary of the day makes these scalps twenty-eight, one of them Bombazeen’s, and another that of “fryer Railes,”—and this is the shape in which the tidings came to Boston of that quick onset at Norridgewock, when the Jesuit Sebastian Rasle fell among his Indian neophytes, ten days before this.[254]

In May of the next year, Lovewell the borderer made his last fight at Fryeburg in Maine, and the news reached Boston on the 13th of the same month. The ballad of Pigwacket, commemorating that bloody work, passed into the popular memory, and abided there for many a year.[255] In the following November four eastern sagamores came to Boston, and what is known as Dummer’s treaty was signed there on December 16, and the next summer (August 6) it was ratified at Falmouth (Portland). There was to be little disturbance of the peace thus consummated for a score of years to come. The war had borne heavily on Massachusetts. In such money as they had, it had during its four years’ continuance cost £240,000, and when the assembly voted an issue of another £50,000 of bills, Dummer, under royal instructions, withheld his approval. His fidelity cost him his salary for a while, which the House refused to vote until some compromise was reached.

While this quieting of the eastern frontier was in progress, the western settlements of Massachusetts were being pushed across the mountains beyond the Connecticut, and the peopling of Berkshire began at Sheffield in 1725. The leading agents in this movement were Col. Jacob[128] Wendell, of Boston, and Col. Jonathan Stoddard, of Northampton. The occupation proved a barrier against the Dutch of New York, though it was sixteen years before the next settlement was made in the Housatonic valley at Pittsfield.[256]

MATHER BYLES.

This follows a red-chalk drawing in the cabinet of the Antiquarian Society at Worcester, which came to it with other portraits by the bequest of the Rev. William Bentley, of Salem (b. Boston, June 22, 1759; d. Salem, December 29, 1819). There is another likeness in the Mem. Hist. Boston, ii. 227. Cf. Catal. Cab. Mass. Hist. Soc., p. 37.

During the night of the 29th of October, 1727, New England experienced one of the severest earthquakes which she had known. The next morning Cotton Mather made a speech in Boston, and this, with an account of the earthquake’s effects, was published at once as The Terror of the Lord, followed shortly by his Boanerges, intended to strengthen the impressions of the awful hour in the minds of the people. Haven’s bibliography shows the affluence of the ministerial mind in the face of[129] this event.[257] Sermon after sermon was published, and the press had not ceased issuing the renewed editions of some of them when Cotton Mather died on the 13th of February, 1728, and gave the preachers another fruitful theme. Here was a man whose views of a fitting mundane life were as repulsive as those of Sebastian Rasle, and whose scalp would have aroused Quebec as Rasle’s did Boston. We have grown to judge each by a higher standard than the prejudices and doctrines of their time.[258]

After the departure of Shute, Wentworth continued as lieutenant-governor in the executive chair of New Hampshire. The assembly tried to insist upon a speaker whom he disapproved, but the explanatory charter of Massachusetts came to Wentworth’s support, and he prevailed; and under his lead the province experienced its share of the Indian warfare. Rhode Island remained all the time under Gov. Cranston, who had held the office by election thirty successive years when he died in 1727. Her chief point of contact with her neighbors was her bills of credit, which had sunk so low that they had become little better than a pest to herself and to the neighboring colonies. Connecticut kept her activity and quiet ways within herself. She took no part in the war beyond putting her border towns in a state of defence.

Shute was pursuing his aim in England. He had succeeded in getting from the king an explicit threat, under whose pressure it was thought the Massachusetts assembly would see the advisability of establishing a fixed salary for the royal governor, when George I. died (June 11, 1727), and Shute’s commission was vacated. He slipped into a pension of £600 a year, and died an old man. The news of the king’s death reached Boston in August, and on the 14th George II. was proclaimed with military parade. The ministers beguiled themselves, as usual, preaching many sermons on the death of a good king, and Mather Byles published a poem.

Since 1720 William Burnet, a son of Bishop Burnet, had been governor of New York and New Jersey, whither he had gone to retrieve a fortune lost in stock speculations; and with a numerous family to support, he felt the necessity of it. The new king relieved him of some embarrassment, occasioned by a growing unpopularity in his government, by directing his transfer to the vacant chair of Massachusetts, signing his commission in March. He reached Boston July 13, and as he was escorted to the Bunch of Grapes tavern[259] the people marked his noticeable presence and his suave manners, and might have predicted a calmer sway from him than proved to be in store. He was flattered by his reception, and even ordered the publication of some eulogistic verses, which Mather Byles, the clerical wit of the time, addressed to him.[260]

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GEORGE II.

From a print in Entick’s Gen. Hist. of the late War (2d ed. 1765) vol. ii., frontispiece.

His instructions were of the sort that the province had got used to, though perhaps they hinted more pointedly of the danger which awaited the charter, if the salary question was not agreeably settled. Burnet’s speech opened the legislative war. The assembly answered it by voting him a larger allowance than was usual,—but still an allowance. The town of Boston had the speech read to it in town meeting, and voted nemine contradicente, as we read in the records,[261] in the assembly’s spirit. The House now asked to be prorogued. The governor refused, thinking the £1,000 a month which the sitting cost might bring them to terms. This failing, he resorted to manœuvres which even Chalmers censures. He removed the General Court to Salem, when, in a sort of grim irony, it recorded a resolve to legalize proceedings passed in an unaccustomed place, and consequently unconstitutional, as they claimed. The House now addressed a memorial to the king and refused the governor a copy of it, and, helped by Boston merchants to pay the cost, the[131] representatives despatched Jonathan Belcher to coöperate with Francis Wilks, now the resident agent in London, in obtaining the king’s favorable attention to their plea. This appeal gave the governor a pretext for releasing the legislature for three months,—and perhaps the device of the House had that purpose.

The Board of Trade heard both sides, sustained the governor, and advised the king to lay the facts before Parliament. The House in turn ordered a historical summary of all the proceedings relating to the salary question from the time of Phips to be edited and printed.[262] The governor dissolved the assembly, and took his revenge in withholding his signature to the bill for their own pay. A new election sent to Boston an assembly which was of the same temper. Burnet told them of the danger from the Board of Trade’s advice to the Crown; their own agents wrote to them there was no danger; and so the House continued as bold as ever. The governor directed their reassembling at Cambridge. Here they voted afresh the allowance, which was scorned as before. Meanwhile the governor got some literary recreation, for which his acquirements well fitted him, by printing moral and entertaining papers in the New England Journal; and if this did not bring him an income, he managed to eke one out by increasing the rate of clearance fees at the custom house, which all went into his own pockets.

Returning one day from Cambridge to Boston, in August, 1729, he was thrown into the water by the overturning of his carriage. A fever ensued, and he died September 7. The legislature gave him an impressive funeral, and voted £2,000 to his children; and his “character,” by Parson Colman, was circulated in a folio half-sheet.[263]

Dummer, as lieutenant-governor, again took the executive’s chair, and fought over the salary question once more; and the council, as before, steadily refused to join in the payment of the agents of the House.

Jonathan Belcher, lately the agent of the province, was now commissioned governor. He came of a New England stock, and his father had gained a fortune in trade, and had secured some political consideration as a member of the council. His mother was a daughter of Thomas Danforth, one of the ablest of the leading politicians under the old charter. The new governor had graduated at Harvard College; and foreign travel had added ease and attraction, with some of the wiles of the world, to a presentable person. He had been accustomed to dispense his fortune in[132] ways to draw attention and give him consequence. He had thrown out intimations in high quarters in England that the view he once held on the prerogative had undergone a change, and that he knew the turbulent spirits of his native province well enough to manage them. Wilks and Shute had seconded his professions, and his appointment followed. With instructions pitched to a higher demand than ever before, he was sent off to try his skill with an intractable people. Meanwhile Dummer had been superseded by Tailer, a former incumbent of the lieutenant-governorship, chiefly because the naval office he was occupying was wanted for another. Tailer was at the time in New England, and received his commission before Belcher arrived, which was not till August 10, 1730. So amid the terror, from a new invasion of small-pox which had withdrawn the town from the observance of its centenary,[264] and with signs of a new life, as well as a new era, in the relief which the law was giving to the baptists and the quakers from the burden of the parish taxes, and with the stranger element of their population developing a new Irish Presbyterian church under John Moorhead,[265] the people of Boston received their recusant townsman as governor. He made his speech in due time to the General Court. Cato, he told them, went beyond reason in letting his obstinacy lure him to destruction. This reference to the salary contention did not intimidate them; for the House had information from its own agents that the jealousies of the party leaders in England were not likely to let any issue affecting the continuance of the charter be forced upon Parliament. In any event there was a disposition rather to accept parliamentary domination, whatever it might be, than surrender one jot of their principles. With such a disposition the House became stubborn,—politely so. It even voted the governor liberal grants for the services which he had rendered as agent, and he took the gratuities though he had abandoned the grantors. The allowances for his services as governor he could not well accept under such instructions as bound him; and as he needed the pay, his son solicited permission from the home government for the father to receive the usual grants. The request was allowed, and the salary contention came virtually to an end. When Belcher approved a grant of £500 to be placed in the Bank of England to the credit of the province’s agent, he little suspected he was furnishing the means to bring about his own overthrow. His conduct of his office rendered such an overthrow likely. The times, with all failings, had[133] not seen before such flagrant attempts to serve party friends with the spoils of office. The public was so sensitive that even the younger Cooke, accepting a judgeship with some traits of sycophancy, fell in their good opinion.

The House set up a claim to audit all bills for which they granted money, and attaching such a proviso to their grants, such votes successively received the governor’s veto. This denied the public officers their salaries, and occasioned distress that the home government was besought to alleviate. The governor’s position was confirmed, and when the news of it came the House somewhat ludicrously asked him to appoint a day of fasting and prayer, since they were under such a “divine displeasure.” The governor thought the matter more mundane than divine, and refused. So in the autumn of 1733 the House saved its pride one forenoon by passing a bill with the proviso, and in the afternoon satisfied its sense of expediency by reversing the vote. Thus the delegates in their ungraceful way succumbed, as the governor did two years later, respecting the salary question. Each side was humbled, and affairs went smoothly for a while, though the depreciation of the paper in which the governor was paid did not quite fill the measure of his content.[266]

Commercial distress always conduces to emotional disturbance in a community, and the history of the “Great Awakening,” as it was called, is no exception to the rule. This religious revival began to make itself felt in 1734, under an impulse from Jonathan Edwards,[267] and later, under the ministrations of George Whitefield, the wild passion—for it became scarce else—spread through the churches and communities of New England.[268]

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[135]

Mather Byles, Judge Danforth, and Thomas Prince supported the movement in the New England Weekly Journal. Thomas Foxcroft and others, reinforced by a large part of the country ministers, fought the battle in sermon and pamphlet. Benjamin Colman gave the movement a qualified commendation. It found various classes of opponents. Charles Chauncy condemned it for its hot-bed sustenance, its “commotion in the passions,” and its precarious growth.[269] Thomas Fleet, the publisher of children’s books, turned the wit which enlivened his evening vendu at the Heart and Crown, in Cornhill, into the columns of the Boston Evening Post, which he had just started. Here he held up Whitefield to ridicule, just as Joseph Green and other wits held up in the same place the pomp of Belcher to public derision. Dr. Douglass[270] reckoned up the thousand pounds sterling that were lost to the families of working people by what he called a misuse of time in attending the midday mass-meetings, to which Whitefield ministered. The passion and fervor swelled, lapsed, returned, dwindled, and died; some counted the wrecks it left, some wondered at its transient impressiveness, and a few occasionally struggled to revive it.[271] Amid all the consternation attending what William Cooper in the election sermon of 1740 called “an empty treasury, a defenceless country and embarrassed trade,” New England managed to raise 1,000 men to send off to join the fleet of Admiral Vernon in the West India waters. Scarce a hundred of them ever returned.[272]

[136]

AN ENGLISH FLEET OF THIS PERIOD.

From Popple’s great map, The British Empire in North America, 1732. Admiral Preble says in his “Vessels of war built at Portsmouth” (N. E. Hist. and Gen. Reg., 1868, p. 393) that the “Falkland” was built in 1690, and carried 54 guns; but in some MS. emendations in the copy of his paper in the library of the Mass. Hist. Soc., he says she was probably built between 1694 and 1696. She is considered to be the earliest man-of-war built in the colonies. Within a short time after 1743, three vessels were built in New England for the royal navy,—the “America,” “Boston,” and “Essex.” The same writer, in The United Service, January, 1884, p. 98, etc., describing the changes in armament of vessels during the 18th century, defines ships-of-the-line as carrying 50 guns or more on three decks; frigates, 20 to 50 guns on two decks. Sloops-of-war with guns on one deck, and corvettes with guns on the poop and forecastle only, came in later.

[137]

The social life of the chief town of New England passed on, meanwhile, in the shadow of these ominous uncertainties. Jeremy Gridley had as early as 1731 started The Weekly Rehearsal, and had given the more scholarly classes this to ponder upon, and that to be entertained with, in columns more purely literary than they had ever known before. If such people welcomed the poems of Isaac Watts,—and one which Watts addressed to Belcher was just now printed in Boston,—they caused Richard Fry, an English printer, freshly come to Boston, to hold a high opinion of their literary taste, because they relieved his shelves of twelve hundred copies of the poems of Stephen Duck, the Wiltshire bard. In 1731 they listened at a Thursday lecture to Colman’s eulogy of Thomas Hollis as a patron of learning; and the neighboring college mourned in him the principal benefactor of this time. Lemercier, the minister of the Huguenots in Boston, published a Church History of Geneva (1732), which was a passing talk. Cox, a bookseller near the town house, got out (1734) a Bibliotheca Curiosa, describing his stock,—enormous for the times. Thomas Prince, the minister of the Old South, let his antiquarian zeal bring back the early struggles of the first settlers, when he printed (1731) the homely Memoirs of Roger Clap, of Dorchester, while the century sermons of Foxcroft in Boston (1730), and of Callender in Rhode Island (1739), made the pews slumbrous then, and command big prices to-day. Thomas Prince, moreover, was in travail with his Chronological History of New England. He published it in 1736, and the General Court paused to take note of it, and forgot for a moment money schemes and revivals to learn how in the “year 1, first month, 6th day” Adam appeared, to lead the long chronology which Prince felt bound to run down before he got to his proper theme. He had already wearied everybody so much, when he had gone far enough to embrace two or three years only of the New England story, that no one longer encouraged him, and “the leading work of history published in America up to that time” remains a fragment for the antiquaries to regret.[273]

It was in the year 1741 that the Boston Cadets came into existence as the governor’s body-guard. It was earlier, that Thomas Hancock, who had married the daughter of Henchman, the bookseller, by whom he was indoctrinated with the principles of successful trade, built the stone mansion on Beacon Hill which John Hancock, his nephew, later made more famous.[274] It was in this time of commercial distress that, according to Bennett, an observer, the reputation of the ladies of Boston suffered if they went to a dancing-assembly lately set up; but they could drive about with their negro footmen, and “neglect the affairs of their families with as good a grace as the finest ladies in London.” And when the finest lady in Boston, his Excellency’s wife, was buried in 1736, we read of the horses of the hearse covered with broadcloth and escutcheons, and of other parade and adornment, which gave tradespeople something to do and money to earn. Artisans needed then more than now such adventitious help.

[138]

BENJAMIN POLLARD.

This likeness of one of the first captains of the Boston Cadets follows an original by Blackburn in the gallery of the Mass. Hist Society. It was Pollard who received Shirley on his return from Louisbourg. Mem. Hist. Boston, ii. 119. He died in 1756. Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., i. 498, xvi. 390; Catal. of the Cabinet, no. 76.

Not a hatter might make as many hats as he would, because he injured by so much the trade of the English hatter, and Parliament interdicted (1732) any such rivalry. The poor man paid dear for his molasses, because Parliament compelled the merchant to buy it of the English sugar islands, instead of the French colonies in the West Indies.[275] He paid more for his rum, because Parliament protected the English distillers. The merchant smuggled and had no pangs of conscience;[139] and what smuggling could do was very likely shown in the stately mansion that Thomas Hancock built.[276] Can we wonder that the new country did not attract as many settlers as it might; that town rates in Boston increased from £8,600 in 1738 to £11,000 in 1741, and the polls fell off from 3,395 to 2,972; and that Sam. Adams, graduating at Harvard in 1740, took for his Commencement part the inquiry, “Whether it be lawful to resist the superior magistrates, if the Commonwealth cannot be otherwise preserved?”

Belcher played the potentate with the Indians, and made his treaties with them as his predecessors had done. He met them at Falmouth (Portland) in 1732, and at Deerfield in 1735. Perhaps he was fairer in his dealings with them than he was with his fellows of the whiter skin, for he has passed into history as the least entitled to esteem of all the line of royal governors in Massachusetts,—a depreciation perhaps helped by his being born on the soil. His political paths were too devious. Hutchinson tells us that when Tailer, the lieutenant-governor, died in 1732, it was Adam Winthrop that Belcher openly favored in New England as the successor, while he intrigued with the Board of Trade to secure the appointment of Paul Mascarene; yet to no avail, for Spencer Phips, the adopted son of Sir William, succeeded to the place.

New Hampshire had been reunited with Massachusetts under Burnet, and she had proved much more tractable than the larger colony in yielding the point of the fixed salary to the governor. She had hopes of being in some way rewarded for it. Under Belcher matters grew worse. He quarrelled with the lieutenant-governor, and David Dunbar, the surveyor-general of the king’s lands, came into the place, but without healing dissensions. Dunbar had the support of influential persons like Benning Wentworth and Theodore Atkinson; and Belcher made what he could out of the friendship of Richard Waldron, the secretary.[277] Massachusetts, as well as her governor, had grievances against her neighbor; and she prohibited by legislation the circulation within her bounds of the promissory notes of New Hampshire whose redemption was not well secured. New Hampshire and Massachusetts[140] were never again under a single executive. Wentworth chanced to be in London when Belcher’s downfall came, and he readily slipped into the executive seat of his province.[278]

After the picture (in the Mass. Hist. Society’s gallery) painted on the voyage over by Smybert, who accompanied him. Cf. Catal. Cabinet Mass. Hist. Soc., no. 41. A photograph of the picture of Berkeley and his family by Smybert, now at Yale College, is given in Noah Porter’s Two Hundredth Birthday of Bishop George Berkeley, N. Y. 1885; and in Kingsley’s Yale College, i. 59. Smybert later painted many portraits in Boston. Cf. Mem. Hist. Boston, iv. 384, with references. His pictures, together with those of Blackburn, Pelham, and Copley, richly preserve to us the look and costume of the better classes of New England during the provincial time. Cf. Wm. H. Whitmore’s Notes on Peter Pelham, Boston, 1867; Arthur Dexter’s paper on the “Fine Arts in Boston” in Mem. Hist. Boston, vol. iv., with references in the notes; A. T. Perkins on the portraits of Smybert and Blackburn in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., Dec. 1878, p. 385, and May, 1879, p. 93. For historic costume see Dr. Edward Eggleston’s “Colonists at Home” in The Century, xxix. 882. It was when Copley was most in vogue that the habits of the upper classes reached in their dress that profusion of silk and satin, brocaded damask and ruffles, ermine and laces, velvet and gilt braid, which makes up the descriptions in Mr. Perkins’ enumeration of Copley’s portraits. (A. T. Perkins’ Life and Works of J. S. Copley, Boston, 1873. Cf. also Martha B. Amory’s “John Singleton Copley” in Scribner’s Monthly, March, 1881, and her Domestic and Artistic life of Copley, Boston, 1882.)

[141]

The Rhode Islanders ejected (1732) Jenckes, their governor, because he tried to stay their wild course in the emission of paper money. The lieutenant-governor, John Wanton, led the opponents of Jenckes, and secured the election of his brother, William Wanton, and two years later succeeded to the chair himself.

George Berkeley, in England, had been pronouncing the age barren of every glorious theme. Perhaps to transcend this level he conceived a project of establishing a college in Bermuda for Indians and missionaries.[279] So he came over to Newport (1729) to buy American lands, and await or perhaps force a rise on them. The death of George I. had crossed his pious scheme by drying up his fountains. Newport was now a thriving town of 5,000 souls, the chief town in a colony of perhaps 18,000 inhabitants. It had an Episcopal church in which Berkeley sometimes preached, and to which he gave an organ. He had brought over with him a Scotch artist, John Smybert, and so the patron and his family, happy on the whole, though his glorious project had not fructified, came out of the canvas under Smybert’s pencil; and the picture went to Yale College, where we may see it now,[280] and afterwards so did his books, and the deed conveying his Newport farm,[281] when after two or three years he had gone back to England, a disappointed man.[282]

Not long afterwards another man with a mission ventured on a different project in the little colony. James Franklin, who had found it prudent to leave Massachusetts, when he told the august assembly that they did not do all they might to catch pirates, came to this nest of free-booters, and started a newspaper, the Rhode Island Gazette, the first in the colony, and saw it fail within a year.

When the Spanish war was coming on, in 1739, the plucky little colony [142]put herself on a war footing. She built the “Tartar,” a war-sloop of 115 tons;[283] her merchants, the Wantons, the Malbones, and others, ran five privateers out to sea; and even her quakers found ways to help. Seven watch-towers were built along the coast, Fort George was garrisoned, and a battery frowned on Block Island.[284]

WILLIAM SHIRLEY.

This follows an engraving, “T. Hudson, pinxt.; J. McArdell, fecit,” reproduced in J. C. Smith’s Brit. Mezzotint Portraits, p. 896. Cf. Catal. Cab. Mass. Hist. Soc., p. 26; Mem. Hist. Boston, ii., frontispiece.

[143]

In Connecticut, on Saltonstall’s death in 1724, Joseph Talcott succeeded and held office during the rest of Belcher’s time.

BOSTON HARBOR, 1732.

From Popple’s British Empire in America (1732).

The rule by which good ends sanctified base means came to its limit. Belcher, who had not been without high support,[285] was removed on the 6th of May, 1741; when he had sufficiently indoctrinated his opponents in his own wily ways, and they had not hesitated to use them.

William Shirley, the governor who succeeded on the same day, was an English barrister, who had come to Boston some time before (about 1733-35) to seek his fortune. He looked about for offices in the gift of the home government, and began soliciting them one after another. When the Spanish war came on, he busied himself in prompting enlistment, and took care that the authorities in England should know it; and[144] Mrs. Shirley, then in that country, had, to her husband’s advantage as it turned out, the ear of the Duke of Newcastle. Shirley was in Rhode Island acting upon the boundary question, which was then raised between Massachusetts and her neighbor, when his commission arrived, and he hastened to Boston to take the oath.

Shirley had some excellent qualities for political station. He was courtly and tactful, and when at a later day he entertained Washington he captivated the young Virginian. He was diligent in his duties, and knew how to retreat when he had advanced unadvisedly. He governed his temper, and was commonly wise, though he did not possess surpassing talents.[286] In his speech to the legislature he urged the strengthening of the defences of Boston, for the Spanish war still raged; and he touched without greatly clarifying the financial problem. He tried in a more civil way than his predecessor had followed to get his salary fixed; but he could not force a vote, and a tacit understanding arising that he should be sure annually of £1,000, he desisted from any further attempts to solve that vexed question. A month later, he went to Commencement at Cambridge, and delivered a Latin speech at the proper moment, which was doubtless talked over round the punch in the chambers, as it added one scholarly feature to a festival then somewhat riotously kept. There was more dignity at the Boston lecture, when Benjamin Colman preached, and when his sermon was printed it had in an appendix the address of the Boston ministers to the new governor, and his Excellency’s reply. Spencer Phips was retained in the chair of the lieutenant-governor, but a new collector of Boston came in with Sir Henry Frankland, the story of whose passion for the maid of a Marblehead inn is one of the romances of the provincial history of New England.[287]

Boston was now a vigorous town, and held probably for the next forty years a larger space in the view which Europe took of the New World than has belonged to her since. Forty topsail vessels were at this time building in her ship-yards. She was despatching to sea twice as many sail as New York, and Newport was far behind her. Fortunes were relatively large, and that of John Erving, the father of Shirley’s son-in-law, was perhaps the largest of its day. He earned a few dollars in ferrying passengers across to Cambridge on a Commencement Day; put them into fish for Lisbon, there into fruit for London, and the receipts into other commodities for the return voyages, until the round of barter, abundantly repeated, made him the rich man that he became, and one who could give tea to his guests. The privateers of the merchants brought royal interest on their outlay, as they captured goods from the French[145] and Spanish traders. Yankee wit turned sometimes unpromising plunder to a gain. One vessel brought in “a bale of papal indulgencies,” taken from a Spanish prize. Fleet, the printer, bought them, and printed his ballads on their backs. Another Boston merchant, of Huguenot stock, had given the town a public hall. This benevolent but keen gentleman, of a limping gait, did not live long to add to the fortune which he inherited. The first use that Faneuil Hall was put to was when James Lovell, the schoolmaster and a writer in the local magazines, delivered a eulogy there on this same Peter Faneuil,[288] while the loyal Bostonians glanced from the speaker to the likeness of George II., which had already been hung on its walls.

Shirley with the rest saw that war with France could not be far off. There was preparation for it in the treaty with the Six Nations, which was made at Philadelphia in July, 1742. In August Shirley himself had treated with the eastern Indians at Fort St. George’s. The next year (1743) the line of western settlements in Massachusetts was strengthened by the occupation, under William Williams, of Poontoosuck, now Pittsfield, and Williams was later instructed to establish Fort Shirley (at Heath), Fort Pelham (at Rowe), and Fort Massachusetts (in Adams, near the Williamstown line).

In 1744 the war came.[289] The French, getting advices from Europe earlier, attacked Canseau before the English were aware of the hostile decision. Though France had published her declaration in March, the news did not reach Boston till the 2d of June. Men’s thoughts passed from the “Great Awakening” to the stern duties of a war. “The heavenly shower was over,” said Thomas Prince, who saw with regret what he thought a warfare with the devil pass by; and Fleet, the wit of the newspapers, pointed to an opportune comet, and called it “the most profitable itinerant preacher and friendly New Light that has yet appeared among us,” while all the pulpit orators viewed it after other and their own fashions. Perhaps the lingering puritanism saw an omen or a warning in the chimes just then set in the tower of Christ Church. A lottery in full success was not heinous enough in those days, it would seem, to be credited with all the divine rebukes that it might be now.[290]

There was danger on the coasts. The armed sloops of Rhode Island and Connecticut were cruising between Martha’s Vineyard and New Jersey, and the brigantines of Massachusetts watched the coast north of Cape Cod.[291] But the retaliatory stroke was soon to come in the expedition against Louisbourg.

[146]

Dr. Douglass, who had grown into prominence in Boston, prophesied the failure of a scheme which had the barest majority in the assembly, and the chances were certainly on his side: but a desire to show what could be done without the military aid of England aroused the country, and not a little unworthy hatred of Romanism helped on the cause. One parson at least was ready to take along with him a hatchet to hew down the altars of the papist churches. A company from Plymouth, under Sylvanus Cobb, was the earliest to reach Boston. Massachusetts mustered 3,250 men, and the transports which sailed out of Boston harbor with this force made a fleet of a hundred sail, under convoy of nine or ten armed vessels, the whole carrying not far from 200 cannon.

The reader must turn to another chapter for the progress of the siege.[292] Good fortune favored this time the bold as well as the brave. Word coming back to Boston for reinforcements, an express was sent to Captain Williams, at Fort Shirley, and in six days he reported in Boston with 74 men, and sailed on the 23d of June. Louisbourg, however, had already surrendered (June 16), two days after the Rhode Island sloop “Tartar”[293] and two other war-sloops had dispersed the flotilla which was speeding from Annapolis to its assistance. This was the only active force of Rhode Islanders in the campaign; her contingent of foot, which was intended to join the Connecticut regiment, did not reach the ground till after the surrender; but her privateers did good service elsewhere, meanwhile, having sent into Newport during the year a full score of prizes.

It was on a fast day, July 2d, that the news of the success reached Boston, and spread throughout the colonies, occasioning[294] exuberant rejoicing, which the ministers tempered as best they could with ascribing the conquest to the finger of God, shown “more clearly, perhaps,” as Charles Chauncy said, “than since the days of Joshua and the Judges.” Modern historians think that Douglass was right, and that extraordinary good luck was a chief reason of the success.

The colonies beyond the Hudson were now anxious to be partakers in the cost and in the burden of the future defence of the captured fortress,[147] if they had not shared the danger and exhaustion of the victory.[295] Pennsylvania offered £4,000, New Jersey £2,000, and New York £3,000.

The victorious Pepperrell returned to Boston in June, 1746. Cannon from the batteries saluted the frigate which brought him. The governor welcomed him at the Castle and escorted him to the landing of the town, where the Cadets received him and led the way to the council chamber. Here addresses and congratulations were exchanged, and the successful general started for his home in Maine, meeting demonstrations of honor at every town on his way.

Shirley now resolved on further conquest, and plans were being arranged for an armament sufficient for the conquest of all New France, with the help this time of veterans from England, when news came of the speedy arrival of a large French fleet on the coast, with a mission of reprisals and devastation.[296] In August a thanksgiving for the victory at Culloden was held, and Thomas Prince spoke in the Old South in Boston. In September there was little giving of thanks, and there was much fear of the French admiral, D’Anville. Troops were pouring into Boston from the country. Douglass says he saw six or seven thousand of them on Boston Common. The defences of the harbor were being rapidly strengthened. All the coast lookouts were reëstablished, and shore batteries were manned. Rhode Island pushed work on her forts. Connecticut sent promises of large reinforcements, if the attack should fall on Boston. Every Frenchman was put under surveillance, and the times inciting to strong language, the General Court issued orders for greater publicity to be given to the act against profaneness. There was a fast to supplicate for mercy. Thomas Prince in his pulpit heard the windows of the meeting-house rattle with a rising storm. He prayed that it might destroy the French fleet. It did. Divided counsels, disappointments in plans, the sudden death of D’Anville, its commander, the suicide of his lieutenant, disorganized the purpose of the enemy; the waves and the rocks did the rest, and only a fragment of the great armament went staggering back to France. Boston breathed easily, and the hasty soldiers marched home to their harvests; and when news came of the compact which George Clinton had made with the Six Nations at Albany, in August and September, hope and courage prevailed, though the tidings[148] from Fort Massachusetts were distressing. Then came other massacres, and Indians were reported prowling through northern Hampshire. It had been intended to make a demonstration against Crown Point in the autumn. Provisions and munitions were hurried from Boston; Massachusetts men gathered at Albany. Winter came, disconcerting plans, and discouragement ensued.[297]

The next year Boston had a taste of the old-world despotism to which it had not been accustomed. Commodore Knowles, commanding a part of the fleet which had assisted in the capture of Louisbourg, came to Boston. Some of Knowles’ men deserted, and as enlistments did not bring what recruits the fleet needed, the commodore sent a press-gang to town (November 17, 1747), which seized whomever they found about the wharves. Boston was enraged. A mob gathered, and demanded that some of the officers of the fleet, who were in town, should be detained as hostages. The air grew murkier, and Shirley became frightened and fled to the Castle. The legislature tried to settle the difficulty, and Knowles threatened to bombard the town, unless his officers were released. The General Court denounced the riot, but signified to the commodore the necessity of redress. Under its order, the officers returned to the fleet, and Knowles, finding the business had become dangerous, let most if not all of his recruits go, and set sail, but not till the governor, gathering courage from the control over the mob which a town meeting had seemed to acquire, had come back to town, when he was escorted to his house by the same militia that had refused his summons before.

It was a violent reaction for Shirley from the enthusiasm of the Louisbourg victory, thus to experience the fickleness of what he called the “mobbishness” of the people; and his trust in the town meeting and the assembly was not strengthened when the representatives reduced his allowance, on pretence of the burdens which the war had brought. Shirley intimated that the 200,000 population of the province and a capital with 20,000 inhabitants did not mark a people incompetent to pay their rulers equably; but his intimations went for little. The colony was not in very good humor. England, in making the treaty of Aix la Chapelle (October 7, 1748), had agreed to restore Louisbourg to the French, and leave the bounds as before the war. There were discordant opinions among the advisers of the government touching the real value of Louisbourg as a military post; but it was unfortunate that to redress the balance in Europe England had to relinquish the conquests of her colonists. It may not have been wholly without regard to the quelling of the New England pride, which might become dangerous,—since Sam. Adams was pluming his political rhetoric in the Independent Advertiser at this time,—that it was thought best by that treaty to give to the province an intimation of[149] the superior authority of the Crown.[298] The province was not without its own power of warning, for Hugh Orr, a young Scotchman, manufactured about this time at Bridgewater 500 stands of arms for the province of Massachusetts Bay; which are said to have been carried off by the British from Castle William when they evacuated Boston in March, 1776. They are supposed to have been the first made in America.[299]

Meanwhile, Horatio Walpole, the auditor-general, with an eye to his own personal advantage, had brought forward a project of the Board of Trade for overruling the charters of the colonies; but the strenuous opposition of William Bollan and Eliakim Palmer for Massachusetts and Connecticut made the advocates of the measure waver, and the movement failed. Shirley was devising a plan of his own, which looked to such an extension of the parliamentary prerogative as had not yet been attempted. His scheme was to build and maintain a line of posts at the eastward, the expense of which all the colonies should share under a tax laid by Parliament.[300] In the pursuit of this plan, Shirley obtained leave of absence, and went to England (1749), while the conduct of affairs was left in the hands of Spencer Phips, the lieutenant-governor, a man of experience and good intentions, but not of signal ability. Thomas Hutchinson, James Otis, and two others meanwhile went to Falmouth to engage the eastern Indians, who were far from quiet, in a treaty, which was finally brought to a conclusion on October 16, 1749. In the following winter (1749-50), Sylvanus Cobb was in Boston fitting out his sloop for a hostile raid through the Bay of Fundy; but Cornwallis at Halifax thought the preparations for it had become known to the French, and the raid was not accomplished.

The next year (1750), Parliament touched the provinces roughly. The English tanners wished for bark, and they could get it cheap if the English land-owners could sell their wood to the furnaces, and the furnaces would buy it if they could find a sufficient market for their iron and steel, as they could do if they had no rivals in America. It was a chain of possibilities that Parliament undertook to make realities, and so passed an act forbidding the running of slitting and rolling mills in the colonies, and[150] Charles Townshend, who introduced the bill, found no opposer in Shirley. The bold utterances that Jonathan Mayhew was making in indignant Boston carried a meaning that did not warn, as it might, the Board of Trade in England.

Shirley, after four years’ absence, during which he had been employed in an unsuccessful mission to Paris about the Acadian boundaries, came back to Boston in 1753, to be kindly received, but to feel in bringing with him a young Catholic wife, whom he had married in Paris, the daughter of his landlord, that he gave her the position of the first lady in the province not without environing himself and her with great embarrassment, in a community which, though it had departed widely from the puritanism of the fathers, was still intolerant of much that makes man urbane and merry. While Shirley had been gone, the good town had been much exercised over an attempt to introduce the drama, and the performance of Otway’s Orphan at a coffee-house in King Street had stirred the legislature to pass a law against stage plays. The journals of Goelet[301] and others give us some glimpses of life, however, far from prudish, and show that human nature was not altogether suppressed, nor all of the good people quite as stiff as Blackburn was now painting them.

Notwithstanding his hymeneal entanglement, Shirley was unquestionably the most powerful Englishman at this time in America. The fortuitous success of his Louisbourg expedition had given him a factitious military reputation.[302] A test of it seemed imminent. For the sixth time in eighty years the frontiers were now ravaged by the savages. Pepperrell was sent to pacify the eastern Indians. The French were stretching a cordon of posts from the Atlantic to the gulf which alarmed Shirley, and he doubted if anything was safe to the eastward beyond the Merrimac, unless the French could be pushed back from Nova Scotia. He feared New Hampshire would be lost, and with it the supply of masts for the royal navy. A road had been cut along the Westfield River through Poontoosuck (Pittsfield) to Albany, and Shirley planned defences among the Berkshire Hills.

At this juncture a conference of the colonies was called at Albany in 1754, which had been commanded through the governor of New York by the Board of Trade. The reader will find its history traced on a later page. Hutchinson in July brought back to Boston a draft of the plan of action. In the autumn the legislature was considering the question, while Franklin was in Boston (October-December) conferring with Shirley and discussing plans. Boston held a town meeting and denounced the Albany plan, and in December (14th) the legislature definitely rejected it, as all the other colonies in due time did. Rhode Island,[151] particularly, was very vigilant, lest an attempt might be made to abridge her charter-privileges. Connecticut established its first press in this very year, which with the press of the other colonies, was lukewarm or hostile to the plan.[303]

Shirley had not attended the congress. He had left Boston in June (1754) on the province frigate “Massachusetts,” with the forces under John Winslow to build a fort on the Kennebec, which was completed on the 3d of September and called Fort Halifax. On his way he stopped at Falmouth, and on the 28th of June he had a conference with the Norridgewock Indians, and on July 5th another with the Penobscots. Accompanied by some young Indians who were entrusted to the English for education, the governor was once more in Boston on the 9th of September, where he was received with due honor.

This expedition and the congress were but the prelude to eventful years. When Henry Pelham died, on the 6th of March of this year, his king, in remembrance of the wise and peaceful policy of his minister, exclaimed, “Now I shall have no more peace!” For the struggle which was impending, New England had grown in strength and preparation, and had had much inuring to the trials of predatory warfare. She had increased about sixfold in population, while New York and Virginia had increased fivefold. The newer colonies of Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and Maryland had fairly outstripped these older ones, and numbered now nine times as large a population as they had sixty-five years earlier. The Carolinas and Georgia had increased in a ratio far more rapid. Massachusetts at this time probably had 45,000 on its alarm list, and in train-bands over 30,000 stood ready for the call.[304] John Adams, when teaching a school in Worcester the next year, ventured to write to a friend, “If we can remove the turbulent Gallicks, our people will in another century become more numerous than England itself.”

In the spring of 1755 Shirley went to Alexandria, in Virginia, being on the way from March 30 till April 12, to meet the other governors, and to confer with General Braddock upon the organization of that general’s disastrous campaign. When the news of its fatal ending reached New England it gave new fervor to the attempts, in which she was participating, of attacking the French on the Canada side,[305] and the war[152] seemed brought nearer home to her people when, by the death of Braddock, the supreme command devolved on the Massachusetts governor.[306] On the 6th of November, at Thomas Hutchinson’s instigation and in expression of their good-will at Shirley’s promotion, the General Court passed a vote of congratulation.

The autumn had been one of excitement in Boston.[307] The forces of nature were conspiring to add to the wonderment of the hour. A part of the same series of convulsions which overturned Lisbon on November 1st and buried Sir Henry Frankland in the ruins, to be extricated by that Agnes Surriage whose romantic story has already been referred to, had been experienced in New England at four o’clock in the morning of the 18th of the same month, with a foreboding of a greater danger; but the commotion failed in the end to do great damage to its principal town, then esteemed, if we may believe the Gentleman’s Magazine, finer than any town in England excepting London. People looked to the leading man of science in New England of that time for some exposition of this mighty power, and Prof. John Winthrop gave at Cambridge his famous lecture on earthquakes, which was shortly printed.[308] The electrical forces of nature had not long before revealed themselves to Franklin with his kite, and it was in November or December that the news was exciting comment in Boston, turning men’s thoughts from the weariness of the war.

That war had not prospered under Shirley, and with a suspicion that he had been pushed beyond his military capacity he was recalled to England, ostensibly to give advice on its further conduct. He had found that Massachusetts could not be led to tax herself directly for the money which he needed, and only pledged herself to reimburse, if required, the king’s military chest for £35,000, which Shirley drew from it. A scale of bounties had failed to induce much activity in enlistments, and the forces necessary for the coming campaign were gathering but slowly.[309][153] This was the condition of affairs when Shirley left for England, carrying with him the consoling commendations of the General Court.

Spencer Phips, the lieutenant-governor, succeeded to the executive chair in Massachusetts at a time when even Boston was not felt to be secure, so fortunate or skilful were the weaker French in a purpose that was not imperilled by the jealousies which misguided the stronger English. It was now problematical if Loudon, the new commander-in-chief, was to bring better auguries. In January of the next year (1757), he came to Boston to confer with the New England governors. The New England colonies now agreed to raise 4,000 new troops. Meanwhile Phips had died in April (4th) in the midst of the war preparations, and Pepperrell, as president of the council, next directed affairs till Thomas Pownall,[310] who had been commissioned governor, and who had reached Halifax on the fleet which brought Lord Howe’s troops, arrived in Boston, August 3d, on the very day when Montcalm on Lake George was laying siege to Fort William Henry, which in a few days surrendered. The news did not reach Pownall till he had pushed forward troops to Springfield on their way to relieve the fort. He put Pepperrell at once in command of the militia,[311] and a large body of armed men gathered under him on the line of the Connecticut;[312] for there was ignorance at the time of Montcalm’s inability to advance because of desertions, and of the weakening of his force by reason of the details he had made to guard and transport the captured stores. Messengers were hurried to the other colonies to arouse them. John Adams, then a young man teaching in Worcester, kept from the pulpit by reason of his disbelief in Calvinism, stirred by the times, with the hope some day of commanding a troop of horse or a company of foot, was one of these messengers sent to Rhode Island, and he tells us how struck he was with the gayety and social aspect of Sunday in that colony, compared with the staid routine which characterized the day in Massachusetts.[313]

Massachusetts had enrolled 7,000 men for the campaign. Connecticut had put 5,000 in the field, and Rhode Island and New Hampshire a regiment each. Massachusetts had further maintained a guard of 600 men along her frontiers. The cost of all these preparations necessitated a tax of half the income of personal and landed property.

In a commercial sense almost crushed,[314] in a political sense the people[154] were as buoyant as ever. When Loudon sent orders to quarter a regiment of the British troops on the people, the legislature forbade it, and grew defiant, and nothing could pacify them but the withdrawal of the order. The commander-in-chief, however he stormed in New York, found it expedient to yield when he learned of the fury his order was exciting in a colony upon whose vigor the home government was largely depending for the successful prosecution of the war. This had now fallen into the hands of Pitt, and he at once recalled Loudon, who chanced to be in Boston, parleying with the legislature about raising troops, when an express brought him his recall. Abercrombie, who succeeded, was even a worse failure; but there was a burst of light at the eastward. Amherst had captured Louisbourg in July (1758),[315] and bringing his troops by water to Boston had landed them on September 13. Never was there so brilliant array of war seen in the harbor as the war-ships presented, or on Boston Common where the troops were encamped. Amherst delayed but three days for rest, when on the 16th of September he began his march westward to join the humbled Abercrombie. At Worcester the troops halted, and John Adams tells us of the “excellent order and discipline” which they presented, and of the picturesqueness of the Scotch in their plaids, as this army of four thousand men filled his ardent gaze.

During the winter recruiting was going on in Boston with success for the fleet wintering at Louisbourg.[316] In the campaign of the next year (1759), Massachusetts and Connecticut put at least a sixth of all their males able to bear arms into the field. They were in part in the army which Amherst led by way of Lake Champlain to the St. Lawrence, and among them were some of the veterans which Pepperrell had command in 1745 at Louisbourg,—Pepperrell who was to die during the progress of the campaign, on the 6th of July, at Kittery in his sixty-fourth year. Another portion went with Pownall to the Penobscot region, or followed him there, and assisted in the building of Fort Pownall, which was completed in July (1759).[317] The reader must turn to another chapter[318] for the brilliant success of Wolfe at Quebec, which virtually ended the war.

George the Second hardly heard of the victories which crowned his minister’s policy. He died October 25, 1760, but the news of his death did not reach Boston till December 27th. He had already effected a change in the government of Massachusetts. Pownall, who had made interest[155] with the Board of Trade to be transferred to the executive chair of South Carolina, left Boston in June, taking with him the good wishes of a people whom he had governed more liberally and considerately than any other of the royal governors.[319] Two months later (August 2, 1760), Francis Bernard, who had been governor of New Jersey,[320] reached Boston as his successor. He showed some want of tact in his first speech, in emphasizing the advantages of subjection to the home government, and gave the House opportunity to rejoin that but for the sacrifice in blood and expense which these grateful colonies had experienced, Great Britain might now have had no colonies to defend. Notwithstanding so untoward a beginning, Bernard seems to have thought well of the people, and reported fair phrases of encomium to the Lords of Trade.[321]

A few weeks after Bernard’s arrival Stephen Sewall, the chief justice, died (September 11, 1760). Thomas Hutchinson was now the most conspicuous man in New England, and he had put all New England under obligations by his strenuous and successful efforts to better their monetary condition. A train of events followed, which might possibly have been averted, if, instead of appointing Hutchinson to the chief-justiceship, as he did, Bernard had raised one of the other justices, and filled the vacancy with Col. James Otis, then Speaker of the House, father of the better known patriot of that name, and whose appointment had been contemplated, it is said, by Shirley. Hutchinson was already lieutenant-governor, succeeding Spencer Phips, and was soon to be judge of probate also for Suffolk,—a commingling of official power that could but incite remark.

The younger Otis was soon to become conspicuous, in a way that might impress even Bernard. There were certain moneys forfeited to the king for the colony’s use, arising from convictions for smuggling under the Sugar Act; the province had never applied for them, and had neglected its opportunities in that respect. The House instructed Otis to sue the custom-house officers. The superior bench under the lead of Hutchinson decided against the province, and it did not pass without suspicion that Bernard had placed Hutchinson on that bench to secure this verdict.

An event still more powerful in inciting discontent was approaching. Charles Paxton, who had been surveyor of Boston since 1752, had, in his seeking for smuggled goods, used general search warrants,—unreturnable, known as “writs of assistance,” and of course liable to great abuse. It seems probable that this process had been so far sparingly used, and there had been no manifest discontent. Upon the king’s death, the existing writs had only a six months’ later continuance, when new applications[156] must be made under the new reign. These new applications came at a time when the public mind was much exercised, and there was a determination to question the legality of such unrestrained power as the writs implied. The hearing was to be before the court of which Hutchinson was now the chief. Jeremy Gridley appeared for the king, and the younger Otis with Oxenbridge Thacher for the petitioners. The court deferred its decision, but in November, 1761, the case was again discussed. The court meanwhile had had advices from England, and the writs were sustained. In the discontent growing out of this proceeding, we may find the immediate beginning of the controversy between the provinces and the Crown, which resulted in the American Revolution. The subsidence of the war left men time to think deeply of these intestine griefs, and when the Peace of Paris in February, 1763, finally dissipated the danger of arms, events had gone far to shape themselves for bringing another renewal of battle, not with the French, but with the mother country.

CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

NEW England in general.—Of Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana, or the Ecclesiastical History of New England from 1620 to 1698, mention has been made in another volume,[322] and, as the title shows, it touches only the few earlier years of the period now under consideration. The book was published in London in 1702, and a solitary forerunner of the edition reached Boston, as we know, October 29 of the same year. It was the most considerable work which had been produced in the British colonies, and was in large part an unshapely conglomerate of previous tracts and treatises. Neal, Mather’s successor in the field, while praising his diligence in amassing the material of history, expressed the opinion of all who would divest scholarship of meretriciousness when he criticised its “puns and jingles,”[323] and said, “Had the doctor put his materials a little closer together, and disposed them in another method, his work would have been more acceptable.”[324] But Mather without Matherism would lose in his peculiar literary flavor; we laugh and despise, while his books nevertheless find a chief place on the shelves of our New England library. Mather was still young when the Magnalia was printed, but he stood by his methods and manner a quarter of a century later, and in publishing (1726) his Manuductio ad Ministerium[325] he defended his labored and bedizened[157] style against, as he says, the blades of the clubs and coffee-houses, who set up for critics. He also belabored Oldmixon in a similar fashion, when that compiler both borrowed the doctor’s labors and berated his reputation, and Mather called him, in his inveterate manner, Old Nick’s son.[326] Sibley not unfairly remarks that these peculiarities of Mather’s style were probably almost as absurd to his contemporaries as to ourselves;[327] and very likely it helped to create something of that curiosity respecting him, which Prince tells us he found in Europe at a later day.

In any estimate of Cotton Mather we may pass by the eulogy of his colleague Joshua Gee,[328] and the Life of Cotton Mather[329] by his son Samuel, as the efforts of a predisposing and uncritical friendliness. We are not quite sure how far removed from the fulsome flattery, if not insincerity, of funeral sermons in those days was the good word upon his contemporary which came from Benjamin Colman.

With the coming of the present century we might suppose the last personal resentment of those who knew Cotton Mather had gone, and as an historical character it might well be claimed that a dispassionate judgment was due to him. When James Savage edited Winthrop’s journal, the public were told how Cotton Mather should be contemned; and the tale was not untruthful, but it was one-sided. Quincy in his History of Harvard University could give no very laudatory estimate of the chronic and envious grumbler against the college.[330] When Dr. Chandler Robbins wrote the History of the Second Church of Boston, he said all he could, and in a kindly spirit, to qualify the derogatory estimate then prevalent respecting his predecessor; and W. B. O. Peabody in his Life of Cotton Mather[331] tempered his judgment by saying, “There is danger lest in our disgust at his fanaticism and occasional folly we should deny him the credit which he actually deserves.” His professed defenders, too, lighten their approval with pointing out his defects. Thus does Samuel G. Drake in a rather feeble memoir in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg. (vol. vi.), and in the 1855 edition of the Magnalia. Dr. A. H. Quint in the Congregational Quarterly, 1859, and Dr. Henry M. Dexter in the Memorial Hist. of Boston, vol. ii., incline to the eulogistic side, but with some reservations. Mr. Samuel F. Haven in the Report of the Amer. Antiq. Soc., April, 1874, turned away the current of defamation which every revival of the Salem witchcraft question seems to guide against the young minister of that day. The estimates of Moses Coit Tyler in his Hist. of Amer. Literature (vol. ii.), and John Langdon Sibley in his Harvard Graduates (vol. iii.), show that the disgust, so sweeping fifty years ago, is still recognized amid all efforts to judge Mather lightly.[332] Mankind is tender in its judgment of the average man, when a difference of times exists. The historical sense, however, is rigid in its scrutiny of those who posture as index-fingers to their contemporaries; and it holds such men accountable to the judgments of all time. Great men separate the perennial and sweet in the traits of their epoch from the temporary and base,—a function Cotton Mather had no conception of.

The next general account of the New England colonies after the Magnalia, and covering the first thirty years of the present period, was Daniel Neal’s History of New-England containing an account of the civil and ecclesiastical affairs of the country to 1700.[158] With a map, and an appendix containing their present charter, their ecclesiastical discipline, and their municipal-laws. In 2 vols. (London. 1720.)[333]

Dr. Watts, writing to Cotton Mather, Feb., 1719-20, of Neal’s history, said that he had hoped to find it “an abstract of the lives and spiritual experiences of those great and good souls that planted and promoted the gospel among you, and those most remarkable providences, deliverances, and answers to prayers that are recorded in your Magnalia Christi, but I am disappointed of my expectations; for he has written with a different view, and has taken merely the task of an historian upon him.” Watts took Neal to task personally for his freedom about the early persecution; but Neal only answered that the fidelity of an historian required it of him.[334] Neal himself in his preface (p. iv.) acknowledges his freedom in treating of the mistakes into which the government fell.

Prince in the preface to his Chronological History of New England says: “In 1720 came out Mr. Neal’s History of New England.... He has fallen into many mistakes of facts which are commonly known among us, some of which he seems to derive from Mr. Oldmixon’s account of New England in his British Empire in America, and which mistakes[335] are no doubt the reason why Mr. Neal’s history is not more generally read among us; yet, considering the materials this worthy writer was confined to, and that he was never here, it seems to me scarce possible that any under his disadvantages should form a better. In comparing him with the authors from whence he draws, I am surprised to see the pains he has taken to put the materials into such a regular order; and to me it seems as if many parts of his work cannot be mended.”

Rogers and Fowle, printers in Boston, who were publishing a new magazine, begun in 1743, called The American Magazine, announced that they would print in it by instalment a new history of the English colonies. They changed the plan subsequently so as to issue the book in larger type, in quarterly numbers, and in this form there appeared in January, 1747, the first number, with a temporary title, which read: A summary, historical and political, of the first planting, progressive improvements and present state of the British settlements in North America; with some transient accounts of the bordering French and Spanish settlements. By W. D., M. D., No. 1. To be continued. Boston, 1747.[336] The author soon became known as Dr. William Douglass, the Scotch physician living in Boston,—“honest and downright Dr. Douglass,” as Adam Smith later chose to call him. He had drawn (pp. 235-38), in contrast to Admiral Warren, a severe character of Admiral Knowles, whose conduct, which occasioned the impressment riot then recent, was fresh in memory. Knowles seems to have instituted a suit for libel, which led to a rather strained amend by Douglass in the preface to the first volume, when the numbers were collected in 1749, and were issued with a title much the same as before, A Summary, historical and political, of the first planting, etc., containing—here follow five heads.[337] The character which he had given of Knowles, he says, was written out of passionate warmth and indiscretion, merely “in affection to Boston and the country of New England, his altera patria,” and then adds that he has suppressed it in the completed volume.[338] The second volume is dated 1751, and Douglass died in 1752.[339]

[159]

To his second volume (1751) he adds what he calls “a supplement to the first volume and introduction to the second volume,” in which he hints at the offence he had given Shirley and Knowles—the latter’s suit for libel forcing him to recant, as we have seen—by saying, “If facts related in truth offend any governor, commodore, or other great officer,” the author “will not renounce impartiality and become sycophant.” He further charges upon “the great man of the province for the time being,” as he calls Shirley, the “impeding, or rather defeating, this public-spirited, laborious undertaking,” as he characterizes his own book.

A large part of the work is given to New England, which he knew best; but his knowledge was at all times subservient to his prejudices, which were rarely weak. He is often amusing in his self-sufficiency, and not unentertaining; but he who consults the book is puzzled with his digressions and with his disorderly arrangement, and there is no index to relieve him.[340] Hutchinson struck the estimate which has not since been disputed: it was his “foible to speak well or ill of men very much as he had a personal friendship for them, or had a personal difference with them.”[341] Prof. Tyler in his Hist. of American Literature[342] has drawn his character more elaborately than others.[343] His book, while containing much that is useful to the student, remains a source of uncertainty in respect to all statements not elsewhere confirmed, and yet of his predecessors on New England history Douglass has the boldness to say that they are “beyond all excuse intolerably erroneous.”[344]

A wider interest than that of ecclesiastical record attaches to a book which all students of New England history have united in thinking valuable. This is the work of Isaac Backus, a Baptist minister in Middleborough, Mass., who published at Boston in 1777 a first volume, which was called A History of New England, with particular reference to the denomination of Christians called Baptists.[345] This volume brought the story down to 1690 only, but an appendix summarized subsequent history down to the date of the book. In the second volume, which appeared at Providence in 1784, the title was changed to A Church History of New England, vol. ii., extending from 1690 to 1784. The same title was preserved in the third volume, which was published in Boston in 1796, bringing the narrative down to that date. In the preface to this volume the author complained of the many typographical errors in the first volume, and professed that though there had been private dislikes of the work by some “because their own schemes of power and gain were exposed thereby,” he knew not of any public dispute about “its truth of facts.” The whole work has been reprinted under the title of the original first volume, with notes by David Weston, and published in two volumes by the Backus Historical Society at Newton, Mass., in 1871.[346]

Miss Hannah Adams published at Dedham, Mass., in 1799, a single volume, Summary History of New England. She does not profess to have done more than abridge the[160] usual printed sources, as they were then understood, and to have made some use of MS. material, particularly respecting the history of Rhode Island.

HANNAH ADAMS.

This follows an oil portrait by Alexander in the cabinet of the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester. Hannah Adams was born at Medfield, in 1755, and died at Brookline, Mass., Nov. 15, 1831; and she was the first person interred at Mount Auburn.

It is the fourth and last published volume of Dr. Palfrey’s History of New England (Boston, 1875) which comes within the period of the present chapter, bringing the story, however, down only to 1741, but a continuation is promised from a MS. left by the author, and edited by General F. W. Palfrey, his son, which will complete the historian’s plan by continuing the narrative to the opening of the war of independence. This fourth volume is amply fortified with references and notes, in excess of the limitations which[161] governed the earlier ones. The author says in his preface that he may be thought in this respect “to have gone excessively into details, and I cannot dispute [he adds] the justness of the criticism; such at present is the uncontrollable tendency of my mind.”

JOHN GORHAM PALFREY.

The editor is indebted to Gen. F. W. Palfrey for the excellent photograph after which this engraving is made.

In 1866 Dr. Palfrey published a popular abridgment of his first three volumes in two smaller ones. These were reissued in August, 1872, with a third, and in 1873 with a[162] fourth, which completed the abridgment of his larger work, and carried the story from the accession of Shirley to power down to the opening of the military history of the American Revolution. In this admirably concise form, reissued in 1884, with a thorough index, the work of the chief historian of New England is known as A compendious History of New England from the Discovery by Europeans to the first general Congress of the Anglo-American Colonies,—the last summarized chapter in the work not being recognized in the title.[347]

Massachusetts.—For this as well as for the period embraced in the third volume of the present history,[348] Thomas Hutchinson’s History of Massachusetts Bay is of the highest importance. Hutchinson says that he was impelled to write the history of the colony from observing the repeated destruction of ancient records in Boston by fire, and he complains that the descendants of some of the first settlers will neither use themselves nor let others use the papers which have descended to them. He seems, however, to have had the use of the papers of the elder Elisha Cooke. He acknowledges the service which the Mather library, begun by Increase Mather, and in Hutchinson’s time owned by Samuel Mather, who had married Hutchinson’s sister, was to him.

While Hutchinson’s continuation of the story beyond 1749 was as yet unknown, George Richards Minot planned to take up the narrative and carry it on. Minot’s Continuation of the History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay from 1748 shows that he made use of the files in the state house as well as their condition then permitted, but he was conscious of the assistance which he might have had, and did not possess, from the papers in the English archives. His first volume was printed in 1798; and he died before his second volume was published, in 1803, which had brought the record down to 1765, but stopped abruptly.[349] Grahame (iii. 446) calls the work “creditable to the sense and talent of its author,” but considers “his style frequently careless, and even slovenly and ungrammatical.” His contemporaries viewed his literary manner much more favorably, and were inclined to give him a considerable share in placing our native historical literature upon a scholarly basis. More painstaking research, with a careful recording of authorities, characterizes the only other History of Massachusetts of importance, that by John S. Barry, whose second volume is given to the period now under consideration,—a work, however, destitute of commensurate literary skill, or its abundant learning would give it greater reputation. Haliburton, in chapters 2 and 3 of book iii. of The Rule and Misrule of the English in America, traces in a summary way the turbulent politics of the province of Massachusetts during its long struggle against the royal prerogative. Emory Washburn’s Sketches of the judicial history of Massachusetts from 1630 to the revolution in 1775, Boston, 1840, contains biographical notices of the judges of Massachusetts, and traces the relations of the study of the law to the progress of political events. William Henry Whitmore’s Massachusetts civil list for the colonial and provincial[163] records, 1630-1774, Albany, 1870, is a list of the names and dates of appointment of all the civil officers constituted by authority of the charters or the local government. The general histories of Maine (during this period a part of Massachusetts) have been sufficiently characterized in another place.[350]

Connecticut.—The History of Connecticut, by Benjamin Trumbull, becomes not of less value as it approaches his own time. Grahame (ii. 165) says of him that he is “always distinguished by the accuracy of his statements, but not less distinguished by his partiality for his own people,” and Palfrey (iv. 226) avers that with all “his gravity Trumbull had a tendency for sensational traditions,” and both are right. He had not brought the story down later than 1713, in the volume published at Hartford in 1797. He says that he availed himself of the material which the ancient ministers and other principal gentlemen of Connecticut had communicated to Thomas Prince, when that writer was engaged upon his Chronological Hist. of New England; and in this collection, he adds, “important information was found, which could have been obtained from no other source.” Trumbull’s first volume was reprinted at New Haven in 1818, with a portrait of the author, together with a second volume, bringing the story down to 1764.

Rhode Island.—Of Rhode Island in the present period, Arnold’s History is the foremost modern authority.[351] Mr. William E. Foster has recently prepared, as no. 9 of the Rhode Island Historical Tracts (1884), a careful and well-annotated study of the political history of the eighteenth century, in a Memoir of Stephen Hopkins.

New Hampshire.—Dr. Belknap, as the principal historian of New Hampshire, has been characterized in another place.[352] The bibliography of his history may find record here. The first volume, The History of New Hampshire, vol. i., comprehending ... one complete century from the discovery of the Pascataqua, was read through the press in Philadelphia (1784) by Ebenezer Hazard.[353] This volume was reprinted at Boston in 1792, where meanwhile vol. ii. (1715-1790) had appeared in 1781, and vol. iii., embracing a geographical description, was issued in 1792. The imprints of these volumes vary somewhat.[354] There was printed at Dover, N. H., in 1812 (some copies have “Boston, 1813”) a second edition in three volumes, “with large additions and improvements published from the author’s last manuscript;” but this assertion is not borne out by the book itself.[355] A copy of his original edition having such amendments by Belknap had been used in 1810, at Dover, in printing an edition which was never completed, as the copy and what had been done in type were burned. Before parting with this corrected copy, the representatives of Dr. Belknap had transferred his memoranda to another copy, and this last copy is the one referred to in the edition which was printed by John Farmer at Dover in 1831, called The History of New Hampshire by Jeremy Belknap, from a copy of the original edition having the author’s last corrections, to which are added notes containing various corrections and illustrations. By John Farmer.[356] This is called vol. i., and contains the historical narrative, but does not include the geographical portion (vol. iii. of the[164] original ed.), which Farmer never added to the publication.[357] Belknap says that he had been educated under the influence of Thomas Prince, and that he had used Prince’s library before it had been despoiled during the Revolution. Of Hutchinson—and Belknap was in early manhood before Hutchinson left New England—he says that while that historian writes many things regarding New Hampshire which Neal and Douglass have omitted, he himself omits others, which he did not think it proper to relate. He refers to Mr. Fitch, of Portsmouth, as having begun to collect notes on New Hampshire history as early as 1728, and says that he had found in Fitch’s papers some things not elsewhere obtainable. He also animadverts on errors into which Chalmers had fallen in his Political Annals of the American Colonies.

EDITORIAL NOTES.

A. The Documentary History of New England.—After the lapsing of the New England Confederacy consequent upon the charter of William and Mary, the governments which made up that group of colonies had no collective archives. It is only as we search the archives of the English Public Record Office, and those of Paris and Canada, including Nova Scotia, that we find those governments treated collectively. The Reports of the English Historical Manuscripts Commission have of late years not only thrown additional light on our colonial history, as papers touching it preserved in the muniment rooms of leading families have been calendared, but the commission’s labors have also been the incentive by which the public depositary of records has been enriched by the transfer of many papers, which the commission has examined. Nine of their voluminous reports (up to 1885) have been printed, and by their indexes clues have been provided to the documents about New England history. The Shelburne Papers, belonging to the Marquis of Lansdowne, which make a large part of the Fifth Report, while of most interest in connection with the American Revolution, reveal not a little concerning the colonial history of the earlier part of the seventeenth century. The volumes enumerated in this Report, which are marked xlv. (1705-1724) and xlvi. (1686-1766), are of particular interest, referring entirely to the American colonies. We find here various papers of the Board of Trade and Plantations (or copies of them), embracing the replies from the provincial governors to their inquiries. In the volume numbered lxi., there are sundry reports of the attorney and solicitor-general, to whom had been referred the appeals of Massachusetts in 1699, and of Connecticut in 1701; his report of 1705 respecting Jesuits and papists in the plantations; that of 1707 on the acts of Massachusetts fining those trading with the French; that of 1710 on the reservation of trees in Massachusetts for masts of the royal navy; that of 1716 on the claim of the governor of Massachusetts to command the militia of Rhode Island; that of 1720 on the negative of the governor reserved in the charter of Massachusetts; that of 1722 on the question of the time when the three years that a province law is open to disapproval properly begins; that of 1725 on the encroachments of the House of Representatives on the prerogative of the Crown; that of 1732 relating to the validity of acts in Rhode Island, notwithstanding the governor’s dissent,—not to name many others.

Another source of documentary help is the manuscripts of the British Museum, of which there are printed catalogues; and the enumeration of the documents in the possession of the Canadian government,—of which the quality can be judged, as they existed in 1858,—in the Catalogue of the Library of Parliament, Toronto, 1858, pp. 1541-1655.

The archives of Massachusetts are probably not surpassed in richness by those of any other of the English colonies. The solicitude which the colonial and provincial government always felt for their preservation is set forth by Dr. George H. Moore in appendix v. of his Final notes on Witchcraft (New York, 1885). In 1821, Alden Bradford, then secretary of the commonwealth,[165] made a printed statement of “the public records and documents belonging to the commonwealth” (pp. 19), but the fullest enumeration of them was included in a Report to the Legislature of Massachusetts, made by the Commissioners ... upon the condition of the records, files, papers, and documents in the Secretary’s department, Jan., 1885 (pp. 42), drawn up by the present writer. An indication of such of them as concern the period of the present volume may be desirable.[358] The series of bound volumes, arranged in 1836-46, by the Rev. Joseph B. Felt, according to a classification which was neither judicious nor uniform, but, as Dr. Palfrey says, betrays “ingenious disorder,”[359] includes not all, but the chief part of the papers illustrative of legislation in the secretary’s office which concern us in the present chapter and make part of one hundred and thirty-one volumes. These come in sequence through vol. 136,—the omitted volumes being no. 107 (the revolution of 1689) and nos. 126 to 129 (the usurpation of the Andros period). The other volumes as a rule begin in the colonial period and come down to about the beginning of the Revolutionary War. They are enumerated with their topical characteristics in the Report already referred to (pp. 8, 9). Four volumes of ancient plans, grants, etc. (1643-1783), accompany the series.

Of the so-called French Archives—documents copied in France—mention has been elsewhere made, and a considerable portion of them cover the period now under examination.[360]

The destruction of the town and court house in 1747 carried with it the loss of many of the original records of the colony and province. The government had already undertaken a transcript of the records of the General Court, which had been completed down to 1737; and this copy, being at the house of Secretary Josiah Willard, was saved. A third copy was made from this, and it is this duplicate character which attaches to the records as we now have them. Transcripts of these records under the charter of William and Mary had by its provisions been sent to the Lords of Trade, session by session, and orders were at once given to secure these from 1737 to 1746, or a copy of them, for the province archives. For some reason this was not accomplished till 1845, when a commissioner was sent to England for that purpose; and these years (1737-1746) are thus preserved. None of these records for the provincial period have been printed.[361] The records of the upper branch or the council were also burned,[362] and were in a similar way restored from England. Of the House of Representatives, or lower branch, we have no legislative records before 1714, nor of the legislative action of either branch have we any complete record before 1714, since neither the journals of the House nor the legislative part of the records of the council were sent over to England, but only the executive part of the latter, which was apparently made up in view of such transmission, as Moore represents. The preservation of the journals of the House is due to the jealousy which that body felt of Dudley when he prorogued them in 1715. Because of their inaction on the paper-money question, the House, in a moment of indignation, and to show that they had done something, if not what the governor liked, voted to have their daily records printed. The set of these printed journals in the possession of the State is defective.[363] There is not known to be a perfect set of them in any collection, perhaps not in all the collections in the state, says Judge Chamberlain,[364] who adds: “Of their value for historical purposes I have formed a very high opinion. In many respects they are of more value than the journals of the General Court, which show results; while the journals of the House disclose the temper of the popular branch, and give the history of many abortive projects which never reached the journals of the General Court.”[365] Of a series of copies called charters, commissions, and proclamations, the second volume (1677-1774) concerns the present inquiry. There is a file of bound letters beginning in 1701, and it would seem they are copies in some, perhaps many, cases of originals in the archives as arranged by Mr. Felt.

Respecting the French and Indian wars, nine volumes of the so-called Massachusetts Archives cover muster-rolls from 1710 to 1774, including the regiments of Sir Chas. Hobby and others (1710), the frontier garrisons, those of Annapolis Royal (1710-11), the expedition to the West Indies (1740), the campaigns of Crown Point, Fort William Henry, and Louisbourg (1758), beside various eastern expeditions and the service by sea. Of the first Louisbourg (1745) expedition, there are no rolls, except as made up in copies from the Pepperrell and Belknap papers in the library of the Mass. Historical Society. In addition to these bound papers there are[166] many others in packages, laid aside by Mr. Felt in his labor, in some cases for reasons, and in other cases by oversight or a varying sense of choice.[366]

The Colonial Records of Connecticut for the present period have come under the supervision of Mr. C. J. Hoadly, and are carefully edited. In 1849 about 50,000 documents in the state archives had been bound in 138 volumes, when an index was made to them.[367] The correspondence of the Connecticut authorities with the home government (1755-58) has been printed in the Connecticut Historical Collections (vol. i. p. 257).

For Rhode Island, the continuation of the Colonial Records, beginning with vol. iii., covers the period now under consideration. The sessional papers of 1691-95, however, are wanting, and were probably sent to England by Bellomont, whence copies of those for May and June, 1691, were procured for the Carter-Brown library. Newport at this time was a leading community in maritime affairs, and the papers of these years touch many matters respecting pirates and privateers. The fifth volume (1741-56) indicates how Rhode Island at that time kept at sea more ships than any other colony, how she took part in the Spanish war, and how reckless her assembly was in the authorizing of paper money. The sixth volume (1757-69) closes the provincial period.

The series of publications of New Hampshire ordinarily referred to as Provincial Papers, from the leading series of documents in what is more properly called Documents and records relating to New Hampshire, is more helpful in the present period than in the earlier one.[368] They may be supplemented by the Shute and Wentworth correspondence (1742-53), and Wentworth’s correspondence with the ministry (1750-60); and letters of Joseph Dudley and others, contained in the Belknap MSS. in the cabinet of the Mass. Historical Society.[369] The Granite Monthly (vol. v. 391) has published a list of the issues of the press in New Hampshire from 1756 to 1773; and B. H. Hall’s History of Eastern Vermont, from its earliest settlement to the close of the eighteenth century, with a biographical chapter and appendixes (2 vols., Albany, N. Y., 1858, and on large paper in 1865), supplements the story as regards the claim of New Hampshire to the so-called New Hampshire grants.

The legislative and judicial methods of the several governments are of the first importance to the understanding of New England history, for it was a slow process by which it came to pass that professional lawyers held any shaping hand in the making or the administering of laws. The first Superior Court of Massachusetts under the provincial charter had not a single trained lawyer on the bench, and its assembly was equipped more with persistency and shrewdness in working out its struggle with the crown officer who tried to rule them than with legal acquirements. E. G. Scott, in his Development of Constitutional Liberty in the English Colonies (N. Y., 1882, pp. 31-58), examines the forms of the colonial governments and the political relations of the colonies. No one has better traced their relations to European politics than Bancroft.

The legislation of the several governments has had special treatment in Emory Washburn’s Sketches of the Judicial History of Massachusetts, 1630-1775 (Boston, 1840); in T. Day’s Historical Account of the Judiciary of Connecticut (Hartford, 1817); in John M. Shirley’s “Early Jurisprudence of New Hampshire,” in the New Hampshire Historical Society’s Proceedings, June 13, 1883. Cf. also H. C. Lodge, Short Hist. of the English Colonies, pp. 412-419.

Of the legislation of Massachusetts, Dr. Moore says[370] that it is “a record which, notwithstanding all its defects, has no parallel in any other American State.” The first edition of the Province Laws, under the new charter, was printed in 1699, and it was annually supplemented by those of the succeeding sessions till 1714, when a second edition was printed, to which an index was added in 1722, and various later editions[167] were issued.[371] In 1869 the first volume of a new edition, of historical importance, was published by the State, with the title Acts and Resolves, public and private, of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, with historical and explanatory notes, edited by Ellis Ames and Abner C. Goodell. Mr. Ames has since died (1884), and the editing is still going on under Mr. Goodell; five volumes, coming down to 1780, having been so far published.[372]

B. Men and Manners.—Dr. George E. Ellis, in an address[373] which he delivered in October, 1884, on the occasion of erecting a tablet to Samuel Sewall’s memory in the new edifice of the Old South church, in Boston, of which that last of the puritans had been a member, said:—

“Judge Sewall is better known to us in both his outer and inner being than any other individual in our local history of two hundred and fifty years; and this is true not only of himself, but through his pen, curiously active, faithful, candid, kind, impartial, and ever just, his own times stand revealed and described to us. His surroundings and companions, his home and public life, the habits, usages, customs, and events, and even the food which we can almost smell and taste, the clothes, and furnishings, the modes of hospitality, of travel, the style of things,—all in infinite detail; the military service, the formal ceremonials and courtesies, the excitements, panics, disasters,—all these have come down to us through Sewall’s pen, with a fullness and old-time flavor and charm, which we might in vain seek to gather from many hundred volumes. And all this comes from Sewall having kept a daily journal from 1674 to 1729, fifty-five years,”—and forty of these years come within the scope of the present chapter.

These journals had long been known to exist in a branch of Sewall’s family, but as, Dr. Ellis says, they “had been kept with much reserve, sparingly yielding to earnest inquirers the information they were known to contain.” President Quincy had drawn from them in his History of Harvard University, and had called them “curious and graphic,” as his extracts show. They had also been used by Holmes in his American Annals, by Washburn in his Judicial History of Mass., and by others. In 1868, some friends of the Mass. Historical Society purchased the diaries and other Sewall papers of the holders, and gave them to the society.[374] The diaries have since been published, and make part of the Collections of that society.[375] Despite a good deal of a somewhat ridiculous conservatism, linked with a surprising pettiness in some ways, the character of Sewall is impressed upon the present generation in a way to do him honor. His was a struggle to uphold declining puritanism, and the contrasts presented by the viceroyalty of New England at that time to one who was bred under the first charter must have been trying to Christian virtues, even were they such as Sewall possessed.[376] Dr. Ellis has[168] pointed out[377] how universally kindly Sewall was in what he recorded of those with whom he came in contact. “There are no grudges, no animosities, no malice, no bitter musings, no aggravating reproaches of those—some very near him—who caused him loss and grief, but ever efforts to reconcile, by forbearance, remonstrance, and forgiveness.” All this may be truly said, and afford a contrast to what the private diaries of his contemporaries, the two Mathers, would prompt us to say of their daily records. Those who are more considerate of the good names of those divines than they were themselves have thus far prevented the publication of these diaries. Dr. Ellis[378] says of them:—

“The diaries of Increase and Cotton Mather are extant, but only extracts of them have been printed. Much in them is wisely suppressed. Increase, though a most faithful, devoted, and eminently serviceable man, was morbid, censorious sometimes, and suffered as if unappreciated. The younger Mather was often jealous, spiteful, rancorous, and revengeful in his daily records, and thus the estimate of his general worth is so far reduced through materials furnished by himself.”[379]

There is among the Sparks manuscripts in Harvard College library a bound quarto volume which is superscribed as follows: “To Mr. Samuel Savile, of Currier’s Hall, London, attorney-at-law: Dear friend,—I here present you with an abstracted Historical Account of that part of America called New England; to which I have added the History of our voiage thereto, Anno Domini, 1740.” This account presents one of the best pictures of New England life, particularly of that in Boston, from a contemporary pen.[380] There are various other diaries of lookers-on, which are helpful in this study of New England provincial life, like the journals of Whitefield, the diary of Francis Goelet,[381] the journal of Madam Knight’s journey, 1704,[382]—not to name others. Among published personal records, there are George Keith’s Journal of Travels from New Hampshire to Caratuck (London, 1706); Capt. Nathaniel Uring’s Voyages and Travels, published at London in 1727;[383] and Andrew Burnaby’s Travels through the middle settlements in North America in the years 1759 and 1760, London, 1775.[384] Burnaby passed on his way, from Bristol through Providence to Boston. The early part of the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is of exceptional value as a reflex of the life of New England as it impressed a young man.[385]

Among the modern treatises on the social condition of New England, a chief place must be given to Henry Cabot Lodge’s Short History of the English Colonies, the chapters in which on the characteristics of the colonies and their life are the essential feature of a book whose title is made good by a somewhat unnecessary abridgment of the colonies’ anterior history. Lodge groups his facts by colonies. Dr. Edward Eggleston in some valuable papers, which are still appearing in the Century Magazine, groups similar, but often much minuter, facts by their topical rather than by their colonial[169] relations. Mr. Horace E. Scudder prepared an eclectic presentation of the subject in a little volume, Men and Manners a hundred years ago (N. Y., 1876), which surveys all the colonies. The Rev. Jos. B. Felt’s Customs of New England (1853) has a topical arrangement.[386]

For Massachusetts in particular, most of the local histories[387] contribute something to the subject; and in the Memorial History of Boston there are various chapters which are useful,[388] and a survey is also given in Barry’s Massachusetts (vol. ii. ch. I).

“He that will understand,” says Bancroft,[389] “the political character of New England in the eighteenth century must study the constitution of its towns, its congregations, its schools, and its militia.”[390]

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C. Finance and Revenue.—Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull in a pamphlet, First Essays at Banking and the first paper money in New England (Worcester, 1884,—from the Council Report of the American Antiquarian Society, Oct., 1884), traces more fully than has been done by Jos. B. Felt, in his Historical account of Massachusetts Currency (Boston, 1839), and by Paine in the Council Report of the same society, April, 1866,[391] the efforts at private banking previous to the province issue of bills in 1690, and with particular reference to a tract, which he ascribes to the Rev. John Woodbridge, of Newbury, called Severals relating to the fund, printed for divers reasons as may appear (Boston, probably 1681-82).[392] Dr. Trumbull attributes to Cotton Mather a paper sustaining the policy of issuing paper bills in 1690, which was published as Some considerations on the Bills of Credit now passing in New England (Boston, 1691),[393] to which was appended Some additional considerations, which the same writer thinks may have been the work of John Blackwell, who had been the projector of a private bank authorized in 1689. Similar views as there expressed are adopted by Mather in his Life of Phips, as printed separately in 1697, and as later included in the Magnalia.

In Dec., 1690, the bills of the £7,000 which were first authorized began to be put forth. Felt (p. 50) gives the style of them, and though an engraved form was adopted some of the earliest of the issues were written with a pen, as shown by the fac-simile of one in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Hist. Soc. (1863, p. 428). Up to 1702 there had been emissions and repetitions of emissions of about £110,000, when another £10,000 was put out. A fac-simile of one of these notes is given in Smith’s Hist. and Literary Curiosities, p. xlv. The issues for the next few years were as follows: 1706, £10,000; 1707, £22,000; 1708, £10,000; 1709, £60,000; 1710, £40,000; 1711, £65,000,—a total of £207,000.

In the following year (1712), the province bills of Massachusetts were made legal tender,[394] but the break had come. The public confidence was shaken, and their decline in value rapidly increased under the apprehension, which the repeated putting off of the term of redemption engendered.

In Connecticut the management was more prudent. She issued in the end £33,500, but all her bills were redeemed with scarce any depreciation. A fac-simile of one of her three-shilling bills (1709) is given in the Connecticut Colony Records, 1706-1716, p. 111.[395]

Rhode Island managed her issues wildly. The history of her financial recklessness, by E. R. Potter, was published in 1837, and reprinted by Henry Phillips, Jr., in his Historical Sketches, etc. This paper as enlarged by S. S. Rider in 1880, constitutes no. viii. of the Rhode Island Historical Tracts, under the title of Bills of Credit and Paper Money of Rhode Island, 1710-1786, with twenty fac-similes of early bills. In 1741 Gov. Ward made an official report to the Lords Commissioners of Trade, rehearsing the history of the Rhode Island issues from 1710 to 1740, and this report, with other documents relating to the paper money of that colony, is in the Rhode Island Col. Records, vol. v. (1741-56).

Towards the end of Dudley’s time in Massachusetts, the party lines became sharply drawn on questions of financial policy. The downfall of credit alarmed the rich and conservative. The active business men, not many in numbers, but strong in influence, found a flow of paper money helpful in making the capital of the rich and the labor of the poor subserve their interests, as Hildreth says. There were those who supposed some amelioration would come from banks, private and public, and the press teemed with pamphlets.[396] The aggressive policy was formulated in A Projection for erecting a Bank of Credit in Boston, New England, founded on Land Security, in 1714.[397] Its abettors endeavored to promote subscriptions by appealing to the friends of education, in a promise to devote £200 per annum to the advantage of Harvard College.[398]

The small minority of hard-money men cast in their lot with the advocates of a public bank as the lesser evil of the two.

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Gov. Dudley was no favorer of the Land-bank scheme[399] and his son, Paul Dudley, attacked it in a pamphlet, Objections to the Bank of Credit lately projected at Boston[400] (Oct., 1714), to which an answer came in Dec., from Samuel Lynde and other upholders, called A Vindication of the Bank of Credit.[401] “Of nearly thirty pamphlets and tracts, printed from 1714 to 1721,[402] for or against a private bank or a public bank,” says Dr. Trumbull,[403] “that of Dudley was the first, and is in some respects the ablest;” but he places foremost among the advocates of the scheme the author of A Word of Comfort to a Melancholy Country (Boston, 1721), purporting to be by “Amicus Patriæ,” or, as Trumbull thinks (p. 40) there is little doubt, by the famous Rev. John Wise, of Chebacco. (Cf. Brinley Catal., i. nos. 1,442-45.)

To forestall the action of the private bank, the province, by a law, issued £50,000 to be let out on mortgages of real estate, and these bills were in circulation for over thirty years, and the assembly took other action to prevent the Land-bank scheme being operative. The subsequent emissions of paper money can be traced in Felt, who also cites the contemporary tracts, ranged upon opposite sides, and supporting on the one hand the conservative views of the Council, and on the other the heedless precipitancy of the House. One of these, The Distressed state of the town of Boston considered ... in a letter from a gentleman to his friend in the country (1720), excited the attention of the council as embodying reflections on the acts of the government.[404]

In 1722 bills of as small a denomination as one, two, and three pennies[405] were ordered, to provide small change, which had become scarce.

The financial situation was rapidly growing worse. In 1710 an ounce of silver was worth eight shillings in paper, and in 1727 it had risen to seventeen shillings; and at this time, or near it (1728), there was afloat about £314,000 of this paper of Massachusetts indebtedness, to say nothing of a similar circulation issued by the other colonies, that of Rhode Island showing a much greater depreciation.[406] The fall in value was still increasing when in 1731 there were plans of bringing gold and silver into the country for a medium of trade;[407] but naturally the needy mercantile class opposed it. Thomas Hutchinson early (1737-38) distinguished himself in the assembly as a consistent opposer of paper money, and in 1740 he tried to push a scheme to hire in England 220,000 ounces of gold to meet the province bills, but he had little success. Another[408] scheme, however, flourished for a while; and this was one reviving the old name of the Land-bank, though sometimes called “Manufactory bank,” a bill for which was set afoot by Mr. John Colman, a needy Boston merchant, as Hutchinson calls him. Its principal feature consisted in securing the issues of the bank by a mortgage on the real estate of each associate to the extent of his subscription. It found its support in the small traders and the people of the rural districts, and was sustained in general by the House of Representatives. The leading and well-to-do merchants opposed it, and set up what was called a “Silver Scheme,”—an issue of notes to be redeemed in silver after the lapse of ten years.[409] “Mr. Hutchinson,” as this gentleman himself records, “favored[172] neither, but considered the silver plan as without fraudulent purpose, which he did not think could be the case with the Land-bank.”[410]

RHODE ISLAND PAPER,—TWELVE PENCE.

From an original bill in an illustrated copy of Historical Sketches of the Paper Currency of the American Colonies, by Henry Phillips, Jr., Roxbury, 1865,—in Harvard College library.

In 1733, Boston instructed its treasurer to refuse the bills of the new emission of Rhode Island. (Records, 1729-42, p. 53.)

The favoring and the opposing of the popular measure of the Land-bank drew lines sharply in the current political contests. The governor was suspected of double dealing, and while he was believed to be personally interested in it, he carried out openly the opposition which the Board of Trade instructed him to pursue: rejected the speaker and committees of the House, who were urging its progress, and displaced[173] justices and militia officers of that way of thinking. All the while rumors of riot began to prevail, but they were not sufficient to coerce the government in a relaxation of their opposition; and the governor on his side carried espionage to a degree which was novel. It is said that something over £50,000 of the bank’s bills actually got out; but some one discovered that an old act of Parliament, which came of the explosion of the South Sea company, held each partner responsible, and nothing else was needed to push the adventure out of existence.[411]

Felt gives the main points in the development of this financial scheme, but here as elsewhere his book is a mere conglomerate of ill-digested items, referring largely to the five volumes (c.-civ.) of the Mass. Archives, marked “Pecuniary,” which cover the monetary movements in Massachusetts between 1629 and 1775. Among the Shelburne Papers, vol. 61,[412] there appears a report of the attorney general to the Lords of Trade on this scheme of erecting a Land-bank in Boston, dated Nov. 10, 1735.

RHODE ISLAND THREE-SHILLINGS BILL, 1738.

From an original bill in the Harvard College copy of Phillips’ Hist. Sketches.

A leading combatant in the wordy conflict which followed was the Scotch physician, William Douglass, then living in Boston. His first publication was Some observations on the scheme projected for emitting £60,000 in bills of a new[174] tenor to be redeemed with silver and gold, Boston, 1738.[413] In the same year he published without date, An Essay concerning silver and paper currencies, more especially with regard to the British colonies in New England, Boston.[414] He next printed in London in 1739 a Discourse concerning the currencies of the British plantations in America, especially with regard to their paper money, more particularly in relation to Massachusetts.[415]

NEW HAMPSHIRE FIVE-SHILLINGS BILL, 1737.

From an original bill in the Harvard College copy of Phillips’ Hist. Sketches of Paper Currency. Fac-similes of bills of 1727 and 1742 are given in Smith’s Lit. and Hist. Curiosities, p. liii. Cf. also Potter’s Manchester.

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NEW HAMPSHIRE THREE-POUNDS BILL, 1740.

From an original bill in the Harvard College copy of Phillips’ Hist. Sketches. There is a fac-simile of a N. H. bill of forty shillings in Gay’s Pop. Hist. U. S., iii. p. 133; and one of a bill of 1742-43 in Cassell’s Hist. United States, i. p. 486.

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A fortunate plan for withdrawing the debased paper currency of Massachusetts Bay was finally matured.[416] Though the taking of Louisbourg had severely taxed the colony with a financial burden, the loss of it by treaty now made the way clear to throw off the same burden. William Bollan, the son-in-law of Shirley, had gone over after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle to represent how the sacrifices of New England deserved more recognition than was seemingly paid them in the surrender of her conquest. This and other reasons prevailed, and the government agreed to reimburse the province for the cost of the siege. This was reckoned on the new basis of paper money. Shirley in 1743 had been allowed to give his assent to an issue called “new tenor,” in which the value to silver was about ten times as great as the enormous flood of issues then in circulation bore, and these last were now known as “old tenor.” On this new basis Louisbourg had cost £261,700, which was held to be equivalent to £183,600 in London, the pound sterling equalling now about 30 shillings of the new tenor, and £11 of the old.[417] This agreement had been reached in 1749,[418] and the specie was shipped to Boston. Two hundred and seventeen chests of Spanish dollars and a hundred casks of copper coin were carted up King Street, in September, the harbinger of new prosperity. It was due most to Thomas Hutchinson’s skilful urgency that the assembly, of which he was now speaker, was induced to devote this specie to the redeeming of the paper bills of the “old tenor,” of which £2,000,000 were in circulation.[419] It was agreed to pay about one pound in specie for ten in paper, and the commissioners closed their labors in 1751, the silver and copper already mentioned paying nine tenths of it, while a tax was laid to pay the remaining tenth. About £1,800,000 in current bills were presented; the rest had been destroyed or hid away and forgotten.[420] Rhode Island had received £6,322 as her share of the whole; but as she was not wise enough to apply it to the bettering of her currency, she suffered the evils of a depreciated paper longer than her neighbors.[421] The same lack of wisdom governed New Hampshire. Connecticut had always been conservative in her monetary practices.

When the Massachusetts Assembly, in 1754, sought to raise money for the expenses of the war then impending, its debate upon an inquisitorial[177] excise bill levying a tax on wines and liquors incited violent opposition. Samuel Cooper launched at the plan a pamphlet called The Crisis.[422] Another brief attack appeared with nothing on the title but The Eclipse, MDCCLIV.[423] Daniel Fowle, however, was accused of printing another satirical account of the Representatives’ proceedings, which was published in 1754 as The Monster of Monsters, and the “Thomas Thumb, Esq.,” of the title is supposed to have shielded Samuel Waterhouse. Fowle was arrested, and the common hangman was directed to burn the pamphlet in King Street.[424] Sabin says that not more than three or four copies of the tract escaped, but the Brinley Catalogue shows two.[425] After his release Fowle printed in Boston the next year (1755) A total Eclipse of Liberty. Being a true and faithful account of the arraignment and examination of Daniel Fowle before the House of Representatives of Massachusetts Bay, Oct. 24, 1754, barely on suspicion of being concerned in printing and publishing a pamphlet, entitled The Monster of Monsters. Written by himself. An Appendix to the late Total Eclipse, etc., appeared in 1756.[426]

In May, 1755, a stamp act went into operation in the province, by which the Representatives had established duties upon vellum, parchment, and paper for two years. It yielded towards defraying the charges of the government about £1,350 for the years in question.[427] Shirley issued a proclamation of its conditions, one of which is in the Boston Public Library, and has been reprinted in its Bulletin, 1884, p. 163.

D. The Bounds of the New England Colonies.—During the provincial period, the external limits and internal divisions of New England were the subject of disagreement. The question as to what constituted the frontier line towards Acadia was constantly in dispute, as is explained elsewhere.[428]

On the western side New York had begun by claiming jurisdiction as far as the Connecticut River. She relinquished this claim in the main, as to her bounds on Connecticut, when that colony pressed her pretensions to a line which ran a score of miles from the Hudson, and when she occupied the territory with her settlers, the final adjustment being reached in 1731.[429]

On the line of Massachusetts the controversy with New York lasted longer. The claim of that province was set forth in a Report made in 1753, which is printed in Smith’s New York (1814 ed., p. 283), and Smith adds that the government of Massachusetts never exhibited the reasons of its claim in answer to this report, but in the spring of 1755 sold lands within the disputed territory.[430] In 1764 the matter was again in controversy. Thomas Hutchinson is thought to have been the author of the Massachusetts argument called The Case of the Provinces of Massachusetts Bay and New York, respecting boundary line between the two provinces (Boston, 1764).[431] Three years later (1767) a meeting of the agents of the two provinces was held at New Haven, by which the disagreement was brought to a conclusion.[432]

For the region north of Massachusetts New[178] York contended more vigorously, and the dispute over the New Hampshire grants in the territory of the present Vermont, which began in 1749, was continued into the Revolutionary period. When, in 1740, the king in council had established the northern line of Massachusetts, the commission of Gov. Benning Wentworth, of New Hampshire, the next year (1741), extended his jurisdiction westward until it met other grants, which he interpreted to mean till it reached a line stretched northerly in prolongation of the westerly boundary of Massachusetts, twenty miles east of the Hudson, and reaching to the southern extremity of Lake Champlain. On the 3d of Jan., 1749, Wentworth made a grant of the town of Bennington, adjacent to such western frontier line. These and other grants of townships which Wentworth made became known as the New Hampshire Grants.[433] The wars prevented much progress in the settlement of these grants, but some of the settlers who were there when the French war closed assembled, it is said, with the Rev. Samuel Peters in 1763 on Mount Pisgah, and broke a bottle of spirits with him, and named the country Verd Mont.

Gov. Colden, of New York, on Dec. 28, 1763, issued a proclamation claiming the land thus held under the grants of Wentworth, basing his rights on the grants in 1664 and 1674 to the Duke of York of “all lands from the west side of the Connecticut River to the east side of the Delaware Bay.” On the 20th July, 1764, the king in council confirmed Colden’s view, and made the Connecticut River the boundary as far as 45° north latitude. When this decision reached Wentworth he had already granted 128 townships. New York began to make counter-grants of the same land, and though the king ordered the authorities of New York to desist, when word reached London of the rising conflict, it was the angry people of the grants rather than the royal will which induced the agents of New York to leave the territory. Gov. John Wentworth continued to make grants till the Revolution, on the New Hampshire side; but though Gov. Moore, of New York, had been restrained (1767), his successors had not the same fear of the royal displeasure. As the war approached, the dispute between New York and the grants grew warmer.[434] In 1773 James Duane, it is thought, was the champion of the New York cause in two pamphlets: A State of the rights of the Colony of New York with respect to its eastern boundary on Connecticut River so far as concerns the late encroachments under the Government of New Hampshire, published by the assembly (New York, 1773); and A Narrative of the proceedings subsequent to the Royal Adjudication concerning the lands to the westward of Connecticut river, lately usurped by New Hampshire (New York, 1773).[435] The next year (1774) Ethan Allen answered the first of these tracts in his Brief narrative of the proceedings of the government of New York. Allen dated at Bennington, Sept. 23, 1774, and his book was published at Hartford.[436]

The war of independence soon gave opportunity for the British authorities on the Canada side to seek to detach the Vermonters from their relations to the revolting colonies.[437] The last of the royal governors of New Hampshire had fled in Sept., 1775, and a congress at Exeter had assumed executive control in Jan., 1776. The next year (1777) a convention framed a constitution, and by a stretch of power, as is told in Ira Allen’s Hist. of Vermont, it was adopted without recurrence to the people’s vote. In March, 1778, the state government was fully organized. The dispute with New York went on. Gov. Clinton issued a proclamation. Ethan Allen answered in an Animadversary Address (Hartford, 1778),[438] and in Dec., 1778, a convention of the people of the grants was held, and their resolution was appended to a document prepared by a committee of the assembly, called A public defence of the right of the New Hampshire grants (so called) on both sides Connecticut river, to associate together, and form themselves into an independent state. Containing remarks on sundry paragraphs of letters from the president of the Council of New Hampshire to his Excellency Governor Chittenden, and the New Hampshire delegates at Congress.[439]

[179]

The same year the legislature of New York directed the preparation of a Collection of evidence in vindication of the territorial rights and jurisdiction of the state of New York, against the claims of the commonwealth of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and the people of the grants who are commonly called Vermonters. It was prepared by James Duane, James Morrin Scott, and Egbert Benson, and is printed in the Fund Publications of the New York Historical Society, 1870 (pp. 277-528). On the other side, Ethan Allen published A vindication of the opposition of the inhabitants of Vermont to the government of New York, and of their right to form an independent state;[440] and in 1780, in connection with Jonas Fay, and by order of the governor and council, he published A concise refutation of the claims of New Hampshire and Massachusetts Bay, to the territory of Vermont; with occasional remarks on the long disputed claim of New York to the same.[441]

In 1782, Ethan Allen again brought out at Hartford his The present state of the controversy between the states of New York and New Hampshire on the one part, and the state of Vermont on the other.[442]

The arguments and proofs were rehearsed in 1784, when the question was to be presented to court, in a brief by James Duane, called State of the evidence and argument in support of the territorial rights of jurisdiction of New York against the government of New Hampshire and the claimants under it, and against the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. An amicable adjustment prevented the publication of this document, and it was first printed in the N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll. for 1871.[443]

[180]

Connecticut claimed certain lands in Northern Pennsylvania, which came within her jurisdiction by the extension of her lines, as expressed in her charter of 1662, westward to the South Sea. New York, being then in the possession of a Christian power, was excepted, but the claim was preserved farther west. In 1753 a company was formed to colonize these Connecticut lands in the Susquehanna valley, and lands were bought of the Indians at Wyoming. The government of Pennsylvania objected, and claimed the lands to be within the bounds of William Penn’s charter. (Cf. Penna. Archives, ii. 120, etc.) The defeat of Braddock checked the dispute, but in 1761 it was renewed. In 1763 the home government required the Connecticut people to desist, on the ground that they had not satisfied the Indian owners. New bargains were then made, and in 1769 settlements again took place. General Gage, as commander-in-chief of the British troops on the continent, refused to interfere. In 1774, William Smith prepared an Examination of the Connecticut claim to lands in Pennsylvania, with an appendix and map (Philadelphia, 1774); and Benjamin Trumbull issued A Plea in vindication of the Connecticut title to the contested lands west of the Province of New York (New Haven, 1774). See entries in the Brinley Catalogue, Nos. 2121, etc. The dispute was later referred to the Continental Congress, which in 1781 decided in favor of Pennsylvania, and Aug. 8, 1782, commissioners were appointed. (Journals of Congress, iv. 59, 64.) Connecticut still claimed west of Pennsylvania, and though she retained for a while the “Western Reserve,” she finally ceded (1796-1800) to the United States all her claims as far as the Mississippi.[444] The claims of Massachusetts, on similar grounds, to land in Michigan and Wisconsin were surrendered to the general government in 1785.

The original patent for the Massachusetts Company made its northern line three miles north of the Merrimac River. New Hampshire claimed that it should be run westerly from a point on the coast three miles north of the mouth of that river. When the Board of Trade, in 1737, selected a commission to adjudicate upon this claim, Massachusetts was not in favor, and New Hampshire got more than she asked, the line being run north of the river three miles, and parallel to it, till it reached the most southerly point of the river’s course, when it was continued due west.[445]

Respecting the boundaries on the side of Maine, there is a journal of Walter Bryent, who in 1741 ran the line between New Hampshire and York County in Maine.[446]

Massachusetts also lost territory in the south. The country of King Philip on the easterly side of Narragansett Bay had been claimed by Plymouth, and Massachusetts, by the union under the province charter, succeeded to the older colony’s claim. An arbitration in 1741 did not give all she claimed to Rhode Island, but it added the eastern towns along the bay.[447] On the frontiers of Connecticut, the towns of Enfield, Suffield, Somers, and Woodstock had been settled by Massachusetts, and by an agreement in 1713 she had included them in her jurisdiction.[448] In 1747, finding the taxes in Massachusetts burdensome[181] from the expenses of the war, these towns applied to be received by Connecticut, and their wish was acceded to, while Massachusetts did not dare risk an appeal to the king in council.[449]

The disputes of Connecticut and Rhode Island respecting the Narragansett country resulted on that side in a loss to Connecticut.[450]

In an interesting paper on the “Origin of the names of towns in Massachusetts,” by William H. Whitmore, in the Proceedings (xii. 393-419) of the Mass. Hist. Society, we can trace the loss of towns to Massachusetts, which she had incorporated, and find some reflection of political changes. Up to 1732 the names of towns were supplied by the petitioners, but after that date the incorporation was made in blank, the governor filling in the name, which may account for the large number of names of English peers and statesmen which were attached to Massachusetts towns during the provincial period. The largest class of the early names seems due to the names of the places in England whence their early settlers came. Prof. F. B. Dexter presented to the American Antiquarian Society, in April, 1885, a paper of similar character respecting the towns of Connecticut.

E. Forts and Frontier Towns of New England.—The large increase during recent years in the study of local history has greatly broadened the field of detail. As scarcely one of the older settlements to the west, north, and east escaped the horrors of the French and Indian wars, the student following out the minor phases must look into the histories of the towns of New England. Convenient finding-lists for these towns are the Check-list of Amer. local history, by F. B. Perkins; Colburn’s Bibliog. of Massachusetts; Bartlett’s Bibliog. of Rhode Island; and A. P. C. Griffin’s “Articles on American local history in Historical Collections, etc.,” now publishing in the Boston Public Library Bulletin.

For the Maine towns particular reference may be made to Cyrus Eaton’s Thomaston, Rockland, and South Thomaston (1863), vol. i.; E. E. Bourne’s Wells and Kennebunk; Cushman’s Ancient Sheepscot and Newcastle; Willis’s Portland (2d ed.); Folsom’s Saco and Biddeford; Eaton’s Warren (2d ed.), which gives a map, marking the sites of the forts about the Georges River; Johnston’s Bristol, Bremen, and Pemaquid, which gives a map of the Damariscotta River and the Pemaquid region, with the settlements of 1751; R. K. Sewall’s Ancient Dominions of Maine; James W. North’s Augusta; G. A. and H. W. Wheeler’s Brunswick, Topsham, and Harpswell, including the ancient territory known as Pejepscot, Boston, 1878 (ch. iv. and xxiii.).

See the present History (Vol. III. p. 365) for notes on the local history of Maine, and (Ibid., p. 364) for references to the general historians,—Sullivan, whose want of perspicuousness Grahame (i. 253) complains of, and Williamson.

At the present Brunswick (Maine), Fort Andros had been built in 1688, and had been demolished in 1694. Capt. John Gyles erected there in August, 1715, a post which was called Fort George. Ruins of it were noticeable at the beginning of this century. There is a sketch of it in Wheeler’s Brunswick, Topsham, and Harpswell, pp. 624, 629.

The fort at St. Georges (Thomaston, Me.) had been built originally in 1719-20, to protect the Waldo patent; it was improved in 1740, and again in 1752 was considerably strengthened. (Williamson, i. 287.)

At Pemaquid, on the spot where Andros had established a post, Phips had built Fort William Henry in 1692, which had been surrendered by Chubb in 1696. It is described in Dummer’s Defence of the New England Charters, p. 31; Mather’s Magnalia, book viii. p. 81. In 1729 Col. David Dunbar erected a stone fort, perhaps on the same foundations, which was called Fort Frederick. There is a plan of the latter post in Johnston’s Bristol, Bremen, and Pemaquid, pp. 216, 264. Cf. Eaton’s Warren, 2d ed.

Further down the Kennebec River and opposite the upper end of Swan Island stood Fort Richmond, which had been built by the Massachusetts people about 1723. Near the present Augusta the Plymouth Company founded Forts Shirley and Western in 1754. There are plans and views of them in J. W. North’s Augusta, pp. 47-49. Cf. Nathan Weston’s Oration at the Centennial Celebration of the Erection of Fort Western, July 4, 1854, Augusta, 1854.

Col. John Winslow planned, in 1754, on a point half a mile below Teconick Falls, the structure known as Fort Halifax, according to[182] the extent shown by the dotted line in the annexed cut.[451] Winslow’s letter to Shirley, with the plan, is in the Mass. Archives, and both are given in North’s Augusta, pp. 59, 60. The fort was completed the next year by William Lithgow, as shown by the black part of the cut, the rear flanker, forming the centre of the original plan, having been built, however, by Winslow. This block-house measured 20 × 20 feet below, and on the overhang 27 × 27 feet. The narrower of the large structures was the barracks, also raised by Winslow, but removed by Lithgow, who built the other portions.

FORT HALIFAX.

The cut follows a reconstruction-draft, made by Mr. T. O. Paine, which is given by North (p. 62). The flanker nearest the river is still standing, and the upright planks on the side, as shown in the annexed cut, mark the efforts which have been made of late to secure the timbers. In the Maine Historical Society’s Collections, vol. viii. p. 198, is a history of the fort by William Goold, as well as the annexed cut of a restoration of the entire fort, drawn by that gentleman from descriptions, from the tracings of the foundations, and from the remaining flanker. The preceding volume (vii.) of the same Collections had contained “materials for a history” of the fort, edited by Joseph Williamson,—mainly documents from the Mass. Archives. A journal of the march of Capt. Eleazer Melvin’s company in Gov. Shirley’s expedition to the Norridgewock country, when Fort Halifax was erected in 1754, kept by John Barber (May 30, 1754-Aug. 17, 1754), is in N. E. Hist. and Gen. Reg., 1873, pp. 281-85. Cf. further in Williamson’s Maine, i. 300; Hutchinson’s Massachusetts, iii. 26. A plan (1754) of the Kennebec River forts, by John Indicott (measuring 3⁸/₁₂ × 1⁵/₁₂), is noted in the Catalogue of the King’s Maps (i. 580), in the British Museum. The forts on the Kennebec, and the chief localities of that river, are described by Col. William Lithgow in 1767, in a deposition printed in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1870, p. 21. Lithgow was then fifty-two years old, and had known the river from childhood.

In 1752, when there was some prospect of quieting the country, and truck houses were built at Fort Richmond and St. Georges, William Lithgow[183] and Jabez Bradbury were put in charge of them.

A paper by Richard Pike, on the building and occupancy of Fort Pownall, on the Penobscot, is in the N. E. Hist. and Gen. Reg., 1860, p. 4. In Williamson’s Belfast, p. 56, is a conjectural view of the fort, drawn from the descriptions and from a survey of the site in 1828. A Survey of the river and bay of Penobscot, by order of Gov. Pownall, 1759, is among the king’s maps (Catal., ii. 167) in the British Museum. A journal of Pownall’s expedition to begin this fort was printed, with notes, by Joseph Williamson in the Maine Hist. Coll., v. 363. Cf. Williamson’s Maine, i. 337. This fort was completed in July, 1759, at a cost of £5,000, and stood till 1775. Cf. N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1859, p. 167, with an extract from the Boston News-Letter, May 31, 1759.

This enumeration covers the principal fortified posts in the disputed territory at the eastward; but numerous other garrison posts, block-houses, and stockades were scattered over the country.[452] A view of one of these, known as Larrabee’s garrison stockade, is given in Bourne’s Wells and Kennebunk, ch. xxi. The view of a block-house built in 1714, near the junction of the Kennebec and Sebasticook rivers, as sketched in 1852, is annexed.

West of Maine the frontier stretched from the Piscataqua to the valley of the Housatonic.

For the New Hampshire part of this line, Belknap’s Hist. of New Hampshire must be supplemented for a general survey by B. H. Hall’s Eastern Vermont. So far as the muster-rolls of frontier service show the activity in New Hampshire, it can be gathered from the second volume of the Report of the Adjutant-General of New Hampshire, 1866, supplemented by others given in the N. H. Revolutionary Rolls, vol. i. (1886). The volumes of the series of Provincial Papers published by that State (vols. ix., xi., xii., xiii.), and called “Town Papers, 1638-1784,” give the local records. The principal town histories detailing the events of the wars are Potter’s Manchester; Bouton’s Concord; Runnel’s Sanbornton; Little’s Warren; C. C. Coffin’s Boscawen; H. H. Saunderson’s Charlestown; B. Chase’s Old Chester; C. J. Fox’s Dunstable; Aldrich’s Walpole; and Morrison’s Windham.

FLANKER, FORT HALIFAX.

In 1704 the assembly of New Hampshire ordered that every householder should provide himself with snow-shoes, for the use of winter scouting parties. (N. H. Prov. Papers, iii. 290.) In 1724 Fort Dummer was built near the modern Brattleboro, in territory then claimed by Massachusetts. (Hist. Mag., x. 109, 141, 178; N. H. Hist. Soc. Coll., i. 143; N. H. Adj.-Gen. Rept., 1866, ii. p. 122.) In 1746, after the alarm over the D’Anville fleet had subsided, Atkinson’s New Hampshire regiment was sent north to meet any invasion from Canada. (N. H. Adj.-Gen. Rept., 1866, ii. 83.) The next year (1747), Walter Bryent advanced with his regiment as far as Lake Winnepesaukee. (N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., July, 1878, p. 297; N. H. Prov. Papers, v. 431, 471; Belknap, ii. 228.)

In 1747 the fort at “no. 4,” or Charlestown, the outpost towards Canada, was attacked. (Saunderson’s Charlestown; Stone’s Sir William Johnson, i. 260.)

In 1752-54 there is record of the hostilities on the New Hampshire borders in the N. H. Prov. Papers, vi. 301, 310-319.

The St. Francis Indians confronted the settlements of the upper Connecticut, and in 1752 Shirley sent Capt. Phineas Stevens to treat with them in the presence of the governor of Canada.[184] (N. Y. Col. Docs., x. 252.) For the massacre at Hinsdale in 1755, and attacks in the Connecticut valley, see N. H. Prov. Papers, vi. 412, and Adj.-Gen. Report, 1866, vol. ii. 153.

FORT HALIFAX, 1755.
(Restoration.)

In 1694-95, the frontier line of Massachusetts was established by law as including the towns of Amesbury, Haverhill, Dunstable, Chelmsford, Groton, Lancaster, Marlborough, and Deerfield. Five years later this list was increased by Brookfield, Mendon, and Woodstock, with a kind of inner line, running through Salisbury, Andover, Billerica, Hatfield, Hadley, Westfield, and Northampton.

For the border troubles of Massachusetts, beside Penhallow and Niles, Neal and Douglass, and the Magnalia, we turn to Hutchinson with confidence in the facilities which he enjoyed; but John Adams says (Works, x. 361), “When Mr. Hutchinson’s History of Massachusetts Bay first appeared, one of the most common criticisms upon it was the slight, cold, and unfeeling manner in which he passed over the Indian wars.”

The most exposed towns fronting the New Hampshire line were Haverhill, Andover, and Dunstable. The History of Haverhill, by G. W. Chase (1861), gives the story of the Indian troubles with much detail.[453] For Andover they may be found in S. L. Bailey’s Historical Sketches of Andover (Boston, 1880); and for Dunstable in Elias Nason’s History of Dunstable (1877). Just below Dunstable lay Groton, and Dr. Samuel A. Green’s Groton during the Indian Wars supplies the want here,—a good supplement to Butler’s Groton. The frontiers for a while were marked nearly along the same meridian by Lancaster, Marlborough, Brookfield, and Oxford. The Early records of Lancaster, 1643-1725, edited by H. S. Nourse (Lancaster, 1884), furnishes us with a full reflection of border experiences during King William’s, Queen Anne’s, and Lovewell’s wars, and it may be supplemented by A. P. Marvin’s History of Lancaster. The sixth chapter of Charles Hudson’s Marlborough (Boston, 1862), and Nathan Fiske’s Historical Discourse on Brookfield and its distresses during the Indian Wars (Boston, 1776), illustrate the period. The struggle of the Huguenots to maintain themselves at Oxford against the Indians is told in Geo. F. Daniels’ Huguenots in the Nipmuck Country (1880), and in C. W. Baird’s Hist. of the Huguenot Emigration to America (1885).

There is in the cabinet of the Mass. Hist. Soc. (Misc. Papers, 41.41) an early plan of the Connecticut and Housatonic valleys, showing the former from the sea as far north as Fort Massachusetts, and the latter up to Fort Dummer, and bearing annotations by Thomas Prince.

[185]

BLOCK HOUSE, BUILT 1714.

In the valley of the Connecticut, Northfield held the northernmost post within the Massachusetts bounds as finally settled. One of the best of our local histories for the details of this barbaric warfare is Temple and Sheldon’s History of Northfield. Deerfield was just south, and it is a centre of interest. The attack which makes it famous came Feb. 29, 1704-5, and the narrative of the Rev. John Williams, who was taken captive to Canada, is the chief contemporary account. Gov. Dudley sent William Dudley to Quebec to effect the release of the prisoners, and among those who returned to Boston (Oct. 25, 1706) was Williams, who soon put to press his Redeemed Captive,[454] which was published in 1707,[455] and has been ever since a leading specimen[186] of a class of books which is known among collectors as “Captivities.”

Further down the Connecticut than Deerfield lies Hadley, which has been more fortunate than[187] most towns in its historian. Sylvester Judd’s History of Hadley, including the early history of Hatfield, South Hadley, Amherst, and Granby, Mass., With family genealogies, by L. M. Boltwood, Northampton, 1863, follows down the successive wars with much detail.[456] A systematic treatment of the whole subject was made by Epaphras Hoyt in his Antiquarian Researches, comprising a history of the Indian Wars in the Country bordering on the Connecticut River, etc., to 1760, published at Greenfield in 1824. There had been published seventy-five years before, A short narrative of mischief done by the French and Indian enemy on the western frontiers of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, Mar. 15, 1743-44, to Aug. 2, 1748, drawn up by the Rev. Mr. Doolittle of Northfield, and found among his manuscripts after his death. Boston, 1750.[457]

By the time of Shirley’s war (1744-48), the frontier line had been pushed westerly to the line of the Housatonic,[458] and at Poontoosuck we find the exposed garrison life repeated, and its gloom and perils narrated in J. E. A. Smith’s History of Pittsfield, 1734-1800 (Boston, 1869). William Williams, long a distinguished resident of this latter town, had been detailed from the Hampshire[459] militia in 1743 to connect the Connecticut and the Hudson with a line of posts, and he constructed forts at the present Heath, Rowe, and Williamstown, known respectively as forts Shirley,[460] Pelham, and Massachusetts. In August, 1746, the latter post, whose garrison was depleted to render assistance during the eastward war, was attacked by the French and Indians, and destroyed.[461]

Fort Massachusetts was rebuilt, and its charge, in June, 1747, committed to Major Ephraim Williams.[462] It became the headquarters of the forts and block-houses scattered throughout the region now the county of Berkshire, maintaining garrisons drawn from the neighboring settlers,[188] and at times from the province forces in part. The plans of one of these fortified posts are preserved in the state archives, and from the drawings given in Smith’s Pittsfield (p. 106) the annexed cuts are made.[463]

In 1754 the charge of the western frontier was given to Col. Israel Williams.[464]

These Berkshire garrisons were in some measure assisted by recruits from Connecticut, as that colony could best protect in this way its own frontiers to the northward. Beside the general histories of Connecticut, this part of her history is treated in local monographs like Bronson’s Waterbury, H. R. Stiles’ Ancient Windsor, Cothren’s Ancient Woodbury, Larned’s Windham County, and Orcutt and Beardsley’s Derby.[465]

CHAPTER III.

THE MIDDLE COLONIES.

BY BERTHOLD FERNOW,

Keeper of the Historical MSS., N. Y. State.

THE thirteenth volume of the New York Colonial Manuscripts contains a document called “Rolle van t’Volck sullende met het Schip den Otter na Niēu Nederlandt overvaren,” April 24, 1660, being a list of the soldiers who were to sail in the ship “Otter” for New Netherland. Among these soldiers was one Jacob Leisler, from Frankfort, who upon arriving at New Amsterdam found himself indebted to the West India Company for passage and other advances to the amount of nearly one hundred florins.

Twenty-nine years later this same quondam soldier administered the affairs of the colony of New York as lieutenant-governor, not appointed and commissioned by the king of England, but called to the position by the people of the colony. When the first rumors of the “happy revolution” in England reached New York, Sir Edmond Andros, the governor-general of New York and New England, was absent in Boston, where the citizens forcibly detained him. Nicholson, the lieutenant-governor, and one or two other high officials belonged to the Church of Rome, and were therefore disliked and suspected by the predominant Protestant population. Rumors had found their way, meanwhile, through the northern wilderness, that the French in Canada were making preparations to invade New York, hoping, with the assistance of the Catholics in the province, to wrest it from the English. The major part of the inhabitants were still Dutch or of Dutch origin, and these were nearly all Protestants. They were easily led to believe that the papists within and without the government had concerted[190] to seize Fort James, in New York, and to surrender that post and the province to a French fleet, which was already on the way from Europe. The prompting of the Protestant party to anticipate any such hostile movement was strengthened when they heard the result of the revolution in England. Leisler, placing himself at the head of this anticipatory movement, seized the fort, and was shortly afterwards proclaimed lieutenant-governor, in order to hold the province for William and Mary until their pleasure should be known. There was little ground for distrusting the Catholics within the province; but the danger from the French was more real, and took a shape that was not expected, in the murderous assault which was made on Schenectady.[466] Leisler’s adherents, as well as his opponents, felt that this coup de main of the French might be only the precursor of greater disasters, if no precautionary steps were taken. Leisler himself believed that the English colonies would never be safe unless the French were driven from Canada. He called a congress of the colonies. Their deliberations led to the naval expedition of Phips against Quebec, and the march of Winthrop and Livingston against Montreal. Their disastrous failure has been described in an earlier volume.[467] Governor Sloughter arrived in New York a few months later, and soon put an end to the hasty revolt. Leisler and his son-in-law, Milbourne, were hanged for what seemed an untimely patriotism and still more uncalled-for religious zeal.

The cry was practically a “No Popery” cry upon which Leisler had risen to such prominence in the affairs of New York. It had appeared scarcely to attract the notice of the king, and he was prone to believe that Leisler was more influenced by a hatred of the Established Church than by zeal for the crown. It was not, however, without some effect. A few words added to the instruction of the new governor had materially changed the condition of religious toleration in the province. Earlier governors had been directed “to permit all persons, of what religion soever, quietly to inhabit within the government.” Under Governor Sloughter’s instructions papists were excepted from this toleration. Was such intolerance really needed for the safety of the English colonies? They had been so far in the main a refuge for those who in Europe had suffered because of their liberal and anti-Roman religious opinions, and had never been much sought by Catholics.[468] The conditions of life in the colonies were hardly favorable to a church which brands private reasoning as heresy; and even in Maryland—which was established, if not as a Catholic colony, yet by a nobleman of that [191] faith—there were, after fifty years of existence, only about one hundred Romanists. Public opinion and the political situation in England had now raised this bugbear of popery. It was but the faint echo of the cry which prompted those restrictions in the instructions to King William’s governor which sought to enforce in New York the policy long in vogue in the mother country. The home government seemed ignorant of the fact that the natural enemies of the Church of Rome, the Reformed and Lutheran clergymen of New York, had not only not shared Leisler’s fears, but, supported by the better educated and wealthier classes, they had opposed him by every means in their power. When, however, with Leisler’s death the motive for their dislike of his cause had been removed, the general assembly, composed to a great extent of his former opponents, willingly enacted a law, the so-called Bill of Rights, denying “liberty to any person of the Romish religion to exercise their manner of worship, contrary to the laws of England.”[469] After the attempt on the life of King William in 1697, further laws, expelling Roman Catholic priests and Jesuits from the province, and depriving papists and popish recusants of their right to vote, were passed in 1700 and 1701. It was reserved for the Revolution of 1776 to change the legal status of the Roman Catholics of New York, and place them on an equal footing with the believers in other doctrines.

In establishing the colony of Pennsylvania on the basis of religious freedom, Penn declared that every Christian, without distinction of sect, should be eligible to public employments. But on the accession of William and Mary it became necessary to adopt and endorse the so-called “penal laws,” in prosecuting followers of the elder church. Penn himself was unable to prevent it, although his liberal spirit revolted at such intolerance, and it seems that the authorities in Pennsylvania were quite as willing as their chief to treat Romanists with liberality, notwithstanding the “penal laws,” since in 1708 Penn was unfavorably criticised in England for the leniency with which this sect was treated by him. “It has become a reproach,” he writes to his friend Logan, “to me here with the officers of the crown, that you have suffered the scandal of the mass to be publicly celebrated.”

Despite all laws, Pennsylvania became of all the colonies the most favorable and the safest field for the priests and missionaries of the Church of Rome. It is true, they had to travel about the country in disguise, but it was known everywhere that Romanists from other provinces came to Philadelphia or Lancaster at regular intervals to receive the sacraments according to the rites of their faith. Before the Revolution, Pennsylvania harbored five Catholic churches, with about double the number of priests and several thousand communicants, mostly Irish and Germans.

The attempt upon the life of the king in 1697 had much the same effect in East New Jersey as in New York. The law of 1698, “declaring what[192] are the rights and privileges of his majesty’s subjects in East New Jersey,” directed “that no person or persons that profess faith in God by Jesus Christ, his only Son, shall at any time be molested, punished, disturbed, or be called in question for difference in religious opinion, &c., &c., provided this shall not extend to any of the Romish religion the right to exercise their manner of worship contrary to the laws and statutes of England.”[470]

When Lord Cornbury assumed the government of New Jersey in 1701, his instructions directed him to permit liberty of conscience to all persons except papists. Matters remained thus with the Romish Church in New Jersey until the end of British rule.

Another incident of Leisler’s brief administration was of greater importance and farther-reaching consequences than his proscription of persons differing from his religious opinions. It will be remembered[471] that a general assembly of the province had been elected in 1683, holding two sessions that year and another in 1684; also that it had been dissolved in 1687, pursuant to the instructions of King James II. to Sir Edmond Andros, directing him “to observe in the passing of lawes that the Stile of enacting the same by the Governor and Council be henceforth used and no other.” The laws enacted by the first assembly, and not repealed by the king, remained in force, and the government was carried on with the revenues derived from the excise on beer, wine, and liquors, from the customs duties on exported and imported goods, and from tax levies; but the people had no voice in the ordering of this revenue, as they had had none during the Dutch period and before 1683. Leisler and his party, however, firmly believed in the Aryan principle of “no taxation without representation,” and when a necessity for money arose out of the French invasion and the subsequent plan to reduce Canada, Leisler issued writs of election for a general assembly, which in the first session, in April, 1690, enacted a law for raising money by a general tax. Adjourned to the following autumn, it again ordered another tax levy, and passed an act obliging persons to serve in civil or military office.

In calling together this general assembly, notwithstanding the repeal by James II. of the Charter of Liberties of 1683, Leisler assumed for the colony of New York a right which the laws and customs of Great Britain did not concede to her as a “conquered or crown” province. The terms on which New York had been surrendered to the English, both in 1664 and in 1674, ignored a participation by the people in the administration of the government, and the king in council could therefore, without infringing upon any law of England or breaking any treaty stipulation, deal with the conquered province as he pleased; while all the other colonies in America[193] were “settled or discovered” countries, which, because taken possession of as unoccupied lands or under special charters and settled by English subjects, had thereby inherited the common law of England and all the rights and liberties of Englishmen, subject only to certain conditions imposed by their respective charters, as against the prerogatives of the crown. The action of Leisler showed to the English ministry the injustice with which New York had been treated so long, and the instructions given to Governor Sloughter in November, 1690, directed him “to summon and call general Assemblies of the Inhabitants, being Freeholders within your Government, according to the usage of our other Plantations in America.” This general assembly was to be the popular branch of the government, while the council, appointed by the king upon the governor’s recommendation, took the place of the English House of Lords. The governor had a negative voice in the making of all laws, the final veto remaining with the king, to whom every act had to be sent for confirmation. Three coördinate factors of the government—the assembly, the council, and the governor—were now established in theory; in reality there were only two, for the governor always presided at the sessions of the council, voting as a member, and in case of a tie gave also a casting vote. This state of affairs, by which the executive branch possessed two votes on every legislative measure, as well as the final approval, continued until 1733, when, Governor Cosby having quarrelled with the chief justice and other members of the council, the question was submitted to the home government. The law officers now declared that it was inconsistent with the nature of the English government, the governor’s commission, and his majesty’s instructions for the governor in any case whatsoever to sit and vote as a member of the council. Governor Cosby was therefore informed by the Lords of Trade and Plantations that he could sit and advise with the council on executive business, but not when the council met as a legislative body.

The first assembly called by Governor Sloughter enacted, in 1691, the Bill of Rights, which was the Charter of Liberties of 1683, with some modifications relative to churches. It met with the same fate as before, as the Lords of Trade could not recommend it to the king for approval, because it gave “great and unreasonable privileges” to the members of the general assembly, and “contained also several large and doubtful expressions.” The king accordingly vetoed it in 1697, after the ministry had required six years to discover the objections against it. They could not very well give the real reason, which was that this Bill of Rights vested supreme power and authority, under the king, in the governor, council, and the people by their representatives, while it was as yet undecided whether in New York, a “conquered” province, the people had any right to demand representation in the legislative bodies.

GOVERNOR FLETCHER.

From a plate in Valentine’s N. Y. City Manual, 1851.

Governor Sloughter died within a few months after his arrival in New York (June, 1691), and was succeeded by Colonel Benjamin Fletcher, “a soldier, a man of strong passions and inconsiderable talent, very active and[194] equally avaricious,” who, as his successor Bellomont said, allowed the introduction into the province of a debased coinage (the so-called dog dollars); protected pirates, and took a share of their booty as a reward for his protection; misapplied and embezzled the king’s revenue and other moneys appropriated for special and public uses; gave away and took for himself, for nominal quit-rents, extensive tracts of land; and used improper influence in securing the election of his friends to the general assembly.

A man of such a character could hardly be a satisfactory governor of a province, the inhabitants of which were still divided between the bitterly antagonistic factions of Leislerians and anti-Leislerians, without in a short time gaining the ill-will and enmity of one of them. The men whose official position, as members of the council, gave them the first opportunity of influencing the new governor were anti-Leislerians. Fletcher therefore joined this party, without perhaps fully understanding the cause of the dissensions. His lack of administrative abilities, coupled with his affiliation with one party, gave sufficient cause to the other to make grave charges against him, which resulted in his recall in 1697.

In the mean time the assembly had begun the struggle for legislative supremacy which characterizes the inner political life of New York during the whole period of British dominion.

It enacted two laws which were the principal source of all the party disputes during the following decades. One of these laws established a revenue, and thereby created a precedent which succeeding assemblies did not always consider necessary to acknowledge, while the executive would insist upon its being followed. The other erected courts of justice as a temporary measure, and when they expired by limitation, and a later governor attempted to erect a court without the assent of the assembly, this law, too, was quoted as precedent, but was likewise ignored.

In 1694 the assembly discovered that, during the last three years, a revenue of £40,000 had been provided for, which had generally been misapplied. Governor Fletcher refused to account for it, as, according to his ideas of government, the assembly’s business was only to raise money for the governor and council to spend. This resulted in a dissolution of the assembly, as in the council’s judgment “there was no good to be expected from this assembly,” and very little was done by its successor, elected in 1695. But not satisfied with vetoing the Bill of Rights, the home authorities tried further to repress the growing liberal movement in New York by giving to Fletcher’s successor, the Earl of Bellomont, an absolute negative on the acts of the provincial legislature, so that no infringement[195] upon the prerogatives of the crown might become a law. He was further empowered to prorogue the assembly, to institute courts, appoint judges, and disburse the revenues. The Bishop of London was made the head of all ecclesiastical and educational matters in the province, and no printing-press was allowed to be put up without the governor’s license.

Bellomont, in addressing the first assembly under his administration, made a bid for popular favor by finding fault with the doings of his predecessor, who had left him as a legacy “difficulties to struggle with, a divided people, an empty treasury, a few miserable, naked, half-starved soldiers, being not half the number the king allowed pay for, the fortifications, and even the governor’s house, very much out of repairs, and, in a word, gentlemen (he said), the whole government out of frame.” The assembly was to find remedies, that is, money wherewith to repair all these evils. How they did it is shown by a speech made to them by Bellomont a month later: “You have now sat a whole month ... and have done nothing, either for the service of his Majestie or the good of y^e country.... Your proceedings have been so unwarrantable, wholy tending to strife and division, and indeed disloyal to his Majestie and his laws, and destructive to the rights and libertys of the people, that I do think fit to dissolve this present assembly, and it is dissolved accordingly.”

Having come with the best intentions of curing the evils of Fletcher’s rule, and being instructed to break up piracy, of which New York had been represented in England as the very hot-bed, Bellomont soon became popular, and no doubt grew in favor with the people, both by persuading the assembly to enact a law of indemnity for Leisler, whose body, with that of Milbourne, was now granted the honors of a public reinterment, and by bringing Kidd, the celebrated sea-rover, to justice. To-day that which was meted out to Kidd might hardly be called justice; for it seems questionable if he had ever been guilty of piracy.

Bellomont was not allowed to carry out his plans for the internal improvement of the province, for death put an end to his work at the end of the third year of his administration, in 1701. His successor, Lord Cornbury, who entered upon his duties early in 1702 (Lieutenant-Governor Nanfan having had meanwhile a successful contest with the leaders of the still vigorous anti-Leisler party), was sent out as governor by his cousin, Queen Anne, in order to retrieve his shattered fortune. The necessitous condition in which he arrived in New York and his profligate mode of life soon led him to several misappropriations of public funds, which resulted in a law, passed by the disgusted assembly of 1705, taking into their own hands the appointment of a provincial treasurer for the receipt and disbursement of all public moneys. The whole of Cornbury’s administration was occupied with a contest between the assembly and the crown: the former claiming all the privileges of Englishmen under Magna Charta; the latter, through its governor, maintaining its prerogatives, and saying that the assembly had no other rights and privileges “but such as the[196] queen is pleased to allow.” Lord Cornbury’s recall did not mend matters.[472] The assembly of 1708, the last under Cornbury’s administration, had been dissolved, because in its tenacity of the people’s right it had declared that to levy money in the colony without consent of the general assembly was a grievance and a violation of the people’s property; that the erecting of a court of equity without consent of the general assembly was contrary to law, both without precedent and of dangerous consequences to the liberty and properties of the subjects.

The term of Cornbury’s successor, Lord Lovelace, was very short, death calling him off within six months, while the lieutenant-governor, Ingoldsby, was a man too much like his friends, Sloughter, Fletcher, and Cornbury, to improve the state of affairs. With Governor Robert Hunter’s commission there came, in 1710, the answer to the declaration of the assembly of 1708. He received thereby “full power and authority to erect, constitute, and establish courts of judicature, with the advice and consent of the council.” The assembly’s remonstrance had been met by ignoring its author, and this treatment naturally incensed the representatives of the people so much that all the efforts of Governor Hunter, a man of excellent qualities, the friend of Addison and Swift, availed nothing in the way of settling the existing differences.

GOVERNOR HUNTER.

Follows an engraving in Valentine’s N. Y. City Manual, 1851, p. 420. Cf. on the seals of the colonial governors, Hist. Mag., ix. p. 176.

After two years’ administration, Governor Hunter had to confess to the Lords of Trade that he could not expect any support of the government from the assembly, “unless her Majesty will be pleased to put it entirely into their own hands;” and in 1715 he appointed Lewis Morris, a wealthy man, as successor to the deceased Chief Justice Mompesson, “because he is able to live without salary, which they [the assembly] will most certainly never grant to any in that station.” He found that he could not carry on the government without yielding, and thereby acting contrary to his instructions, and during the summer of 1715 came to an understanding with the assembly. “I asked,” he says, in a letter to the Lords of Trade, “what they would do for the Government if I should pass it (the Naturalization Bill) in their way, since they did not like mine; I asked nothing for myself, tho’ they well knew that I[197] had offers of several thousands of pounds for my assent; they at last agreed that they would settle a sufficient Revenue for the space of five years on that condition; many rubs I met with, but at last with difficulty carry’d through both parts of the Legislature and assented to both at the same time. If I have done amiss, I am sorry for’t, but what was there left for me to do? I have been struggling hard for bread itself for five years to no effect and for four of them unpitty’d, I hope I have now laid a foundation for a lasting settlement on this hitherto unsettled and ungovernable Province.”

In asserting their rights as representatives of the people and compelling the executive finally to acknowledge them, the assembly had followed the course which has been shown to be effective in the English Parliament since the days of William III. But the legislative supremacy over the executive established by this victory was greater than that obtained by Parliament. In New York the executive could only collect taxes when first authorized by the legislature, while the people, through their representatives, kept the control of the sums collected in their own hands by appointing the receiving and disbursing officers.

Hunter’s wise course in yielding on several points had a better effect on the province than at first he was willing to confess. Fletcher had found the people of New York “generally very poor and the government much in debt, occasioned by the mismanagement of those who have exercised the King’s power.” The revenues of the province were in such deplorable condition that several sums of money had to be borrowed on the personal credit of members of the council to pay the most pressing debts of government; the burden of war, unjustly placed on the shoulders of New York, had impoverished the inhabitants and almost destroyed their usefulness as taxpayers; while the neighboring colonies, either refusing to assist in the defence of the frontiers against the French or being dilatory in sending their quota of money and men, reaped the advantage of New York’s patriotism by receiving within their boundaries the bulk of the foreign trade, and by adding to their population the majority of emigrants. When Hunter left the province, after ten years’ service as its governor, he could congratulate the assembly on increased prosperity and on a better state of public affairs.

His successor was the comptroller of customs at London, William Burnet, the son of the celebrated bishop, who exchanged places with Hunter. Smith, the historian, describes him as “a man of sense and polite breeding, a well-read scholar, sprightly and of social disposition.... He used to say of himself, ‘I act first and think afterwards.’” The good reports which preceded Burnet made a favorable impression on the colonial assembly, and the whole period of his administration was undisturbed by constitutional disputes, even though people opposed to him tried to create trouble by asserting that the appointment of a new governor of the province required, like the accession of a new king, the election of a new assembly,[198] and by representing the continuance of an assembly under two governors as unconstitutional.

Burnet’s distrust of the neighboring French caused some stir in mercantile circles. He had an act passed forbidding all trade in Indian goods with Canada,—an act which would have benefited the province in general by securing all the Indian trade, a large part of which now found its way to Canada; but the merchants of New York and Albany, who disposed of their surplus to Canada traders, would have made less profits. They consequently opposed Burnet’s plans until the end of his administration (1728).

During the three years of John Montgomerie’s rule, which was ended by his death, in 1731, New York enjoyed some rest, to be violently disturbed, however, by the claims of his successor. It had been usual in the royal instructions of the governor to fix the salary of the president of the council at half the amount allowed to the executive, and it was customary to provide that in the absence, resignation, or death of the governor or lieutenant-governor he should assume the reins of the government. Upon Montgomerie’s death, Rip van Dam, as eldest member of the council, became president, and then claimed the full salary of the governor, which the council, after five months’ deliberation, finally allowed. It was upon this decision that the famous Zenger libel suit of a few years later hinged. Soon after the arrival of the new governor, William Cosby, Rip van Dam was called upon (November, 1732) to restore to the treasury a moiety of the full salary, which, under the decision of the council, he had been receiving in contravention, as was claimed, of the royal instructions. On the refusal of the president to comply, the attorney-general of the province was directed to begin an action in the king’s name “to the enforcing a Due Complyance with the said Order [to refund] according to the true Intent thereof and of his Majestie’s Additional Instruction.”

At the trial, the chief justice, Lewis Morris, surprised the governor, the attorney-general, and the whole aristocratic party (Van Dam and his friends representing the popular party) by informing the king’s counsel, in the first place, that the question to be discussed was one of jurisdiction, involving the right of the court to decide cases of equity; and in the second place, that he denied such jurisdiction, and in general the right of the king to establish courts of equity.[473] Jealous to maintain the royal prerogatives, Cosby removed Morris from the chief-justiceship, and put De Lancey, the second justice, in his place. Finding his efforts to be reinstated without result, and having no other means to avenge himself, Morris had recourse to the press, and in Zenger’s New York Weekly Journal he attacked the governor with extreme rancor, and attempted to influence the general assembly, to which he had been elected, against the king’s authority to erect courts. Even Cosby’s death, in 1736, could not conciliate him. The attacks[199] upon his administration continued, and Morris’s vindictiveness finally even disturbed the council and the assembly. President Clarke, who had temporarily succeeded Cosby, was deterred from arresting Van Dam, the younger Morris, Smith the historian, and Zenger the printer, to be sent to England to be tried for treason, only because the forty-fifth paragraph of the instructions required positive proof of the crime in such cases.

The trial of Zenger had, however, already shown that it was not safe to accuse a man of a crime when a jury had already acquitted him. The first number of the Weekly Journal appeared on the 5th of November, 1733; and its editor had from the beginning made war upon the administration with so much vigor that in January following the chief justice, De Lancey, “was pleased to animadvert upon the doctrine of libel in a long charge given in that term to the grand jury,”[474] hoping to obtain an indictment against Zenger. The jury did not share the opinions of the chief justice, and failed to indict Zenger. Nor was the general assembly willing to concur in a subsequent resolution of the council that certain numbers of the Journal should be publicly burnt by the hangman, “as containing in them many things derogatory of the dignity of his majesty’s government, reflecting upon the legislature and tending to raise seditions and tumults in the province,” and that the printer should be prosecuted. The burning of the papers (November 2, 1734), carried out by special order of the council alone, was in appearance far from the solemn judicial act which it was meant to be. The sheriff and the recorder of New York, with a few friends, stood around the pile, while the sheriff’s negro, not the official hangman, set fire to it. The municipal authorities, who usually have to attend such ceremonies ex officio, and were ordered to do so in this case, had refused to come, and would not even allow the order to be entered in the proper records, because they considered it to be neither a royal mandatory writ nor an order authorized by law. Zenger’s trial began on the 4th of August, and resulted in a verdict of “Not guilty.”

The publishing of the alleged libel had been admitted, but it was claimed to be neither false, nor scandalous, nor malicious. When the New York lawyers who had been engaged in the defence were disbarred, Andrew Hamilton, a prominent pleader from Philadelphia, took the case. He managed it so adroitly, met the browbeating of De Lancey so courageously, and pleaded the cause of his client so eloquently that he at once achieved a more conspicuous fame than belonged to any other practitioner at the bar of that day. The corporation of New York fell in with the popular applause in conferring upon him the freedom of their city, enclosing their seal in a box of gold, while they added the “assurances of the great esteem that the corporation had for his person and merits.”[475]

The result of Zenger’s trial established the freedom of the press in the colonies,[476] for it settled here the right of juries to find a general verdict in[200] libel cases, as was done in England by a law of Parliament passed many years later, and it took out of the hands of judges appointed to serve during the king’s pleasure, and not during good behavior, as in England, the power to do mischief.[477] It also gave a finishing blow to the Court of Exchequer, which, after the case of Cosby versus Van Dam, never again exercised an equity jurisdiction, and it suppressed the royal prerogative in an assumed right to establish courts without consulting the legislature. The jurisdiction hitherto exercised by the Supreme Court as a Court of Exchequer—that is, in all matters relating to his majesty’s lands, rights, rents, profits, and revenues—had always been called in question by colonial lawyers, because no act of the general assembly countenanced it. It was, therefore, a relief to everybody in the province when the legislature, in 1742, passed an “Act for regulating the payment of the Quit-Rents,” which in effect, though not in name, established on a firm basis a branch of the Supreme Court as a Court of Exchequer. As then instituted, it passed into the courts of the state, and was only abolished in December, 1828.

The excitement over the Zenger trial had hardly had time to subside when Rip van Dam again disturbed the public mind by claiming, after Cosby’s death, that he as eldest councillor was entitled to be president of the council, and as such to be acting governor, although he had been removed from the council by Cosby. Before the quarrel could attain too threatening dimensions, Clarke’s commission as lieutenant-governor happily arrived, and Van Dam’s claim was set at rest. Clarke’s administration of the province was in the main a satisfactory one. He had lived nearly half a century in New York,[478] and was thoroughly conversant with its resources and its needs, and, assisted by a good education as a lawyer, he found little difficulty in managing the refractory assembly and in gaining most of his important legislative points. His greatest victory was that by certain concessions he induced the assembly of 1739 to grant again a revenue to the king equivalent to the civil list in England, which had been refused since 1736, but was continued during the whole of Clarke’s administration. Although perhaps never unmindful of his own interests, he had also the good of the province at heart, and it must be regretted that a plan, drawn up while he was yet secretary, for colonizing the Indian country was not fully carried out and bore no fruits. He proposed to buy from the Iroquois about 100,000 acres of land, the purchase money to be raised either by subscription or by the issue of bills of credit. Every Protestant family made acquainted with the conditions and wishing to settle was to have 200 acres at nominal quit-rents. All the officials who were entitled to fees from the issue of land patents agreed to surrender the same, so that it would have imposed upon the settlers only the cost of improvements.[201] The neighboring colonies had industriously spread the report that there were few or no lands ungranted in the province of New York, and that the expense of purchasing the remainder from the Indians or obtaining a grant from the crown was greater than the price of land in Pennsylvania and other colonies. Advertisements were therefore to be scattered over Europe, giving intending emigrants a clear view of the advantages of settling in the backwoods of New York. The plan reads very much like a modern land-scheme. If it could, however, have been carried out in those days, with all the governmental machinery to help it, the country from the upper Mohawk to the Genesee would have been settled before the Revolution, and Sullivan’s expedition might have become unnecessary and a Cherry Valley massacre impossible.

The only great event of Clarke’s administration was the negro plot of 1741, which for a while cast the city of New York into a state of fear and attendant precautions, and these conditions were felt even throughout the colonies. A close examination of the testimony given at the trial of the alleged negro conspirators fails to convince the modern investigator that the slaves, who had been misled by the counsels of Roman Catholics, had really arranged a plan to murder all the whites and burn the city. Fires had occurred rather frequently, suspiciously so, during the spring of 1741, the negro riot of the earlier years of the century was remembered, reports of negro insurrections in the West Indies made slave-owners look askance at their ebony chattels, an invasion of the British colonies in America by France and Spain seemed imminent, and a rancorous hatred of the Church of Rome and its adherents prevailed among the English and Dutch inhabitants of New York, while tradition and the journal of the proceedings against the conspirators assure us that some sort of a plot existed; but we must still wonder at the panic occasioned among the ten or twelve thousand white inhabitants by what, after all, may have been only the revengeful acts of a few of the 20 whites and 154 negroes who were indicted on the most insufficient evidence. It is doubtful whether all who were indicted had anything to do with the fires or the intended murder, but the judicial proceedings were of a nature to implicate every one of the two thousand colored people in the county of New York, and two thirds of the accused were found guilty, and were either hanged, burnt at the stake, or transported.

Political astuteness, or perhaps a desire to enjoy in quiet his advancing years, had led Clarke to yield to the popular party on all important points. He had confined himself to wordy remonstrances in surrendering several of his prerogatives. His successor, Admiral George Clinton,—the second son of the Earl of Lincoln, and, as he acknowledged himself, a friend and cousin of Charles Clinton, father of Governor George Clinton of a later date,—found that the position of governor had ceased to be financially desirable. New Jersey had been again placed under a separate governor, thus reducing the income of the governor of New York by £1,000.[202] “Former governors,” it is reported, “had the advantage of one of the four companies, besides the paying of all the four companies, which made at least £2,000 per annum;” but now the assembly had placed this in other hands.

GOVERNOR CLINTON.

From a plate in Valentine’s N. Y. City Manual, 1851.

They had also interfered with a former custom, according to which the governors drew one half of their salary from the date of their commissions; but under the new arrangement for raising and paying the salary he could only draw it from the date of his arrival. Clinton brought with him a prejudice against his lieutenant-governor which was perhaps justified, for he knew him to have led Cosby into all the errors which characterized the latter’s administration. But instead of maintaining an independent position apart from the two political parties, he threw himself into the arms of the cunning Chief Justice De Lancey, the leader of the popular faction. Acting under his advice, Clinton at first was as ready to yield every point to the assembly as Clarke had done, until he discovered that all the powers of a governor were gradually slipping into De Lancey’s hand, who hoped to tire out Clinton’s patience and induce him to resign, thus leaving the field free to him with a commission of lieutenant-governor.

Clinton, upon his arrival at New York, had found, as Clarke predicted, the province “in great tranquillity and in a flourishing condition, able to support the government in an ample and honorable manner.” He perhaps would have had no difficulty with the general assembly about money grants, if he had been less distrustful of Clarke and more willing to acknowledge the rights of the people in such matters. His first measures of dissolving the old assembly, calling a new one, and, perhaps for the first time in America, introducing a kind of civil service reform by continuing in place all officers who had been appointed by his predecessors, were received with great satisfaction throughout the province, but they failed to loosen the strings of the public purse, while the new assembly sought other measures to declare their independence. Clarke’s advice, given before Clinton’s arrival, that henceforth the assembly should allow the government a revenue for a term of years, was not acted upon; but instead they voted the usual appropriations for one year only. In voting salaries for officers, they did[203] not recognize the incumbents by name, and the council pronounced this a device of the assembly to usurp the appointing power, and to change the stipends of the officers at any time.

Walpole had meanwhile turned over the government in England to his friend Pelham, a family connection of Governor Clinton. Macaulay describes Pelham as a man with an understanding like that of Walpole, “on a somewhat smaller scale.” During Pelham’s administration, a bill was considered in the House of Commons in 1744, news of which, upon reaching the colonies, did not fail to arouse their indignation. It forbade the American colonies to issue bills of credit or paper money. As these colonies had but little trade, and had to draw upon Europe for the tools and necessaries of life in the newly opened wilderness, the small amount of coin which they received from the West Indies and the Spanish main in exchange for bread-stuffs and lumber, their only articles of exportation, went across the ocean in part payment of their debts, leaving no “instrument of association,” no circulating medium, in their hands. To replace the coin, they had to have recourse to the issue of paper money, without which all intercolonial and internal trade would have been impossible. The parliamentary intention of depriving the colonies of these means of exchange led the New York assembly to declare that the bill was contrary to the constitution of Great Britain, inconsistent with the liberties and privileges of Englishmen, and subjected the British colonies in America to the absolute will of the crown and its officers.

The efforts of Governor Clinton to reconcile the assembly by giving his assent to all the bills passed by them in their first session did not prevent their assuming greater powers than the House of Commons. He could not obtain from them either money or men for the Cape Breton expedition, set on foot by Governor Shirley of Massachusetts. Trying to regain control of colonial politics, he stirred up a bitter feeling among the popular party men; and after years of struggle, during which the home government afforded him little comfort and support, Clinton was willing to throw up his commission as governor of New York in 1751, and return to England and resume his station as admiral.

The French of Canada had used many artifices and had been indefatigable in their endeavors to gain over the Six Nations. They had cajoled many of them to desert their own tribes and remove to Canada, and had instigated others, whom they could induce to desert, to go to war with the Catawba Indians, friends of South Carolina, thereby endangering and weakening the allegiance of the Southern Indians to the British interest. Commissioners had arrived, or were to come, from all the other colonies, to meet the Six Nations at Albany and renew the covenant chain. If Quidor (the Indian name for the governor of New York) were to be absent on such an occasion, especially a Quidor who already had made an excellent impression on the king’s red allies, the council conceived that the meeting would not only be without result, but that the Indians, considering themselves[204] slighted, would turn a more willing ear to the French, and thus endanger the existence of the colonies. Clinton was luckily a man who considered duty higher than any personal comfort, and on the 1st of July, 1751, opened the conference with the Indians which may be said to have been one of the most important in the history of the English colonies. Colonel William Johnson was induced to withdraw his resignation as Indian agent, which had made the Six Nations very uneasy, and a peace was made between the Iroquois, of New York, and the Catawbas, which also included their friends among the Southern Indians. There is not space to say much of the Indian policy pursued by Governor Clinton and other royal governors of New York. To use the Indian explanation, “they took example from the sun, which has its regular course; and as the sun is certain in its motion, New York was certain to the Indians in the course of their mutual affairs, and deviated not in the least.” New York alone had to bear the expenses (£1,150) of this conference, since Massachusetts, Connecticut, and South Carolina refused to contribute, while New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia were not represented. The other colonies also refused to help New York in keeping the Iroquois in good humor by supplying smiths to live in the Indian territory and repair the savages’ guns and hatchets. New York has the benefit of the Indian trade, they said; let her bear the burden. Pennsylvania, most interested of all the middle colonies in keeping the Indians friendly, had soon learned the evils of neglecting them. Armed parties of French and savages came down into the valley of the Ohio in 1753, creating great confusion among the Indians of Pennsylvania, and inducing nearly all, the Delawares alone excepted, to join the French, as their best recourse in the indifference of the English. At the same time the New York Indians became dissatisfied at their treatment by the general assembly, which would not allow the forts in the Indian country, at Oswego and at Albany, to be maintained, preferring to trust to the activity of the Indians for keeping the French and their savage allies from devastating the northern frontier. Disgusted with the constant struggle which the jealousy of the assembly and their encroachments upon the royal prerogatives always kept alive, Clinton finally resigned in October of 1753; astonishing the council, and especially his political enemy De Lancey, the chief justice, before he surrendered the office to his newly arrived successor, Sir Danvers Osborn, by the production of a letter from the Duke of Newcastle, secretary of state, dated October 27, 1747, which gave Clinton a leave of absence to come to England, and covered De Lancey’s commission as lieutenant-governor. This stroke of Clinton’s did not succeed very well. It is true, Sir Danvers’ presence deprived the new lieutenant-governor of the pleasure of showing himself as chief magistrate of the province, but it was to be only for a few days. Sir Danvers, perceiving that the assembly of New York was not a body easily led by royal commands, exclaimed, “What have I come here for?” and hanged himself two days after taking the necessary oath; and thus the lieutenant-governor, De Lancey, came into power.

[205]

GOV. JAMES DE LANCEY.

From a plate in Valentine’s N. Y. City Manual, 1851. Cf. Lamb’s New York, i. 543.

De Lancey soon discovered himself in a dilemma. The oaths which he had taken when entering upon his new office, and which he must have had self-respect enough to consider binding, compelled him to maintain the royal prerogatives and several obnoxious laws made for the colonies by Parliament. On the other side, his political career and his bearing of past years forced him to work for the continuation of the popularity which his opposition to the very things he had sworn to do had gained him. De Lancey was skilful enough to avoid both horns of this dilemma. The assembly, rejoicing to see a man of their own thinking at the head of affairs, passed money and other laws in accordance with the lieutenant-governor’s suggestions, and quietly pocketed his rebukes, when he saw fit to administer any. The two most important events during his term were of such a nature that he could do nothing, or only very little, to prevent or further action.

On the 11th of January, 1754, a great number of people assembled in the city of New York, on account of a late agreement of the merchants and others not to receive or pass copper half-pence in payment at any other rate than fourteen to the shilling. The crowd kept increasing until two o’clock in the afternoon, when the arrest of the man beating the drum and of two others throwing half-pence into the mass quieted them.

GOV. CADWALLADER COLDEN.

From a plate in Valentine’s N. Y. City Manual, 1851, p. 420.

Later there was the conference of commissioners of all the colonies at Albany in July, 1754, convened to treat anew with the Iroquois, and also to consider, in obedience to orders from England, a plan of confederation for all the colonies. The deliberations and conclusions of the congress in this last respect are made the subject of inquiry in a later chapter of the present volume.[479] De Lancey was accused of opposing this plan of union by his machinations. We may say that such accusation was unjust. The general assembly of the province, to whom the “representation of the state and plan for union” was referred, that they might make observations thereupon, said in their report or address to the lieutenant-governor, on the 22d of August, 1754: “We are of opinion with your Honor, that nothing is more natural and salutary than a union of the colonies for their own defence.” While he transmitted the minutes of the congress at Albany to the Lords of Trade without a word of comment, he may have used his private influence to defeat the union; but there is no reason to believe that he acted even in that wise from other than upright motives, and he had already[206] shown, in the New Jersey boundary question, how personal associations had restrained him from interfering or giving an opinion. His sense of duty in office was perhaps exaggerated, and he could not brook censure by the home authorities. The receiver-general and other officers entrusted with the collection of the king’s revenue desired the passage of an act “for the more easy collecting his majesty’s quit-rents, and for protection of land in order thereto.” The assembly and council having passed such a bill, it came before the governor for his assent, which he readily gave, supposing that an act favored by the king’s officers could not meet with the disapproval of the government in England. The Lords of Trade, however, rebuked him, and he sent in his resignation.

GOV. MONCKTON.

From a plate in Valentine’s N. Y. City Manual, 1851.

In the mean time, the appointment of Admiral Sir Charles Hardy as governor had relieved De Lancey for a time (1755-57) from the cares of the administration. Sir Charles allowed himself to be led by his lieutenant-governor, and therefore the affairs of government went on as smoothly as of late, excepting that the assembly made occasional issues upon money bills, though that body was little inclined to press their levelling principles too strongly against their old friend, the lieutenant-governor, now that he was the adviser of the executive. Sir Charles proved less fond of the cares of office than of the sea, and after two years’ service resigned, to hoist his blue admiral’s flag under Rear Admiral Holbourn at Halifax. De Lancey had therefore to assume once more the government on the 3d of June, 1757, which he administered, with little to disturb the relations between the crown and the assembly, down to the time of his[207] death, on July 30, 1760. This event placed his lifelong adversary, Cadwallader Colden, in the executive chair, first as president of the council, and a year later as lieutenant-governor.

The policy of the royal representative was now very quickly changed. The acquiescent bearing of De Lancey in his methods with the assembly gave place to the more peremptory manner which had been used by Clinton, whose friend Colden had always been. The records of the next few years, during which Monckton, who was connected with the Acadian deportation, was governor, show but the beginning of that struggle between prerogative and the people which resulted in the American Revolution, and a consideration of the immediate causes of that contest belongs to another volume.

The history of Pennsylvania, down to the appointment of Governor Blackwell in 1688, has been told in a previous chapter.[480] The selection of John Blackwell for the governorship was an unfortunate one. A son-in-law of the Cromwellian General Lambert and a resident of puritanical New England, he must have shared more or less in the hatred of the Friends’ religion, so that his appointment to govern a colony settled principally by this sect most likely arose from Penn’s respect and friendship for the man and from his inability to find a suitable Quaker willing to accept the office. Within two months after his arrival, he had quarrelled with his predecessor, Thomas Lloyd, then keeper of the broad seal, and the rest of the council. Shortly after this he succeeded in breaking up the assembly, and before he had been in the province one year he became convinced that his ideas of governing did not meet with the approbation of the people, and returned to England, leaving the administration in the hands of his opponent, Lloyd.

After having acquired from the Duke of York the Delaware territory, Penn endeavored to bring his province and the older settlements under one form of government; but he could not prevent the jealousies, caused often by difference of religious opinion and by desire for offices, from raising a conflict which soon after Blackwell’s departure threatened a dissolution of the nominal union. Lloyd remained president of Pennsylvania, while Penn’s cousin, Markham, was made lieutenant-governor of Delaware, under certain restrictions, as detailed in a letter from Penn, which still left the supremacy to Lloyd in matters of governing for the proprietary.

In the mean time James II. of England had been forced to give up his crown to his son-in-law, and this event brought unexpected results to the proprietary of Pennsylvania. Penn’s intimacy with the dethroned Stuart, unmarred by their different religious views, made him at once a suspicious person in the eyes of the new rulers of England. He had been arrested three times on the charges of disaffection to the existing government, of[208] corresponding with the late king, and of adhering to the enemies of the kingdom, but had up to 1690 always succeeded in clearing himself before the Lords of the Council or the Court of King’s Bench. At last he was allowed to make preparations for another visit to his province “with a great company of adventurers,” when another order for his arrest necessitated his retirement into the country, where he lived quietly for two or three years. This blow came at a most critical time for his province, distracted as it was by political and religious disturbances, which his presence might have done much to prevent. The necessity of keeping remote from observation did not give him opportunity to answer the complaints which became current in England, that a schism among the Quakers had inaugurated a system of religious intolerance in a province founded on the principles of liberty of conscience. The result of this inopportune but enforced inactivity on Penn’s part was to deprive him of his province and its dependency (Delaware), and a commission was issued to Benjamin Fletcher, then governor of New York, to take them under his government, October 21, 1692. Fletcher made a visit to his new territory, hoping, perhaps, that his appearance might bring the opposing sections into something like harmony. Quickly disabused of his fond fancy, and disappointed in luring money from the Quakers, he returned to New York, leaving a deputy in charge. About the same time, 1694, Penn had obtained a hearing before competent authority in England, and having cleared himself successfully of all charges, he was reinvested with his proprietary rights. Not able to return to Pennsylvania immediately, he transferred his authority to Markham, who continued to act as ruler of the colony until 1699, when Penn visited his domain once more.

One of Penn’s first acts was to impress the assembly with the necessity of discouraging illicit trade and suppressing piracy. He did it with so much success that the assembly not only passed two laws to this effect, but also took a further step to clear the government of Pennsylvania from all imputations by expelling one of its members, James Brown, a son-in-law of Governor Markham, who was more or less justly accused of piracy. He was equally successful with his recommendations to the assembly concerning a new charter, the slave-trade, and the treatment and education of the negroes already in the province. But when, in 1701, he asked in the king’s name for a contribution of £350 towards the fortifications on the frontiers of New York, the assembly decided to refer the consideration of this matter to another meeting, or “until more emergent occasions shall require our further proceedings therein.”

The evident intention of the ministry in England to reduce the proprietary governments in the English colonies to royal ones, “under pretence of advancing the prerogatives of the crown,” compelled Penn to return to England in the latter part of 1701. But before he could leave a quarrel broke out in the assembly between the deputies from the Lower Counties, now Delaware, and those of the province. The former were accused[209] of having obtained some exclusive powers or rights for themselves which the others would not allow them, and in consequence the men of the Lower Counties withdrew from the assembly in high dudgeon. After long discussions, and by giving promises to agree to a separation of that district from the province under certain conditions, Penn at last managed to patch up a peace between the two factions. He then went to England.

The new charter for the province and territories, signed by Penn, October 25, 1701, was more republican in character than those of the neighboring colonies. It not only provided for an assembly of the people with great powers, including those of creating courts, but to a certain extent it submitted to the choice of the people the nomination of some of the county officers. The section concerning liberty of conscience did not discriminate against the members of the Church of Rome. The closing section fulfilled the promise already made by Penn, that in case the representatives of the two territorial districts could not agree within three years to join in legislative business, the Lower Counties should be separated from Pennsylvania. On the same day Penn established by letters-patent a council of state for the province, “to consult and assist the proprietary himself or his deputy with the best of their advice and council in public affairs and matters relating to the government and the peace and well-being of the people; and in the absence of the proprietary, or upon the deputy’s absence out of the province, his death, or other incapacity, to exercise all and singular the powers of government.” The original town and borough of Philadelphia, having by this time “become near equal to the city of New York in trade and riches,”[481] was raised, by patent of the 25th of October, 1701, to the rank of a city, and, like the province, could boast of having a more liberal charter than her neighbors; for the municipal officers were to be elected by the representatives of the people of the city, and not appointed by the governor, as in New York.

The government of the province had been entrusted by Penn to Andrew Hamilton, also governor for the proprietors in New Jersey, with James Logan as provincial secretary, to whom was likewise confided the management of the proprietary estates, thus making him in reality the representative of Penn and the leader of his party. Hamilton died in December, 1702; but before his death he had endeavored in vain to bring the representatives of the two sections of his government together again. The Delaware members remained obstinate, and finally, while Edward Shippen, a member of the council and first mayor of Philadelphia, was acting as president, it was settled that they should have separate assemblies, entirely independent of each other.

The first separate assembly for Pennsylvania proper met at Philadelphia, in October, 1703, and by its first resolution showed that the Quakers, so dominant in the province, were beginning to acquire a taste for authority, and meant to color their religion with the hue of political power. According[210] to the new charter, the assembly, elected annually, was to consist of four members for each county, and was to meet at Philadelphia on the 14th of October of each year, sitting upon their own adjournments. Upon the separation of the legislative bodies of the two sections, Pennsylvania claimed to be entitled to eight members for each county, which, being duly elected and met, reasserted the powers granted by the charter; but when the governor and council desired to confer with them they would adjourn without conference. Upon the objection from the governor that they could not sit wholly upon their own adjournment, they immediately decided not to sit again until the following March, and thus deprive the governor and council of every chance to come to an understanding on the matter.

Before President Shippen could take any step toward settling this question, John Evans, a young Welshman, lately appointed deputy-governor by Penn, arrived in Philadelphia (December, 1703). The new-comer at once called both assemblies together, directing them to sit in Philadelphia in April, 1704, in utter disregard of the agreement of separation. He renewed Hamilton’s efforts to effect again a legislative union, and also failed, not because the Delaware members were opposed to it, but because now the Pennsylvania representatives, probably disgusted with the obstinacy of the former, absolutely refused to have anything to do with them. Governor Evans took this refusal very ill and resented it in various ways, by which the state of affairs was brought to such a pass that neither this nor the next assembly, under the speakership of David Lloyd, accomplished anything of importance, but complained bitterly to Penn of his deputy. In the latter part of the same year the first assembly for the Lower Counties met in the old town of New Castle, and was called upon by Governor Evans to raise a militia out of that class of the population who were not prevented by religious scruples from bearing arms,—soldiers being then needed for the war against France and Spain. About a year later, having become reconciled with the Pennsylvania assembly of 1706, Evans persuaded the Delaware representatives to pass a law “for erecting and maintaining a fort for her Majesty’s service at the Town of New Castle upon Delaware.” This law exacted a toll in gunpowder from every vessel coming from the sea up the river.[482]

These quarrels between the governor and the assemblies were repeated every year. At one time they had for ground the refusal of the Quakers to support the war which was waging against the French and Indians on the frontiers. At another they disagreed upon the establishment of a judiciary. These disturbances produced financial disruptions, and Penn himself suffered therefrom to such an extent that he was thrown into a London prison, and had finally to mortgage his province for £6,600. The recall of[211] Evans, in 1709, and the appointment of Charles Gookin in his stead, did not mend matters. Logan, Penn’s intimate friend and representative, was finally compelled to leave the country; and, going to England (1710), he induced Penn to write a letter to the Pennsylvania assembly, in which he threatened to sell the province to the crown, a surrender by which he was to receive £12,000. The transfer was in fact prevented by an attack of apoplexy from which Penn suffered in 1712. The epistle, however, brought the refractory assembly to terms. After exacting a concession of their right to sit on their own adjournment, they consented to the establishment of a judiciary, without, however, a court of appeal, and finally yielded to passing votes to defray the expenses of government. They even gave £2,000 to the crown in aid of the war. Affairs went smoothly under Gookin’s administration until, in 1714, the governor, whose mind is supposed to have been impaired, began the quarrel again by complaining about his scanty salary and the irregularity of payments. He also insisted foolishly upon the illegality of affirmation; foolishly, because the Quakers, who would not allow any other kind of oath, were the dominant party in the province.[483] Not satisfied with the commotion he had stirred up, he suddenly turned upon his friend Logan, and had now not only the anti-Penn faction, but also Penn’s adherents, to contend with. The last ill-advised step resulted in his recall (1717) and the appointment of Sir William Keith, the last governor commissioned by Penn himself; for the great founder of Pennsylvania died in 1718.

While after Penn’s death his heirs went to law among themselves about the government and proprietary rights in Pennsylvania, Governor Keith, who as surveyor of customs in the southern provinces had become sufficiently familiar with Penn’s affairs, entered on the performance of his duties under the most favorable conditions. The assembly had become weary to disgust with the continuous disputes and altercations forced upon them by the last two governors, and it was therefore easily influenced by Sir William’s good address and evident effort to please. Without hesitation it voted a salary of £500 for the governor, and acted upon his suggestion to examine the state of the laws, some of which were obsolete or had expired by their own limitations. The province was somewhat disturbed by the lawsuit of the family for the succession, finally settled in favor of Penn’s children by his second wife, and by a war of the southern Indians with the Susquehanna and New York tribes; but nothing[212] marred the relations between governor and legislature. Under the speakership of James Trent, later chief justice of New Jersey (where the city of Trenton was named after him),[484] an act for the advancement of justice and more certain administration thereof, a measure of great importance to the province, passed the previous year (1718), became a law by receiving the royal assent. Governor Keith’s proposal in 1720 to establish a Court of Chancery met with unqualified approval by the assembly. Under the next governor this court “came to be considered as so great a nuisance” that after a while it fell into disuse.

In 1721 the first great council which the Five Nations ever held with the white people outside of the province of New York and at any other place than Albany, N. Y., took place at Conestoga, and the disputes which had threatened the outlying settlements with the horrors of Indian war were amicably settled. The treaty of friendship made here was confirmed the next year at a council held at Albany, as in the mean time the wanton murder of an Iroquois by some Pennsylvania traders had somewhat strained the mutual relations.

The commercial and agricultural interests of the province began to suffer about this time for want of a sufficient quantity of a circulating medium. Divers means of relief were proposed, among them the issue of bills of credit. Governor Keith and the majority of the traders, merchants, and farmers were enchanted with the notion of fiat money, and overlooked or were unwilling to profit by the experiences of other provinces which had already suffered from the mischievous consequences of such a measure. The result was that, after considerable discussion, turning not so much upon the bills of credit themselves as upon the mode of issuing them and the method of guarding against their depreciation, the emission of £15,000 was authorized, despite the order of the king in council of May 19, 1720, which forbade all the governors of the colonies in America to pass any laws sanctioning the issue of bills of credit. It would lead us too far beyond the limits of this chapter to inquire whether, as Dr. Douglass, of Boston, suggested in 1749, the assembly ordering this emission of £15,000 bills of credit, and another of £30,000 in the same year, was “a legislature of debtors, the representatives of people who, from incogitancy, idleness, and profuseness, have been under a necessity of mortgaging their lands.” All the safeguards thrown around such a currency to prevent its depreciation proved in the end futile. The acts creating this debt of £45,000[485] provided for its redemption a pledge of real estate in fee simple of double the value, recorded in an office created for that purpose. The money so lent out was to be repaid into the office annually, in such instalments as would make it possible to sink the whole original issue within a certain number of years.[213] In the first three years the sinking and destruction of the redeemed bills went on as directed by law; but under its operation the community found itself suffering from the contraction, although only about one seventh of the debt had been paid. The legislature, therefore, passed a law (1726) directing that the bills should not be destroyed, as the former acts required, but that, during the following eight years, they should be reissued. The population of the province, growing by natural increase and by immigration, seeming to require a larger volume of currency, a new emission of £30,000 was ordered in 1729 under the provisions of the laws of 1723. In 1731 the law of 1726 was reënacted, to prevent disasters which threatened the farmer as well as the merchant, and to avoid making new acts for emitting more bills. In 1739 the amount of bills in circulation, £68,890, was increased to £80,000, equal to £50,000 sterling, because the legislature had discovered that the former sum fell “short of a proper medium for negotiating the commerce and for the support of the government.” They justified this step, and tried to explain why a pound of Pennsylvania currency was of so much less value than a pound sterling by asserting that the difference arose only from the balance of Pennsylvania’s trade with Great Britain, which was in favor of the former, since more English goods found their way here now that bills of credit had become the fashion. The act of 1739 had made the bills then in circulation irredeemable for a short term of years, which in 1745 was extended to sixteen years more under the following modifications: the first ten years, up to 1755, no bill was to be redeemed, or, if redeemed, was to be reissued; after 1755 one sixth of the whole amount was to be paid in yearly and the bills were to be destroyed. In 1746 a further issue of £5,000 for the king’s use was ordered, to be sunk in ten yearly instalments of £500 each, and in 1749 Pennsylvania currency, valued in 1723 at thirteen shillings sterling per pound, had, like all other colonial money, so far depreciated that a pound was equal to eleven shillings and one and one third pence.[486]

When the limit of the year 1755 was reached many of the bills of credit had become so torn and defaced that the assembly ordered £10,000 in new bills to be exchanged for the old ones. In the mean time the French war had begun, and to support the troops sent over from England £60,000 were issued in bills to be given to the king’s use.

By this time Pennsylvania had become so largely in debt as to make her taxes burdensome. Notwithstanding a hesitation to increase the volume of indebtedness, her assembly felt called upon by reason of the war to contribute her share of the cost of it, and in September, 1756, a further issue of £30,000 was authorized under a law which provided for the redemption of the bills in ten years by an excise on wine, liquor, etc. If this excise should bring in more than was necessary, the “overplus” was to go into the hands of the king.[487]

[214]

Governor Keith took care to increase his popularity with the assembly, and thereby to advance his own personal interest in a greater degree than was compatible with his allegiance to the proprietary’s family. Having managed to free himself from the control of the council, who were men respecting their oaths and friends of the Penn family, he incurred the displeasure of the widow of the great Quaker, and in 1726 was superseded by Patrick Gordon. Keith and his friend David Lloyd had vainly endeavored to persuade Hannah Penn that her views concerning the council’s participation in legislative matters were erroneous, and that the council was in fact created for ornamental purposes and to be spectators of the governor’s actions. This opinion of Keith was of course in opposition to the instructions which he had received. Fully to understand the condition of affairs, we must remember that the government of this colony was as much the private property of the proprietary as the soil; and that in giving instructions to his deputy and establishing a council to assist the deputy by their advice, the proprietary did no more than a careful business man would do when compelled to absent himself from his place of business,—or at least such were the views of the Penns.

The even tenor of political life in Pennsylvania, the greater part of whose inhabitants were either Quakers, religiously opposed to any kind of strife, or Germans, totally ignorant of the modes of constitutional government, was somewhat disturbed during the first two or three years of Gordon’s administration by Keith’s intrigue as a member of the assembly, to which he was soon chosen. We are told that he endeavored by “all means in his power to divide the inhabitants, embarrass the administration, and distress the proprietary family.” He grew, however, as unpopular as he had been popular; and when he finally returned to England, where he died about 1749, the colony again enjoyed quiet for several years.

Governor Gordon had in his earlier life been bred to arms, and he had served in the army with considerable repute until the end of Queen Anne’s reign. As a soldier he had learned the value of moderation; and not forgetting it in civil life, his administration was distinguished by prudence and a regard for the interests of the province, while his peaceful Indian policy secured for the colony a period of almost unprecedented prosperity. Planted in 1682, nearly fifty years later than her neighbors, Pennsylvania could boast in 1735 that her chief city, Philadelphia, was the second in size in the colonies, and her white population larger than that of Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas.

The death of Hannah Penn, the widow of the first proprietor, in 1733, threatened to put a sudden stop to Gordon’s rule, since the assembly,[215] deeming his authority to be derived from Hannah Penn, and to end with her death, refused him obedience. The arrival of a new commission, executed by John, Thomas, and Richard Penn, quickly settled this question, as well as another point. The king’s approval of it reserved specially to the crown the government of the Lower Counties, if it chose to claim it. Of the progress in Gordon’s time towards the settlement of the disputed boundary with Maryland, the recital is given in another chapter.[488]

Upon Gordon’s death, in 1736, James Logan, the lifelong friend of Penn, succeeded as president of the council, but gave place, after two uneventful years, to the new governor, George Thomas, who had been formerly a planter in the island of Antigua.

A promise of continued quiet was harshly disturbed when the governor authorized the enrolment of bought or indented servants in the militia. Opposed to the use of military arms under all conditions, the Quakers who owned these enrolled servants, of whom 276 had been taken, were still more aggrieved by having their own property appropriated to such uses. The assembly finally voted the sum of £2,588 to compensate the owners for the loss of their chattels, but the feeling engendered by the governor’s action was not soothed. The relations between governor and assembly became strained; the governor refusing to give his assent to acts passed by the assembly, and the latter neglecting to vote a salary for the governor. This condition of affairs may have led to the serious election riots which disturbed Philadelphia in 1742. The governor, who had only received £500 of his salary, began to be embarrassed, and was in the end induced by his straits to assent to bills beyond the pale of his instructions, while the assembly soothed him by no longer withholding his salary. In this way good feeling and quiet were restored, and when, in 1747, he decided to resign, the regret of the assembly was unfeigned.

After a short interregnum, during which Anthony Palmer, as president of the council, ruled the province, James Hamilton was appointed deputy-governor by the proprietors, Richard and Thomas Penn. He entered upon his duties with good omens. He was born in the country, and his father had somewhat earlier enjoyed an eminence from the result of the Zenger trial such as no lawyer in America had enjoyed before. For a while the assembly and Hamilton were mutually pleased; but as, in time, he withheld his assent to bills that infringed the proprietary’s right to the interest of loans, the assembly was arrayed against him, and rendered his position so unpleasant that in 1753 he sent to England his resignation, to take effect in a year. His place was taken by Robert Hunter Morris, son of the chief justice of New Jersey, who was, like Hamilton, a man thoroughly conscientious and conversant with the political life in the colonies. Very early in his term he came in conflict with the assembly on a money bill, which his instructions would not allow him to sign. Hampered by these orders, he was unable to rely upon his judgment or feelings and to[216] act independently; hence very soon, in 1756, he resigned, and retired to New Jersey, where he died in 1764.

The state of affairs under the next governor, William Denny, is shown by a passage in one of his early messages. “Though moderation is most agreeable to me,” he says to the assembly, “there might have been a governor who would have told you, the whole tenor of your message was indecent, frivolous, and evasive.” Again the instructions were the cause of all trouble. The governor was in duty bound to withhold his assent from every act for the emission of bills of credit that did not subject the money to the joint disposal of the governor and assembly, and from every act increasing the amount of bills of credit or confirming existing issues, unless a provision directed that the rents of proprietary lands were to be paid in sterling money, while the taxes on these lands could not become a lien on the same. The treasury of the province was on the verge of complete bankruptcy, when the governor rejected a bill levying £100,000 on all real and personal property, including the proprietary lands. Seeing no other way out of the dilemma, the assembly amended their bill by exempting the proprietary interests from taxation, but they sought their revenge by sending an agent, Benjamin Franklin, to England to represent their grievances to the crown. Franklin reached London in July, 1757, and entered immediately upon a quarrel with the proprietors respecting their rights, from which he issued as victor. Denny, tired of the struggle, and in need of money, finally disobeyed his instructions, gave his assent to obnoxious bills, and was recalled, to give way to Hamilton, who in 1759 was again installed.

Hamilton went through his second term without strife. There were too many external dangers to engage the assembly’s attention. Parliament, in anticipation of a Spanish war, had appropriated £200,000 for fortifying the colony posts; the assembly took the province’s share of it, £26,000, and made ready to receive the Spanish privateers, to whose attacks by the Delaware the country lay invitingly open. The danger was not so great as it seemed. In 1763 Hamilton was superseded by John Penn, the son of Richard and grandson of William Penn.

During these later years, Pennsylvania could justly be called the most flourishing of the English colonies. A fleet of four hundred sail left Philadelphia yearly with the season’s produce. The colony’s free population numbered 220,000 souls, and of these possibly half were German folk, who had known not a little of Old World oppression; one sixth were Quakers, more than a sixth were Presbyterians, another sixth were Episcopalians, and there were a few Baptists. The spirit and tenets of the first framers of its government, as the Quakers had been, were calculated to attract the attention of oppressed sectaries everywhere, and bodies of many diversified beliefs, from different parts of Europe, flocked to the land, took up their abodes, and are recognized in their descendants to-day. Conspicuous among these immigrants were those of the sect called Unitas Fratrum, United Brethren,[217] or Moravians, who settled principally in the present county of Northampton. Though they labored successfully among the Indians in making converts, it was rare that they succeeded in uniting to their communion any of their Christian neighbors. The Moravians had been preceded by a sect of similar tenets, the adherents of Schwenckfeld. They had come to Pennsylvania in 1732 and mostly settled in the present county of Montgomery. Still earlier a sort of German Baptists, called Dunkers, Tunkers, or Dumplers, coming to America between 1719 and 1729, had found homes in Lancaster County. Another sect of Baptists, the followers of Menno Simon, or Mennonists,—like the Friends, opposed to taking oaths and bearing arms,—had begun to make their way across the ocean as early as 1698, induced thereto by information derived from Penn himself. Like the Dunkers, they chose Lancaster County for their American homes.

But there were other motives than religious ones. There came many Welsh, Irish, and Scotch farmers. The Welsh were a valuable stock; the same cannot be said of the Irish, who began to come in 1719, and continued to arrive in such large numbers that special legislation in regard to them was required in 1729. An act laying a duty on foreigners and Irish servants imported into the province was passed May 10, 1729. This act was repealed, but many features of it were embodied in an act of the following year, imposing a duty on persons convicted of heinous crimes, and preventing poor and impotent persons being imported into the province. It must be acknowledged that the Catholic religion, professed by these immigrants, had not a little to do with the temper of the legislation which restrained them, in a colony which had been modelled on the principles of religious freedom. It was not assuring, on the other hand, for the legislators to discover that the sympathy which the Roman priests showed for the French enemies of the province foreboded mischief.

It has been told in a previous chapter how New Jersey passed from the state of a conquered province to that of a proprietary or settled colony, and how little the change of dynasty in England affected the public affairs of this section of the middle colonies. The proprietors of East New Jersey had grown weary of governing the province, and in April, 1688, had drawn up an act surrendering their share. The revolutionary disturbances in England which soon followed prevented action upon this surrender; but when, at the beginning of the next century, the proprietors of West New Jersey also showed themselves willing to surrender the burden and cares of government to the crown, the Lords of Trade gave it as their opinion that no sufficient form of government had ever been formed in New Jersey, that many inconveniences and disorders had been the result of the proprietors’ pretence of right to govern, and advised the Law Lords to accept the surrender. The proprietors reserved to themselves all their rights in the soil of the province, while they abandoned the privilege of governing. East and West New Jersey, now become again one province, was to be[218] ruled by a governor, a council of twelve members appointed by the crown, and twenty-four assembly-men elected by the freeholders. The governor was given the right of adjourning and dissolving the assembly at pleasure, and of vetoing any act passed by council and assembly, his assent being subject to the approval or dissent of the king.

When surrendering in 1701 their rights of government, the proprietors recommended, for the office of royal governor, Andrew Hamilton, their representative in the colony, in whose ability and integrity they had the fullest confidence, and who during his previous terms as governor had also won the admiration and reverence of the governed. Intrigues against Hamilton, instituted by two influential proprietors, Dockwra and Sonmans, and by Colonel Quary, of Pennsylvania, resulted in Hamilton’s defeat and the appointment of Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, who was already governor of New York. Cornbury published his commission in New Jersey on the 11th of August, 1703, and inaugurated, by his way of dealing with the affairs of the colony, the same series of violent contests between the governor and the people, represented by the assembly, that had served under him to keep New York unsettled. Complaints made by the proprietors against him in England had no effect, although he had clearly violated his instructions, by unseating three members of the assembly; by making money the proper qualification for election to the same, instead of land; and by allowing an act taxing unprofitable and waste land to become a law. His successor, John, Lord Lovelace, appointed early in 1708, arrived in New York early in December of the same year. He had various schemes for the improvement of both colonies, but it is doubtful whether his previous position of cornet in the royal horse-guards had fitted him for administrative and executive work. A disease was, moreover, already fastened upon him, which in a few months carried him off. His successor, Major Richard Ingoldsby, is best described by Bellomont, under whom he had previously served in New York. “Major Ingoldesby has been absent from his post four years,” says Bellomont in a letter to the Lords of Trade, October 17, 1700, “and is so brutish as to leave his wife and children here to starve. Ingoldesby is of a worthy family, but is a rash, hot-headed man, and had a great hand in the execution of Leisler and Milburn, for which reason, if there were no other, he is not fit to serve in this country, having made himself hatefull to the Leisler party.” Cornbury understood the man so fully that he would not allow him to act as lieutenant-governor of either New York or New Jersey, to which office he had been appointed in 1704. Ingoldsby’s commission as lieutenant-governor was revoked in 1706, but he was admitted as a member of the council for New Jersey. It seems that the order revoking the commission was not sent out to New York in 1706, for upon Lord Lovelace’s death he assumed the government, and acted so brutally that, when news of it reached England, a new order of revocation was issued. In the short interval before the arrival of his successor, Governor Robert Hunter, who published his commission in New[219] Jersey in the summer of 1710, Ingoldsby had managed to get into conflict with the assembly, largely formed of members from the Society of Friends, and brought about the state of affairs which we may call usual in all the British colonies ruled by a governor appointed by the king, and by an assembly elected by the people. Hunter must be termed the first satisfactory governor of New Jersey. Early in his administration he met with opposition from those who so far had slavishly followed the royal governor. These opponents were the council of the province, who objected to every measure which Governor Hunter, advised by Lewis Morris and other influential members of the Quaker or country party, deemed necessary for the public good. The council was entirely under the thumb of Secretary Jeremiah Basse, who, having been an Anabaptist minister, agent in England for the West Jersey Society, governor of East and West Jersey, had shared in the obloquy attached to Lord Cornbury’s administration. Public business threatened to come to a standstill, as the home authorities were slow in acting on recommendations to remove the obnoxious members of the council. Hunter constantly prorogued the assembly of New Jersey; “it being absolutely needless to meet the assembly so long as the council is so constituted,” he writes to the Lords of Trade, June 23, 1712, “for they have avowedly opposed the government in most things, and by their influence obstructed the payment of a great part of the taxes.” But it was not until August, 1713, that the queen approved of the removal of William Pinhorn, Daniel Coxe, Peter Sonmans, and William Hall from the council, in whose places John Anderson, a wealthy trader and farmer of Perth Amboy, John Hamilton, postmaster-general of North America, and John Reading, of West Jersey, were appointed. William Morris, recommended in place of Sonmans, had died meanwhile. Sonmans stole and took out of the province all public records, and, having gone to England with his booty, he used the papers to injure Governor Hunter in the estimation of the people of New Jersey, while “our men of noise” agitated against him in the province and in its assembly. No effort was spared to prevent a renewal of Hunter’s commission in 1714, and when he was reappointed notwithstanding, Coxe, Sonmans, and their friends had so inflamed the “lower rank of people that only time and patience, or stronger measures, could allay the heat.” At last it became an absolute necessity to summon the assembly again, and an act “for fixing the sessions of assembly in the Jersies at Burlington” was passed in 1715, which became the cause of incessant attacks upon the governor by Coxe and his party. Hunter, seeing the wheels of government stopped by the factious absence of Coxe and his friends from the legislative sessions, said to the assembly, May 19, 1716: “Whereas, it is apparent and evident that there is at present a combination amongst some of your members to disappoint and defeat your meetings as a house of representatives by their wilful absenting themselves from the service of their country ... I have judged it absolutely necessary ... to require you forthwith to meet as a house of representatives, and to take the usual methods to oblige your[220] fellow members to pay their attendance.” The assembly, like a sensible body, aware that Governor Hunter had always acted with justice and moderation, answered his appeal to them by expelling on the 23d of May their speaker, Coxe, as a man whose study it had been to disturb the quiet and tranquillity of the province, and such other members as did not attend and could not be found by the sergeant-at-arms of the house.

Coxe did not consider himself vanquished. An appeal to the king followed. Coxe charged Hunter with illegal acts of every kind, and his petition was numerously signed; but the council certified that his subscribers were “for the most part the lowest and meanest of the people,” and the king sustained and commended the governor. When, a few years later, Hunter resolved to return to Europe to recover his health at the baths of Aix-la-Chapelle, he could with pride assert that the provinces governed by him “were in perfect peace, to which both had long been strangers.”

William Burnet, who succeeded his friend Hunter, was not so amiable a man, and showed the airs of personal importance too much to suit the Quaker spirit which prevailed among the New Jersey people. He needed money to live upon, however, and there was something of the Jacobite opposition in the province for him to suppress. He had difficulty at first in getting the assembly to pass other than temporary bills; but in 1722 the governor and assembly had reached an understanding, and Burnet passed through the rest of his term without much conflict with the legislature, and when transferred to the chair of Massachusetts, in 1728, he turned over the government in a quiet condition, and with few or no wounds unhealed.

The most notable event during the three years’ term of his successor, Montgomerie, was the renewal of an effort, already attempted in Burnet’s time, but defeated by him, to have New Jersey made again a government separate from New York. “By order of the house 4th 5mo, 1730,” John Kinsey, Junr., speaker, signed a petition to the king for a separate governor. Montgomerie died July 1, 1731, and Lewis Morris, as president of the council, governed till September, 1732, when Cosby, the new governor, arrived. The grand jury of Middlesex tried to further the attempt for a separate government in 1736, but nothing was done till Cosby died, when Morris, whom Cosby had shamefully maligned, received the appointment from a grateful king, and New Jersey was again possessed of a separate governor.

Governor Morris published his commission at Amboy on the 29th of August, 1738; at Burlington a few days later. The council, with the assembly, expressed the thanks and joy of the people in unmeasured terms, prophetically seeing trade and commerce flourish and justice more duly and speedily administered under the new rule. The pleasant relations between the governor and the representatives of the people which these expressions of satisfaction seemed to foreshadow were not to be of long duration. “There is so much insincerity and ignorance among the people,[221] ... and so strong an inclination in the meanest of the people to have the sole direction of all the affairs of the government,” writes Morris to his friend Sir Charles Wager, one of the treasury lords, May 10, 1739, “that it requires much more temper, skill, and constancy to overcome these difficulties than fall to every man’s share.” Under these influences, Morris, the former leader of the popular party, betrayed them, and tried to obey his instructions to the very letter. Following the example set by Cosby, of New York, in regard to the salary of an absent governor and a present lieutenant-governor or president of the council, he began to quarrel with John Hamilton, who as president had temporarily acted as governor. Fortunately for Morris’s reputation, this case did not grow into such a public scandal as the Cosby-Van Dam case, mentioned above, and was quietly settled in the proper way. The assembly, having early discovered that Morris was not an easy man to deal with, tried to discipline him by interfering with the disposal of the revenue granted for the support of the government, and finally refused to pass supply bills unless the governor disobeyed his instructions and assented to bills enacted by them. The wheels of the governmental machinery threatened to come to a standstill for want of money, when Morris, after an illness of some weeks, died at Trenton on the 21st of May, 1746, leaving the government of the province to his whilom adversary. John Hamilton, as president of the council, who was then already suffering from ill health, prorogued the assembly, then sitting at Trenton, and reconvened them at Perth Amboy, his own home. Relieved of their political enemy, Morris, the assembly became more amenable to reason, and during Hamilton’s brief administration “chearfully made provision for raising 500 men” for the Canada expedition, and lent the government £10,000 to arm and equip the New Jersey contingent. Hamilton soon succumbed to his disease, and died June 17, 1747. When John Reading, another member of the council, succeeded to power, his administration of a few months was mainly signalized by riots at Perth Amboy,—in which Reading was roughly handled. These disturbances were caused by an act to vacate and annul grants of land and to divest owners of property which had been bought some years before from the Indians.

Jonathan Belcher, after being removed in 1741[489] from the executive office of Massachusetts, had gone to England, where, with the assistance of his brother-in-law, Richard Partridge, the agent at court for New Jersey, he obtained the appointment of governor of this province. When he first met the council and assembly of New Jersey, on the 20th of August, 1747, he said to them, “I shall strictly conform myself to the king’s commands and to the powers granted me therein, as also to the additional authorities contained in the king’s royal orders to me, and from these things I think you will not desire me to deviate.” Belcher had not yet had occasion to arouse the anger of the assembly, when the latter, at their first session,[222] of unusual long duration (fourteen weeks), already showed their distrust of him by voting his salary for one year only, and not “a penny more” than to the late governor, who had “harast and plagued them sufficiently.” Belcher was too well inured to colonial politics openly to manifest his anger at such treatment, or to tell the assembly that he considered them “very stingy,” as he called them in a letter to Partridge. His administration gave evidence of his ability to yield gracefully up to the limits of his instructions; but when a conflict with his assembly could not be avoided, he faced it stubbornly. On the whole, his rule resulted in a much-needed quiet for the province, which was only briefly disturbed by the riots already mentioned, which had begun before Belcher’s arrival. The members of the assembly, who depended largely for their election on the votes of these rioters, sympathized with the lawless element in Essex and other counties; but in the end wiser counsels prevailed, and the disturbances ceased.

In another part of the province the dispute over the boundary line with New York, as it affected titles of land, was also a source of agitation, which in Belcher’s time was the cause of constant remonstrance and appeal and of legislative intervention, but he left the question unsettled, a legacy of disturbance for later composition.

Age and a paralytic disorder, which even the electrical apparatus that Franklin sent to Belcher could not remove, ended Belcher’s life on the 31st of August, 1757, leaving the government in the hands of Thomas Pownall, who, on account of Belcher’s age and infirmity, had been appointed lieutenant-governor in 1755. Pownall was at the time of Belcher’s death also governor of Massachusetts. After a short visit to New Jersey he found “that the necessity of his majesty’s service in the government of the Massachusetts Bay” required his return to Boston, and his absence brought the active duties of the executive once more upon Reading, as senior counsellor, who, through age and illness, was little disposed towards the burden.

The arrival, on the 15th of June, 1758, of Francis Bernard, bearing a commission as governor, relieved Reading of his irksome duties. Bernard had, during his short term, the satisfaction of pacifying the Indians by a treaty made at Easton in October, 1758. The otherwise uneventful term of his administration was soon ended by his transfer to Massachusetts. His successor, Thomas Boone, after an equally short and uneventful term, was replaced by Josiah Hardy, and the latter by William Franklin, the son of the great philosopher. The latter had secured his appointment through Lord Bute, but nothing can be said in this chapter of his administration, which, beginning in 1762, belongs to another volume.[490]

The possible injury which a development of the manufacturing interests in the colonies might inflict on like interests in Great Britain agitated the mind of the English manufacturer at an early date. Already in Dutch[223] times this question of manufactures in the province of New Netherland had been settled rather peremptorily by an order of the Assembly of the Nineteen, which made it a felony to engage in the making of any woollen, linen, or cotton cloth. The English Parliament, perhaps influenced by the manufacturers among their constituents, or not willing to appear as legislating in the interest of money, declared, in 1719, “that the erecting of manufactories in the colonies tends to lessen their dependence on Great Britain,” and a prohibition similar to that of the Dutch authorities was enacted. During the whole colonial period this feeling of jealousy interfered with the development of industries and delayed their growth. Whatever England could not produce was expected to be made here, such as naval stores, pearlash and potash, and silks; but the English manufacturer strenuously set himself in opposition to any colonial enterprise which affected his own profits.

Shipbuilding and the saw-mill had early sprung from the domestic necessities of the people. The Dutch had made the windmill a striking feature in the landscape of New York. The people of Pennsylvania had been the earliest in the middle colonies to establish a press, and it had brought the paper-mill in its train, though after a long interval; for it was not till 1697 that the manufacture of paper began near Philadelphia, and not till thirty years later (1728) was the second mill established at Elizabethtown in New Jersey. The Dutch had begun the making of glass in New York city, near what is now Hanover Square, and in Philadelphia it was becoming an industry as early as 1683; though if one may judge from the use of oiled paper in the first houses of Germantown, the manufacture of window-glass began later. Wistar, a palatine, erected a glass-house near Salem, in West New Jersey, in 1740, and Governor Moore, of New York, in 1767, says of a bankrupt glass-maker in New York that his ill success had come of his imported workmen deserting him after he had brought them over from Europe at great cost.

The presence of iron ore in the hills along the Hudson had been known to the Dutch, but they had made no attempt to work the mines, relying probably to some extent upon Massachusetts, where “a good store of iron” was manufactured from an early date. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, when the ore was tried, the founders discovered the iron to be too brittle to encourage its use. Lieutenant-Governor Clarke tried to arouse interest for the iron industry in 1737, and induced the general assembly to consider the advisability of encouraging proprietors of iron-works; but the movement came to nothing, and Parliament did what it could to thwart all such purposes by enacting a law “to encourage the importation of pig and bar iron from his Majesty’s Colonies in America, and to prevent the erection of any Mill or other Engine for Slitting or Rolling of Iron; or any plating Forge to work with a Tilt Hammer; or any Furnace for making Steel in any of the said Colonies.” When this act was passed in 1750 only a single plating-forge existed in the province of New York, at Wawayanda,[224] Orange County, which had been built about 1745, and was not in use at the time. Two furnaces and several blomaries had been established about the same time in the manor of Cortland, Westchester County, but a few years had sufficed to bring their business to a disastrous end.

In 1757 the province could show only one iron-work at Ancram, which produced nothing but pig and bar iron. At this same establishment, owned by the Livingstons, in the present Columbia County, many a cannon was cast some years later to help in the defence of American liberties. In 1766 we find a little foundry established in New York for making small iron pots, but its operations had not yet become very extensive.

The first iron-works in New Jersey seem to have been opened by an Englishman, James Grover, who had become dissatisfied with the rule of the Dutch and the West India Company, and had removed from Long Island to Shrewsbury, New Jersey, where he and some iron-workers from Massachusetts set up one of the first forges in the province.

In 1676 the Morris family, which later became so prominent in colonial politics, was granted a large tract of land near the Raritan River, with the right “to dig, delve, and carry away all such mines for iron as they shall find” in that tract. The smelting-furnace and forge mentioned in an account of the province by the proprietors of East New Jersey, in 1682, employing both whites and blacks, was probably on the Morris estate. The mineral treasures of the province, however, remained on the whole undiscovered at the end of the century; but in the following century several blomary forges and one charcoal-furnace were erected in Warren County, the latter of which was still running twenty-five years ago. Penn had early learned of the richness of his province in iron and copper, though no attempt was made to mine them till 1698. At this early period Gabriel Thomas mentions the discovery of mineral ores, which were probably found in the Chester County of that day, and the first iron-works in the province were built in that region. Governor Keith owned iron-works in New Castle County (Delaware) between 1720 and 1730, and had such good opinion of the iron industry in the colonies that he considered them capable of supplying, if sufficiently encouraged, the mother country with all the pig and bar iron needed.

In 1718 we read of iron-works forty miles up the Schuylkill River, probably the Coventry forge, on French Creek, in Chester County; also of a forge in Berks or Montgomery County, which in 1728 became the scene of an Indian attack. The mineral wealth of Lancaster County soon attracted the attention of the thrifty Germans who had settled there. In 1728 this county had two or more furnaces in blast, and the number of them in the province increased rapidly up to the time of the Revolution.

Upon the Delaware, the Dutch and Swedes seem to have neglected the ores of silver, copper, iron, and other minerals, which they did not fail to discover existed in that region; but an Englishman, Charles Pickering, who lived in Charlestown, Chester County, Pennsylvania, appears to have[225] been the earliest to mine copper, and was on trial in 1683 on the charge of uttering base coin. A letter written by Governor Morris, of New Jersey, to Thomas Penn in 1755, speaks of a copper-mine at the Gap in Lancaster County, which had been discovered twenty years previous by a German miner.

It was New Jersey, however, which led in the working of copper ore. Arent Schuyler, belonging to a Dutch family of Albany, New York, prominent in politics and in other matters, had removed in 1710 to a farm purchased at New Barbadoes Neck, on the Passaic River, near Newark. There one of his negroes re-discovered a copper-mine, known to the Dutch and probably worked before by them, asking as a reward for it all the tobacco he could smoke, and the permission “to live with massa till I die.” The ore taken from this mine proved to be so very rich in metal, copper and silver, that Parliament placed it on the list of enumerated articles, in order to secure it for the British market. Arent Schuyler’s son John introduced into the middle colonies the first steam-engine, requiring it to keep his copper-mine free from water. The copper-mining industry found another adherent about 1750 in Elias Boudinot, who opened a pit near New Brunswick, and erected there a stamping-mill, the products of which were sent to England and highly valued there. When Governor Hunter, in a letter to the Lords of Trade, November 12, 1715, speaks of “a copper mine here brought to perfection,” he undoubtedly refers to a New Jersey or Pennsylvania undertaking, for five years later he answers the question, “What mines are in the province of New York?” with, “Iron enough, copper but rare, lead at a great distance in the Indian settlement, coal mines on Long Island, but not yet wrought.” The coal mines, which have added so much to the wealth of Pennsylvania during the present century, had not been discovered during the period preceding the Revolution.

It has been said above that the colonies were expected to engage in the production of potash and pearlash. This was an industry already recommended as profitable by the secretary of New Netherland in 1650. The dearness of labor, however, interfered with its development, for “the woods were infinite,” and supplied all the necessary material. The attempt, about 1700, to employ Indians at this work failed, for “the Indians are so proud and lazy.” About 1710 a potash factory was established in the province of New York at the expense of an English capitalist, who found it, however, a losing investment. Not discouraged by previous failures, John Keble, of New Jersey, proposed to set up a manufacture of potash. He petitioned for authority to do so, and from his statements we learn that in 1704 Pennsylvania alone of the middle colonies exported potash, and only to the amount of 630 pounds a year. There is no information as to Keble’s success, but a memorial of London merchants to the Lords of Trade in 1729, asking that the manufacture of this important staple in the colonies might be encouraged, drew forth the opinion that not enough was thought of this industry to “draw the people from employing that part of their time (winter) in working up both Wooling and Linen Cloth.”

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Tradition points to many a house, in the region originally settled by the Dutch, as having been built with bricks imported from Holland. That such was not the rule, but only an exception, in the days of the West India Company’s rule, is proved by the frequent allusion to brick-kilns on the Hudson, near Albany and Esopus, and on the Lower Delaware. For the convenience of transportation, the trade has centred in these localities to this day.

The making of salt, either by the solar process or by other means, was a necessity which appealed to the colonists at an early period. The Onondaga salt-springs had been discovered by a Jesuit about 1654, but, being then in the heart of the Indian country, they could not be worked by the French or Dutch. Coney Island had been selected in 1661 as a proper place for salt-works, but the political dissensions of the day did not allow operations to go on there. The Navigation Act of 1663, prohibiting the importation into the colonies of any manufactures of Europe except through British ports, made an exception in favor of salt. The result was that this industry was carried on in the middle colonies during the colonial period only in a few small establishments, furnishing not enough for local consumption.

When the palatines began to emigrate, and there was fear that they would carry with them the art of making woollens, Parliament in 1709 forbade such manufactures in the colonies. In 1715 the towns-people of New York and Albany, probably also of Perth Amboy, Burlington, and Philadelphia, are reported as wearing English cloth, while the poor planters are satisfied with a coarse textile of their own make. Nearly two thirds of such fabrics used in the colonies were made there, and the Lords of Trade were afraid that, if such manufacture was not stopped, “it will be of great prejudice to the trade of this kingdom.” Governor Hunter very sensibly opposed any legislation which would force the people to wear English cloth, as it would be equivalent to compelling them to go naked. A report of the Board of Trade, made in 1732, tells us that “they had no manufactures in the province of New York that deserve mentioning;... no manufactures in New Jersey that deserve mentioning.” “The deputy-governor of Pennsylvania does not know of any trade in that province that can be considered injurious to this kingdom. They do not export any woollen or linen manufactures; all that they make, which are of a coarse sort, being for their own use.”

The statements embodied in reports of this kind were made upon information acquired with difficulty, for the crown officers in the colonies interrogated an unwilling people, who saw no virtue in affording the grounds of their own business repression, and concealed or disguised the truth without much compunction of conscience; and in Massachusetts the legislative assembly had gone so far as to call to account a crown officer who had divulged to the House of Commons the facts respecting the exportation of beaver hats.

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An address of the British House of Commons to the king, presented on the 27th of March, 1766, called forth a description of the textile manufactures in the province of New York at the close of the period of which this chapter treats. The Society of Arts and Agriculture of New York City had about this date established a small manufactory of linen, with fourteen looms, to give employment to several poor families, hitherto a charge upon the community. No broadcloth was then made in the province, and some poor weavers from Yorkshire, who had come over in the expectation of finding remunerative work, had been sadly disappointed. But coarse woollen goods were extensively made. One of these native textile fabrics, called linsey-woolsey, and made of linen warp and woollen woof, became a political sign during the Stamp Act excitement. People “desirous of distinguishing themselves as American patriots” would wear nothing else. The manufacture of these coarse woollens became an ordinary household occupation, and what was made in excess of family needs found its way to market. Governor Moore says, “This I had an opportunity of seeing during my late tour;... every house swarms with children, who are set to work as soon as they are able to spin and card; and as every family is furnished with a loom, the itinerant weavers, who travel about the country, put the finishing hand to the work.”

The making of beaver hats was an industry in which the colonial competition with the English hatters led to most oppressive legislation in Parliament. The middle colonies, particularly from their connection with the beaver-hunting Indians, had carried the art to a degree which produced a cheaper if not a better covering for the head than was made in England, and they found it easy to market them in the West Indies, where they excluded the English-made article. Accordingly the export of hats from England fell off so perceptibly that in 1731 the “Master Wardens and Assistants of the Company of Feltmakers of London” petitioned the Lords of Trade to order that the inhabitants of the colonies should wear no hats but such as were made in Great Britain. The prayer was denied, but Parliament was induced, in 1732, to forbid the exportation of hats from American ports.

But most trades in the colonies failed of the natural protection which arises from cheap labor, while the opportunities of acquiring lands and establishing homes with ample acres about them served further to increase the difficulties of competition with the Old World, in that artisans were attracted by lures of this kind to the new settlements, and away from the shops of the towns.

The commerce of the colonies easily fell into four different channels: one took produce to England, or to such foreign lands as the navigation laws permitted; the second bound the colonies one with the other in the bonds of reciprocal trade; a third was opened with the Indians; and the fourth embraced all that surreptitious venture which was known as smuggling.

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The ports of New York and Philadelphia absorbed the foreign and transatlantic trade of the middle colonies, notwithstanding the efforts which New Jersey made to draw a share of it to Perth Amboy. Before Governor Dongan’s time, ships coming to Amboy had to make entry at New York, as it was feared that goods brought to the New Jersey port and not paying New York duties might be smuggled to New York by way of Staten Island. “Two or three ships came in there [at Amboy] last year,” writes Governor Dongan in 1687, “with goods, and I am sure that country cannot, even with West Jersey, consume £1,000 in goods in 2 years, so that the rest must have been run into this colony.” Some years later the Lords of Trade decided that the charter did not give to either West or East Jersey the right to a port of entry, but she, nevertheless, in due time obtained the right to open such ports at Amboy and Burlington. The displeasure of the New York authorities was manifest in the refusal of their governor to make proclamation of such decree, and the larger province was strong enough occasionally to seize a vessel bound for Amboy. New Jersey could protest; but her indignation was in vain, and she never succeeded in establishing a lucrative commerce. How steadily the commerce of her neighbor increased is shown in the record that in 1737 New York had 53 ships with an aggregate of 3,215 tons; in 1747, there were 99 ships of 4,313 tons; and in 1749, 157 with a capacity of 6,406 tons. The records of the New York custom-house show that the articles imported from abroad or from the other British colonies on this continent and from the West Indies were principally rum, madeira wine, cocoa, European goods, and occasionally a negro slave,[491] while the exports of the colonies were fish and provisions.

New Jersey had little Atlantic trade, since New York and Philadelphia could import for her all the European and West India goods which she needed. In intercolonial trade, however, she had a large share, and she supplied her neighbors with cereals, beef, and horses. New York, on the contrary, was sometimes pressed to prevent certain exportations, when she needed all her productions herself, as was sometimes the case with cereals. This intercolonial trade naturally grew in the main out of the products of the several colonies; while for their Indian trade, they were compelled to use what the avidity of the natives called for,—blankets, weapons, rum, and the trinkets with which the Indian was fond of adorning his person, and for all which he paid almost entirely in furs. The nature of this traffic was such, particularly in respect to the sale of arms and spirits, that legislation was often interposed to regulate it in the interest of peace and justice.

As respects the illegal or last class of commercial channels, we find that[229] before Bellomont’s time there had grown up, as he found, “a lycencious trade with pyrats, Scotland and Curaçao,” out of which no customs revenue was obtained. As a consequence, the city and province of New York “grew rich, but the customes, they decreased.” Certain Long Island harbors became “a great Receptacle for Pirates.” The enforcement of the law gave Bellomont a chance to say, in 1700, that an examination of the entries in New York and Boston had shown him that the trade of the former port was almost half as much as that of the other, while New Hampshire ports had not the tenth part of New York, except in lumber and fish. The Philadelphia Quakers objected to fight the West Indian enemies of the crown; but they had little objection to trade with them, and to grow rich on such more peaceful intercourse.

Towards the end of the period spoken of in this chapter, a “pernicious trade with Holland” had sprung up, which the colonial governors found hard to suppress, but which was successfully checked in 1764 by the English cruisers; but shortly before the War of Independence it began again to flourish.

A diversity of trade brought in its train a great variety in the coin, which was its medium, and a generation now living can remember when the great influx of Spanish coin poured into the colonies in the last century was still in great measure a circulating medium. The indebtedness to the mother country which colonists always start with continued for a long while to drain the colonies of its specie in payment of interest and principal. As soon as their productions were allowed to find openly or clandestinely a market in the Spanish main and the West Indies, the return came in the pieces of eight, the Rix dollars, and all the other varieties of Spanish or Mexican coinage which passed current in the tropics. So far as these went to pay debts in Europe, the colonies were forced to preserve primitive habits of barter in wampum, beaver, and tobacco. By the time of Andros, foreign trade and the increasing disuse of these articles of barter had begun to familiarize the people with coin of French and Spanish mintage, and at that time pieces of eight went for six shillings, double reals for eighteen pence, pistoles for twenty-four shillings. Soon after this the metal currency began to be very much diminished in intrinsic value by the practice of clipping. Both heavy and light pieces were indiscriminately subjected to this treatment, and the price of the heavier pieces of eight advanced in consequence, so that in 1693 a standard of weight had to be established, and it was determined by a proclamation that “whole pieces of eight of the coins of Sevill, Mexico, and Pillar pieces of 15 pennyweight not plugg’d” should pass at the rate of 6 shillings; pieces of more weight to increase or lose in value 4-1/2 pence for each pennyweight more or less. Pieces of eight of Peru were made current at fourpence for each pennyweight, and Dog dollars at five shillings sixpence. English coin was of course current in the colonies, and the emigrants of that day brought their little hoard in the mintage of their European homes, instead of buying, as to-day, letters of exchange[230] or drafts payable in a currency unknown to them. In 1753 it became necessary to enact, in New York, a law to prevent the passing of counterfeit English half-pence and farthings, and in the second half of the last century the coins mostly current, besides English ones, were the gold Johannis of eighteen pennyweight, six grains; Moidores of six pennyweight, eighteen grains; Carolines of six pennyweight, eight grains; Double Loons (Doubloons) or four Pistoles of seventeen pennyweight, eight grains; double and single Pistoles; French Guineas (louis d’ors) of five pennyweight, four grains; and Arabian Chequins of two pennyweight, four grains.

Of the middle colonies, New Jersey was the first to follow Massachusetts in issuing paper money, which she did by authorizing the issue of £3,000 in bills for the expedition against Canada in 1709.

The people of the Netherlands and the Belgic provinces had profited as little under religious persecution as the puritans and separatists of New England, to become tolerant of other faiths when in the New World they had the power of control. The laws of New Netherland were favorable only to the Protestant Reformed Dutch Church, although Swedes and Finns, who had come to New Sweden on the Delaware, were allowed to worship according to the Lutheran ritual. The directors of the West India Company, the supreme authority, did not approve of any religious intolerance, and expressed themselves forcibly to that effect when Stuyvesant tried to prosecute members of the Society of Friends. When New York and New Jersey became English provinces, complete freedom of religion was granted to them. This drew to them members of all established churches and of nearly every religious sect of Europe, the latter class largely increased by such as fled to New York from Massachusetts to enjoy religious toleration. In 1686, in New York at least, “the most prevailing opinion was that of the Dutch Calvinists.” How the Roman Catholics were treated has been shown above. The same reasons which had led to their proscription tried to impose upon the colonies the Church of England, by directing the governors not to prefer any minister to an ecclesiastical benefice unless he was of this order. This royal command to the governors of New York and New Jersey produced results which its originators probably did not contemplate. It led to the incorporation of Trinity Church in New York, with the celebrated and ever-reviving Anneke Jans trials growing out of it as a fungus, and to the creating a demand for ministers of the Anglican or Episcopal church which necessitated a school to educate them. This was the King’s College, known to us of the present day as Columbia College, chartered in 1754. The non-Episcopalians saw in this movement the fulfillment of their fears, first aroused by the Ministry Act under Governor Fletcher in 1693, tending towards the establishment of a state church. Out of this dread and out of the difficulty in obtaining ministers for the Dutch Reformed Church grew another educational institution, the Queen’s College, now known as Rutgers College, in New Brunswick,[231] N. J. Another institution preceded it, the College of New Jersey at Princeton. This was first founded by charter from President Hamilton in 1746, and enlarged by Governor Belcher in 1747, who left, by will, to its library a considerable number of books. The proprietors of Pennsylvania, always thoughtful of the weal of their subjects, gave, in 1753, $15,000 to a charitable school and academy, founded four years before in Philadelphia by public subscription. Two years later, in 1755, it grew into the “College, Academy, and Charitable School of Philadelphia,” by an act of incorporation, and to-day it is the “University of Pennsylvania.”

Urged thereto by the founder of the independence of the Netherlands, William the Silent, Prince of Orange, the states-general had adopted in the sixteenth century the system of universal education, which, in our days, the New England States claim as their creation. Hence we find schools mentioned and schoolmasters at work from the beginning of the New Netherland; and though at first no classics were taught, even at so early a date as 1663 we read of a government schoolmaster who taught Greek and Latin. The assembly of New York passed, in 1702, an act for the encouragement of a free grammar school, and favored generally the primary education of the children of their constituents. New Jersey did not lag in the good work. In 1765 she had 192 churches of all denominations except the Roman Catholic, and we may safely suppose that a school was connected with nearly every church. The Moravians of Pennsylvania imitated the example set to them at home, and established boarding-schools at Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Litiz. The small number of schools among the “Dissenters,” as the Rev. Samuel Johnson calls all non-Episcopalians, induced him, however, to say, in 1759, that “ministers and schools are much wanted in Pennsylvania.”

CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

I. The Manuscript Sources of New York History. (By Mr. Fernow.)—New York has taken the lead among the American States in the extent of the printed records of her history.[492] In the archives at Albany there are certain manuscript documents illustrating the period now under consideration deserving mention.

“When first his Royall Highnesse, the Duke of York, took possession of this Province [New York], he ... gave him [Gov^r Nicolls] certain Laws, by which the Province was to be governed.” Several copies of these, Duke’s Laws (1674), were made, and they were sent to the different districts, Long Island, Delaware, the Esopus, and Albany, into which the province was then divided.[493]

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The so-called Dongan’s Laws (1683 and 1684) make a manuscript volume, containing the laws enacted by the first general assembly of the province during the years 1683 and 1684. It has upon its original parchment cover a second title, evidently written at a later date: “The Duke of York’s Charter of Liberty & Priviledges to the Inhabitants of New York, anno 1683, with Acts of Assembly of that year & the year 1684.” The laws are mainly a reënactment of the Duke’s Laws, and are now deposited in the State library. They have never been printed.

The Original Colonial Laws (1684-1775) make nineteen volumes of manuscripts, now in the office of the secretary of state at Albany, of which such as had not in the mean time expired by their own limitation were printed in 1694,[494] 1710, and 1726, by William Bradford; in 1719 by Baskett; in 1762 by Livingston and Smith; in 1768 by Parker, and in 1773 by Van Schaack. The Bradford edition of 1710 contains also the journal of the general assembly, etc.

Those Bills which failed to become Laws (1685-1732) make three volumes of manuscript, and though the measures proposed never became operative they show the drift of public opinion during the period covered by them. Several of these bills have been bound into the volumes of laws.

The student of colonial commerce and finances will find much to interest him in other manuscript volumes, now in the State library at Albany, to wit: Accounts of the Treasurer of the Province, under various titles, and covering the period from 1702 to 1776, eight volumes, and Manifest Books and Entry Books of the New York Custom House, 1728 to 1774, forty-three volumes. Much information coveted by the genealogist is hidden in the Indentures of Palatine Children, 1710 and 1711, two volumes; in forty volumes of Marriage Bonds, 1752 to 1783, of which an index was published in 1860 under the title New York Marriages; and in the records kept in the office of the clerk of the Court of Appeals,—Files of Wills, from 1694 to 1800, and of Inventories, 1727 to 1798.

Out of the 28 volumes of Council Minutes, 1668 to 1783, everything relating to the legislative business before the council has been published by the State of New York in the Journal of the Provincial Council. The unpublished parts of these records—the seven volumes of “Warrants of Survey, Licenses to Purchase Indian Lands,” 1721 to 1766, the fourteen “Books of Patents,” 1664 to 1770, the nineteen “Books of Deeds,” 1659 to 1774, and the thirty-four volumes of “Land Papers,” from 1643 to 1775—give as complete a history of the way in which the colony of New York gained its population as at this day it is possible to obtain without following the many private histories of real estate. The above-mentioned “Books of Deeds” contain papers of miscellaneous character, widely differing from deeds, such as commissions, letters of denization, licenses of schoolmasters, etc. Of the “Land Papers” a Calendar was published by the State in 1864.[495]

A public-spirited citizen of Albany, General John Tayler Cooper, enriched in 1850 the State library with twenty-two volumes of manuscripts, containing the correspondence of Sir William Johnson, the Indian commissioner. This correspondence covers the period from 1738 to 1774, and is important for the political, Indian, social, and religious history[233] of New York. Extracts from it appeared in Dr. O’Callaghan’s Documentary History of New York (vol. ii.).[496]

Less important for the period treated of in this chapter are the Clinton Papers, especially the later series; but of the first importance in the study of the French wars are the Letters of Colonel John Bradstreet, deputy quartermaster-general, and The Letters of General Sir Jeffrey Amherst, commander-in-chief in America, dated New York, Albany, etc., from 1755 to 1771, a manuscript volume presented to the State library by the Rev. Wm. B. Sprague, D. D.[497]

An Abridgment of the Records of Indian Affairs, transacted in the Colony of New York from 1678 to 1751, with a preface by the compiler, is the work of Peter Wraxall, secretary for Indian affairs. It is a manuscript of 224 pages, dated at New York, May 10, 1754.[498] It is to be regretted that Wraxall’s complete record of these transactions has not been preserved, as the few extracts of them handed down to us in the Council Minutes and in the Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York give us a great deal of curious and interesting information.[499]

The religious life in the colony of New York during the early part of the eighteenth century, as seen from the Episcopal point of view, is well depicted in a manuscript volume (107 pp. folio), Extracts from Correspondence of the Venerable Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts with the Missionaries T. Payer, S. Seabury, and others, from 1704 to 1709.[500] The history of trade and business is likewise illustrated in the Commercial Letters of the firm P. & R. Livingston, New York and Albany, from 1733 to 1738, and of Boston and Philadelphia merchants during the same period, giving us a picture of mercantile transactions at that time which a number of account-books of N. De Peyster, treasurer of the colony and merchant in the city of New York, and of the firm of Beverley Robinson & Morrison Malcom, in Fredericksburg, now Patterson, Putnam County, N. Y., help to fill out.[501]

II. Cartography and Boundaries of the Middle Colonies. (By Mr. Fernow and the Editor.)—The following enumeration of maps includes, among others, those of a general character, as covering the several middle colonies jointly, and they run parallel in good part with the sequence named in an earlier section[502] on the “Cartography of Louisiana and the Mississippi Basin under the French Domination,” so that many of the maps mentioned there may be passed over or merely referred to here.[503]

There was little definite knowledge of American geography manifested by the popular [234] gazetteers of the early part of the last century,[504] to say nothing of the strange misconceptions of some of the map-makers of the same period.[505]

A German geographer, well known in the early years of the eighteenth century, was Johann Baptist Homann, who, having been a monk, turned Protestant and cartographer, and at nearly forty years of age set up, in 1702, as a draftsman and publisher of maps at Nuremberg,[506] giving his name till his death, in 1724, to about two hundred maps.[507] Homann’s career was a successful one; he became, in 1715, a member of the Academy of Science at Berlin, and was made the official geographer of the Emperor Charles of Germany and of Peter the Great of Russia. A son succeeded to the business in 1724, and, on his death in 1730, the imprint of the family was continued by “the heirs of Homann,” at the hands of some university friends of the son. Under this authority we find a map, Die Gross Britannischen Colonial Laender in Nord-America in Special Mappen (Homannsche Erben, Nuremberg), in which nearly the whole of New York is called “Gens Iroquois,” or “Irokensium.”

Contemporary with the elder Homann, the English geographer Herman Moll was publishing his maps in London;[508] and of his drafting were the maps which accompanied Thomas Salmon’s Modern History or the State of all Nations, first issued between 1725 and 1739.[509] His map of New England and the middle colonies is not carried farther west than the Susquehanna.[510]

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Mention has already been made of the great map of Henry Popple in 1732,[511] and of the maps of the contemporary French geographer D’Anville;[512] but their phenomenal labors were long in getting possession through the popular compends of the public mind. We find little of their influence, for instance, in the Gazetteer’s or Newsman’s Interpreter, being a geographical Index of all the Empires, Kingdoms, Islands, etc., in Africa, Asia, and America. By Laurence Echard, A. M., of Christ’s College, Cambridge (London, 1741).[513] In this New York is made to adjoin Maryland, and is traversed by the Hudson, Raritan, and Delaware rivers; New Jersey lies between 39 and 40° N. L., and is bounded on the east by Hudson’s Bay; and Pennsylvania lies between 40 and 43° N. L., but no bounds are given.

The French geographer’s drafts, however, were made the basis in 1752 of a map in Postlethwayt’s Dictionary of Commerce, which was entitled North America, performed under the patronage of Louis, Duke of Orleans, First Prince of the Blood, by the Sieur d’Anville, greatly improved by M. Bolton.

The maps which, three years later (1755), grew out of the controversies in America on the boundary claims of France and England have been definitely classified in another place,[514] and perhaps the limit of the English pretensions was reached in A New and Accurate Map of the English Empire in North America, representing their Rightful Claim, as confirmed by Charters and the formal Surrender of their Indian Friends, likewise the Encroachments of the French, etc. By a Society of Anti-Gallicans. Published according to Act of Parliament, Decbr., 1755, and sold by W^m. Herbert on London Bridge and Robert Sayer over against Fetter Lane in Fleet Street. This map is of some importance in defining the location of the Indian tribes and towns.

The English influence is also apparent in a reissue of D’Anville, made at Nuremberg by the Homann publishing house the next year: America Septentrionalis a Domino D’Anville in Gallia edita, nunc in Anglia Coloniis in Inferiorem Virginiam deductis nec non Fluvii Ohio cursu aucta, etc., Sumptibus Homanniorum Heredum, Noribergiæ, 1756.[515] It makes the province of New York stretch westerly to Lake Michigan.

Respecting the special maps of New York province, a particular interest attaches to The Map of the Country of the Five Nations, printed by Bradford in 1724, which was the first map engraved in New York. The Brinley Catal. (ii. no. 3,384, 3,446) shows the map in two states, apparently of the same year (1724). It originally accompanied Cadwallader Colden’s Papers relating to an Act of the Province of New York for the encouragement of the Indian trade. It was reëngraved from the first state for the London ed. of Colden’s Five Nations, in 1747, and from this plate it has been reproduced on another page (chapter viii.).[516]

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CADWALLADER COLDEN’S MAP OF THE MANORIAL GRANTS ALONG THE HUDSON.

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Another of Colden’s maps, made by him as surveyor-general of the province, exists in a mutilated state in the State library at Albany, showing the regions bordering on the Hudson and Mohawk rivers. It was drafted by him probably at the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century,[517] and fac-similes of parts of it are annexed (pp. 236, 237).

A map of the northern parts of the province, called Carte du Lac Champlain depuis le Fort Chambly jusqu’au Fort St. Frédéric, levée par le Sieur Anger, arpenteur du Roy en 1732, faite à Québec, le 10 Octobre, 1748, signé de Lery, indicates the attempted introduction of a feudal system of land tenure by the French. The map is reproduced in O’Callaghan’s Doc. Hist. of New York.

The province of New York to its western bounds is shown in A Map of New England and ye Country adjacent, by a gentleman, who resided in those parts. Sold by W. Owen (London, 1755).

The New York State library has also a manuscript Map of part of the province of New York on Hudson’s River, the West End of Nassau Island, and part of New Jersey. Compiled pursuant to order of the Earl of Loudoun, Septbr. 17, 1757. Drawn by Captain [Samuel J.] Holland. This is a map called by the Lords of Trade in 1766 “a very accurate and useful survey, ... in which the most material patents are marked and their boundaries described.”

Something of the extension of settlements in the Mohawk Valley at this period can be learned from a manuscript Map of the Country between Mohawk River and Wood Creek, with the Fortifications and buildings thereon in 1758, likewise preserved in the State library.[518]

A drawn map of New York province and adjacent parts (1759), from Maj. Christie’s surveys, is noted in the King’s Maps (Brit. Mus.), ii. 527.

The boundary controversy between New York and New Jersey has produced a long discussion over the successive developments of the historical geography of that part of the middle colonies. An important map on the subject is a long manuscript roll (5 × 2-6/12 feet), preserved in Harvard College library, which has been photographed by the regents of the University of the State of New York, and entitled A copy of the general map, the most part compiled from actual survey by order of the commissioners appointed to settle the partition line between the provinces of New York and New Jersey. 1769. By Ber^d. Ratzer. [New York, 1884.] 7-5/8 × 12-3/4 in.[519]

Respecting the controversy over the New Hampshire grants, see the present volume (ante, p. 177), and Isaac Jennings’s Memorials of a Century (Boston, 1869), chapters x. and xi.

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Of the special maps of Pennsylvania, the Holme map a little antedates the period of our survey.[520] The Gabriel Thomas map of Pennsylvania and New Jersey appeared near the end of the century (1698), and has already been reproduced.[521] In 1728 we find a map of the Delaware and Chesapeake bays in the Atlas Maritimus et Commercialis, published at London. In 1730 we note the map of Pennsylvania which appeared in Humphrey’s Historical Account of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.[522]

About 1740, in a tract printed at London, In Chancery. Breviate. John Penn, Thomas Penn, and Richard Penn, plaintiffs; Charles Calvert, defendant,[523] appeared A map of parts of the provinces of Pennsylvania and Maryland, with the counties of Newcastle, Kent, and Sussex in Delaware, according to the most exact surveys yet made, drawn[240] in the year 1740. The controversy over this boundary is followed in chapter iv. of the present volume.

A map of Philadelphia and parts adjacent, by N. Scull and G. Heap, was published in 1750, of which there is a fac-simile (folding) in Scharf and Westcott’s Philadelphia, vol. i.

The annexed fac-simile (p. 239) is from a plate in the London Mag., Dec., 1756.

A map to illustrate the Indian purchases, made by the proprietary, is given in An Enquiry into the Causes of the Alienation of the Delaware and Shawanese Indians (London, 1759).[524]

Surpassing all previous drafts was a Map of the Improved Part of Pennsylvania, by Nicholas Scull, published in 1759, and sold by the author in Second Street, Philadelphia. Engraved by Jas. Turner. It was reproduced in Jefferys’ General Topography of North America (Nos. 40-42), and was reissued in London in 1770, and again as A Map of Pennsylvania, exhibiting not only the improved parts of the Province, but also its extensive frontiers, laid down from actual surveys, and chiefly from the late Map of N. Scull, published in 1770. Robert Sayer & Bennett (London, 1775). The edition of 1770 was reëngraved in Paris by Le Rouge.

Upon the boundary controversy between Pennsylvania and Virginia respecting the “Pan handle,” see N. B. Craig’s Olden Time (1843), and the St. Clair Papers, vol. i. (passim).

EDITORIAL NOTES.

The Leisler Papers constitute the first volume of the Fund Publications of the N. Y. Hist. Society’s Collections, and embrace the journal of the council from April 27 to June 6, 1689 (procured from the English State Paper Office), with letters, etc., and a reprint of a tract in defence of Leisler, issued at Boston in 1698, and called Loyalty Vindicated, being an answer to a late false, seditious, and scandalous pamphlet, entitled “A letter from a Gent,” etc.[525] The Sparks Catal. (p. 217) shows a MS. copy made of a rare tract in the British Museum, printed in New York and reprinted in London, 1690, called A modest and impartial narrative of the great oppressions that the inhabitants of their majestie’s Province of New York lye under by the extravagant and arbitrary proceedings of Jacob Leisler and his accomplices. Sparks endorsed his copy as “written by a violent enemy to Leisler; neither just, candid, nor impartial.”[526] Various papers relating to the administration of Leisler make a large part of the second volume of the Documentary History of New York, showing the letters written by Leisler to Boston, the papers connected with his official proceedings in New York, and his communications with the adjacent colonies; the council minutes in Dec., 1689; proceedings against the French and Indians; the papers relating to the transfer of the fort and arrest of Leisler; the dying speeches of Leisler and Milbourne; with a reprint of A letter from a gentleman of the city of New York to another (New York, 1698). There are a few original[241] letters of Leisler in the Prince Letters (MSS.), 1686-1700, in Mass. Hist. Soc. cabinet.

The career of Leisler is traced in the memoir by C. F. Hoffman in Sparks’s Amer. Biog., xiii. (1844), and in G. W. Schuyler’s Colonial New York (i. 337). Peleg W. Chandler examines the records of the prosecution in his American Criminal Trials (i. 255). Cf. also Historical Magazine, xxi. 18, and the general histories, of which Dunlap’s gives the best account among the earlier ones.[527]

The student must, of necessity, have recourse to the general histories of New York for the successive administrations of the royal governors, and H. B. Dawson, in his Sons of Liberty (printed as manuscript, 1859), has followed the tracks of the constant struggle on their part to preserve their prerogatives.[528] Schuyler (Colonial New York, i. 394-460) follows pretty closely the administration of Fletcher. The chapter on New England (ante, no. ii.) will need to be parallelized with this for the career of Bellomont.

Under Nanfan, who succeeded Bellomont temporarily, Col. Bayard, who had brought Leisler to his doom, was in turn put on trial, and the narrative of the proceedings throws light on the factious political life of the time.[529]

One of the most significant acts of Cornbury’s rule (1702-1708) was the prosecution in 1707 of Francis Mackemie, a Presbyterian minister, for preaching without a license.[530]

J. R. Brodhead, who gives references in the case (Hist. Mag., Nov., 1863), charges Cornbury with forging the clause of his instructions under which it was attempted to convict Mackemie, and he says that the copy of the royal instructions in the State Paper Office contains no such paragraph. “History,” he adds, “has already exhibited Lord Cornbury as a mean liar, a vulgar profligate, a frivolous spendthrift, an impudent cheat, a fraudulent bankrupt, and a detestable bigot. He is convicted of having perpetrated one of the most outrageous forgeries ever attempted by a British nobleman.”[531]

The few months of Lovelace’s rule (1708-9) were followed by a funeral Sermon when he died, in May, 1709, preached by William Vesey (New York, 1709), which is of enough historical interest to have been reprinted in the N. Y. Hist. Coll. (1880).

During 1720-1722, the Shelburne Papers (Hist. MSS. Commission Report, v. 215) reveal letters of Peter Schuyler and Gov. Burnet, with various other documentary sources.

There is a portrait of Rip van Dam, with a memoir, in Valentine’s Manual (1864, p. 713).

In 1732 and 1738 we have important statistical and descriptive papers on the province from Cadwallader Colden.[532]

[242]

The narrative of the trial of Zenger was widely scattered, editions being printed at New York, Boston, and London; while the principles which it established were sedulously controverted by the Tory faction.[533]

The main printed source respecting the Negro Plot of 1741 is the very scarce book by the recorder of the city of New York, Daniel Horsmanden, A Journal of the proceedings in the Detection of the Conspiracy formed by some white people in conjunction with negro and other slaves for burning the City of New York, and murdering the inhabitants, etc., containing, I., a narrative of the trials, executions, etc.; II., evidence come to light since their execution; III., lives of the several persons committed, etc. (New York, 1744).[534]

The history of Pennsylvania during this period is a tale of the trials of Penn,[535] the misgovernment of the province by representatives of the proprietors, the struggles of the proprietary party against the people, the apathy of the Quakers in the face of impending war, and the determination of the assembly to make the proprietors bear their share of the burdens of defence. The published Pennsylvania Archives give much of the documentary evidence, and the general histories tell the story.

The Pennsylvania Hist. Soc., in vols. ix. and x. of their Memoirs, published the correspondence of Penn with Logan, his secretary in the colony, beginning in 1700. This collection also embraced the letters of various other writers, all appertaining to the province, and was first arranged by the wife of a grandson of James Logan in 1814; but a project soon afterwards entertained by the American Philosophical Society of printing the papers from Mrs. Logan’s copies was not carried out, and finally this material was placed by that society at the disposal of the Penna. Hist. Society. The correspondence was used by Janney in his Life of Penn, and liberal extracts were printed in The Friend (Philadelphia, July, 1842-Apr., 1846) by Mr. Alfred Cope. Mr. Edward Armstrong, the editor of the Historical Society’s volumes, gathered additional materials from other and different sources. A portrait of Logan is given in the second volume, which brings the correspondence down to 1711. The material exists for continuing the record to 1750, though Logan ceased to hold official connection with the province in 1738.

Sparks (Franklin’s Works, vii. 25) says that “a history of James Logan’s public life would be that of Pennsylvania during the first forty years of the last century.” See the account of Logan in the Penn and Logan Correspondence, vol. i.

The correspondence of Thomas and Richard Penn with a later agent in Philadelphia, Richard Peters, is also preserved. In 1861 this correspondence was in the possession of Mr. John W. Field, of Philadelphia, when Mr. Charles Eliot[243] Norton gave transcripts of a portion of it (letters between 1750 and 1758) to the Mass. Hist. Society.[536]

Of an earlier period, when Evans was deputy-governor, there are some characteristic letters (1704, etc.) in a memoir of Evans communicated by E. D. Neill to the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., Oct., 1872 (p. 421).

There is a biographical sketch of Sir William Keith in the Penna. Historical Society’s Memoirs (vol. i.).

There is a pencil-drawn portrait of Sir William Keith, with a painting made from it, in the gallery of the Penna. Hist. Society. Cf. Catal. of Paintings, etc. (nos. 77, 162), and Scharf and Westcott’s Philadelphia (i. 177). Some of the rare tracts in the controversy of Governor Keith and Logan are noted in the Brinley Catal., ii. pp. 197-8. Cf. Hildeburn’s Century of Printing.

As to the position of the Quakers upon the question of defensive war, there is an expressive letter, dated in 1741, of James Logan, who was not in this respect a strict constructionist of the principles of his sect, which is printed in the Penna. Mag. of History (vi. 402). Much of this controversy over military preparation is illustrated in the autobiography and lives of Benjamin Franklin; and the issues of Franklin’s Plain Truth (1747) and Samuel Smith’s Necessary Truth, the most significant pamphlets in the controversy, are noted in the bibliographies.[537] Sparks, in a preliminary note to a reprint of Plain Truth, in Franklin’s Works (vol. iii.), states the circumstances which were the occasion and the sequel of its publication. In Ibid. (vii. 20) there is a letter of Richard Peters describing the condition of affairs.

A mass of papers, usually referred to as the Shippen Papers, and relating to a period in the main antedating the Revolution, have been edited privately by Thomas Balch as Letters and Papers relating chiefly to the Provincial History of Pennsylvania, with some notices of the writers. (Philad., 1855, one hundred copies.)

First of importance among the published travels of this period is the narrative of an English Quaker, Thomas Story, who came over in 1697. From that time to 1708 he visited every part of the colonies from New Hampshire to Carolina, dwelling for much of the time, however, in Pennsylvania, where he became, under Penn’s persuasion, a public official. The Journal of the life of Thomas Story, containing an account of his remarkable convincement of and embracing the principles of truth, as held by the people called Quakers, and also of his travels and labours in the service of the Gospel, with many other occurrences and observations, was published at Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1747.[538]

George Clarke, born in 1676, was made secretary of the province of New York in 1703, and came to America, landing in Virginia. We have an account of his voyage, but unfortunately the book does not follow his experiences after his arrival;[539] but we have the Letters of his private secretary, Isaac Bobin, which, under the editing of Dr. O’Callaghan, were printed in a small edition (100 copies) at Albany in 1872.

George Keith’s Journal of Travels from New Hampshire to Caratuck, on the Continent of North America, London, 1706, is reprinted in the first volume (1851) of the Collections of the Prot. Episc. Hist. Society, together with various letters of Keith[540] and John Talbot.[541]

Benjamin Holme, another Quaker, came to the colonies in 1715, and extended his missionary wandering to New England, and southward beyond the middle colonies,[542] as did, some years later, 1736-1737, still another Quaker, John Griffeth,[244] whose Journal of his life, labours, and travels in the work of the ministry passed through many editions, both in America and Great Britain.[543]

The records of missionary efforts at this time are not wholly confined to the Quakers. The narrative of the Rev. Thomas Thompson reveals the perplexities of the adherents of the Established Church in the communities through which he travelled in the Jerseys.[544] Similar records are preserved in the journals of Whitefield[545] and his associates, like the Journal of a Voyage from Savannah to Philadelphia and from Philadelphia to England, MDCCXL., by William Seward, Gent., Companion in Travel with the Reverend Mr. George Whitefield (London, 1740).

We have a few German experiences, among them Gottlieb Mittelberger’s Reise nach Pennsylvanien im Jahr 1750 und Rŭkreise nach Teutschland im Jahr 1754 (Stuttgart, 1756)[546]—which is the record of a German teacher and organist, who was in the province for three years. He had no very flattering notion of the country as an asylum for such Germans as, having indentured themselves for their passage, found on their arrival that they could be passed on from master to master, not always with much regard to their happiness.

Michael Schlatter, a Dutch preacher, published his observations of the country and population, and particularly as to the condition of the Dutch Reformed churches. He was in the country from 1746 to 1751, and made his report to the Synod of Holland. Though the book pertains mostly to Pennsylvania, his experiences extended to New York and New England.[547]

We have the reports of a native observer in the Observations on the inhabitants, climate, soil, rivers, productions, animals, and other matters worthy of notice, made by Mr. John Bartram in his travels from Pensilvania to Onondago, Oswego, and the lake Ontario in Canada. To which is annexed a curious account of the Cataracts at Niagara, by Mr. Peter Kalm (London, 1751).[548] Bartram was born in Pennsylvania, and made this journey in company with Conrad Weiser, the agent sent by Pennsylvania to hold friendly conference with the Iroquois, as explained in another chapter.[549] Bartram’s principal object was the study of the flora of the country, in which pursuit he acquired such a reputation as to attract the notice of Linnæus, but his record throws light upon the people which came in his way, and enable us in some respects to understand better their manners and thoughts. Evans’ map, already mentioned,[550] was in part the outgrowth of this journey.

We also owe to the friendly interest of the great Swedish botanist the observations of Peter Kalm, a countryman of Linnæus, whom the Swedish government sent to America on a botanical tour in 1748-1751. He extended his journeys to Pennsylvania, New York, and Canada, and we have in his three volumes, beside his special studies, not a little of his comment on men and events. He published his En risa til Norra America at Stockholm, 1753-1761. (Sabin, ix. 36,986.)[551]

[245]

The Rev. Andrew Burnaby’s Travels through the middle settlements in North America in 1759-1760, with observations upon the state of the Colonies, was published in London, 1775.[552] Burnaby was an active observer and used his note-book, so that little escaped him, whether of the people’s character or their manners, or the aspect of the towns they dwelt in, or of the political and social movements which engaged them.

The relations of the middle colonies to the Indians will be particularly illustrated in a later chapter on the military aspects of the French wars,[553] but there are a few special works which may be mentioned here: Colden’s Five Indian Nations (only to 1697); Morgan’s League of the Iroquois; Wm. L. Stone’s Life of Sir William Johnson; and Geo. W. Schuyler’s Colonial New York—Peter Schuyler and his family (Albany, 1885). The successive generations of the Schuylers had for a long period been practical intermediaries between the colonists and the Indians. Something of the Indian relations in Bellomont’s time is indicated elsewhere.[554] For the agreement between William Penn and the Susquehanna Indians in 1701, see the Penna. Archives (i. 145). Of similar records in Cornbury’s time, Schuyler (ii. 17) says the remains are meagre, but he gives more for Hunter’s time (ii. pp. 42-79) and Burnet’s (ii. p. 83). The Shelburne Papers (Hist. MSS. Commission Report, v.) reveal various documents from 1722 to 1724, and there is a MS. of a treaty between the governors of New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania (Albany, Sept., 1722) in the library of Harvard College.

For the treaty of 1735, see the Penna. Mag. of Hist. (vii. 215).

For 1742 there was a treaty with the Six Nations at Philadelphia, and its text was printed at London.[555]

In 1747 there were treaties in July at Lancaster, Penna., with the Six Nations, and on Nov. 13 with the Ohio Indians at Philadelphia. (Haven in Thomas, ii. 497.) Again, in July, 1753, Johnson had a conference with the Mohawks (2 Penna. Archives, vi. 150); and in Oct. a treaty with the Ohio Indians was made at Carlisle (Hildeburn, i. 1328; Haven, p. 517). There exist also minutes of conferences held at Easton, Oct., 1758, with the Mohawks;[556] at Easton, Aug., 1761, with the Five Nations; and in Aug., 1762, at Lancaster, with the northern and western Indians. (Hildeburn, i. 1593, 1634, 1748, 1908.)

The Moravians, settling first in Georgia, had founded Bethlehem in Pennsylvania in 1741, and soon extended the field of their labors into New York;[557] and in no way did the characteristics of this people impress the life of the colonies so much as in the intermediary nature of their missions among the Indians. David Zeisberger was a leading spirit in this work, and left a manuscript account (written in 1778 in German) of the missions, which was discovered by Schweinitz in the archives of the Moravian church at Bethlehem. (Schweinitz’s Zeisberger, p. 29.) It proved to be the source upon which Loskiel had depended for the first part of his History of the Mission of the United Brethren among the Indians in North America, in three parts, by Geo. H. Loskiel, translated from the German by Christian Ignatius Latrobe (London, 1794);[558] and Schweinitz found it of invaluable use to him in the studies for his Life of David Zeisberger (Philad., 1870). The other principal authority on the work of the Moravians among the Indians is Rev. John Heckewelder, whose Narrative of the Mission of the United Brethren (Philad., 1820) has been elsewhere referred to,[559] and who also published An account of the History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations who once inhabited Pennsylvania and the neighboring States (Philad., 1818).[560] Schweinitz[246] also refers to another manuscript upon the Indians, preserved in the library of the American Philosophical Society, by Christopher Pyrlaeus, likewise a Moravian missionary.[561] We have again from Spangenberg an Account of the manner in which the Protestant Church of the Unitas Fratrum preach the Gospel and carry on their missions among the heathen (English transl., London, 1788); and his notes of travel to Onondaga, in 1745, which are referred to in the original MS. by Schweinitz (Zeisberger, p. 132), have since been printed in the Penna. Mag. of History (vol. iii.).[562]

Perhaps the most distinguished of the English missionaries was David Brainerd, a native of Connecticut, of whose methods and their results, as he went among the Indians of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, we have the record in his life and diaries.[563]

The question of the population of the middle colonies during the eighteenth century is complicated somewhat by the heterogeneous compounding of nationalities, particularly in Pennsylvania. In New Jersey the people were more purely English than in New York. We find brought together the statistics of the population of New York, 1647-1774, in the Doc. Hist. of N. Y. (i. 687), and Lodge (English Colonies, p. 312) collates some of the evidence. The German element in New York is exemplified in F. Kapp’s Die Deutschen im Staate New York während des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts. (New York, 1884.)

In Pennsylvania the Swedes were beginning to lose in number when the century opened, and the Dutch were also succumbing to the English preponderance; but there were new-comers in the Welsh and Germans in sufficient numbers to keep the characteristics of the people very various.[564] Religion had brought the earliest Germans,—Dunkers[565] and Mennonists,[566] all industrious,[247] but ignorant. By 1719 the Irish began to come, in part a desirable stock, the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians; but in large numbers they were as unpromising as the dregs of a race could make them. The rise of Presbyterianism in Pennsylvania is traced in C. A. Briggs’s Amer. Presbyterianism (New York, 1885).[567]

The influx of other than English into Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century had an extent best measured by A collection of upwards of 30,000 names of German, Swiss, Dutch, French, and other immigrants in Pennsylvania, 1727-1776, with notes and an appendix containing lists of more than one thousand German and French in New York prior to 1712, by Professor I. Daniel Rupp (2d enlarged ed., Philad., 1876).

Respecting the Welsh immigrants, compare the Pennsylvania Mag. of Hist., i. 330; Howard M. Jenkins’s Historical collections relating to Gwynedd, a township of Montgomery County, Penn., settled, 1698, by Welsh immigrants, with some data referring to the adjoining township of Montgomery, also a Welsh settlement (Phila., 1884), and J. Davis’s History of the Welsh Baptists (Pittsburgh, 1835).

The Huguenot emigration to the middle colonies, particularly to New York, is well studied in C. W. Baird’s Huguenot Emigration to America (1885). Cf. references ante, p. 98; and for special monographs, W. W. Waldron’s Huguenots of Westchester and Parish of Fordham, with an introduction by S. H. Tyng (New York, 1864), and G. P. Disosway on the Huguenots of Staten Island, in the Continental Monthly, i. 683, and his app. on “The Huguenots in America” to Samuel Smiles’s Huguenots (N. Y., 1868).

The best summary of the manners and social and intellectual life of the middle colonies will be found in Lodge’s Short History of the English Colonies (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania), and he fortifies his varied statements with convenient references. For New York specially the best known picture of life is Mrs. Anne Grant’s Memoirs of an American Lady,[568] but its recollections, recorded in late life, of experiences of childhood, have nearly taken it out of the region of historical truth. For Pennsylvania there is a rich store of illustration in Watson’s Annals of Philadelphia, and much help will be derived from the Penn and Logan Letters, printed by the Penna. Hist. Soc.;[569] from the journal of William Black, a Virginian, who recorded his observations in 1744, printed in the Penna. Mag. of Hist. (vols. i. and ii.).[570]

The exigencies of the Indian wars, while they colored the life and embroiled the politics of the time, induced the search for relief from pecuniary burdens, here as in New England, in the issue of paper money, which in turn in its depreciation grew to be a factor of itself in determining some social conditions.[571]

The educational aspects of the middle colonies have been summarily touched by Lodge in his English Colonies. Each of them had founded a college. An institution begun at Elizabethtown in 1741, was transferred to Princeton in 1757, and still flourishes.[572] In 1750 the Academy[248] of Philadelphia made the beginning of the present University of Pennsylvania. In 1754 King’s College in New York city began its mission,—the present Columbia College.[573]

The development of the intellectual life of the middle colonies, so far as literary results—such as they were—are concerned, is best seen in Moses C. Tyler’s History of American Literature (vol. ii. ch. 16).[574] The list by Haven in Thomas’s Hist. of Printing (vol. ii.) reveals the extent of the publications of the period; but for Pennsylvania the record is made admirably full in Charles R. Hildeburn’s Century of Printing,—issues of the press in Pennsylvania, 1685-1784.[575]

William Bradford, the father of printing in the middle colonies, removed to New York in 1693, where he died in 1752, having maintained the position of the leading printer in that province, where he started, in 1725, the N. Y. Gazette, the earliest New York newspaper.[576] His son, Andrew Bradford (born 1686, died 1742), was the founder of the newspaper press in Pennsylvania, and began the American Weekly Mercury in 1719, and the American Magazine in 1741.[577]

The records of the publication of Franklin and his press have been more than once carefully made,[578] and Col. William Bradford, grandson of the first William, has been fitly commemorated in the Life of him by Wallace.[579]

The general histories of New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey have been sufficiently described elsewhere.[580] The documentary collections of New York State have likewise been explained;[581] but the historical literature respecting the province and State has never been bibliographically arranged. The city of New York[249] has some careful histories of its own.[582] The capital, Albany, by reason of the attention of its devoted antiquarian publishers, has recently had its own bibliography traced.[583] The extent of the other local histories of the State, particularly as far as the Dutch period was represented in it, has been already indicated;[584] but the list as touching the period covered by the present chapter could be much enlarged.[585]

The several official and documentary collections published by Pennsylvania have been described elsewhere.[586] Something of her local history has been also indicated, but the greater part of the interest of this class of historical records falls within the period of the present volume.[587]

Respecting the histories of Philadelphia, since the memoranda were noted in Vol. III. (p. 509), the material gathered by Thompson Westcott has been augmented by the labors of Col. J. Thomas Scharf, and the elaborate History of Philadelphia (Philad., 1884) with this joint authorship has been issued in three large volumes. Two chapters (xiii. and xv.) in the first volume cover in the main the period now dealt with. There is still a good deal to be gleaned from the old Annals of Philadelphia, by John F. Watson, of which there is a new edition, with revisions and additions by Willis P. Hazard.[588] It is a work somewhat desultory in character and unskilful in arrangement, but it contains a great body of facts.[589]

[250]

[251]

The views of New York here annexed (pp. 250, 251) are the principal ones of the earlier half of the seventeenth century. The larger (New York, on the scroll) is from the great map of Popple, British Empire in America, published in 1732. The upper of the two (p. 251) is reduced from a large panoramic South Prospect of y^e Flourishing City of New York (6-6/12 × 2-4/12 ft.), dedicated to Gov. George Clinton by Thomas Blakewell, which was published March 25, 1746. A lithographic reproduction appeared in Valentine’s N. Y. City Manual, 1849, p. 26, and in his Hist. of N. Y. City, p. 290. (Cf. Cassell’s United States, i. 480.) Originals are reported to be in the N. Y. Society library and in the British Museum (King’s Maps, ii. 329, and Map Catal., 1885, col. 2,975).

The reduced fac-simile view, called a “South Prospect,” follows a copperplate engraving in the London Magazine, Aug., 1761.

Key: 1, the fort; 2, the chapel in the fort; 3, the secretary’s office; 4, the great dock, with a bridge over it; 5, the ruins of Whitehall, built by Gov. Duncan [Dongan]; 6, part of Nutten Island; 7, part of Long Island; 8, the lower market; 9, the Crane; 10, the great flesh-market; 11, the Dutch church; 12, the English church; 13, the city hall; 14, the exchange; 15, the French church; 16, upper market; 17, the station ship; 18, the wharf; 19, the wharf for building ships; 20, the ferry house on Long Island side; 21, a pen for cattle designed for the market; 22, Colonel Morris’s “Fancy,” turning to windward, with a sloop of common mould.

This print is clearly based on the one placed above it.

[252]

The official documentary collections of New Jersey have already been indicated,[590] as well as some traces of its local history.[591]

A view of New York about 1695 is no. 39 in the gallery of the N. Y. Hist. Society. Cf. Mrs. Lamb’s New York, i. p. 455, for one assigned to 1704.

A view purporting to be taken in 1750 is found in Delisle’s Atlas (1757).

A collection of views of towns, which was published by Jan Roman at Amsterdam in 1752, included one of Nieu Amsterdam, namaels Nieu York. (Muller’s Catal. of American Portraits, etc., no. 310.)[592]

[253]

The earliest plan of New York of the period which we are now considering is one which appeared in the Rev. John Miller’s Description of the Province and City of New York, with the plans of the City and several forts, as they existed in the year 1695, now first printed from the original MS. (London, Rodd, 1843), and in a new ed., with introd. and notes by Dr. Shea (N. Y., Gowans, 1862). See Vol. III. p. 420, of the present History, and Mrs. Lamb’s New York (i. 421).

A fac-simile of this plan, marked “New York, 1695,” is annexed. It is reproduced several times in Valentine’s New York City Manual (1843-44, 1844-45, 1845-46, 1847, 1848, 1850, 1851, 1852), and is explained by the following:

Key: 1, the chapel in the fort of New York; 2, Leysler’s half-moon; 3, Whitehall battery of 15 guns; 4, the old dock; 5, the cage and stocks; 6, stadt-house battery of 5 guns; 7, the stadt or state house; 8, the custom-house; 8, 8, the bridge; 9, Burgher’s or the slip battery of 10 guns; 10, the fly block-house and half-moon; 11, the slaughter-house; 12, the new docks; 13, the French church; 14, the Jews’ synagogue; 15, the fort well and pump; 16, Ellet’s alley; 17, the works on the west side of the city; 18, the northwest block-house; 19, 19, the Lutheran church and minister’s house; 20, 20, the stone points on the north side of the city; 21, the Dutch Calvinists’ church, built 1692; 22, the Dutch Calvinists’ minister’s house; 23, the burying-ground; 24, a windmill; 25, the king’s farm; 26, Col. Dungan’s garden; 27, 27, wells; 28, the plat of ground designed for the E. minister’s house; 29, 29, the stockado, with a bank of earth on the inside; 30, the ground proper for the building an E. church; 31, 31, showing the sea flowing about New York; 32, 32, the city gates; 33, a postern gate.

There is a MS. plan of this date (1695) in the British Museum. A plan of the fort in New York (1695) is also given by Miller, and is reproduced in Gowan’s ed. of Miller, p. 264. (Cf. Appleton’s Journal, viii. p. 353.)

The Brit. Mus. Map Catal. (1885), col. 2,972, notes a map by J. Seller, London; and a Novum Amsterdamum, probably by Vander Aa, at Leyden, in 1720.

A large Plan of the City of New York, from an actual survey, made by Iames Lyne, was published by William Bradford, and dedicated to Gov. Montgomerie, while Col. Robt. Lurting was mayor, in 1728. It has been reproduced wholly or in part at various times.[593]

Popple’s plan of New York (1733) was later re-engraved in Paris. His map of the harbor, from his great map The British Empire in America (inscribed on a scroll, “New York and Perth Amboy harbours”), is annexed (p. 254) in fac-simile.

[254]

Key: A, the fort; B, Trinity Church; C, old Dutch church; D, French church; E, new Dutch church; F. Presbyterian meeting; G, Quakers’ meeting; H, Baptist meeting; J, Lutheran church; L, St. George’s Chapel; M, Moravian meeting; N, new Lutheran meeting; 1, governor’s house; 2, secretary’s office; 3, custom-house; 4, Peter Livingston & Co., supg. hu.; 5, city hall; 6, Byard’s sugar-house; 7, exchange; 8, fish market; 9, old slip market; 10, meal market; 11, fly market; 12, Burtin’s market; 13, Oswego market; 14, English free school; 15, Dutch free school; 16, Courtland’s sugar-house; 17, Jas. Griswold; 18, stillhouse; 19, Wileys Livingstone; 20, Laffert’s In. Comp.; 21, Thomas Vatar Distilhouse; 22, Robert Griffeth’s Distilhouse; 23, Jno. Burling’s Distilhouse; 24, Jas. Burling’s Distilhouse; 25, Jno. Leake’s Distilhouse; 26, Benj. Blagge’s Distilhouse; 27, Jews’ burial-ground; 28, poor house; 29, powder-house; 30, block-house; 31, gates.

Other drafts of New York harbor during the first half of the last century will be found in Southack’s Coast Pilot, and in Bowen’s Geography (1747). A chart of the Narrows is in a Set of Plans and Forts in America, London, 1763, no. 12.

A large plan of The City and environs of New York, as they were in the years 1742-1744, drawn by David Grim in the 76th year of his age, in Aug., 1813, as it would seem from recollection, is in the N. Y. Hist. Society’s library, and is engraved in Valentine’s N. Y. City Manual, 1854.

The plan of 1755 (also annexed), made after surveys by the city surveyor, and bearing the arms of New York city, follows a lithograph in Valentine’s N. Y. City Manual, 1849, p. 130, after an original plate belonging to Trinity Church, N. Y.

Cf. Valentine’s New York, p. 304, and the Hist. of the Collegiate Reformed Dutch Church in New York (New York, 1886). It was also given in 1763 in a Set of plans and forts in America (no. 1), published in London.

A plan of the northeast environs of New York, made for Lord Loudon, in 1757, is in Valentine’s Manual, 1859, p. 108.

The plan of 1755 (p. 255) needs the following

[255]

Key: A, the fort; B, Trinity Church; C, old Dutch church; D, French church; E, new Dutch church; F, Presbyterian meeting; G, Quakers’ meeting; H, Baptist meeting; I, Lutheran church; K, Jews’ synagogue; L, St. George’s Chapel; M, Moravian meeting; N, new Lutheran meeting; O, custom-house; P, governor’s house; Q, secretary’s office; R, city house; S, exchange; T, fish market; V, old slip market; X, meal market; Y, fly market; Z, Burtin’s market; 1, Oswego market; 2, English free school; 3, Dutch free school; 4, block-house; 5, gates.

[256]

[257]

Maerschalck’s plan of 1755 was used as the basis of a new plan, with some changes, which is here reproduced (p. 256) after the copy in Valentine’s Manual (1850), and called a Plan of the City of New York, reduced from an actual survey, by T. Maerschalkm [sic], 1763. The following key is in the upper right-hand corner of the original (where the three blanks are in the fac-simile), of a lettering too small for the present reduction:—

BELLIN’S PLAN, 1764.

Key: A, shipping port; B, bridge for discharging vessels; C, fountain or wells; D, house of the governor; E, the temple or church; F, parade ground; G, meat-market; H, slaughter-house; J, lower town; K, city hall; L, custom-house and stores; M, powder-magazine.[594]

The latest of the plans here reproduced is one which is given in Valentine’s Manual (1861, p. 596), and was made by Bellin by order of the Duke de Choiseul, in 1764:—

The view of Philadelphia (reproduced, p. 258) is the larger part of George Heap’s “East Prospect,” as reduced from the London Mag., Oct., 1761:—

[258]

Key: 1, Christ Church; 2, state-house; 3, academy; 4, Presbyterian church; 5, Dutch Calvinist church; 6, the court-house; 7, Quakers’ meeting-house; 8, High Street wharf; 9, Mulberry Street; 10, Sassafras Street; 11, Vine Street; 12, Chestnut Street (the other streets are not to be seen from the point of sight); 13, draw-bridge; 14, corn-mill.

The style of the domestic buildings in Pennsylvania during this period may be seen from specimens delineated in Scharf and Westcott’s Philadelphia (particularly the Christopher Saur house in Germantown, in vol. iii. p. 1964); Egle’s Pennsylvania; Watson’s Annals of Philadelphia; Smith’s Delaware County, Rupp’s Lancaster County; and other local histories, especially Thompson Westcott’s Historic buildings of Philadelphia, with notices of their owners and occupants (Philad., 1877). The Penna. Mag. of Hist., July, 1886, p. 164, gives a view of the first brick house built in New Jersey, that of Christopher White, in 1690.

The original was first published in London in 1754, and was engraved by Jefferys, and reissued in his General Topog. of N. America, etc., 1768, no. 29. It was reproduced on the same scale in Philadelphia, in 1854. In 1857, through the instrumentality of George M. Dallas, then minister to England, a large oil-painting, measuring eight feet long and twenty inches high, was received by the Philadelphia library; and attached to it was an inscription, The southeast prospect of the City of Philadelphia, by Peter Cooper, painter, followed by a key to the public and private buildings. Confidence in its literal fidelity is somewhat shaken by the undue profusion of a sort of cupola given to buildings here and there,—one even surmounting the Quaker meeting-house. Antiquaries are agreed that it must have been painted about 1720. Among the private houses prominent in the picture are that of Edward Shippen, at that time occupied by Sir William Keith, then governor of the province, and that of Jonathan Dickinson. (Cf. Hist. Mag., i. 137.) It has been reëngraved on a small scale in Scharf and Westcott’s Hist. of Philadelphia, vol. i., where will also be found (p. 187) a view of the old court-house, from an ancient drawing (1710). Cf. view of 1744 in Ibid., p. 207.

CHAPTER IV.

MARYLAND AND VIRGINIA.

BY JUSTIN WINSOR,

The Editor.

MARYLAND began its career as a crown province with conditions similar to those which had regulated its growth under the Proprietary. There was nothing within its limits worthy the name of a town, though there were certain places where the courts met. The people were planters, large and small. They, with their servants, were settled, each with land enough about him, along the extensive tide-water front of the Chesapeake and its estuaries. Each plantation had a wharf or landing of its own, and no commercial centre was necessary to ship or receive merchandise. The Indians were friendly, and no sense of mutual protection, such as prevailed farther north, compelled the settlers to form communities. They raised tobacco,—too much of it,—and saw hardly enough of one another to foster a stable, political union. Local disturbances were accordingly not very promptly suppressed. Because one was independent in his living, he came to have too little sympathy with the independence of the mass.

Life was easy. Land and water yielded abundantly of wild game, while swine and cattle strayed about the woods, with ear-marks and brands to designate their owners. The people, however, had mainly to pound their corn and do without schools, for it needs villages to institute the convenient mill-wheel and build the school-house. The condition of the people had hardly changed from what it was during the seventeenth century. When the eighteenth came in, a political change had already been wrought by the revolution which placed William and Mary on the throne,[595] for in 1692 the Marylanders had welcomed Sir Lionel Copley as the first royal governor. In his train came a new spirit, or rather his coming engendered one, or gave activity to one which had been latent. The assembly soon ordained the Protestant Episcopal church to be the established order of a colony which before had had a Catholic master. In time the exclusiveness relaxed a little, enough in some fashion to exempt from restraint those who were Protestant, but dissenters; but the Romanists soon found to their cost that there was no relief for them. The fear of a[260] Jacobite ascendency in the mother country easily kept the assembly alert to discern the evils supposed to harbinger its advent.

Down to 1715 there was a succession of royal governors, but only one among them made any impress upon the time. This was Francis Nicholson, a man of vigor, who was felt during a long career in America in more than one colony. He was by commission the lieutenant-governor under Copley; but when that governor died, Nicholson was in England. On returning he followed his predecessor’s way in studying the Protestants’ interests. In pursuance of this he made the Puritan settlement at Anne Arundel, later to be known as Annapolis, the capital,[596] and left the old Catholic St. Mary’s thereby to become a name and a ruin.

There grew up presently an unseemly quarrel between Nicholson and Coode, a reprobate ecclesiastic, who had earlier been a conspicuous character in Maryland history.[597] The breach scandalized everybody; and charge and counter-charge touching their respective morals contaminated the atmosphere. Indeed, the indictment of Nicholson by his enemies failed of effect by its excess of foulness. In face of all this the governor had the merit, and even the courage, to found schools. He also acquired with some a certain odor of sanctity, when he sent Bibles to the sick during an epidemic, and appointed readers of them to attend upon a sanitarium which had been established at a mineral spring in St. Mary’s county. There was not a little need of piety somewhere, for the church in Maryland as a rule had little of it. When Nicholson was in turn transferred to Virginia, Nathaniel Blakiston (1699) and John Seymour (1703) succeeded in the government. Under them there is little of moment to note, beyond occasional inroads of the French by land and of the pirates along the Chesapeake. Events, however, were shaping themselves to put an end to the proprietary sway.

Charles, the third Lord Baltimore, died February 20, 1714-15, and his title and rights descended to Benedict, his son, who had already in anticipation renounced Catholicism. In becoming Protestant he had secured from the Crown and its supporters an increased income in place of the allowance that his Catholic father now denied him, out of the revenues of the province, which were still preserved to the family. Benedict had scarce been recognized when he also died (April 5, 1715), and his minor son, Charles, the fifth lord, succeeded. The young baron’s guardian, Lord Guilford, took the government, and finding to his liking John Hart, who was then ruling the province for the king, he recommissioned him as the representative of the Proprietary, who was now one in religious profession with the vast majority of his people. The return of the old master was to appearances a confirmation of the old charter; but an inevitable change was impending.

Meanwhile the laws were revised and codified (1715), and a few years[261] later (1722), by solemn resolution, the lower house of the assembly declared that the people of Maryland were entitled to all the rights and immunities of free Englishmen, and were of necessity inheritors of the common law of England, except so far as the laws of the province limited the application of that fundamental right.[598] This manifesto was the signal of a conflict between the ways that were and those that were to be. The Proprietary and the upper house made a show of dissenting to its views; but the old conditions were doomed. The methods of progress, however, for a while were gentle, and on the whole the rule of succeeding governors, Charles Calvert (1720), Benedict Leonard Calvert (1726), and Samuel Ogle (1731), was quiet.

The press meanwhile was beginning to live, and the Maryland Gazette was first published at Annapolis in 1727. A real town was founded, though it seemed at the start to promise no more than St. Mary’s, Annapolis, or Joppa.[599] This was Baltimore, laid out in 1730, which grew so leisurely that in twenty years it had scarce a hundred people in it. From 1732 to 1734 the Proprietary himself was in the province and governed in his own person.

The almost interminable controversy with the Penns over the northern bounds of Maryland still went on, the latter province getting the worst of it. Even blood was shed when the Pennsylvania Germans, crossing the line which Maryland claimed, refused to pay the Maryland taxes. During this border turmoil, Thomas Cresap, a Maryland partisan, made head against the Pennsylvanians, but was finally caught and carried to Philadelphia. A truce came in the end, when, pending a decision in England, a provisional line was run to separate settlers in actual possession.

Maryland had other troubles beside in a depreciated paper currency, and was not singular in it. She sought in 1733 to find a remedy by making tobacco a legal tender.

In 1751 the rights of the Proprietary again passed, this time to an unworthy voluptuary, destined to be the last Baron Baltimore, Frederick, the sixth in succession, who was not known to his people and did nothing to establish a spirit of loyalty among them. They had now grown to be not far from a hundred and thirty thousand in number, including multitudes of redemptioners, as immigrants who had mortgaged their labor for their ocean passage were called, and many thousands of transported convicts. This population paid the Proprietary in quit-rents and dues not far from seventy-five hundred pounds annually.

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FREDERICK, LORD BALTIMORE.

From an engraving in the London Magazine, June, 1768, after an original painting of the sixth baron. He was born Feb. 6, 1731; succeeded to the title on the death of the fifth baron, April 24, 1751. Some accounts make him erroneously the seventh baron.

The beginning of the French war found Horatio Sharpe[600] fresh in office (1753) as the representative of the man to whom the people paid this money. There was need of resources to push the conflict, in which Maryland had common interests with Virginia and Pennsylvania. The delegates were willing to vote grants, provided the revenue of the Proprietary would share in the burden. This the governor refused to consider; but as the war went on, and the western settlements were abandoned before the Indian forays, Sharpe conceded the point, and £40,000 were raised, partly out of a double tax upon Catholics, who were in the main of the upper classes of the people. The question of supplying the army lasted longer than the £40,000, and each renewal of the controversy broadened the gulf between the governor and the lower house. It soon grew to be observed that the delegates planned their manœuvres with a view to overthrowing, under the stress of the times, the government of the Proprietary. Occasionally a fit of generosity would possess the delegates, as when they voted £50 a scalp to some Cherokee rangers, and £1,500 to the Maryland contingent in Forbes’s expedition against Du Quesne. It was never difficult,[263] meantime, for them to lapse into their policy of obstruction. So Maryland did little to assist in the great conflict which drove the French from North America.

When the war was practically closed, in 1760, the long dispute over the boundary with Pennsylvania was brought to an end, substantially, upon the agreement of 1732, by which the Proprietary of that day had been over-reached. This fixed the limits of the present State of Delaware, and marked the parallel which is now known as Mason and Dixon’s line. The most powerful colony south of that line was Virginia, with whom Maryland was also destined to have a protracted boundary dispute, that has extended to our own time, and has been in part relegated to the consideration of the new State, which the exigencies of the civil war caused to be detached from the Old Dominion. What was and is the most westerly of the head fountains of the Potomac (so the charter described the point from which the meridian of Maryland’s western line should run) depended on seeking that spot at the source of the northern or southern fork of the river. The decision gave or lost to Maryland thirty or forty square miles of rich territory. A temporary concession on Maryland’s part, which entailed such a loss, became a precedent which she has found it difficult to dislodge. Again, as the line followed down the Potomac, whether it gave the bed of that river to Virginia or to Maryland, has produced further dispute, complicated by diversities in the maps and by assumptions of rights, but in 1877 arbitration confirmed the bed to Maryland. Changing names and shifting and disappearing soil along the banks of the Chesapeake have also made an uncertainty of direction in the line, as it crosses the bay to the eastern shore. A decision upon this point has in our day gained new interest from the values which attach to the modern oyster-beds.

The history of Virginia was left in an earlier chapter[601] with the suppression of Bacon’s Rebellion. The royal governors who succeeded Berkeley held office under Lord Culpepper, who himself assumed the government in 1679,[602] bringing with him a general amnesty for the actors in the late rebellion.[603] But pardon did not stop tobacco falling in price, nor was his lordship chary of the state, to maintain which involved grinding taxes. Towns would not grow where the people did not wish them, and even when the assembly endeavored to compel such settlements to thrive at fixed landing places, by what was called a Cohabitation Act (1680), they were not to be evoked, and existed only as ghosts in what were called “paper towns.” Tobacco, however, would grow if only planted, and when producers continued to plant it beyond what the mob thought proper to maintain fit prices, the wayward populace cut off the young plants, going about from plantation to plantation.[604] Culpepper kept up another sort of destruction in[264] hanging the leaders of the mob, and in telling the people that a five-shilling piece, if it went for six, would make money plentier. When the people insisted that his salary should be paid in the same ratio, he revoked his somewhat frantic monetary scheme.

When Culpepper ceased to be the Proprietary, in 1684, Virginia became a royal province, and Charles II. sent out Lord Howard of Effingham to continue the despotic rule. The new governor had instructions not to allow a printing-press.[605] He kept the hangman at his trade, for plant-cutting still continued. The assembly managed to despatch Ludwell to England to show how cruelly matters were going, and he got there just after William and Mary were proclaimed. The representations against Effingham sufficed to prevent the continuance of his personal rule, but not to put an end to his commission, and he continued to draw his salary as governor, despite his adherence to James, and after Francis Nicholson had been sent over as his deputy (1690). The new ruler was not unskilled in governing; but he had a temper that impelled him sometimes in wrong ways, and an ambition that made the people distrust him. He could cajole and domineer equally well, but he did not always choose the fit occasion. He was perhaps wiser now than he was when he nearly precipitated New York into a revolution; and he showed himself to the people as if to win their affections. He encouraged manufactures. He moved the capital from Jamestown, and created a small conspicuousness for Williamsburg[606] as he did for Annapolis, in Maryland. He followed up the pirates if they appeared in the bay. He tried to induce the burgesses to vote money to join the other colonies in the French war; but they did not care so much for maintaining frontier posts in order to protect the northern colonies as one might who had hopes to be one day the general governor of the English colonies. They intrigued in such a way that he lost popularity, when he had none too much of it. He seemed generous, if we do not narrowly inspect his motives, when he said he would pay the Virginia share of the war money, if the assembly did not care to, and when he gave half of a gratuity which the assembly had given him, to help found the college of William and Mary. This last act had a look of magnanimity, for James Blair, who had been chiefly instrumental in getting the college charter, and who also in a measure, as the commissary of the Bishop of London, disputed Nicholson’s executive supremacy, had laughed at his Excellency for his truculent ways. The governor had opposed the “Cohabitation” policy as respects towns, and a certain Burwell affair, in which as a lover he was not very complacent in being worsted, had also made him enemies powerful enough to prefer charges in England against him, and he was recalled,—later to be met in New England and Acadia, and as Sir Francis Nicholson to govern in Carolina.

His service in Virginia was interrupted by his career in Maryland, ending[265] in 1698, during which Sir Edmund Andros ruled in the larger colony. This knight’s New England experience had told on him for the better; but it had not wholly weaned him from some of his pettish ways. He brought with him the charter of the College of William and Mary, and had the infelicity to find in Blair, its first president, the adversary who was to throw him. This Scotchman was combative and stubborn enough for his race, and equally its representative in good sense and uprightness. Blair insisted upon his prerogatives as the representative of the bishop, and taking the grounds of quarrel with the governor to England he carried his point, and Nicholson was recalled from Maryland to supply the place of Andros.

The new college graduated its first class in 1700, and at about the same time Claude Philippe de Richebourg and his Huguenots introduced a new strain into the blood of Virginia.

The accession of Queen Anne led to the conferring of the titular governorship in 1704 upon George Hamilton, the Earl of Orkney, who was to hold the office nominally for forty years. For five years the council ruled under Edward Jenings, their president, and when, December 15, 1704, he made his proclamation of the victory of Blenheim, it was a satisfaction to record that Colonel Parke, of Virginia, had been the officer sent by Marlborough to convey the news to the queen.[607]

In 1710 the ablest of the royal governors came upon the scene, Alexander Spotswood, a man now in his early prime, since he was born in 1676. He bore a wound which he had got at this same Blenheim, for he had a decisive, soldierly spirit. It was a new thing to have a governor for whom the people could have any enthusiasm. He came with a peace-offering in the shape of the writ of habeas corpus, a boon the Virginians had been thus far denied. The burgesses reciprocated in devoting £2,000 to build him a palace, as it was called, as perhaps well they might, considering that their annual tobacco crop was now about 20,000,000 pounds.

The happy relations between the governor and his people did not continue long without a rupture. The executive needed money to fortify the frontiers, and the assembly tightened the purse-strings; but they did pass a bill to appoint rangers to scour the country at the river heads.[608] Spotswood did the best he could with scant funds. He managed to prevent the tributary Indians from joining the Tuscaroras in their forays in Carolina,[609] and he induced the burgesses to take some action on the appeals of Governor Pollock.[610] He also gave his energy scope in developing the manufacture of iron and the growing of vineyards, and in the stately march which he made to find out something about the region beyond the Blue Ridge.[611] He was indeed always ready for any work which was required.

[266]

ALEXANDER SPOTSWOOD.

After the engraving in the Spotswood Letters, vol. i., with a note on the portraits on p. viii. His arms are on p. vii. Cf. the Century Magazine, xxvii. 447.

If his burgesses revolted, he dissolved them with a sledge-hammer kind of rhetoric.[612] If Blackbeard, the pirate, appeared between the capes, he sent after him men whom he could trust, and they justified his measure of them when they came home with a bloody head on their bowsprit.[613] He had no sooner concluded a conference with the Five Nations, in August and September, 1722,[614] than the opposition to an assumption which he, like the other[267] governors, could not resist, to be the head of the church as well as of the state, made progress enough to secure his removal from office.[615]

During Spotswood’s time, Virginia attained to as much political prominence as the century saw for her prior to the Revolution. The German element, which gathered away from tide-water,[616] began to serve as a balance to the Anglican aristocracy, which made the river banks so powerful. The tobacco fields, while they in one sense made that aristocracy, in another made them, in luckless seasons, slaves of a variable market. This relation, producing financial servitude, enforced upon them at times almost the abjectness of the African slaves whom they employed. Above it all, however, arose a spirit of political freedom in contrast with their monetary subjection. The burgesses gradually acquired more and more power, and the finances of the province which they controlled gave them opportunities which compensated for their personal cringing to the wilful imperialism of the tobacco market. The people lacked, too, the independence which mechanical ingenuity gives a race. A certain shiftlessness even about the great estates, a laziness between crops, the content to import the commonest articles instead of making them,—all indicate this. The amenities of living which come from towns were wanting, with perhaps some of the vices, for an ordinary or a public house generally stood even yet for all that constituted a settlement of neighbors. In 1728 Byrd, of Westover, speaks of Norfolk as having “most the air of a town of any in Virginia.”

Spotswood remained in Virginia, and was a useful man after his fall from office. He was made the deputy postmaster-general of the colonies (1730-39), and he carried into the management of the mails the same energy which had distinguished his earlier service, and brought Philadelphia and Williamsburg within eight or ten days of each other. On his estates, whether on the Rapidan near his Germans at Germanna, or in his house at Yorktown, he kept the courtly state of his time and rank, and showed in his household his tenderest side. His old martial spirit arose when he was made a major-general to conduct an expedition to the West Indies; but he died (1740) just as he was about to embark, bequeathing his books, maps, and mathematical instruments to the College of William and Mary.

Meanwhile, after a short service in the governor’s office by Hugh Drysdale (1722)[617] and Robert Carter, in 1727 William Gooch took the chair, and held it for twenty-two years. It was a time of only chance excitement, and the province prospered in wealth and population. The governor proved conciliatory and became a favorite of the people. He granted toleration to the Presbyterians, who were now increasing on the frontiers, where Mackemie[268] and the Scotch-Irish were beginning to gain influence, and the sturdy pioneers were thinking of the country beyond the mountains.[618] Some of the tide-water spirit was pushing that way, and in 1745 Lord Fairfax settled in the valley, built his Greenway Court, and passed his life in chasing game and giving it to his guests, with other hospitable cheer.[619] Tall and gaunt of person, sharp in his visage and defective in his eyesight, if he had little of personal attraction for strangers, he had the inheritance of some of the best culture of England, and could hand to his guests a volume of the Spectator, open at his own essays. Disappointed in love at an early day, Fairfax added a desire for seclusion to a disposition naturally eccentric. He had come to America for divertisement, and, enamored of the country and its easy life, he had finally determined on settling on his property. The mansion, which he had intended to erect with all the dignity of its manorial surroundings, was never begun; but he built a long one-story building, with sloping roof and low eaves. Here he lived on through the Revolution, a pronounced Tory, but too respected to be disturbed, until the news of Yorktown almost literally struck him dead at ninety-two.

Along the river bottoms of the lowlands, while Major Mayo[620] was laying out Richmond (1733), and while all tradition was scorned in the establishment of the Virginia Gazette (1736),[621] the ruling classes of the great estates felt that they were more rudely jostled than ever before, when Whitefield passed that way, harrying the church,[622] and even splitting the communions of the Presbyterians as he journeyed in other parts.

When Governor Gooch returned to England, in 1749, he left the council in power, who divided (1751) the province into four military districts, and to the command of one of them they assigned a young man of nineteen, George Washington by name. Late in the same year (November 20, 1751) a notable character presented himself in Robert Dinwiddie, and the College of William and Mary welcomed the new executive with a formal address.[623] Dinwiddie had been unpopular as a surveyor of customs, as such officers almost invariably are; and he came to his new power in Virginia[269] at a trying time, just as a great war was opening, and he and the burgesses could not escape conflict on the question of the money needed to make Virginia bear a creditable part in that war. When it was the northern frontiers towards Canada which were threatened, neither Maryland nor Virginia could be made to feel the mortification that their governors felt, if the northern colonies were left to fight alone the battles in which all the English of the continent were interested.

But the struggle was now for the thither slope of the Alleghanies and the great water-shed of the Ohio. In this conflict Virginia presented a frontier to be ravaged, as she soon learned to her cost. The story of that misfortune is told in another chapter,[624] as well as of the outbreak which Dinwiddie forced, when he sent Washington to Le Bœuf. The exigencies of the conflict, however, were not enough to prevent the assembly from watching jealously every move of the governor for asking money from them; and he in turn did little to smooth the way for their peaceable acquiescence, when he exacted[270] unusual fees for his own emolument. The aristocracy were still powerful, and, working upon the fears entertained by the masses that their liberties were in danger, all classes contrived to keep Dinwiddie in a pretty constant turmoil of mind, a strain that, though past sixty, he bore unflinchingly. If, by his presentation of the exigencies, he alarmed them, they would vote, somewhat scantily, the money which he asked for: but they embarrassed him by placing its expenditure in the hands of their own committee. Dinwiddie was often compelled to submit to their exasperating requirements, and was obliged to inform the Lords of Trade that there was no help for it.

It was war indeed, but this chapter is concerned chiefly with civil affairs. Nothing, therefore, can be said here of the disaster of Braddock and its train of events down to the final capture of DuQuesne. Forts were built,[625] and the Indians were pursued[626], and Virginia incurred a debt during it all of £400,000, which she had to bear with the concomitants of heavy taxes and a depreciated paper money. At the end of the war, Norfolk, with its 7,000 inhabitants, was still the only considerable town.

Dinwiddie had ruled as the deputy of Lord Albemarle. When Lord Loudon came over in July, 1756, to assume the military command in the colonies, he became the titular governor of Virginia; but he was never in his province in person, and Dinwiddie ruled for him till January, 1758, when he sailed for England.

CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

SINCE the enumeration of the records of Maryland was made in another volume,[627] the Maryland Historical Society, having now in custody the early archives of the province, has begun the printing of them, under the editorship of Mr. William Hand Browne, three volumes of which having been thus far published.[628] The publication committee of that society have also made to the legislative assembly of the State a printed report,[629] dated November 12, 1883, in which they give an account of the efforts made in the past to care for the documents. To this they append a Calendar of State Archives, many of which come within the period covered by the present chapter.[630]

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The general histories of Maryland have been characterized in another place.[631] Of one of them, Chalmers’s, some further mention is made in the present volume.[632] Two works of a general character have been published since that enumeration was made. One of these is the Maryland (Boston, 1884) of William Hand Browne, a well-written summary of the history of the palatinate prior to the Revolutionary period.[633] Mr. Browne’s familiarity with the Maryland archives was greatly helpful in this excellent condensation of Maryland’s history. Mr. John A. Doyle has made special use of the colonial documents in the Public Record Office, in the chapters (x. and xi.) which he gives to the province in his English in America, Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas, London, 1882.

There have been some valuable papers of late embraced in the Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, edited by Professor Herbert B. Adams, which touch Maryland, particularly its institutional history. Such are Edward Ingle’s Parish Institutions of Maryland (Studies, 1st series, no. vi.); John Johnson’s Old Maryland Manors (no. vii.);[634] Herbert B. Adams’s Maryland’s influence upon land cessions to the United States, with minor papers on George Washington’s interest in Western lands, the Potomac Company and a National University (3d series, no. 1);[635] Lewis W. Wilhelm’s Maryland Local Institutions, the Land System, Hundred, County, Town (nos. v., vi., and vii.).

The one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of Baltimore, occurring in 1880, has produced several records. The city commemorated the event, and printed the next year a Memorial Volume, 1730-1880, edited by Edward Spencer;[636] and the Proceedings of the Historical Society, October 12, 1880, constitutes no. 16 of their Publication Fund series. Mr. J. Thomas Scharf, who had published his Chronicles of Baltimore[272] in 1874, elaborated the matter into the more extensive History of Baltimore City and County, in 1881, published at Philadelphia. There is a plan of the city showing its original and present bounds in this last book (p. 62), as well as in the same writer’s History of Maryland (i. 416). In 1752 there was printed a List of families and other persons residing in Baltimore, and this has been thought to be the earliest directory of an American town. In the same year there was a view of Baltimore by John Moales, engraved by Borgum, which is the earliest we have.[637]

The coarse, hearty, and somewhat unappetizing life of the colony, as it appeared to a London factor, who about the beginning of the eighteenth century sought the country in quest of a cargo of tobacco, is set forth amusingly, as well as in a warning spirit, in a rough Hudibrastic poem, The Sot-weed Factor, by Eben Cook, Gent.[638] (London, 1708.)

There are modern studies of the life of the last century in Lodge’s Short History of the English Colonies, in the seventh chapter of Neill’s Terra Mariæ, and in the last chapter of Doyle’s English Colonies; but the most complete is that in the first chapter of the second volume of Scharf’s History of Maryland, whose foot-notes and those of Lodge will guide the investigator through a wide range of authorities.[639]

Illustrations of the religious communions are given in Perry’s History of the American Protestant Episcopal Church (i. 137), in the Historical Collections of the American Colonial Church (vol. iv.), in Anderson’s American Colonial Church, in Hawks’s Ecclesiastical Contributions (section on “Maryland”), and in Theodore C. Gambrall’s Church Life in Colonial Maryland (Baltimore, 1885).[640] The spread of Presbyterianism is traced in C. A. Briggs’s American Presbyterianism, p. 123.

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The literature of the controversy over the bounds of Maryland, so far as it relates to the northern lines, has already been indicated in another volume.[641] The dispute was ably followed by McMahon in his History of Maryland (vol. i. pp. 18-59), among the earlier of the general historians, and the whole question has been surveyed by Johnston in his History of Cecil County (ch. xix.). He traces the course of the Cresap war,[642] the progress of the chancery suit of 1735-1750.[643] The diary of one of the commissioners for running the line in accordance with the decision, being the record of John Watson, is preserved in the library of the Pennsylvania Historical Society. Mr. Johnston (p. 307) also describes the line of 1760,[644] and tells the story of the work and methods adopted by Mason and Dixon in 1763, referring to their daily journal, one copy of which is, or was, preserved in the Land Office, the other in the library of the Maryland Historical Society.[645] The scientific aspects of this famous survey are considered in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (1769); and a running sketch of the history of the line, by William Darlington, is reprinted in the Historical Magazine (ii. p. 37). Another, by T. Edwards, is in Harper’s Monthly (vol. liii. p. 549), and one by A. T. McGill in the Princeton Review (vol. xxxvii. p. 88). Dunlap’s “Memoir” (see Vol. III. p. 514) is also contained in Olden Time (vol. i. p. 529).

The most recent and one of the most careful surveys of the history of the dispute between Baltimore and Penn and of the principles involved is in Walter B. Scaife’s “Boundary Dispute between Maryland and Pennsylvania,” in Pennsylvania Magazine of History (October, 1885, p. 241).

Chief among the maps bearing upon the question of the bounds are the following:—

A map of Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and East and West New Jersey, by John Thornton, which is without date, but probably from 1695 to 1700.[646]

A new map of Virginia and Maryland and the improved parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, revised by I. Senex, 1719.[647]

A short account of the first settlement of the Provinces of Virginia, Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania by the English, to which is annexed a map of Maryland, according to the bounds mentioned in the charter and also of the adjacent country, anno 1630, London, 1735. This map is a large folding one called “A map of Virginia, according to Capt. John Smith’s map, published anno 1606; also of the adjacent county, called by the Dutch Niew Nederlant, anno 1630, by John Senex, 1735.”[648]

The map accompanying the agreement of July 4, 1760, between Baltimore and Penn, is reproduced, with the text of that document, in the Pennsylvania Archives, iv. (1853), p.3.

Respecting the bounds in dispute between Maryland and Virginia, the fullest summary of claims and evidence is in the Report and Journal of Proceedings of the joint Commissioners to adjust the boundary line of the States of Maryland and Virginia, Annapolis, 1874. This volume gives statements of the Maryland (p. 63) and Virginia (p. 233) claims, with depositions of witnesses. The volume as deposited in public libraries is accompanied by a coast survey chart, in which the determined bounds are marked, with the attestation of the governor of Maryland.[649]

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[275]

It may be collated with the Report and accompanying documents of the Virginia Commissioners on the boundary line between Maryland and Virginia, Richmond, 1873, which contains the statements of the Maryland Commissioners as well as those of the Virginia Commissioners, the latter having a voluminous appendix of historical documents, including a large number copied from the British Archives, and depositions taken in 1872. The Final Report of the Virginia Commissioners (Richmond, 1874), includes a memorandum of their journal and their correspondence (1870-72), as well as the journal of the joint commissions of Virginia and Maryland (1872).

WILLIAM BYRD.

After a cut in Harper’s Magazine, April, 1885, p. 712, from the original painting now at Brandon, on James River. Byrd was b. 1674, and d. 1744.

Respecting the bounds of Virginia and North Carolina, commissioners on the part of both colonies were appointed in 1710,[650] but the line was not run in its easterly portion till 1728, by commissioners and surveyors of both governments. Col. William Byrd, one of the commissioners of Virginia, prepared a sort of diary of the progress of the work, which is known as a History of the Dividing Line between Virginia and North Carolina, as run in 1728-29. This and other of Byrd’s writings which have come down to us are in manuscript, in the hand of a copyist, but interlined and corrected by Byrd himself. The volume containing them was printed at Petersburg in 1841 (copyrighted by Edmund Ruffin) with an anonymous editor’s preface, which states that the last owner of it was George E. Harrison, of Brandon, and that the family had probably been prevented from publishing the papers because of the writer’s “great freedom of expression and of censure, often tinctured by his strong church and state principles and prejudices;” for Colonel Byrd was “a true and worthy inheritor of the opinions and feelings of the old cavaliers of Virginia.” These papers were again privately printed at Richmond, in 1866, under the editing of Thomas H. Wynne, in two volumes, entitled History of the Dividing Line and other tracts, from the papers of William Byrd of Westover. Mr. Wynne supplies an historical introduction, and his text is more faithful than that of 1841, since some of the asperities of the manuscript were softened by the earlier editor. Byrd had been particularly severe on the character of the North Carolinians, as he saw it in his intercourse with them,[651] and not the worst of his characterizations touched their “felicity[276] of having nothing to do.” Byrd at the time of his commission was a man of four and fifty, and he lived for some years longer, not dying till 1744. He was a good specimen of the typical Virginian aristocrat, not blind to the faults of his neighbors, and the best sample of such learning and wit as they had,[652] while he was not forgetful of some of the duties to the community which a large estate imposed upon him. Among other efforts to relieve the Virginians from their thraldom to a single staple were his attempts to encourage the raising and manufacture of hemp.[653] One of Byrd’s companions in the boundary expedition of 1728-29 was the Rev. Peter Fontaine, who acted as chaplain to the party, and a draft of the line as then marked is made in connection with some of his letters in Ann Maury’s Memoirs of a Huguenot Family (New York, 1852, 1872, p. 356).[654] In 1749 the line was continued westerly beyond Peter’s Creek, by Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson, the father of Thomas Jefferson; and was still further continued to the Tennessee River in 1778.[655]

Another question of bounds in Virginia, which it took some time to settle, was the western limits of the northern neck, as the wedge-like tract of territory was called which lay between the Rappahannock and the Potomac. It had been granted by Charles II. to Lord Hopton and others, but when bought by Lord Thomas Culpepper a new royal grant of it was made to him in 1688.[656] It passed as a dower with Culpepper’s daughter Catharine to Thomas, Lord Fairfax, and from him it passed to the sixth lord, Thomas, who petitioned (1733) the king to have commissioners appointed to run the line between the rivers. Of this commission was William Byrd, and an account of their proceedings is given in the second volume of the Byrd Manuscripts (p. 83) as edited by Wynne. A map of the tract was made at this time, which was called The Courses of the Rivers Rappahannock and Potowmack in Virginia, as surveyed according to order in the years 1736-1737. The bounds established by this commission were not confirmed by the king till 1745, and other commissioners were appointed the next year to run the line in question. The original journal of the expedition for this purpose, kept by Maj. Thomas Lewis, is now in the possession of John F. Lewis, lieutenant-governor of Virginia.[657] The plate of the map already referred to was corrected to conform, and this additional title to it was added: A Survey of the Northern Neck of Virginia, being the lands belonging to the Rt. Honourable Thomas Lord Fairfax, Baron Cameron, bounded by and within the Bay of Chesapoyocke, and between the Rivers Rappahannock and Potowmack. Along the line which is dotted to connect the head-spring of the southern branch of the Rappahannock with the head-spring of the Potomac is a legend, noting that it was determined by the king in council, April 11, 1745, that this line should be the westerly limit of the Fairfax domain. A section of the second state of the plate of this map is annexed in fac-simile from a copy in Harvard College library.[658]

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An account has been given elsewhere[659] of what has been lost and preserved of the documentary records of Virginia.

The introduction to W. P. Palmer’s Calendar of Virginia State Papers, 1652-1781, summarizes the documents for the period of our present survey which are contained in the body of that book, and they largely concern the management of the Indians on the borders.[660] Among the Sparks MSS. in Harvard College library are various notes and extracts respecting Maryland and Virginia from the English records (1727-1761) in the hand of George Chalmers, as made for his own use in writing his Revolt of the American Colonies.[661]

There were various editions of the laws during the period now under consideration. What is known as the Purvis collection, dedicated to Effingham, was published in London in 1686; and a survey, giving An abridgement of the Laws in force and use in her majesty’s plantations, including Virginia, was printed in London in 1704. The acts after 1662 were published in London in 1728; while the first Virginia imprint on any edition was that of W. Parks, of Williamsburg, in 1733; and John Mercer’s Abridgment, published in Williamsburg four years later (1737), was reprinted in Glasgow in 1759. The acts since 1631 were again printed at Williamsburg in 1752.[662]

The earliest description of the country coming within the present survey is John Clayton’s Account of the several Observables in Virginia (1688), which Force has included in the third volume of his Tracts. A paper on the condition of Virginia in 1688 is the first chapter in W. H. Foote’s Sketches of Virginia (1850). An “Account of the present state and government of Virginia” is in the fifth volume (p. 124) of the Massachusetts Hist. Soc. Collections. The document was presented to that society by Carter B. Harrison, of Virginia. It seems to have been written in England in 1696-98, in the time of Andros’ governorship, and by one who was hostile to him and who had been in the colony.

Professor M. C. Tyler[663] speaks of the commissary, James Blair, as “the creator of the healthiest and most extensive intellectual influence that was felt in the Southern colonies before the Revolution.” This influence was chiefly felt in the fruition of his efforts to found the College of William and Mary.[664] The Present State of Virginia and the College, by Messieurs Hartwell, Blair and Chilton (London, 1727), contains an account, in which Blair, in Tyler’s opinion, had the chief hand. Blair’s relations to the college have had special treatment in Foote’s Sketches of Virginia (ch. ix.); in[279] Bishop Meade’s Old Churches and Families of Virginia (vol. i. art. xii.); and in the Hist. of the American Episcopal Church (vol. i. ch. 7), by Bishop Perry, who gives two long letters from Blair to the governor of Virginia, after the originals preserved at Fulham Palace.

Additional material is garnered by Perry in his Historical Collections of the Amer. Colonial Church, which includes a large mass of Blair’s correspondence.[665]

WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE.

After the picture given in Meade’s Old Churches, etc., i. 157. Cf. Perry’s Amer. Episc. Church, i. 123; Gay’s Pop. Hist. U. S., iii. 60.

The original building was burned in 1705. The next building, which by scarcity of funds was long in erecting, was not completed till 1723. The above cut is of this second building. In Scribner’s Monthly, Nov., 1875, are views of the building before and after rebuilding in 1859.

While Francis Makemie was entering the lists in the interest of “cohabitation,” gaining thereby not much respect from the tide-water great-estate owners, and printing in London (1705) his Plain and friendly perswasive to the inhabitants of Virginia and Maryland for promoting towns and cohabitation, setting forth the loss to virtue by the dispersal of sympathizers in religion, Robert Beverley was publishing anonymously in London (1705) his History and Present State of Virginia, in four parts. 1. The History of the First Settlement of Virginia, and the Government thereof, to the present time. 2. The Natural Productions and Conveniences of the Country, suited to Trade and Improvement. 3. The Native Indians, their Religion, Laws, and Customs, in War and Peace. 4. The Present State of the Country, as to the Polity of the Government, and the Improvements of the Land,[666] which, as will be seen in the last section of the title, particularly[280] sets forth the condition of the colony at that time, offering some foundation for Mackemie’s arguments.[667]

About twenty years later we have another exposition of the condition of the colony in Hugh Jones’s Present State of Virginia, giving a particular and strict account of the Indian, English, and negro inhabitants of that colony, published in London in 1724.[668] Jones was rector of Jamestown and a professor in the college at Williamsburg, and his book was a missionary enterprise to incite attention among the benevolent in the mother country to the necessities of the colony. “His book,” says Tyler,[669] is one “of solid facts and solid suggestions, written in a plain, positive style, just sufficiently tinctured with the gentlemanly egotism of a Virginian and a churchman.”

The single staple of Virginia was the cause of constant concern, whether of good or bad fortune, and the case was summed up in 1733, in a tract published at London, Case of the planters of tobacco in Virginia, as represented by themselves, with a vindication.[670] Bringing the history of the colony down to about the date of the period when Jones made his survey, Sir William Keith in 1738 published his History of the British Plantations in America, containing the History of Virginia: with Remarks on the Trade and Commerce of that Colony.[671] Nine years later (1747) Stith published his history, but it pertained only to the early period, and in his preface, dated at Varina, December 10, 1746, he acknowledged his indebtedness to William Byrd.[672]

When Burk published his History of Virginia in 1804,[673] the days of the Revolution had separated him from those that were in reality the formative period of the Virginian character, which had grown out of conditions, then largely a mere record. One would have expected to find the eighteenth century developed in Burk better than it is. The more recent authorities have studied that period more specifically, though Bancroft does not much enlarge upon it.[674] Lodge[675] is chiefly valuable for the conspectus he affords of the manners of the time. Doyle in his English in America (London, 1882) depends on the “Colonial Entry Books” and “Colonial Papers” of the State Paper Office in London. Since Howison’s,[676] the latest history is that by a Virginian novelist, John Esten Cooke, and styled Virginia, a history of the people (Boston, 1883),[677] in which he aims to show, through succeeding generations of Virginians, how the original characteristics of their race have been woven into the texture of the population from the Chesapeake to the Mississippi, as those of New England have controlled the north from the Atlantic to the Lakes. He laments that there has never been a study of the Southern people to the same extent as of the Northern, and says that some of the greatest events in the annals of the whole country need, to understand them, a contemplation of the Virginian traits, losing sight, as he expresses it, of “the fancied dignity of history.” Guided somewhat by this canon, the author has modelled his narrative, dividing the periods into what he calls the Plantation, the Colony, and the Commonwealth,—the second more than covering the years now under consideration. He places first among his authorities for this period The Statutes at Large, being a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia, by William Walter Hening, in thirteen volumes, as the most important authority on social affairs in Virginia. He speaks of its unattractive title failing to suggest the character of the work, and says, with perhaps an excess of zeal, that “as a picture of colonial time, it has no rival in American books.”

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The institutional history of Virginia has of late received some particular attention at the hands of Mr. Edward Ingle, who printed in the Mag. of Amer. History (Dec., 1884, p. 532) a paper on “County Government in Virginia,” which he has reprinted with other papers on the Land Tenure, the Hundreds, the English Parish in America, and the Town, in a contribution called Local Institutions of Virginia, which makes parts ii. and iii. of the third series (1885) of the Johns Hopkins University Studies in History and Political Science.[678]

We are fortunate in possessing the official correspondence of the two most notable royal governors of the eighteenth century. The letters of Alexander Spotswood were used by Bancroft, and were then lost sight of till they were recovered in England in 1873.[679] They are now published in two volumes (Richmond, 1882, 1885) as The official letters of Alexander Spotswood, lieutenant-governor of Virginia, 1710-1722; now first printed from the manuscript in the collections of the Virginia Historical Society, with an introduction and notes by R. A. Brock, constituting the initial volumes of a new series of the Collections of the Virginia Historical Society. Spotswood’s official account of his conflict with the burgesses is printed in the Virginia Hist. Register; and we best see him as a man in William Byrd’s “Progress to the Mines,” included in Wynne’s edition of the Byrd Manuscripts. Palmer draws Spotswood’s character in the introduction to his Calendar of Virginia State Papers, p. xxxix.[680]

Of the other collection of letters, The official records of Robert Dinwiddie, lieutenant-governor of Virginia, 1751-1758; now first printed from the manuscript in the collections of the Virginia Historical Society, with an introduction and notes by R. A. Brock, Richmond, Va., 1883-84, being vols iii. and iv. of the new series of the same Collections, a more special account is given in another place.[681]

The valley of Virginia has been more written about locally than the eastern parts. Beside the old history of Kercheval,[682] W. H. Foote has embraced it in the second series of his Sketches of Virginia (Philad., 1855), and it has recently been treated in J. Lewis Peyton’s History of Augusta County, Va. (Staunton, Va., 1882), a region once embracing the territory from the Blue Ridge to the Mississippi.

Norfolk has been made the subject of historical study, as in W. S. Forrest’s Norfolk and Vicinity (1853), but with scant attention to the period back of its rise to commercial importance.

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The ecclesiastical element forms a large part of Virginia history in the earlier times. Some general references have been given in another place.[683] At the opening of our present period, there were of the established church in Virginia fifty parishes, with one hundred churches and chapels and thirty ministers,—according to Bray’s Apostolic Charity (London, 1700).[684] The church history has been well studied by Dr. Hawks,[685] Bishop Perry,[686] and Dr. De Costa,[687] in this country, and by Anderson in his History of the Colonial Church (1856),—a book which Doyle calls “laborious and trustworthy on every page.” Bishop Meade has treated the subject locally in his Old Churches and Families of Virginia,[688] as has Dr. Philip Slaughter in his Saint George’s Parish, Saint Mark’s Parish and Bristol Parish,[689] and he has given a summary of the leading churches of colonial Virginia in a section of Bishop Perry’s Amer. Episc. Church (vol. i. p. 614).

The dissenting element was chiefly among the Presbyterians, whose later strongholds were away from the tide-water among the mountains. The Reverend Francis Mackemie[690] had been principal leader among them, and he was the first dissenter who had leave to preach in Virginia. Their story is best told in C. A. Briggs’ American Presbyterianism (p. 109), and in both series of W. H. Foote’s Sketches of Virginia (Phil., 1850, 1855).

The Baptists in Virginia did not attain numerical importance till within the decade preceding the American Revolution, and they had effected scarcely any influence among the opponents of establishment during the period now under consideration.[691] The Huguenots brought good blood, and affected religious life rather individually than as a body.[692]

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In depicting the society of Virginia during this period, we must get what glimpses we can from not very promising sources. The spirit which despised literature and schools was in the end dispelled, in part at least, but it was at this time dominant enough to prevent the writing of books; and consequently the light thrown upon social life by literature is wanting almost entirely. The Virginians were apparently not letter-writers and diarists, as the New Englanders were, and while we have a wealth of correspondence in Massachusetts to help us comprehend the habits of living, we find little or nothing in Virginia. We meet, indeed, with some letters of the Byrds[693] and the Fontaines,[694] and the official correspondence of Spotswood and Dinwiddie; but the latter touch only in a casual way upon the habits of living. A few descriptive and political tracts, like Hugh Jones’ Present State,[695] give us small glimpses. Later Virginia writers like Bishop Meade[696] and Dr. Philip Slaughter,[697] have gathered up whatever of tradition has floated down in family gossip; and Foote[698] and Esten Cooke[699] have drawn the picture from what sources they could command, as Irving has in his Life of Washington.[700] The most elaborate survey of the subject, with philosophic impulses, has been made by Eben Greenough Scott in his Development of Constitutional Liberty in the English Colonies of America (New York, 1882),[701] in which he contrasts the manners of the lowland aristocracy with those of the farmers of the valley and with the wilder life of the frontiers.[702] The most elaborate composite of data derived from every source is the chapter on “Virginia in 1765,” in Henry Cabot Lodge’s Short History of the English Colonies, in which he depends very largely on the survival of manners in the days when Burnaby, Anburey, Robin, Smyth, Brissot de Warville, Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, and Weld travelled in the country,—material which has the great disadvantage of being derived from chance observation, with more or less of generalization based on insufficient instances, as Dr. Dwight has pointed out in the case of Weld at least.[703]

CHAPTER V.

THE CAROLINAS.

BY PROFESSOR WILLIAM J. RIVERS.

NORTH CAROLINA: Proprietary Government.—It was certainly manifest to England that her claim to vast regions of valuable territory would be substantiated, and her commerce and political power augmented, by the settling of her subjects in North America. Yet the history of her colonies bears, on many pages, evidence of the indifference and inexcusable neglect of the mother country. Instead of a liberal contribution of arms and munitions of war, the means of sustenance, and the protection of her ever-present sovereignty to all who were willing to leave the comforts of home and risk their lives in her service, far away across the Atlantic, enough appeared to have been done if lavish gifts of land were bestowed upon companies, individuals, or proprietors, for their especial emolument, and through them some paltry acres offered to emigrants, with promises of a little more religious freedom and a little larger share of political privileges than they were permitted to enjoy at home. The genesis of a new and potent nationality may be said to have been involved in the acceptance, by the colonists, of these conditions, as inducements to emigration, with all else dependent on their own manly courage.

NORTH CAROLINA.

[This is a sketch of the map in Hawks’ North Carolina, ii. 570, showing the grants and divisions from 1663 to 1729.

Quaritch in his Catal. for 1885, no. 29,516, prices at £25 a MS. map of the south part of Virginia (North Carolina), showing the coast line from Cape Henry to Cape Fear, and signed “Nicholas Comberford, fecit anno 1657.” It measures 18¾ × 14 inches.—Ed.]

One of the colonies that struggled, through neglect and almost insurmountable hardships, into permanent existence was Carolina. Before its[286] settlement, other colonies had successfully established themselves in New England, and in Maryland and Virginia. In 1663, Charles II., in the second year after his restoration, granted the region south of Virginia and extending from 31° to 36° north latitude, and westward within these parallels across the continent, to some of his adherents, to whom he was indebted for distinguished services. It is stated in the grant that this extensive region is called “Carolina,” a name used before, and now, no doubt, retained in honor of the king.[704] The favored noblemen are thus introduced to us: “our right trusty and right well-beloved cousins and counsellors, Edward, Earl of Clarendon, our High Chancellor of England, and George, Duke of Albemarle, Master of our Horse and Captain-General of all our Forces, our right trusty and well-beloved William Lord Craven, John Lord Berkeley, our right trusty and well-beloved counsellor, Anthony Lord Ashley, Chancellor of our Exchequer, Sir George Carteret, Knight and Baronet, Vice-Chamberlain of our Household, and our trusty and well-beloved Sir William Berkeley, Knight, and Sir John Colleton, Knight and Baronet;” who, we are deliberately informed, “being excited with a laudable and pious zeal for the propagation of the Christian faith, and the enlargement of” the British dominions, humbly besought leave of the king, “by their industry and charge, to transport and make an ample colony” of his subjects, “in the parts of America not yet cultivated or planted, and only inhabited by some barbarous people who have no knowledge of Almighty God.”[705] Had these high functionaries of the realm acted in accordance with this solemn announcement of their pious zeal for the propagation of Christianity, the blessing of Heaven would, no doubt, have rested more largely upon their noble enterprise.

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An adverse claim was soon made to the same territory under a grant obtained in 1629,[706] by Sir Robert Heath, attorney-general of Charles I. But he had failed to form a colony, and the claims of those to whom he had conveyed his rights were on that account set aside. The Proprietors under the new charter began to make immediate exertions to form a settlement, that the king might see they did not “sleep with his grant, but were promoting his service and his subjects’ profit.”[707]

AUTOGRAPHS OF THE LORDS PROPRIETORS.

These follow fac-similes given in the Charleston Year Book, 1883.

Before this, settlers from Virginia had moved at various times southward and taken up their residence on some good lands on and near the river Chowan, in what is now the northeastern part of North Carolina. Among these was a considerable number of Quakers, at that time subject to religious persecution. It happened that Sir William Berkeley, one of the new Proprietors, was governor of Virginia. He was empowered by the other Proprietors to form a government forthwith in this settlement, and appoint its officers; the appointment of surveyor and secretary alone being reserved to the Proprietors in England. “We do likewise send you proposals to all that will plant, which we prepared upon receipt of a paper from persons that desired to settle near Cape Fear, in which our considerations are as low as it is possible for us to descend. This was[288] not intended for your meridian, where we hope to find more facile people, who, by your interest, may settle upon better terms for us, which we leave to your management, with our opinion that you grant as much as is possible rather than deter any from planting there.” Sir William, it is inferred, followed these instructions. William Drummond was appointed governor;[708] the tract of land, at first forty miles square, was named Albemarle in honor of the duke, and a council of six was constituted to make laws with the consent of the delegates of the freemen. These laws were to be transmitted to England for approval by the Proprietors. Lands were granted to all free of rent for three years; and such lands as had been taken by previous settlers were confirmed to them.

Almost simultaneously another colony (Clarendon) was settled in what is now North Carolina. As early as 1660 some adventurers from Massachusetts had gone to the Cape Fear, sometimes called the Charles, River, and purchased lands from the Indians; but in a few years abandoned the situation, leaving their cattle and swine in care of the natives. To the same locality the attention of the inhabitants of Barbadoes[709] was directed on the grant of the territory to the powerful noblemen whose names are given in the charter. The passage already quoted from the letter to Sir William Berkeley had reference to them and their proposal. Explorers, employed by “several gentlemen and merchants” of Barbadoes, were sent out (1663) under command of Hilton, who ascended the Cape Fear far inland, and formed a more favorable opinion of the country than the New Englanders had been enabled to form near the mouth of the river. They purchased from the Indians “the river and land of Cape Fair,” as they express it, and returned to Barbadoes on January 6, 1664. An account of their exploration was published the same year, to which were appended proposals from the Proprietors, through their commissioners, Thomas Mudyford and Peter Colleton, to all who should settle, at their own hazard and expense, south and west of Cape Romano, sometimes called Cape Carteret. This was a bid for volunteer settlers south of the Cape Fear settlement. Nothing whatever, it appears, was accomplished under this offer of the commissioners. In a Description of the Province, with liberal privileges offered to settlers, issued also in London (1666), it is stated that a new plantation had been begun by the English at Cape Fear on the 29th of May, 1664. In the following November, Robert Sandford was appointed secretary and John Vassall surveyor of “Clarendon County.”[710] It was time the Proprietors should agree upon some definite and satisfactory terms for settlement in their territory. While they did not sanction the purchase of lands from Indians, as they had also disallowed the claims of the New England adventurers, they made to all colonists, from Barbadoes and elsewhere, liberal offers for settlement; and under “concessions[289] and agreement” a method of government was framed, and John Yeamans of Barbadoes was knighted by the king (through means of Sir John Colleton), and commissioned, in January, 1665, governor of the newly formed Clarendon County[711] and of the territory southward as far as Florida; for in this direction the Proprietors designed to place a third colony or county.

The two counties, Albemarle and Clarendon, were formed under the charter of 1663. Another charter was granted by the good-natured king in June, 1665, enlarging the limits of the province to 36° 30´ on the north, and on the south to 29°. This extension may be ascribed to the desire of the Proprietors to secure beyond doubt the section on which the Chowan colony happened to be formed near Virginia, and to embrace, southwardly, the limits claimed with respect to Spanish Florida.

We have very little knowledge concerning the administrations of Drummond and of Yeamans. It is said that the latter, being near the sea, began at once to export lumber and opened a trade with Barbadoes; and reports so favorable were carried thither, and so many were induced to follow the first emigrants, that the authorities of the island interposed, and forbade, under severe penalties, “the spiriting off” of their people. In Albemarle, Drummond was succeeded by Samuel Stephens as governor in 1667. In Clarendon, the colony soon ceased to prosper, and most, if not all, of the colonists had abandoned it in 1667. We shall understand better why they did so if we bear in mind that the territory of the Lords Proprietors was very extensive. There were other places, not yet explored, more convenient for commerce, more defensible, more fruitful, more desirable in all respects; the advantages of which would naturally draw off settlers from the less favorable localities selected before a thorough knowledge of the country was obtained. The Proprietors, as we have said, thought of forming, with larger preparations, a colony still further south. The famous harbor of Port Royal, in what is now South Carolina, was the locality they desired to[290] occupy and (with unusual display of wisdom) to fortify. For reasons, however, which will appear hereafter, when we treat of South Carolina, the colonists, after visiting Port Royal, and after a temporary settlement at Albemarle Point on the western bank of the Ashley River, finally settled down on the opposite side, at the confluence of the Ashley and Cooper rivers, and founded the present city of Charleston. There was, indeed, enough to discourage the settlers at Cape Fear independently of the more extensive preparation by the Proprietors to place a colony in a better situation. Secretary Sandford (in his Relation of his voyage in 1666) incidentally mentions: “Wee were in actuall warre with the natives att Clarendon, and had killed and sent away many of them, for they [the more southern Indians] frequently discoursed with us concerning the warre, told us the natives were noughts, their land sandy and barren, their country sickly.” Surveyor-General Vassall, in a letter from Virginia (Oct. 6, 1667), speaks of the loss of the plantation on Charles River and his furnishing shipping to carry away “such weak persons as were not able to go by land.” And a letter from Boston (Dec. 16, 1667) states that Cape Fear was deserted, and the settlers “come hither, some to Virginia.”[712]

Here let us notice the policy and plans of the Proprietors with respect to their distant colonies. The two charters differ only in a few particulars. The second increases the extent of territory, its main object, gives power to subdivide the province into distinct governments, and is a little more explicit with regard to religious toleration. No person was to be molested for difference of religious opinion or practice who did not actually disturb the peace of the community. With regard to political privileges, there is an important clause in both charters conferring upon the Proprietors power to ordain any laws and constitutions whatsoever (if consonant to reason and, as far as possible, to the laws and customs of England), but only “by and with the advice, assent, and approbation of the freemen,” or the majority of them, or of their delegates or deputies, who, for enacting such ordinances, were to be duly assembled from time to time. These privileges, we shall see in the history of the colony, were maintained by the people with a pertinacity commensurate with their importance, whenever their lordships attempted to control the colonists without due regard to their approbation and consent. The charter reserved to the king only allegiance and sovereignty; in all other respects the Proprietors were absolute lords, with no other service or duty to their monarch than the annual payment of a trifling sum of money, and in case gold or silver should be found a fourth part thereof.

On August 6, 1663, a letter to the Proprietors, from members of a Cape Fear company of New England adventurers, claimed full liberty to choose their governors, make and confirm laws, and to be free from taxes, except such as they might impose on themselves, and deprecated “discouragement[291] in reference to their government” as to the accustomed privileges of English colonists. While their claims were not conceded, this letter was answered generally by their lordships, on August 25th, announcing their concessions to all wishing to settle in Carolina.[713] The New England claim of privileges is worthy of notice for what we now call “advanced ideas.” And if we compare the charters of Connecticut (1662) and Rhode Island (1663) with that of Carolina (1663), it will appear that the self-interest of Clarendon[714] and his associates stood in the way of their securing to their colony some civil privileges which it would not have seemed strange at that time to concede. And it may as well be stated here, at once, that besides considerations of self-interest it was also the express policy of their lordships to “avoid erecting a numerous democracy” in their province. To carry out this policy, a grand scheme of government, called the Fundamental Constitutions, was framed by Shaftesbury and the philosopher Locke, and solemnly confirmed as a compact among themselves,—the Proprietors,—and which was to be unalterable forever. A scheme more utopian, more unsuited to the actual condition of the colonists, could hardly have been devised. Yet its adoption by the people was recommended, ordered, stubbornly insisted on by their lordships at the risk of balking—as, for a while, it did balk—the prosperity of their colony. The first set of the unalterable Constitutions is dated 21st July, 1669; the second was issued in March, 1670,—and so on till a fifth set had been constructed. Under the right conferred by the charter, respecting the consent of the freemen, or their delegates, in establishing laws and constitutions, such consent was never formally given; and the code was, at least in South Carolina, again and again rejected. It was a gage of political contention foolishly thrown down; but in taking it up, the colonists were made ardent students of political rights.

By these Constitutions, the eldest Proprietor was made Palatine,—a sort of king of the province. The other seven Proprietors were to be high functionaries: admiral, chamberlain, constable, chief justice, chancellor, high steward, and treasurer.[715] There was to be a Parliament: eight superior[292] courts, one to each Proprietor according to his high office; county and precinct courts; and a grand Executive Council, among whose duties was the preparation and first enactment of all matters to be submitted to Parliament. Among the carefully composed articles in these Constitutions should be noticed such as enjoin that no person above seventeen years of age could have the benefit and protection of the law who was not a member of some church; and no one could hold an estate or become a freeman of the province, or have any habitation in it, who did not acknowledge a God and that He is publicly and solemnly to be worshipped. Moreover, in the set of the Constitutions printed and sent over for adoption, the Church of England[716] was made the established church, and “it alone shall be allowed to receive a public maintenance by grant of Parliament.” It was also enjoined that no one seventeen years old should have any estate or possession or the protection of the law in the province, unless he subscribed the Fundamental Constitutions and promised in writing to defend and maintain them to the utmost of his power.

Their lordships in England, and most, if not all, of their appointed officers in the colonies, as in duty bound, contended strenuously for the adoption of this preposterous form of government till the year 1698; and hardly then did the incontrovertible logic of events convince them of their folly. A late historian of North Carolina remarks, “Their lordships theorized, the colonists felt; the Proprietors drew pictures, but the hardy woodsmen of Carolina were grappling with stern realities. Titles of nobility, orders of precedence, the shows of an empty pageantry, were to them but toys which might amuse children; but there was no romance in watching the savage, or felling the forest, or planting the corn, or gathering the crop, with the ever-present weapon in reach of the laboring hand.”

There was another cause of irritation on the part of the colonists, both in North and South Carolina. The terms of the tenure of land were of paramount interest to them and their children. The quantity offered in 1663 was augmented in 1666, and two years later, by the “Great Deed of Grant,” the fear of forfeiture was removed for not clearing and planting a specified portion of the land; in other words, settlers were permitted to hold lands as they were held in the adjoining royal province of Virginia. At first each freeman received one hundred acres, the same for his wife, each child and manservant, and fifty for each woman-servant; paying a half-penny per acre. After the expiration of servitude, each servant received a liberal quantity of land with implements for tillage.[717] In 1669, in the settling of the colony at Ashley River, one hundred and fifty acres were offered to all free persons above sixteen years of age, and the same for able-bodied men-servants; and a proportionate increase for others,[293] if they arrived before the 25th of March, 1670; then a less number of acres for subsequent arrivals. The annual rent was a penny or the value of a penny per acre (as also announced in the unalterable Constitutions); payments to begin September, 1689.[718] When Governor Sayle died (a year after settling on Ashley River), Sir John Yeamans came from Barbadoes to the new settlement; and having been made a landgrave claimed the government as vice-palatine under the Fundamental Constitutions. Such claim was denied by the colonists;[719] but he soon received a commission, and his first measure, on assuming control, was to have an accurate survey made and a record of lands held by settlers in South Carolina, with a view to the collection of quit-rents for the Proprietors. When ten years of outlay for their province had brought them no pecuniary return, they began to think “the country was not worth having at that rate.” They removed their former favorite Yeamans, because further outlays were incurred, and placed West in authority, who had attended more successfully to their interests. In November, 1682, all prior terms for granting land were annulled, and if a penny an acre (the words “or the value of a penny” being omitted) was not paid, a right of reëntry was claimed: “to enter and distraine, and the distress or distresses then and there found to take, lead, and carry and drive away and impound, and to detain and keep until they shall be fully satisfied and paid all arrears of the said rent.” This produced inequality of tenure, or operated to the injury of many who had previously taken up, on more liberal terms, only part of the lands they were entitled to.[720] Their lordships were too just to interfere with the stability of titles, but the alteration of the tenure for new grants or of the mode of conveyance, from time to time, was at least unwise. Besides, there was scarcely any coin in the province, and the people found it hard that they could no longer pay in merchantable produce. To their reasonable request for relief and a better encouragement to new settlers came the reply, “We insist to sell our lands our own way.” With this reply a peremptory order was sent that the third set of the unalterable Constitutions should be put in force.

A part of this manifest diminution of the generosity of the Proprietors and their unwillingness to bestow further concessions may be accounted for by the opposition their favorite scheme of government had encountered in both colonies, and especially by a rebellious outbreak which had just occurred in Albemarle County. Clarendon County at Cape Fear had broken up and disappeared, as we have related; and henceforth our attention must be directed to Albemarle at the northern end of the province and the Ashley River colony at the south, remote from each other, with a[294] vast forest intervening, the dwelling place of numerous tribes of Indians. Before the province was authoritatively divided (1729), it had divided itself, as it were, into North and South Carolina; and it is best that, in this narrative, we should begin to call them so.

In North Carolina, the Quakers, who were in close association and unison, and so far influential in action,[721] opposed the Fundamental Constitutions and the Church of England establishment; and all the settlers looked upon the enforcement of the recent orders of the Proprietors—the displacement of an easy and liberal method of government without asking their assent—as a violation of the terms of settlement, and of the inducements at first held out to them.[722] Governor Stephens endeavored to enforce the orders of the Proprietors, but he died soon after receiving them, and was succeeded by Carteret, president of the council, till an appointment should be made. Carteret appears not to have been of a nature to contend against the disaffection and turbulence which had arisen, and, in 1675, went to England to make known personally, it is said, the distracted condition of the colony. But two of the colonists, Eastchurch and Miller, had also gone over to represent, personally, the grievances of the people. They seemed, to the Proprietors, the ablest men to carry out their instructions; and the former was made governor and the latter deputy of Earl Shaftesbury and secretary of the province; he was also made, by the commissioners of the king’s revenue, collector of such revenue in Albemarle. They sailed for Carolina in 1677, but the new governor remained a long while in the West Indies (winning “a lady and her fortune”), and died soon after reaching Albemarle. Miller as representing Eastchurch, but really without legal authority to act as governor, ruled with a high hand. He had gone to represent the grievances of his fellow colonists; he returned to harass them still more. The new “model” of government, the denial of “a free election of an assembly” (as the Pasquotank people complained), the attempt to enforce strictly the navigation laws, the collection of the tax on tobacco at their very doors,[723] his drunkenness and “putting the people in general by his threats and actions in great dread of their lives and estates,” as the Proprietors themselves express it, became intolerable to the colonists.

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The New Englanders, with their characteristic enterprise, had long been sailing through the shallow waters of the Sound in coasting vessels, adapted to such navigation, and had largely monopolized the trade of North Carolina; buying or trafficking for lumber and cattle, which they sold in the West Indies, and bringing back rum, molasses, salt, and sugar, they exchanged these for tobacco, which they carried to Massachusetts, and shipped thence to Europe without much regard to the navigation laws. Miller, according to instructions sent to Governor Eastchurch, sought to break up this thriving and lucrative business, and to introduce a more direct trade with England. The populace generally, including the Quakers, had their own grievances, and fraternized with the New England skippers. Gillam, one of these bold captains, arrived with his vessel laden with the commodities the people needed, and armed, this time, with cannon. A wealthy Quaker, Durant, was on board with him. On land, John Culpepper, who had lately left South Carolina, where he had created commotions, became a leader of the malcontents. Influenced, no doubt, by the recent rebellion of Bacon in Virginia, some participators in which had taken refuge among them, and led on by men of courage whose hard-earned emoluments were threatened with ruin, the insurgents seized and imprisoned Miller and seven of the proprietary deputies, and took from the former a large amount of money which he had collected for the king. They had won over to their side the remaining deputy, the president of the council; and together they now governed the colony as seemed best to them. But they were aware that violence and usurpation could not be passed over with impunity by higher authority; and as Miller and some of his adherents had escaped and gone to England, Culpepper and Holden were also sent to the Proprietors on a mission of explanation. The explanation of neither party was entirely satisfactory. Miller lost his offices, and Culpepper, though he was unpunished by the Proprietors, was seized by the Commissioners of the Customs to answer for the revenue money which had been used in the time of the disorders. He was put on trial, in 1680, for “treason committed without the realm.” It is said by Chalmers that the judges ruled that taking up arms against the proprietary government was treason against the king. Notwithstanding this view of the case, Culpepper was acquitted of treason, because Shaftesbury asserted that the county of Albemarle had not a regular government, and the offence of the prisoner amounted to no more than a riot.[724]

At this time the Earl of Clarendon sold his proprietary share to Seth[296] Sothel, who was appointed governor. Mr. John Harvey, as president of the council at Albemarle, was to exercise the functions of governor till Sothel’s arrival. The latter, on his voyage, was captured by an Algerine corsair; Harvey died; Jenkins was made governor, and was deposed by the people without reprimand from the Proprietors; and in February, 1681, Wilkinson was appointed. These sudden changes in executive authority were unfortunate for the prestige of proprietary power in the colony; for all this while and until Sothel came in 1683, the old adherents of the Culpepper party, or the popular party, held control in Albemarle. But still more unfortunate for the Proprietors was the coming of Sothel. He seems to have purchased his place as Proprietor and to have come as governor in order to have a clear field for the exercise of his rapacity. If he was “a sober, moderate man,” as his colleagues thought when they intrusted their interests and the welfare of the county to his hands, his association with the Algerines must have materially changed his character. In 1688, the outraged colonists seized him, intending to send him to England for trial. On his appeal this was not done, but the case referred to the colonial assembly, who condemned him. His sentence, however, amounted only to banishment for twelve months and perpetual deposition from authority, Proprietor though he was. He went to South Carolina, and his further career will be noticed when we review the history of that colony.

The next year Philip Ludwell, of Virginia, was made governor, and after four years was transferred to South Carolina and appointed governor of both colonies. For more than twenty years North Carolina was governed by a deputy of the governor at Charleston, or (when there was no deputy appointed) by the president of her own council. The Albemarle colony had become to the Proprietors only a source of vexation. At any rate, they acted wisely in leaving its management, in some measure, under the control of those more conversant with its affairs than their lordships in England could possibly be. Their own mismanagement, in truth, was the principal cause of the turbulent spirit of the people.[725]

After Sothel’s banishment the executive authority belonged, as a rule, to the president of the council till Ludwell received it in 1689. On the latter’s removal to Charleston, S. C., Lillington acted as deputy in Albemarle. In 1695, Thomas Harvey became deputy governor by appointment from Archdale, the Quaker Proprietor (who was sent over to heal grievances in both colonies), and was followed in 1699 by Henderson Walker, president of the council. In 1704, Robert Daniel was appointed deputy by Governor Johnson, of South Carolina. John Porter, a Quaker, or sympathizer with the Quakers (sent to England to complain of Daniel and legislation in favor of the Church of England in the colony by “The Vestry Act”), with[297] the assistance of Archdale, prevailed on the Proprietors to order Daniel’s removal, and Governor Johnson appointed (1705) Thomas Carey in his place. He was as little acceptable to the Quakers in North Carolina as his predecessor had been, and through their influence in England at this conjuncture the appointment of a deputy by the executive in South Carolina was suspended, Carey was removed, and a new Proprietary Council formed, including Porter and several Quakers. Porter returned to North Carolina in 1707, and called together the new council, who chose William Glover, a Churchman, president, and, as such, acting governor. He, however, as Carey had done, required conformity to the English laws respecting official oaths, which were displeasing to the Quakers; and Porter in opposition declared Glover’s election as president illegal, formed a coalition with Carey, whom he had before caused to be displaced, and secured his election to the presidency of the council. There were now two claimants for executive authority, and no power at hand to decide between them. Carey and Glover sat in opposite rooms with their respective councils. Daniel, being a landgrave, and having thereby a right to a seat in the Upper House,—as the council with the governor was styled,—sat alternately with one and the other, and no doubt enjoyed their altercations.

A new rebellion, so-called, now broke out, based apparently on local party strife. At first Carey and his Quaker supporters opposing Glover and his party sought and obtained control of the assembly; and when Edward Hyde came from England with letters on authority of which he claimed executive power,[726] the Carey party, at first favorable to him, finally, on losing control of the next assembly, directed itself against him. Hyde’s life was endangered by Carey’s armed opposition; and Spotswood, the energetic governor of Virginia, sent him military aid and put down his opponents.[727] Carey, on his way through Virginia, was arrested by Spotswood and sent to England for trial. This was the occasion of Lord Dartmouth’s circular letter to all the colonies “to send over no more prisoners for crimes or misdemeanors without proof of their guilt.”

According to the latest history,—that of Rev. Dr. Hawks,—another[298] result of this acrimonious contest was the deplorable massacre of hundreds of defenceless white settlers, men, women, and children, by the Tuscarora Indians. This is doubtless merely post hoc ergo propter hoc. We must ascribe hostilities solely to encroachments on the lands of the natives; to ill treatment by traders and others; and to the killing of one of their number, which called for revenge. The Tuscaroras, it was thought, could muster 1,200 warriors. They suddenly made their onslaught at daybreak, September 22, 1711. Their special task in the diabolical conspiracy was to murder all the whites along the Roanoke, while other tribes conducted a simultaneous attack upon other sections. The wielding of the blood-dripping knife and tomahawk, the conflagration of dwellings and barns, the murderous rush upon the victims who, here and there, had hidden themselves and who ran out from the blazing fires to a fate scarcely less dreadful, with other horrors we are unwilling to relate, continued for three days. One hundred and fifty were slain on the Roanoke, more than sixty at Newbern, an unknown number near Bath; and the carnage was stopped only by the exhaustion and besotted drunkenness of the bloodstained savages. Governor Hyde was powerless to confront the foe. He could not raise half the number of men the enemy had. The Quakers were non-combatants; and with them were affiliated many others who opposed the government. Governor Hyde was compelled to resort to arbitrary measures in impressing vessels and in procuring provisions for such troops as he could muster; and these were so inadequate, and so wide-spread was the Indian combination, that he called for assistance from Virginia and South Carolina. Both responded with alacrity. While Spotswood could not supply troops, he checked the further combination of tribes in his direction. South Carolina sent troops onward through the forests, under Colonel Barnwell, who defeated the Tuscaroras and put an end to the war for the time being. But after he retired to South Carolina, suffering with wounds, the Indians treacherously renewed hostilities; and it was believed they would soon be joined by more powerful northward tribes. To add to the calamities of the people, an epidemic (said to be yellow fever) broke out. The mortality was fearful, and among the victims was the governor of the colony. The council elected Colonel Pollock as their president and to act as commander-in-chief. The following mournful picture is given us from manuscripts left by Colonel Pollock: “The government was bankrupt, the people impoverished, faction abundant, the settlements on Neuse and Pamlico destroyed, houses and property burned, plantations abandoned, trade in ruins, no cargoes for the few small vessels that came, the Indian war renewed, not men enough for soldiers, no means to pay them, the whole available force under arms but one hundred and thirty or forty men, and food for the whole province to be supplied from the northern counties of Albemarle only.” South Carolina, being again called on for help, sent Colonel James Moore, eldest son to Colonel James Moore, late governor of the colony. On the[299] 20th of March, 1713, he conquered the last stronghold of the savages, who soon after, broken and disheartened, left the province in large numbers, and joined themselves with the Iroquois in what is now the State of New York. Such of them as remained in North Carolina entered into a treaty of peace with the whites. During these exhausting calamities the Proprietors were appealed to; and it was a poor response to refer the matter to General Nicholson “to enquire into the disorders of North Carolina.”

The next year (May, 1714) Charles Eden, an excellent officer, was appointed governor. The adherents of Carey, or the popular party, however, seemed to be actuated against all who were sent to rule the colony. What grievances they had to palliate or justify their conduct, on this occasion, we know not; but soon their active opposition had to be dealt with by the constituted authorities. We shall see, when we treat of South Carolina, that a few years later the colonists, in that section, threw off, effectually, the inefficient rule of the Proprietors, and placed themselves under the immediate control of the Crown; deposing the last proprietary governor, and electing Colonel Moore governor in the king’s name. It is probable that the same spirit actuated the people in North Carolina. Yet her historians have not made it evident that the continued disaffection and turbulence and rebellion of the people are indications of their readiness to act as their more southern brethren acted. Perhaps they had not, at that conjuncture, the same amount of provocation. When we read the letter of the Lords Proprietors to the council and assembly (June 3, 1723),[728] “We received an address from you, transmitted some time since by our late governor, Mr. Eden, wherein you signified to us your great dislike to the rebellious and tumultuous proceedings of several of the inhabitants of South Carolina, and your constant and steady adherence to our government and the present constitution,” we are to bear in mind that this governor and council were the appointed officers of their lordships. We are to ask, Where are the records of the assembly,[729]—records of the thoughts and actions of the representatives of the people? These, no doubt, will show, if they can be found, that a spirit of local self-government actuated the people, and is the thread of development to be followed by the future historian of the State. We need the testimony of Porter, of Carey, of the able and virtuous Edward Moseley (chief justice from 1707 to 1711), and of other leaders of the people against the repressive policy of their lordships in England and their governors and councils.

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Some interesting subjects, indicative of the condition of the colony in these early times, must be briefly noticed: the emission of paper money consequent upon the expenses of the Indian war; the occasional rating of commodities for exchange; the indigenous products of the soil and staples of export; the forwarding of tobacco abroad through Virginia, and troubles about boundary lines; the customs and modes of life among the gentry or planters and the humbler classes, and among their close neighbors, the Indian tribes; the visits of pirates to the coast, both in North and South Carolina, notably Teach or Blackbeard, and the romantic defeat of him in Pamlico Sound; the settling, at first, along the streams, which became the principal highways for travel and commerce; the ill effects necessarily resulting from the habitations being far apart, and from the fact that there was very little social intercourse; the transmission of letters only by special messengers; the disadvantageous nature of the coast section, retarding the prosperity of the colony.

During the proprietary period, or the first sixty-six years of the colony, the people clung to the seaboard and that part of it which had no good port of entry. This was as great a misfortune as it was to cling to the border line of Virginia. The accession of population, including foreigners, came chiefly through that border. In 1690 and again in 1707, bodies of French Protestants arrived, and settled in Pamlico and on the Neuse and Trent; and three years after some Swiss and Germans settled at Newbern. The whites in the province numbered at this time about 5,000. Large tracts of unoccupied land lay between the selected points of settlement. A few towns had been begun: the first, forty-two years after the first settling in the province. If a good harbor had been selected and a town properly fortified built there for exports, the progress of North Carolina might have been more rapid and substantial. The metropolis was Edenton (founded 1715) on the Chowan. The legislature met there. It contained forty or fifty houses. There was no church there. The Rev. Dr. Hawks says: “For long, long years there were no places of worship. They never amounted to more than some half dozen of all sorts, while the Proprietors owned Carolina; and when their unblessed dominion ended, there was not a minister of Christ living in the province.” There had been, however, missionaries sent out by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel; and there were some pious gentlemen in the colony who gave them welcome and all the assistance in their power. But while a few of the missionaries were exemplary and accomplished much good, others were a positive hindrance to “the propagation of the gospel.”

Among the misfortunes of the colonists we must not fail to notice the incompetent governors sent from England. Favoritism, and not fitness for office, dictated the selection. Archdale, Hyde, and Eden are considered the only governors sent to the province who did it much service. The last two whom their lordships favored with the dignity of executive authority were Burrington, pronounced “a profligate blackguard,” and Sir Richard[301] Everard, whom his superseded rival railed against as “a noodle and an ape,” and “no more fit to be a governor than Sancho Panza.” It was in the administration of Sir Richard that the colony passed by purchase under the immediate control of the king. Two thousand five hundred pounds sterling were paid for each of seven shares; Lord Carteret declining to dispose of his, as it had come to him by inheritance.[730] The claims for arrears of quit-rent due from settlers were also purchased. Before the surrender of the charter many changes had occurred in the ownership of shares in the province; and not one of the original Proprietors remained alive to witness the failure of their successors in the noble enterprise committed to their management by the munificence of Charles II.

Royal Government.—The method of the royal government will be noticed when we come to write of South Carolina. The more thoughtful in North Carolina no doubt felt relieved in escaping from the negligent rule of the Proprietors; but the transition from the old to the new form of administration appears to have been a matter of indifference to the people at large. All they saw in 1731 was that George Burrington, who had been displaced for Everard in 1725, came back with a commission as the first royal governor, to displace in turn his former rival. Burrington, favored for his father’s services to the king, was unsuited for his position, and soon became involved in disputes with his council, the assembly, and the judges. He appeared to think the foremost duty of the assembly was to provide for him a salary suitable to his new dignity, to raise money for other royal officers and an adequate and permanent revenue for the king. The assembly was prorogued for declining to do so. His violence and tyranny caused complaints against him to be sent, through Chief Justice Smith, to the authorities in the mother country. One service, however, he rendered, in conciliating the Indians on the western border. To this end he sent Dr. John Brickell with a party of ten men and two Indian hunters to assist them.[731] The account of the expedition adds to our knowledge of the condition of that remote section of the province, as the interesting work of Lawson does with respect to other sections. In 1734, on the return of the chief justice, the governor retired to Charleston and sailed thence to England. Soon afterwards he was found murdered in St. James’ Park, in London.[732] Nathaniel Rice, secretary of the province, and the first named of the councillors, administered the government from April till November, when Gabriel Johnston, a Scotchman and man of letters, received, through the influence of his patron, Lord Wilmington, the royal appointment. For nearly twenty years he prudently administered the affairs of the colony. At first he[302] found a formidable obstacle to a successful management of the people in their disregard of laws and of gubernatorial dignitaries, imposed upon them by foreign authority. Many hard things have been said of the people by those who, perhaps, did not consider the neglect, mismanagement, and tyrannical provocation under which they lived for two generations, and the increasing intercolonial influences in behalf of popular sovereignty. One of the Virginia commissioners, for laying off (in 1727) the northern boundary, states that the borderers preferred to belong to the Carolina side, “where they pay no tribute to God or to Cæsar.” Governor Johnston, at this time, was in need of the latter kind of tribute. The salaries of the crown officers were to be paid from quit-rents due to the Crown, the collection of which depended on enactments of the assembly. The governor, finding great difficulty in having a satisfactory enactment passed, prorogued the assembly and attempted to collect the rents on his own authority. Not only was this resisted by the people, but the assembly, being again convened, denied the legality of the acts of the governor, and imprisoned his officers who had distrained for the rents.[733] The assembly was consequently dissolved (March, 1736). At the next session, in the following September, the governor addressed the representatives of the people on the general condition of the province, the lack of moral and educational advancement, and of proper regard for law and good order, and assured them “that while he was obliged by his instructions to maintain the rights of the Crown, he would show a regard to the privileges, liberties, and happiness of the people.” In the spirit of compromise a law was passed with the concurrence of the governor, but which the authorities in England rejected as yielding too much to the demands of the popular assembly.

At this time (1738) commissioners were empowered to run the boundary between North and South Carolina, and completed the work from the Atlantic as far westward as the Pee Dee. The original division of the coast section into three counties—Albemarle with six precincts, Bath with four precincts, and Clarendon with one (New Hanover)—was altered, and the precincts were denominated counties. The very names of the original counties disappeared. Soon other counties westward or inland were formed as the population increased, chiefly by overland immigration. To each county the governor appointed a sheriff, selected from three persons recommended by the county court. The judiciary system was modified to suit the new administration and augmentation of population. The governor had before (1736) deplored the fact that no provision had been made “or care taken to inspire the youth with generous sentiments, worthy principles, or the least tincture of literature;” but not until 1754 was an act passed to establish a public seminary. It did not receive the royal assent. That there were not many schools is doubtless due to the[303] sparseness of settlements, and not to any general indifference to education.[734] During the period of the royal government there were two schools that we read of,—those at Newbern and Edenton. In the building of the former, a wooden structure, the lower house of assembly occasionally held its sessions. In 1749, printing was introduced at Newbern, from Virginia; and a weekly paper styled the North Carolina Gazette, issued “on a sheet of post-sized folio,”—“with freshest advices, foreign and domestic.” In 1752 appeared the first edition of the Provincial Laws.

At the town of Wilmington, so named in honor of the Governor’s patron, and sometimes at Newbern, the assembly now met instead of at Edenton, near the Virginia boundary. A new assembly was convened at Wilmington, and an attempt was made to establish an equalization of representation, with a consequent diminution of the number of representatives from the old and more northern counties,—from five members each to two members.[735] Dissatisfaction was the result; and the six northern counties would neither recognize the assembly at Wilmington nor pay taxes, nor would the jurors attend the courts. The colony, however, was more thriving than it had been at any previous period. It was favored by the mother country with bounties on its exports; and the general prosperity was augmented by the coming in of the banished Highlanders and of emigrants from Ireland, and especially by the beginning of the great flow of overland immigration into the central and more western section of the province. Under the prudent management of Johnston, harmony at last prevailed, and such laws were enacted as were necessary. On the declaration of war between England and France, the defences of the coast received legislative attention, and a fort mounting twenty-four cannon was erected on the south bank of the Cape Fear, and called Fort Johnston, in honor of the governor.[736]

Governor Johnston died in August, 1752. What he had written to the Duke of Newcastle, in 1739, was now even more applicable, that after years of effort he had brought the colony “to system, where disorder had before reigned, and placed it on a firmer foundation.” The administration again devolved on Nathaniel Rice; and on his decease in January, Matthew Rowan, the next councillor, acted as governor till the arrival of Arthur Dobbs, in 1754. Rowan’s short term of service was distinguished by liberal contributions for building churches and purchasing glebe lands[304] for the support of ministers of the gospel; and by the convening of the assembly to provide for aiding Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, by whose order George Washington had gone to examine the alarming movements of the French on the Ohio. The militia of North Carolina amounted at that time, as stated by Rowan, to 15,400 men.

Besides the early coast-line settlements, and those along the bottom lands of the northeastern streams, there came, mainly after Braddock’s defeat, a remarkable tide of immigration from the western frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania into central and western North Carolina. Between 1750 and 1790 the accession to the population is computed[737] to be as much as 300,000. Many seeking fertile lands moved over into the “Up Country” of South Carolina, and westward into Tennessee. These hardy and liberty-loving German and Scotch-Irish settlers formed a section of North Carolina which for a long time was “distinct in population, religion, and material interests.” Their final fraternization and blending in political union with the people of the eastern section is a subject for the later history of the province and State.

Governor Dobbs, a native of Ireland, and who had been a member of its Parliament, brought to the colony cannon and firelocks, as a present from the king; and, as a present from himself, “a number of his relations, who had hopes of offices and preferments.”[738] While, on the one hand, he sought to conciliate the Indian tribes, on the other he continuously embroiled himself in contests with the assembly and on trivial matters. It was, however, the irrepressible conflict of that day,—the conflict we have been expecting all along in this history,—the outgrowth of antagonism between the royal prerogatives and the rights and privileges of the representatives of the people. Contributions of men and money were called for by the governor for the general defence of the provinces, and for fortifications within the limits of North Carolina. The assembly were ever ready to defend their frontiers and render aid to the neighboring colonies. But in the acts for founding new counties, they disallowed “the royal prerogative of granting letters of incorporation, ordering and regulating elections, and establishing fairs and markets.” In enactments for a new court system, the further emission of paper money, and the appointment of an agent in England to solicit the affairs of the province, disputes ensued between the assembly and the executive. A new assembly being convened was equally jealous of its rights and privileges, and ably maintained them in lengthy communications to the governor, but without moving him from his convictions of duty under the royal instructions. The assembly was prorogued after appointing, by resolution,[305] the agent to England, whom the governor had rejected. Upon reassembling, and again in a new assembly, on various bills the struggle for legislative rights was continued with the Upper House or council.

Two very different events here arrest our attention: the grant of the king, through Parliament, of £50,000 to indemnify Virginia, North and South Carolina, for their war expenses, and the proposal to the colonies to form a union for common defence against general attacks of the French and Indians; the one fostering attachment to the Crown, the other teaching the method of effectual resistance.

Governor Dobbs was now infirm and over eighty years of age, and, having obtained leave of absence, there was sent over, as Lieutenant-Governor, the able and energetic William Tryon, a colonel in the Queen’s Guards, who became, on the decease of Dobbs, in 1765, governor of North Carolina. He was succeeded by Martin, the last royal governor. We close this brief narrative, pondering upon the province’s progress in wealth, population, and political stability; on the intercolonial influences developing union and constitutional self-government; and on the portentous shadow of the approaching Revolution.[739]

SOUTH CAROLINA.

Proprietary Government.—In 1665 the Lords Proprietors placed in charge of Sir John Yeamans—whom they had, in January, commissioned governor of Clarendon county at Cape Fear—the further discovery of the Carolina coast southward of the portion embraced in the report of Hilton, Long, and Fabian in 1663. Yeamans and his party left Barbadoes in three vessels in October. After separation by a storm, they all reached the Cape Fear or Charles River. But there a violent gale wrecked the vessel containing the greater part of their provisions, arms, and ammunition. Being in distress for supplies, their sloop was despatched to Virginia for aid, and Yeamans himself returned to Barbadoes, leaving Robert Sandford in commission to obtain a vessel and complete the exploration of the southern coast. Sandford appears to have first entered the North Edisto River, where he met the Cassique of Kiawah, who had traded with the settlers in Clarendon county, and who now invited Sandford to his country. But the explorers sailed on to Port Royal, arriving there[306] early in July. Their reception was apparently very friendly, and Dr. Henry Woodward remained among the Indians to learn their language, while a nephew of the chief accompanied Sandford. They designed, on their return, to visit Kiawah; but by a mistake of the Indian who acted as guide, they passed beyond the entrance (now Charleston harbor) which led to that country, and the wind not being favorable for putting back, the voyagers proceeded northward and returned to Cape Fear.[740]

In 1667, the Proprietors took measures to found, in the region reported on by Sandford, a colony worthy of themselves and of the munificence of the king in granting them almost royal authority in the extensive territory lavishly bestowed by the charter. The elaborate plan of government which Locke assisted in maturing was devised for this new enterprise, and was solemnly agreed upon as a contract among the Proprietors. Twelve thousand pounds sterling, a large sum at that day, were expended in preparation for founding, in what is now South Carolina, a colonial government calculated to bring both glory and emolument to their lordships. In August, 1669, three vessels were ready to sail from England: the “Carolina” frigate, the “Port Royall,” and the sloop “Albemarle.” On board the first-named were ninety-three passengers. How many were in the other vessels is not at present known; but the intention appears to have been to begin the settlement with at least two hundred. They stopped at Kinsale in Ireland to take in other emigrants, receiving, however, only seven; and according to instructions sailed thence to Barbadoes, which they reached in October. They were to obtain there such plants as the vine, olive, ginger, cotton, and indigo, and some swine for the new colony; and, no doubt, as many emigrants as could be induced to join the expedition. The fleet was consigned to Thomas Colleton, brother of the Proprietor, Sir Peter Colleton. It seems that the Proprietors were not pleased with the management of Sir John Yeamans in the previous expedition and his leaving the perils of exploration to Secretary Sandford; yet his experience and ability rendered his coöperation desirable, and power was given him to fill a blank commission sent to him for the governorship of the new colony. Living in Barbadoes, and familiar with projects of colonization, he acted on this occasion on behalf of their lordships, with authority as their lieutenant-general, and assisted and encouraged the adventurers. But many disasters occurred: at Barbadoes the “Albemarle” was driven ashore in a gale and lost, in November; and in[307] January the “Port Royall” suffered the same fate at the Bahama Islands. A sloop obtained at Barbadoes in place of the “Albemarle” became separated in a storm, and the “Carolina,” in a damaged condition, put in at Bermuda for repairs. A part of the equipments was lost by the wrecks; and Yeamans, to the discontent and indignation of the colonists, withdrew from further participation in their fortunes, saying he was obliged to return to Barbadoes as one of the commissioners appointed to negotiate “with French commissioners the affair at St. Christopher’s.” He persuaded the colonists to take Colonel William Sayle, and inserted his name as governor in the blank commission sent to him by the Proprietors. He describes Sayle as “a man of no great sufficiency, yet the ablest I could then meet with.”[741]

The expedition sailed again on the 26th of February, 1670, in the “Carolina” and a sloop bought at Bermuda (where Sayle had, twenty years before, founded a colony of Presbyterians).[742] The Barbadoes sloop, with about thirty persons on board, had gone to Nansemond, Virginia, and joined the rest of the expedition at Kiawah in the month of May. The other two vessels, about a fortnight after leaving Bermuda, had reached the coast at a place called Sewee,[743] in March, and proceeded thence to Port Royal harbor, their point of destination, and where the instructions of the Proprietors directed them to go. They remained there a few days. Governor Sayle summoned the freemen, according to instructions annexed to his commission, and they elected Paul Smith, Robert Donne, Ralph Marshall, Samuel West, and Joseph Dalton their representatives in the council, which consisted of ten, the other five being deputies named by the Proprietors. The governor and council, by the same instructions, were to select the place for building a fort and a town. Upon examination the land at Kiawah was judged better, and a more defensible position could there be found than at Port Royal. A discussion was held, and, the governor favoring Kiawah, it was determined to remove and settle there permanently. Weighing anchor, they sailed northward as to their home at last, and in the month of April selected for their residence a bluff which they named Albemarle Point, on the western bank of Kiawah River, now called the Ashley, and began to build a town which they named Charles Town, and to erect fortifications. Safely settled after a perilous voyage, when now, borne down with daily toil, they sank to rest, soothing dreams of prosperity and happiness, no doubt, renewed their courage for the labors and dangers of the morrow.[744]

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The administration of the colony devolved on the governor, representing the Palatine (the Duke of Albemarle),[745] and the council, representing partly the other Lords Proprietors and partly the people. On the 4th July, 1670, the governor and council—because the freeholders were “nott neere sufficient to elect a Parliament,” as the instructions required—promulgated certain orders for the better observance of the Sabbath; and a certain William Owens, arguing that a parliament was necessary for such legislation, persuaded the people to elect one among themselves, “which they did and returned to said governor.” But this 4th July spirit of independence was not persisted in, the members elect receding from their own “election into dignity.”[746] The council continued to exercise all necessary legislative and judicial as well as executive power, till a parliament was formed.

Sayle was about eighty years of age and in feeble health, and died on 4th March, 1671, transferring his authority, as he was empowered to do, on the man of his choice. He selected Joseph West, his able assistant, who had brought the colonists from England under commission as “Governor and Commander in Chief of the Fleet.”

Scarcely had the English entrenched themselves when the jealous Spaniards sent a party to attack them; but finding them stronger than they expected, they returned to St. Augustine. The chief reason for not settling at Port Royal, as they were directed to do, was evidently the exposure of that situation to attacks, both from hostile Indians and the Spaniards who instigated them, and who, from their early exploration and settlement, claimed the noble harbor, of which Ribault had said, a century before, the largest ships of France, “yea, the argosies of Venice,” might enter therein.[747]

Sayle’s nomination of West, to act with all the authority conferred upon himself, was of force only till the pleasure of the Proprietors could be known. When they were informed of Sayle’s decease, they gave the position of governor to Sir John Yeamans (commission dated August, 1671); continuing West, however, as superintendent of important interests in the[309] colony. He was made governor when Yeamans was displaced (1674); and in December, 1679, their lordships wrote to him, “We are informed that the Oyster Point is not only a more convenient place to build a town on than that formerly pitched on by the first settlers, but that people’s inclinations tend thither; we let you know the Oyster Point is the place we do appoint for the port town, of which you are to take notice and call it Charles Town.” The public offices were removed thither and the council summoned to meet there, and, in 1680, thirty houses were erected. Even before this, some settlers had left old Charles Town and taken up their residence at Oyster Point. Great interest was aroused in all that pertained to the colony by the active exertions and liberal offers of the Proprietors. Every vessel that sailed to Charles Town brought new-comers. The Proprietors’ trading-ship “Blessing” followed the first expedition, its “main end” and chief employment being to transport emigrants from Barbadoes, where Yeamans and Thomas Colleton were to advise and help Captain Halsted in this work of emigration. The “Carolina,” in a return voyage from the same island, had brought sixty-four settlers, and the “John and Thomas” forty-two. In the “Phœnix” from New York a number of German families arrived, who began to build James Town on the Stono River. When Sir John Yeamans came to reside at Charles Town (April, 1672) he brought the first negro slaves into the colony. In 1680, the date of the removal to Oyster Point, the settlers numbered about 1,200; in 1686, they were estimated at 2,500, English, Irish, Scotch, French, and Germans. It is of significance, with respect to the first political acts of these settlers, to bear in mind that they were mostly dissenters. Boone, agent in London for a large portion of the people, stated in his petition to the House of Lords (in 1706) that after the reëstablishment of the Church of England by the Act of Uniformity, many subjects of the Crown, “who were so unhappy as to have some scruples about conforming to the rites of said Church, did transplant themselves and families into said Colony, by means whereof the greatest part of the inhabitants there were Protestant Dissenters from the Church of England.” We must remember, too, that religious freedom was promised as an inducement to emigrate. As Governor Archdale said, the charter “had an overplus power to grant liberty of conscience, although at home was a hot persecuting time.” And this overplus power was at first very fairly used. All denominations lived harmoniously together, till Lord Granville became Palatine, whose tyrannical disruption of the religious privileges of the colonists (by excluding dissenters from the colonial legislature) nearly cost the Proprietors their charter. The felling of forests, clearing of plantations, experimenting in agricultural products, establishing stock farms, building habitations, opening a peltry trade with the Indians, forming military companies for mutual defence against hostile tribes, and against the French at times, and at times against the Spaniards, exploring the adjacent country, caring for and nursing the sick who succumbed to the malarial influences of the sultry low country along the coast, where the[310] settlers were for many years compelled to reside,[748]—amidst such circumstances there was no disposition for religious dissension and none for political differences among themselves. And when political opposition did arise, it was for civil rights, and between the colonists as one party and the Lords Proprietors and their official representatives as the other party. The rights for which they contended against irritating obstacles engendered a persistent spirit of political advancement which led to the overthrow of the proprietary government in 1719, and in further development through the royal administration culminated in constitutional self-government. In this respect, the history of no other colony presents a more interesting and instructive record. The awakening of the people to a determined maintenance of what they deemed right and just began with the stubborn efforts of the Proprietors to force the colonists to adopt their scheme of government, the Fundamental Constitutions. The people declared the charter of Charles II. to be fundamental enough for them. The facts involved in this contention are now to be related.

Locke and Shaftesbury’s elaborate and cumbrous system, solemnly adopted by the Proprietors, suited only (if it could be made to suit) a large population. A copy was sent out for the first governor, but not to be immediately put in force. He was to govern by “instructions” annexed to his commission, and prefaced with the words “In regard the number of the people which will at first be set down at Port Royal will be so small, together with want of Landgraves and Cassiques, that it will not be possible to put our Grand Model of government in practice at first;” the instructions, coming as nigh as practicable to the Grand Model, must be used instead. The same “paucity of nobility” and people is given as the reason for two sets of Temporary Laws (1671, 1672) and the Agrarian Laws (1672). The governor and council are told to follow always the latest instructions; a prudent order, for they came in so quick succession, and with so many alterations, that they may have confused the wisest of governors. In these official papers two principles are prominent: one that nothing should be debated or voted in the parliament (the majority representing the people) “but what is proposed to them by the council” (the majority representing their lordships); the other “that the whole foundation of the government is settled upon a right and equal distribution of land,”—for the Proprietors and provincial aristocracy, first; then the common people could have their subordinate little share.[749]

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Contrast with these official regulations framed in London the actions of Governor West and his council as recorded in the “Council Journals” for 1671-72, still preserved in the office of the secretary of state. They were exercising, on account of the “paucity of nobility,” all executive, judicial, and legislative powers with promptness and energy, and were fully supported by the people. They proclaimed war against the Kussoe Indians, had all fire-arms repaired, began to construct a fort, raised military companies, commissioned their officers, and reduced the enemy to submission. They heard and decided complaints and legal issues, and punished criminals, distributed lands, and provided for the health and security of the community. They denied to Sir John Yeamans, Landgrave though he was, any claim to gubernatorial authority, under the Fundamental Constitutions, and had him before their tribunal for cutting timber not his own. It is said he retired again to Barbadoes. But he was commissioned governor and reappeared in the colony, and was “disgusted that the people did not incline to salute him as governor.” In obedience to instructions, he immediately summoned, by proclamation, the freemen to assemble and elect a parliament of twenty members, and to select five of their number to be members of the grand council. This legislative body (April, 1672), the first we have knowledge of in the colony, had at this time very little power, compared with the council; but it was destined to become, as the representative of the people, the most potent factor in the political development of subsequent years. Sir John Yeamans, two years later, gave place again (as before stated) to his rival, Colonel West, whom the Proprietors declared the “fittest man” to be governor.[750] He had, more than any other in the province, promoted the best interests both of the people and of their lordships. There was some scarcity of provisions at the close of Yeamans’ administration, and he was charged with exporting, for his own advantage, too great a quantity of the agricultural products of the colony. Commotions ensued, and John Culpepper, surveyor, was engaged in them or instigated them; and having left Charles Town, he found in North Carolina popular discontents more ready for rebellious activity. The cause of the commotions at Charles Town does not clearly appear. The settlement was so prolific in all that sustains life—in forest, in fields, in a harbor abounding in fish, in herds of swine and cattle—that it is strange to hear of a scarcity of food; even in 1673, when want is said to have threatened the people, provisions were exported to Barbadoes.

Governor Sayle, for reasons already stated, was not to put in force altogether the Fundamental Constitutions; there was, however, a copy “sent under our hands and seales,” as is mentioned in his commission.[312] The project of founding the new colony was based on this special scheme of government. It is positively stated by the colonists, in their letter to Sothel (1691), that this set originally sent bore date July 21, 1669; was “fairly engrossed in parchment, and signed and sealed” by six of the Proprietors; and as all persons were required to swear submission to them before they could take up land, “several hundred of the people arriving here did swear accordingly.” A MS. copy[751] of this set, but without signatures, is in the Charleston library. It does not contain the article establishing the Church of England. In other respects it is as favorable to settlers as the revised set bearing date March 1, 1669-70, and containing that article. That many colonists (the majority being dissenters) preferred the first set sent with Sayle’s commission may thus be reasonably accounted for. It was afterwards repudiated by the Proprietors (those who were then Proprietors) as “but a copy of an imperfect original,” to use the words ascribed to them in the letter to Sothel; and they say themselves in their letter to the Grand Council, May 13, 1691, “The Constitution, so-called, and dated 21 July, 1669, we do not nor cannot own as ours.” The second set was printed, and, it is said, was not known at Ashley River till February, 1673.[752]

In 1687, under Governor Colleton, the endeavor to force the adoption of the Constitutions occasioned such contention between their lordships’ officers and the representatives of the people that no laws were passed for two years; and as all laws were limited to twenty-three months, there was in 1690 not one statute law in force in the colony. A new position was taken and with boldness. “The people having not, according to the royal charters, assented or approved of any fundamental constitutions in parliament, have unanimously declared that the government now is to be directed and managed wholly and solely according to said charters.” Their revolutionary spirit went still further. The representatives in Parliament[313] denied “that any bill must necessarily pass the grand council before it be read in parliament.” They maintained this position, and in consequence were dissolved. The Proprietors instructed their favorite, Landgrave Colleton, brother of one of themselves, to call no more parliaments “unless some very extraordinary occasion should require it.” Colleton proclaimed martial law. The Proprietors thought he did right. In his arrogance, he imprisoned a clergyman and fined him £100 for preaching what he considered a seditious sermon. The Proprietors thought it best to remit the fine. The people, however, raised a cry against his “illegal, tyrannical, and oppressive way of government.” Fortunately for him, Seth Sothel, a Proprietor by purchase of Clarendon’s share, arrived,—having been turned out of North Carolina by its assembly,—and assumed control of affairs in the more southern colony, and acted pretty much as he pleased, till he was turned out of his new position by his colleagues in London. The Proprietors, by their aristocratic folly, had kept the people continually studying and maintaining their rights. A new policy began, about this time, in England,—to revoke proprietary charters. The spirit, too, of the colonists, demanded from the Proprietors some conciliatory concession. Yet it cannot but appear a triumph for the people, and not a good-will concession, when “the true and absolute” lords wrote to the Grand Council (1691), almost in the words which they had written to Andrew Percival and to the provincial authorities,—as if they wished to make an emphatic apology,—that there had been “no alteration made in any of the Constitutions, but for the greater security of the people of Carolina from oppression, either by ourselves or our officers, as any one that will please to peruse the several alterations may plainly perceive; the last in date still bounding our own power most, and putting more into the hands of the people.” But they were forced soon—and it must have been with some little feeling of vexation—to acknowledge the failure of their Grand Model, and to write to their next governor, Ludwell (who could not conciliate the “factious” assembly), that they now thought it best for themselves and the colonists to govern by all the powers of the charter; but that they would part with no power till the people were disposed to be more orderly. This was written to Ludwell; but to the public it was at last definitely announced “that as the people have declared they would rather be governed by the powers granted by the charter without regard to the Fundamental Constitutions, it will be for their quiet and the protection of the well-disposed to grant their request.” The Proprietors, however, still held to the Constitutions as a compact among themselves and as a regulation of their mutual interests; and even endeavored once more to tempt the people to adopt some part of them in the fifth set, reduced to 41 Articles. They were then laid aside entirely.

The assembly (we shall no longer call them parliament), not yet aware of the action of the Proprietors, prepared a summary of grievances: that[314] the latest form of conveying land was not satisfactory; that courts ought to be regulated by laws made by the assent of the people; that the representatives of the people are too few in the assembly and not appointed according to the charter; that the power of enacting necessary laws should not be obstructed; that the application of the laws of England to the province ought not to be by authority of a Palatine Court (established by their lordships), but such laws are applicable of their own force, or are to be so by act of the assembly; that the powers of the assembly and the validity of their enactments are not to be judged by inferior courts, but by the next succeeding General Assembly; that martial law should not be resorted to except in case of rebellion, tumult, sedition, or invasion; that there should be more commoners in the council; that the deputies of the Proprietors were forbidden to confirm a certain set of laws (necessary at times for the immediate welfare of the people) until their lordships’ assent should be given, which could not be known in the province “in less time than one year, sometimes two,” and they do not conceive the Patent of Carolina gives any such powers to their lordships.

There was a further principle announced by the people: that the Proprietors could send what “instructions” they pleased, but they certainly could never have intended that they should have the force of statute laws without the assent and approbation of the people, except in such matters as wholly belonged to their direction according to the charter. With so intelligent and progressive a people to control, the almost impotent “absolute lords” on the other side of the Atlantic might well have written to Ludwell as they did to Morton, “Are you to govern the people, or the people you?” Yet a further signal triumph for the people was at hand. The Proprietors had already seen fit to modify their rule that the assembly of the people should neither debate nor vote on any matter except what the Grand Council should propose to them; but their modification at that time amounted to very little, namely, that if a necessary law was delayed by the council, and “the majority of the grand juries of the counties” presented the matter for legislation, then only might “any of the chambers” take cognizance of it. It was now the good fortune of Governor Smith,[753] successor to Ludwell, to announce that “the Proprietors have consented that the proposing power for the making of laws, which was heretofore lodged in the governor and council only, is now given to you as well as the present council.”[754] Henceforth the assembly claimed the privileges and usages of the House of Commons in England.

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COOPER AND ASHLEY RIVERS.

[This is a side-map in a large folding one called A new map of Carolina, by Philip Lea, at the Atlas and Hercules, in Cheapside, London. Courtenay considers it to be of a date before 1700. There is a fac-simile of the whole in Charleston Year Book, 1883. For the associations and landmarks of these rivers see C. F. Woolson’s “Up the Ashley and Cooper,” in Harper’s Monthly, Dec., 1875; and P. D. Hay’s “Relics of Old South Carolina,” in Appleton’s Journal, xix. 498. In the Charleston Year Book (1883) there is a large map, showing the town and the early farms on the west bank of the Ashley; the present site of the city up to near the Clements’ Ferry road, with all lines of fortifications and historic points. Cf. W. G. Simms’ “Description of Charleston,” in Harper’s Monthly, June, 1857.

Moll’s map of South Carolina (1730) is given in fac-simile in Cassell’s United States, i. 439.—Ed.]

When there was no longer any reasonable expectation for the adoption of the Grand Model of government, a carefully prepared set of Instructions, in 43 Articles, became the rules for the colony, all former Instructions and Temporary Laws being abrogated, except such as related to lands. These rules continued as long as the Proprietors owned the province. It is not necessary to explain them. They were for the interest of their lordships; simple enough, but establishing a proprietary oligarchy. The Palatine and three other Proprietors, and, in the colony, the governor and three other deputies, constituted the governing power, with, apparently, a complete check upon the representatives of the people. The people could not complain if their lordships carried out what they wrote to Ludwell, that “they would part with no power” conferred on them by the charter “till the people were disposed to be more orderly;” for the people had demanded to be governed solely by the charter. The prominent[316] question now would be: Do their lordships properly interpret and apply the powers granted them in the charter?

But fresh political subjects engaged attention: the tenure of lands, naturalization of the French Huguenots, payment of quit-rents, now for some years due, the jury laws, and that relating to elections. Governor Smith lost courage; he could be no champion for their lordships against his friends and neighbors. The only way out of the difficulties occasioned by the maladministration of the Proprietors was that some Proprietor should be sent over “with full power” to heal all grievances. This plan was adopted. The grandson of Earl Shaftesbury was appointed, but declined to come. A pious, benevolent Quaker came, John Archdale, whose policy was a smiling patience, but a strict requisition of every penny that was due to the “true and absolute lords” of the province,—himself among them. He thought his patience would, as he expressed it, allay their heats. But this could only be done by concessions. He yielded to their request to have thirty representatives in the assembly. He also remitted, after a struggle, arrears of quit-rents to Michaelmas, 1695, on condition that the remaining debts were secured, rents for the future strictly provided for, and the town fortified by taxation. Some political advancement was gained by the assembly;[755] the repeal of any law not infringing on the rights of the Crown or of the Proprietors, or relating to land, was not to be made without the consent of the General Assembly. The council, too, was so constituted by the pious Quaker as to be more in harmony with the dissenters. But he seemed to fear that he might be prevailed upon to grant too much, and appointing his friend, Joseph Blake, in his place, hastened away (1696). He lived to see the peace and tranquillity vanish which he hoped he had firmly established. Two years later the “House of Commons” petitioned (among other things) for the privilege of coining; and for the removal of duties on the chief exports from the colony. They also prayed that no more than 1,000 acres be in future granted in one piece; that an authenticated copy of the charter be sent them; and that the colonial authorities have power to repeal laws (if expedient to do so) which had been confirmed by the Proprietors: and though some of these things (they said) were beyond their lordships’ power to grant, their interest with the king was great enough to secure them for their colonists. Their lordships, as might have, been expected, were astonished that Blake, himself a Proprietor,[756] should allow such an address to be issued,—a precedent for so much future evil.

The century now closed. Governor Blake died in 1700. As required under the 43 Articles, the deputies elected a Landgrave to succeed Blake, till the Proprietors could be heard from. At first they chose Morton. He was set aside afterwards by the council, as were all the Landgraves in the colony, and Colonel James Moore, a deputy, appointed. This competition[317] gave origin, for the first time in the history of the colony, to what may be denominated party strife. Besides Moore, several able leaders now appeared,—among them, Major Daniel, Colonel William Rhett, and Sir Nathaniel Johnson; while to Nicholas Trott the foremost place must be assigned for distinguished learning and ability. On his arrival he espoused the popular cause; but with numerous offices and honors bestowed upon him by the Proprietors, he and his brother-in-law, Colonel Rhett, became their zealous champions. These able men so largely influenced their lordships that at a word from them governors and councils were sometimes set at naught.

At the opening of the new century, we must cease to look upon South Carolina as the home of indigent emigrants, struggling for subsistence. While numerous slaves cultivated the extensive plantations, their owners, educated gentlemen, and here and there of noble families in England, had abundant leisure for social intercourse, living as they did in proximity to each other, and in easy access to Charles Town, where the governor resided, the courts and legislature convened, and the public offices were kept. The road that led up from the fortified town between the two broad rivers so enchanted Governor Archdale that he believed no prince in Europe, with all his art, could make a walk for the whole year round so pleasant and beautiful. From the road, to the right and to the left, avenues of water-oaks in mossy festoons, and in spring-time redolent with jasmines, gave the passer-by glimpses of handsome residences, from whose spacious verandas could be seen on the east the beautiful waters of the Bay, on the west the Ashley River. Hospitality, refinement, and literary culture distinguished the higher class of gentlemen.[757]

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Governor Moore and his party gained control of the council by filling vacancies with those of whose good-will they were assured. But they ineffectually sought, by every means in their power, to elect a majority of assembly-men in their interest. Even violence was resorted to, and some estimable gentlemen, opponents of the party in power, were set upon and maltreated in the streets. The assembly resolved to investigate the abuses at the election, and were, therefore, prorogued from time to time; and it was reported that martial law would be proclaimed. When at last the assembly convened, they began with recriminations. If the public welfare had required their counsels, why had the governor, through pique, prorogued them? And was it true that he designed to menace them with coercion? “Oh! how is that sacred word Law profaned when joined with Martial! Have you forgotten your Honor’s own noble endeavor to vindicate our liberties when Colleton set up this arbitrary rule?”[758] But further disputation was averted. The governor had planned a secret and sudden attack on St. Augustine. The assembly joined in the scheme. They requested him to go as commander instead of Colonel Daniel, whom he nominated. They voted £2,000; and thought ten vessels and 350 men, with Indian allies, would be a sufficient force. The doors are closed. Men, and even women, who had been to St. Augustine, are interrogated concerning its defences. An embargo is laid on the shipping in the harbor. Moore with about 400 men sets sail, and Daniel with 100 Carolina troops and about 500 Yemassee Indians march by land. But the inhabitants of St. Augustine had heard of their coming, and had sent to Havana for reinforcements. Retreating to their castle, they abandoned the town to Colonel Daniel, who pillaged it before Moore’s fleet arrived. Governor Moore and Colonel Daniel united their forces and laid siege to the castle; but they lacked the necessary artillery for its reduction, and were compelled to send to Jamaica for it. Unfortunately the agent sent put back to Charles Town, and the governor sent Colonel Daniel himself to Jamaica. Before he returned, two Spanish ships appeared off St. Augustine. Moore instantly burned the town and all his own ships, and hastened back by land. Colonel Daniel, coming from Jamaica with the artillery, narrowly escaped the Spanish ships, and was convoyed to Charles Town by an English man-of-war which he met at sea. The expense entailed on the colony was £6,000.

When this attack on St. Augustine was planned, it must have been anticipated in the colony that war would be declared against Spain and France. The impending danger to South Carolina, a frontier to Spanish Florida, induced the Proprietors to appoint as governor the soldierly Sir Nathaniel Johnson (June, 1702). James Moore was made receiver-general; Nicholas Trott, attorney-general; Job Howes, surveyor-general; and Rhett, Broughton, and other men of ability, adhering to the government in its hour of peril, increased thereby the power of the dominant[319] party. Colonel Moore, being sent out by Johnson (December, 1703) with fifty Carolinians and one thousand Indians, ravaged the country of the Apalatchees, allies of the Spaniards, and utterly defeated them and a body of Spanish troops that came to their assistance. Three years later, in August, when yellow fever was prevalent and five or six deaths a day, in the small population of Charles Town, was not a rare occurrence, a French fleet of five vessels under Le Feboure, aided by the Spanish governor at Havana, suddenly appeared off the harbor. Troops were disembarked at several points. A council of war was held, and the Carolinians determined to go out and meet the enemy. Colonel Rhett, Captains Fenwicke, Cantey, Watson, and others, with many gentlemen as volunteers, defeated the invaders, and brought 230 French and Spanish prisoners into town. Thus perished the first attempt to take Charles Town by a naval force, a feat which never yet has been accomplished. The governor, handsomely rewarded by the Proprietors, thanked the troops for their valor and their unanimity at a time when violent estrangements existed between political parties in the colony.

We must now revert to 1704, and relate the occasion of these estrangements. The governor and dominant faction favored Episcopacy. Lord Granville, the new Palatine, was an uncompromising zealot for the Church of England. It was determined to establish that Church in South Carolina. This was not contrary to the charter; but most of the colonists were dissenters, and it would be useless at that juncture to endeavor to win over a majority of the assembly to the support of such a project. The assembly stood prorogued to the 10th of May. They were summoned earlier; and on the 4th a bill was proposed and read, requiring “all persons that shall hereafter be chosen members of the Commons House of Assembly, and sit in the same, to take the oaths and subscribe the declaration appointed by this bill, and to conform to the religious worship of this Province, according to the Church of England, and to receive the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper according to the rites of said Church.”[759] Some of the members called for the reading of the charter: but the opposition was soon overcome; the bill passed and was ordered to the governor and council, who passed it and returned it to the House; Landgrave Morton, of the council, being denied leave to enter his protest against it. It was pushed through the requisite proceedings and ratified under date of the 6th. It was passed by one majority,—twelve for it and eleven against it; seven members being absent. Some who voted in the negative are said to have been Episcopalians. The assembly was then prorogued[320] till October. It was required by this law that in case a representative elected refused to qualify as directed, the next on the sheriff’s return should be entitled to the seat, or the next, and so on till the list was exhausted; then only should a new writ be issued. The effect was not only to exclude dissenters, but ten men could elect a member against the votes of a thousand. Another tyrannical abuse of party power was exhibited in an Act establishing Religious Worship (passed on the reassembling of the Commons), which authorized a lay commission for the trial of ecclesiastical causes. Dalcho says in his Church History, that they “were authorized to sit in the judgment-seat of spiritual officers, and thus to wrest the ecclesiastical authority out of the hands of the Bishop of London.” This gave offence to Churchmen. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, by whose liberality the colony had been greatly benefited, resolved not to send or support any missionaries in South Carolina, till the law, or at least that clause of it, should be repealed. The dissenters, already elected members of assembly, were not allowed (on reassembling in October) to enter their protests against the conduct of the Church party. The Rev. Mr. Marston was called to account by the commission and deprived of his benefice, for opposing the action of the oligarchy. But the case was carried to a higher tribunal, the House of Lords in England. Upon an able representation of the matter, redress having been refused by the Proprietors (under lead of Granville), a report was made to the queen, which caused the annulment of these two provincial laws. Nor was this all; the Board of Trade recommended the annulment of the proprietary charter (April, 1706). Since the accession of James II. there had been a disposition in the English authorities to revoke the charters to companies or individuals, and bring all the American colonies into a closer dependence on the Crown. Though the surrender of the Carolina charter was not on this occasion effected, yet it was manifest to the colony that an authority more potent than that of their lordships was interested in their welfare.

Lord Granville was succeeded in the Palatinate by Lord William Craven, and Colonel Edward Tynte was made governor. The once dominant faction, which had been transmuted, said Archdale, by Johnson’s “chemical wit, zeal, and art” into a High Church party, now fell asunder. Much attention had been awakened in England to the fortunes of the colony by the publications of Archdale and of Oldmixon and the “Case of the Protestant Dissenters;” and Governor Tynte entered upon his duties with kindly assurances and the wish to “render Carolina the most flourishing colony in all America.” He did not live long, and Colonel Charles Craven, brother of the Palatine, and previously an officer in the colony, was appointed in his place (December, 1710). Since the days of Joseph West, “moderate, just, pious, valiant” (says Archdale), no man more capable and beloved than Charles Craven had governed[321] South Carolina. A sentence from an address of his to the Commons (April, 1712) shows the spirit of his administration. However great the honor of this office might be, “yet I shall look on it as a greater glory if, with your assistance, I could bring to pass so noble designs as the safety of this province, the advancement of its riches, and, what is more desirable” than riches, the unanimity and quiet of its people. “To what a prodigious height hath the united provinces risen in less than a century of years, to be able to create fear in some, envy in others, and admiration in the whole world!” The people, aroused by the expectation or apparent reality of their increasing importance, voted £1,500 for the erection of a State House and £1,000 for a residence for the governor. Unparliamentary altercations gave place to a generous emulation for the public welfare. The governor expressed the “greatest tenderness” towards all dissenters and assured them that nothing should ever be done by him injurious to their liberties. Though the law excluding them from the assembly was repealed, yet the Episcopal party retained ascendency and the public support of the Church (by a new Church Act) was continued. The parish system was inaugurated, and the representatives were increased to thirty-six. The turbulence of elections at Charles Town gave place to unmolested elections in the respective parishes. Libraries and a free school were open to all, and religious and educational advancement was promoted. Under Craven’s prosperous administration, it even seemed likely that the public debt would be liquidated, which had begun with the unlucky expedition against St. Augustine. But fresh expenditures were demanded in assisting North Carolina in her conflicts with the Tuscaroras; and scarcely had Barnwell and Moore rested from that campaign, when the most disastrous Indian war that South Carolina ever had to encounter broke suddenly upon her unsuspecting inhabitants. The Yemassees had been employed against the Apalatchees, and, at a later date, against the Tuscaroras. Being enticed by the Spaniards, whom their chiefs often visited, and being largely in debt to the English traders and irritated by their oppressive misconduct, they turned their experience in war against those who had taught them to fight, and, hoping for help from St. Augustine, began an indiscriminate slaughter on the line of settlements westward from Charles Town. Knowing the colonists to be formidable opponents, they had allured into conspiracy with them other Indian nations, notably the Creeks. So wide-spread was the combination formed that the governor asked assistance from other colonies. North Carolina in response sent aid under Colonel Maurice Moore (brother of James Moore), a friendly service which was gratefully appreciated and acknowledged by the assembly. But “expedition is the life of action,” said Craven; and not awaiting assistance, he fought the foe at once, and Colonel Mackay, in another direction, surprised their town, in which they had vast quantities of provisions and plunder, and attacking a fort to which they had betaken themselves carried it by assault and completely routed them.[322] This effectually checked the Yemassees, and dispirited the tribes engaged to assist them. The assembly met, and, despatching such business as was necessary, adjourned to take up their muskets. All available forces were raised and placed under command of Lieutenant-General James Moore and Colonels John Barnwell and Alexander Mackay. The Yemassees, though joined by the Apalatchees, were forced beyond the Savannah, and took up their residence in Florida. We have not space to narrate the heart-rending or romantic incidents of this contest. The Yemassees had acted prematurely; otherwise the disasters to the colony would have been far greater. Many lives were lost (estimated at 400), an immense amount of cattle, produce, and other valuable property destroyed, and it was said that the traders alone lost £10,000 in debts due them. But the invincibility of the colonists was so forcibly impressed upon the minds of the Indians that they entered into no more combinations, and never again, except in straggling parties, penetrated to the vicinity of the fortified English settlements.

On account of the death of Sir Anthony Craven, the governor returned to England, leaving Colonel Robert Daniel to be deputy (1716) till the arrival of Robert Johnson (son of Sir Nathaniel), who was appointed to succeed him. At this time the French were extending their cordon of forts from Canada down to Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico, and courting the alliance of the Indians who dwelt on the outskirts of the whole line of English colonies. In view of these new dangers and of the deserted condition of the westward parishes of the colony, the Carolinians were compelled to keep up garrisons and troops of rangers from the Santee to the Savannah. The expense of defending themselves and their great losses in the recent Indian war caused an application to the Proprietors for relief. Lord Carteret, Palatine in place of the Duke of Beaufort (who, before, had offered on his part to give up the colony rather than have it in need of adequate relief and protection), wrote to the Board of Trade, “We, the Proprietors, having met on this melancholy occasion, to our great grief find that we are utterly unable of ourselves to afford our colony suitable assistance in this conjuncture; and unless his majesty will graciously please to interpose, we can foresee nothing but the utter destruction of his majesty’s faithful subjects in those parts.” The board asked if such of the Proprietors as were not minors were “willing to surrender the government to the king.” There was no king upon the throne now gratefully sensible of the distinguished services of a Clarendon, Monk, Berkeley, Carteret, or Craven. It was not, on the other hand, the influences of a Danson, Amy, Blake, or even the descendants of the original Proprietors, that formed a barrier to the manifest interests of the whole British nation; but it was the admirable love of justice in the rulers of England that saved to the Proprietors the lavish gift of Charles II., even after their confession of utter inability to help their colonists. It was evident, however, that the termination of the proprietary authority must come. The colonists made it come. We shall now relate how this was done.

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The assembly had been forced to issue bills of credit; at first to meet the debts incurred by Moore’s expedition against St. Augustine. This easy method of making money was continued, and of course the bills depreciated. The London merchants complained, and the bills were ordered to be called in and cancelled. To do this required £80,000. This large sum the assembly undertook to pay in three years by a tax on the lands and negroes of the colonists. Before this could be effected the colonial income, applicable to other expenses, was reduced by a royal order to cease the tax of ten per cent on importations of British manufactures; and at the same time an expensive expedition became necessary to suppress the pirates who infested the coasts, and at times seized every ship leaving the harbor of Charles Town. If the Proprietors were unwilling “to expend their English estates to support much more precarious ones in America,”[760] whom were the colonists to ask for aid, except the king? When Governor Johnson met his first assembly, he inveighed against addresses sent to England without consulting the Proprietors as “disrespectful,” “unjustifiable and impolitic.” He then offered the distressed colonists a “donative” from their lordships of a small remission of quit-rents. The assembly declined the donative. They instructed their committee “to touch slightly (but not by way of argument or submission) on what the last two assemblies have done heretofore in addressing his majesty to take this province under his protection.” The governor was anxious they should accept the donative; and equally anxious they should, in return, order a rent-roll for the benefit of the Proprietors. He said, “As the assembly is to pass wholesome laws even to private persons, much more to the Lords Proprietors, who are our masters.” The assembly replied, “We cannot but approve of your honor’s care of their lordships’ interest, who are, as you say, your masters.” “If you look over their charters,” was the answer, “you will find them to be your masters likewise.” (December, 1717.)

The assembly elected Colonel Brewton powder-receiver. The governor, as military chief, required the assembly to order forthwith the keys to be delivered to Major Blakeway, whom he had commissioned. The House refused. The governor offered a compromise: “My officer shall keep the magazines and give receipts to your officer for all powder delivered into his keeping.” “What is the use,” replied the House, “of a powder-receiver who does not keep the powder?” “But I insist upon keeping it,” said the governor, “for I am his majesty the king’s lieutenant.” He soon saw an advertisement by the House, signed by their Speaker, declaring their right to appoint “all officers who receive a settled salary out of the public treasury of this province,” and to “put out, call to account, and put in place,” at discretion, all such officers; and commanding, under penalty, the powder-tax to be paid by all ships to the officer elected by the assembly.

The people, however, were fond of Governor Johnson. They did not[324] always harmonize with strangers sent over to govern them. But Johnson was almost one of themselves, and they admired him for his conspicuous bravery. He had gone personally in pursuit of the pirate Worley, and after a desperate encounter brought in alive only the chief and one of his crew, they having been smitten down with dangerous wounds; and he had immediately caused them to be tried and executed. At this time, too, Colonel Rhett had captured Bonnet, pursuing him into Cape Fear River, and brought him and about thirty of his crew to Charles Town, for speedy execution. The people knew that the governor was in duty bound to promote the cause of the Proprietors. But some of his adherents they justly regarded with ill-will. There had been, as before mentioned, a change, very acceptable to the people, in the mode of electing their representatives. Trott and Rhett had had great control in elections while the ballot was in Charles Town; and the former had been writing to their lordships against the new method of election by parishes. To the surprise of the governor and of all but Trott, orders came from London to disallow that method, to dissolve the assembly, and to summon another to be chosen by the old method; to repeal also the act for electing the powder-receiver, and other laws, such as that for the rehabitation of the Yemassee lands by bringing over Irish settlers to live there, which the people deemed of great importance to the welfare of the colony.[761] The argument was, with their lordships, What right have the assembly to alter anything determined by us? It is true our deputies sanctioned these laws; but we are not bound by what our deputies do, being ourselves the head and source of legislative power in our colony. The people thought, on the other hand, that an enactment by the assembly ratified by the governor and council, the appointed agents of the Proprietors, should not be set aside by the mere whim of a few persons on the other side of the Atlantic, or by the dictation of a man like Nicholas Trott. This gentleman had now to confront the long-delayed denunciation of Whittaker, Allein, and other prominent lawyers, who had for years endured his arrogance and tyranny in court. Thirty-one articles of complaint against him were presented to the assembly, and by them communicated to the governor and council. They knew the allegations to be well founded, and united with the assembly in requesting the Proprietors to restrict their favorite’s power. It had even been ordered from London that no quorum of the council should sanction a law unless Trott was one of the quorum. For a time, too, the whole judicial power was in his hands. Francis Yonge, a member of the council, deputy of Lord Carteret, and surveyor-general, was deputed, with suitable instructions, to proceed to London and confer with the Proprietors (May, 1719).[325] Lord Carteret was absent on an embassy. The others kept Mr. Yonge waiting, without conference, for three months; then sent him back with sealed orders. In fact, some of the Proprietors were minors; others lived away from London; the few who exercised authority left many matters to their secretary: and thus, says Yonge, “a whole province was to be governed by the caprice of one man.” If the secretary managed the Proprietors, Trott and Rhett managed him. When the sealed orders were opened, it was found that Chief Justice Trott was thanked, the governor reprimanded, his brother-in-law, Colonel Broughton, turned out of the council, together with Alexander Skene and James Kinloch; Mr. Yonge alone being permitted to remain, in courtesy to the absent Palatine (Carteret) whose deputy he was. A new council was appointed, and the governor again ordered to dissolve the assembly and call a new one under the old method of election.

The deputies excluded from the council and other prominent gentlemen now became active among the people. The arguments they used must have been: Have not the Proprietors, spurning all appeals, protected a tyrannical judge, and continued him in power over the lives and property of the people? Have they not refused to part with an acre of their immense uncultivated domains for public use in supporting the garrisons? Have they not obstructed our efforts to bring an increase of settlers here for the strengthening of our frontiers, and divided out the land, by thousands of acres, for their own emolument? To foster the power of a few favorites, have they not annulled our laws for the equitable representation of the people by fair and peaceful elections? Have they helped the colony in its distress, beat back the Spaniards, resisted the invasion of the French, suppressed the pirates, or quelled at any time an Indian horde? Can they now, masters as they claim to be, protect us in any emergency? And if, after all these provocations, we choose to rebel and throw off their vaunted absolutism, where are their forces to check our revolt? Will King George, our sovereign, to whom we appeal for protection, furnish them with an army to reduce us to submission? Influenced by such sentiments, the people came again to the polls at Charles Town, to elect their last assembly under the proprietary government. Mr. Yonge, who was there, tells us, “Mr. Rhett and Mr. Trott found themselves mistaken, in fancying they could influence the elections when in town, so as to have such members chosen as they liked, for it proved quite the contrary; they could not get so much as a man chosen that they desired. The whole people in general were prejudiced against the Lords Proprietors to such a degree that it was grown almost dangerous to say anything in their favor.”

It happened at this conjuncture that war was again declared by England against Spain, and an attack from Havana was in preparation either on Charles Town or the island of Providence. Advices being sent to the colony, the governor called together the council and such members elect of the assembly as he could collect, to provide for repairing the[326] fortifications; and as the recent repeals had left him without adequate funds, he proposed an immediate voluntary subscription. The members of the assembly whom he consulted told him the duties provided by law would suffice. “But the Act raising these duties is repealed by the Proprietors.” They replied, “They did not and would not look on their repeal as anything,” and dispersed to their homes. The governor then ordered a muster of all the provincial troops. This afforded an admirable opportunity for a complete combination. An association of leading citizens was secretly formed; the people assembled at the muster; they almost unanimously signed the resolutions submitted to them by the association, and agreed to support whatever measures they should adopt. The first notice the governor had of these proceedings was a letter signed by Mr. Skene, Colonel Logan, and Major Blakeway (28th November), telling him the whole province had entered into an agreement “to stand by their rights and privileges, and to get rid of the oppression and arbitrary dealings of the Lords Proprietors,” and inviting him to hold his office in behalf of the king. The members elect of the assembly, in the mean while, held private conferences and matured their plans.

On meeting at the time required by their writs (December 17), they waited upon the governor, as was customary; and Mr. Middleton, in their name, informed him that they did not look upon his present council as a legal one (the Proprietors having appointed twelve members, instead of seven, the usual number of deputies), and would not act with them as a legal council. Anticipating, it appears, a dissolution, they had resolved themselves into a convention, delegated by the people, and passed resolutions so revolutionary in character as to alarm the governor and his few adherents, who resorted to every menace and means of persuasion without moving the assembly or convention from their fixed purposes. The governor, therefore, issued a proclamation dissolving them. The proclamation was torn from the marshal’s hands; and the convention issued a proclamation, in their own names, ordering all officers, civil and military, to hold their offices till further orders from them. Having failed to win Johnson to their interest, they elected their own governor, Colonel James Moore.

Johnson, who had gone up to his plantation, hearing that the people intended to proclaim Moore governor in the king’s name, hastened back and used every effort to prevent it. But he found the militia drawn up, colors flying at the forts and on all the ships in the harbor, drums beating, and every preparation made for proclaiming the new governor. An eye-witness says it would be tedious to tell all the frantic ex-governor did. But the leaders of the revolution had sent Mr. Lloyd to keep with him under pretence of friendship and adherence, and prevent any rash action on his part. The troops began their march, inspirited by patriotic harangues, and escorted the members of the convention to the fort:[327] where, by the united acclamations of the people, James Moore was proclaimed governor of South Carolina in the name of the king of England (December 21, 1719).

A council of twelve was chosen, as in other colonies under the royal government; and the convention then resumed its functions as a legislative assembly, and proceeded to enact such laws as the state of the province required. They addressed a letter to the Board of Trade explanatory of their action, and their agent in England (Mr. Boone, with whom also Colonel Barnwell was sent to act) laid before the king an account of the misrule of the Proprietors and implored his protection. Johnson and the Proprietors were equally active, and the decision of the English government was anxiously awaited by both parties. During nearly a year such anxiety continued; and as the clergy in the province were unwilling to perform the marriage ceremony without, as previously, a license from Johnson as governor, and a large number of people followed his advice and example in not paying taxes until executions were issued against them, he supposed he had a party ready to reinstate him. But it was not till he received aid from the crews of several English men-of-war that he formed a plan of seizing the government. The Spanish fleet (to resist which the people had been mustered) had not come to Charlestown, but had gone to the island of Providence, and had been there repulsed by Governor Rogers. The “Flamborough,” Captain Hildesley, and “Phœnix,” Captain Pearce, arrived in Charlestown harbor in May, 1721; and chiefly, it appears, by the advice of Hildesley, Johnson appeared in arms with about 120 men, mostly sailors from the “Flamborough,” and marched against the forts, whose garrisons were obeying the orders of Governor Moore. The forts opened fire upon them. Whereupon, Captain Pearce was deputed by Johnson, together with some of his council, to negotiate with the revolutionists. They refused to negotiate; for they knew from their agents that the regency in England had determined to protect the colony, and that General Francis Nicholson had been appointed provisional royal governor. Johnson requested to see the orders of the regency and the despatches from the agents. As soon as he read them, he disbanded his men and gave up all opposition to the existing government. Nicholson’s commission is dated 26th September, 1720. He arrived in the colony 23d May, 1721, and was gladly received by Governor Moore, the assembly, and the people. The revolution was now complete; although the surrender of the proprietary charter, for such a sum of money as was finally agreed upon, was not effected till 1729.

Royal Government.—We have before us the ninety-six articles of instruction to Nicholson (30th August, 1720) and the additional ones to Governor Johnson (1730), detailing the method of the royal government, and which continued in force, with some modifications, till the separation of the colony from the mother country. It is not necessary to give a[328] full synopsis of this method. The enacting clause is “by the governor, council, and assembly;” and the assembly had the same powers and privileges as were allowed to the House of Commons in England. The Episcopal was the established Church, under jurisdiction of the Bishop of London. School-masters were licensed by the bishop or by the governor. If the governor died or left the province, and there was no commissioned lieutenant-governor, the eldest councillor, as president, acted in his stead. Special care was enjoined for the encouragement of the Royal African Company for the importation of negro slaves. If any part of the instructions was distasteful to the people, it was that which conferred equal legislative authority with the assembly upon the council; a council of twelve, nominated (or suspended) by the governor, and three of whom, with the governor, could form a quorum, in emergencies. On this point contests soon arose, the assembly thinking that the governor and three or more of their own neighbors or relatives, who happened to be councillors, ought not to have the power to counteract the deliberate will of the entire body of the representatives of the people; that is, of the freeholders who alone voted for members of the assembly.

But, for the time being, all were happy at their release from “the confused, negligent, and helpless government of the Lords Proprietors.” Governor Nicholson, on his arrival, found in all parties a cheerful allegiance to the king and zeal for the advancement of the colony.[762] Ex-Governor Moore was made Speaker of the assembly, with Nicholson’s cordial approbation, and all laws demanded by the condition of the province were promptly enacted. Peace having been declared between England and Spain, the new governor applied himself to the regulation of Indian affairs, and succeeded in bringing the tribes on the frontier into alliance with British interests. With peace and security everywhere, he addressed himself to forming new parishes, building churches and obtaining clergymen by the help of the London Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Additional free schools were established by bequests from three benevolent citizens, and the people generally emulated the public spirit of their good governor. In 1725 he returned to England, and the administration of his office devolved upon Arthur Middleton as president of the council. He had it not in his power to be the generous benefactor Nicholson had been, and his views of duty to the royal authority placed him in opposition to the progressive spirit of those with whom he had been associated in the recent revolution. His stubborn contest with the assembly prevented the enactment of any laws for three years. They thought it necessary for the good of the people to pass a bill for[329] promoting the currency of gold and silver in the province. The council rejected it as contravening an act of Parliament in the reign of Queen Anne; and insisted on the passage of a supply bill by the assembly, to meet the expenses of the government. This the assembly refused unless their bill was first agreed to. Middleton resorted to prorogations and dissolutions. This availed nothing; for the people supported their representatives by reëlecting them. From 1727 to 1731 the same bill was eight times sent up to the president and his council, and always rejected. He prorogued them six times, and six times ordered new elections. Among other things in this contest, the assembly claimed the right to elect their clerk without consulting the council;[763] ordered an officer of the council to their bar, and put him under arrest for delay in making his appearance; and maintained that—as in Nicholson’s time—members elect should qualify by holding up the hand in taking the oath before the council, if they thought that best, instead of swearing on the Holy Evangelists, as the governor required them to do. The contest was not terminated until the arrival of Governor Johnson (December, 1730) as successor to Nicholson.

Sir Alexander Cumming had been sent to form a treaty with the Cherokees who lived near the head of the Savannah River and far westward,—a powerful nation with 6,000 warriors. They sent a deputation of their chiefs to England with Cumming to visit King George. It was important to secure the friendship of these Indians before the French should allure them to their interest. The chiefs returned from England in company with Governor Johnson. Middleton had before sent agents among the Creeks and Cherokees, to avert, if possible, the influence of the French, whose enterprise and energy were likely to become more formidable to the English settlements than the hostility of the Spaniards had been. While guarding against danger in this direction, they had to contend against molestations from their inveterate enemy in Florida. Runaway slaves were always welcomed there, were made free, and formed into military companies. Roving bands of the defeated Yemassees from the same refuge-place plundered the plantations on the frontier. No compensation could be obtained for such ruthless spoliation. At length Colonel Palmer was sent to make reprisals; and with about 300 men, militia and friendly Indians, he completely laid waste the enemy’s country up to the gates of St. Augustine, and taught them their weakness and the superior power of the English colonists. Unfortunately, no definite boundaries were settled upon between the claims of Spain and England.

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PLAN OF CHARLESTOWN, S. C., 1732.
(From Popple’s British Empire in America.)

[This was reëngraved in Paris in 1733, “avec privilège du Roi.” There is a fac-simile of a plan of Charleston (1739) in the Charleston Year Book, 1884, p. 163-4.—Ed.]

The colonial government, however, had erected in Governor Nicholson’s time Fort King George on the Altamaha, and were determined to keep the Spaniards to the westward of that river. A Spanish embassy came to Charlestown to confer with President Middleton about the erection of this fort. But the only definite understanding reached was in the avowal by the ambassadors that his Catholic majesty would never consent to deliver up runaway[331] slaves, because he desired to save their souls by converting them to the Christian faith. Cunning emissaries from St. Augustine continued to tamper with the slaves, and rendered many of them dangerous malcontents. Not long after (1738) an armed insurrection was attempted in the heart of the English settlement; the negroes on Stono River marching about plundering, burning farm-houses, and murdering the defenceless. The planters at that time went to church armed. It was Sunday. Lieutenant-Governor Bull, riding alone on the road, met the insurgents, and escaping them by turning off on another road gave the alarm. The male part of the Presbyterian congregation at Wiltown—notified of the insurrection by a Mr. Golightly—left the women in church, and hastening after the murderous horde found them drinking and dancing in a field, within sight of the last dwelling they had pillaged and set on fire. Their leader was shot, some were taken prisoners and the rest dispersed. More than twenty persons had been murdered. It might have been an extensive massacre, if so many armed planters had not attended divine service that day.[764]

CHARLESTOWN IN 1742.

[This follows a steel plate, “The city of Charleston one hundred years ago, after an engraving done by Canot from an original picture by T. Mellish, Esq.” A long panoramic view of Charlestown in 1762 is given in the Charleston Year Book, 1882; and in Cassell’s United States, i. 355. The name “Charleston” was substituted for “Charlestown” in the act of incorporation of 1783.—Ed.]

There were in the colony above 40,000 negro slaves. The necessity for increasing the number of white inhabitants had long been apparent to the English authorities. Some of the German Palatines in England (1729) and more of them in 1764 were sent over to the colony. Mr. Purry, of Neufchatel, and his Swiss were granted (1732) an extensive tract of land near the Savannah River. Some Irish colonists settled at Williamsburgh (1733). Colonel Johnson, before he came over as royal governor, proposed[332] to the Board of Trade a plan for forming a number of townships at convenient points, with great inducements to both foreigners and Englishmen to remove to the province. Above all, the proposal by Lord Percival (1730) to establish the colony of Georgia (between the Savannah and Altamaha), and the carrying of the project into effect under General Oglethorpe (1733), gave promise of adding materially to the security and strength of South Carolina. With a new fort at Beaufort (Port Royal), and abundant artillery and ammunition furnished by his majesty, and ships of war protecting the harbor, we have but to look forward a few years to the settlement and improvement of the healthy and fertile “up country” by overland immigration from Virginia and Pennsylvania, and the moving up of population from the coast, to reach the period of permanent prosperity and the greater development of the material resources of the province. Many families moved to the upper part of South Carolina when Governor Glen established peace with the Cherokees; many came when Braddock’s defeat exposed the frontiers of the more northern colonies to the French and Indians; while by way of Charlestown Germans came up to Saxegotha and the forks of the Broad and Saluda—as the Scotch-Irish had come to Williamsburg.

From 200 to 300 ships now annually left Charlestown. In addition to rice, indigo, pitch, turpentine, tar, rosin, timber of various kinds, deer-skins, salted provisions, and agricultural products grown along the coast, the interior plantations raised wheat, hemp, flax, and tobacco; fruits, berries, nuts, and many kinds of vegetables were abundant; and fish from the rivers, and turkeys and deer and other game from the forest, furnished luxuries for the table, without counting the ever-present supplies from swine, sheep, and cattle. But we must now go back a few years.

Governor Johnson died 3d May, 1735, and Lieutenant-Governor Thomas Broughton on 22d November, 1737. William Bull, president of the council, succeeded to the administration till the arrival of Governor James Glen (December, 1743).[765] The lieutenant-governor was a prudent ruler. He assisted in the settlement of Savannah and in the war of Georgia upon St. Augustine (sending the Carolina regiment under Colonel Vanderdussen), and managed wisely in every emergency. Governor Glen with greater energy and activity extended the fortification of the province,—visiting every portion of his government, going among the Cherokees, obtaining a surrender of their lands for the erection of forts, and erecting them; as Prince George on the upper part of the Savannah, 170 miles above Fort Moore, and Fort Loudon on the Tennessee among the Upper Cherokees, 500 miles from Charlestown. These forts and those at Frederica[333] and Augusta in Georgia were garrisoned by his majesty’s troops for the protection of both provinces. When Glen, in 1756, was superseded by Governor William Henry Lyttleton, war was declared between England and France. On the termination of hostilities, the Cherokees, who had aided the British troops in the more northern colonies, were returning home through Western Virginia, and committed depredations, appropriating to their use such horses as came in their way, and were set upon and some of them murdered. In retaliation they killed the whites wherever they could, indiscriminately. Among their victims in Carolina were a few of the garrison of Fort Loudon. This was done by roving bands of headstrong young Indians. The troops at Prince George despatched the news to Governor Lyttleton, who instantly began preparations for war. The Cherokees sent thirty-two of their chiefs to settle the difficulty, as the nation at large desired peace and the continuation of their old friendship with the English. Lyttleton kept the chiefs under arrest, and took them with him along with his troops. His ill-usage of them and his folly involved the province in a disastrous war with the whole Cherokee nation. Then, being appointed Governor of Jamaica, he left the calamities he had caused to the management of Lieutenant-Governor Bull. Not till 1761 were hostilities ended by the help of Colonel Grant, of the British army. Dr. Hewatt, who had the advantage of the acquaintance of the last Lieutenant-Governor Bull, and probably his assistance in the compilation of his history, gives a detailed and graphic narrative of this deplorable conflict, carried on in pathless forests, hundreds of miles from Charlestown. So wasted were Colonel Grant’s men “by heat, thirst, watching, danger, and fatigue” that when peace was made “they were utterly unable to march farther.” In the provincial regiment assisting Grant were Middleton, Laurens, Moultrie, Marion, Huger, Pickens, and others who became distinguished in the war of the Revolution.

The Peace of Paris (1763) happily put an end forever to hostilities arising from French possessions in America. The succeeding royal governors of South Carolina were Thomas Boone (1762), Lord Charles Greville Montague (December, 1765), and Lord William Campbell (1773).

The most interesting and continuous thread of events running through all the colonial history of South Carolina is the development of the power of the assembly or representatives of the people. Taking up this subject where we left it at the close of Middleton’s contest with the assembly, we observe that the choice of their clerk was conceded to them by the succeeding governor. In the policy both of the proprietary and royal government, the elective franchise was granted to the people or freeholders only in choosing members of the assembly. We do not find that they balloted for any executive or other officer. The success of the assembly in electing a few administrative officers and holding them accountable to themselves was an important acquisition, and was followed by a further gain of power in the same direction. Governor Glen, addressing the[334] authorities in England (October 10, 1748), said in substance “that a new modelling[766] of their constitution,” in South Carolina, “would add to the happiness of the province and preserve their dependence upon the Crown, any weakening [of the] power of which and deviation from the constitution of the mother country is in his opinion dangerous. Almost all the places of profit or of trust are disposed of by the general assembly.” “Besides the treasurer they appoint also the commissary, the Indian commissioner, the comptroller of the duties upon imports and exports, the powder-receiver, etc. The executive part of the government is lodged in different sets of commissioners,” “of the market, the workhouse, of the pilots, of the fortifications, etc. Not only civil posts, but ecclesiastical preferment, are in the disposal or election of the people, although by the king’s instructions to the governor” this should belong to the king or his representative. The governor is not prayed for, while the assembly is, during its sittings, the only instance in America where it is not done. “The above officers and most of the commissioners are named by the general assembly, and are responsible to them alone; and whatever be their ignorance, neglect, or misconduct, the governor has no power to reprove or displace them. Thus the people have the whole of the administration in their hands, and the governor, and thereby the Crown, is stripped of its power.” In the next place, the assembly claimed, and with success, the sole power of originating tax bills, notwithstanding instructions to the contrary. They refused to the council even the power to amend such bills. In the words of the Journals of the House (no. 21, 1745), they asserted their “sole right of introducing, framing, and amending subsidy bills,”—which they based on the English Constitution as paramount to the royal instructions. It was furthermore intimated that the council had no right to legislative functions at all,—a view soon after ably advocated by Mr. Drayton. It was contended that the council was not a counterpart of the House of Lords, but simply a body advisory to the governor. It was even argued that, similarly with the mother country, colonial usages and precedents were to be regarded as constitutional in South Carolina.

The last development of the power of the assembly tended to check the governor’s prerogative of dissolution and prorogation. In a contest with Governor Boone, beginning in 1762 and continued to May, 1763, dissolution and prorogation failed entirely as a means of controlling the actions or sentiments of the representatives of the people, where the people were of one mind with the assembly. The subject of dispute involved the assembly’s sole right to judge of the validity of the election of its own members, and the argument on the part of the House was conducted chiefly by Rutledge and Gadsden. But about this time came proposals that committees from all the colonial assemblies should meet to consider the British Stamp Act. We conclude this brief narrative with the remark[335] that in the Continental Congress that ensued the leading statesmen of the South Carolina popular assembly stepped as veterans to new battlefields with the dust of recent victories still upon them.[767]

CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

By the Editor.

IT is claimed that Sir Robert Heath conveyed his rights under the grant of 1630 to the Earl of Arundel, and that these eventually became invested in Dr. Coxe, as presented in a memorial to William III., and assumed in the Carolana of his son, Daniel Coxe.[768] The Heath grant,[769] however, was formally annulled August 12, 1663.[770] De[336] Laet’s map, showing the coast of what was subsequently North Carolina at the period of Heath’s grant, 1630, is given in fac-simile elsewhere.[771]

Dr. Hawks, in his North Carolina, prints from Thurloe’s State Papers (ii. p. 273) a letter dated at Linnehaven, in Virginia, May 8, 1654, from Francis Yardley to John Farrar, giving an account of explorations during the previous year along the seaboard. In 1662 (March) the king granted the first charter, and this was printed the same year, but without date, as The first Charter granted by the King to the Proprietors of Carolina, 24 March.[772] In 1665 (June 30) the second charter extended the limits of the grant. Both charters are found in a volume printed in London, but without date, and called The two Charters granted by King Charles to the Proprietors of Carolina, with the first and last Fundamental Constitutions of that Colony. Issues of this book seem to have been made in 1698, 1705, 1706, 1708, etc.[773]

Mr. Fox Bourne, who in his Life of John Locke (London, 1876, vol. i. pp. 235, etc.) gives the most satisfactory account of Locke’s connection with the new colony, writes of the Fundamental Constitutions that Locke had a large share in it, though there can be hardly any doubt that it was initiated by Lord Ashley, modified by his fellow-proprietors. He adds: “The original draft, a small vellum-covered volume of seventy-five pages, neatly written, but with numerous erasures and corrections, is preserved among the Shaftesbury Papers (series viii. no. 3), and this interesting document has been printed, verbatim et literatim, by Mr. Sainsbury, in the Appendix to the Thirty-third report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records (1872), pp. 258-269.”

The same author refers to a draft extant in Locke’s handwriting, dated 21 June, 1669, which varies in some respects from that later issued by the Proprietors, in print.

There is, or was, in 1845, in the Charleston Library, presented to it by Robert Gilmor, of Baltimore, in 1833, a MS. copy in Locke’s own handwriting, dated July 14, 1669; but the earliest printed copy is one entitled thus: The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, in number a Hundred and Twenty, agreed upon by the Palatine and Lords Proprietors, to remain the sacred and unalterable form and rule of government of Carolina forever. March 1, 1669.[774] Printed first in 1670, the document was reissued, with some modifications, in 1682, and again, with more important modifications, in 1698.[775] It is also contained in A Collection of several pieces of Mr. John Locke, never before printed, and not extant in his works. London, 1720.[776]

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It would seem from a map which is given in fac-simile in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, December, 1883 (p. 402), that it describes the “Discovery made by William Hilton of Charles Towne in New England, Marriner, from Cape Hatteraske, Lat: 35° 30′, to the west of Cape Roman in Lat. 32° 30′, In y^e yeare 1662, And laid down in the forme as you see by Nicholas Shapley of the town aforesaid, November, 1662.” A small sketch of the map, which is annexed, shows that he passed along the islands which form a barrier to Pamlico Sound, without noticing, or at least indicating, that interior water, and then entering Cape Fear River tracked its shores up to a point where he designated three branches, which he called East, North, and West. The fac-simile given in the Proceedings by Mr. Hassam, from a photograph of the original in the British Museum,[777] is too obscure to make out all the names which occur along the river, while only “Hatterask” and “C. Romana” are noted on the coast. The intervening points, Cape Lookout and Cape Fear, are not named.

Hilton had come to Plymouth (Mass.) while a child, in 1623, whence he followed his father to Piscataqua, but later settled in Newbury and Charlestown, and in the latter place he died in 1675. Shapley is supposed to have been the same who was clerk of the writs in Charlestown in 1662, dying in that town in May, 1663. Although the New England antiquary, James Savage, and others have not supposed this Massachusetts Hilton to have been the same who led the Barbadoes party to Cape Fear the next year, this map and its record would seem to indicate that when the merchants of that island determined to accept the proposals of the Proprietors of Carolina to furnish them with colonists, they placed the expedition which they sent out in August, 1663, under the charge of one who had already explored parts of this coast,—no other than this William Hilton of New England. This exploring party landed at St. Helena and Edisto, and returned to Barbadoes after an absence of five months. Hilton’s True Relation was published in London in 1664.[778]

SHAPLEY’S DRAFT.

The year before (1663), according to Hawks,[779] the Proprietors had issued proposals for the encouragement of settlers within their grant, and we have, as Mr. Rivers has stated, the outcome of the Sandford expedition (1665) preserved in a manuscript among the Shaftesbury Papers, and the results of this seem to have been embodied in what is considered a second and expanded edition of their original proposals, which was now published in London, in 1666,—a mere tract of twelve pages, called A brief description of the Province of Carolina, on the coasts of Floreda; and more perticularly of a New[338] Plantation begun by the English at Cape Feare on that river now by them called Charles-River, the 29th of May, 1664. Together with a most accurate map of the whole province.[780]

A SKETCH OF THE 1666 MAP.

As indicative of the changes in the North Carolina coast since it was first explored, Mr. Wm. L. Welsh (Bulletin Essex Institute, xvii. nos. 1, 2, and 3, and separately Salem, 1885), in a paper called An Account of the cutting through of Hatteras Inlet, Sept. 7, 1846, says that the present inlet of that name was made by the storm of that date, and that the explorers of 1584 entered through Caffey inlet, since disappeared, and that all the inlets of that day are closed, except the little-used Ocracoke inlet.

It was under the incentive of Sandford’s explorations and this districting of the country that the Proprietors entered upon the expedition which reached the Ashley River in 1670, for whose guidance Locke had prepared his plan of government. The more common knowledge of the geography of the Carolina coast at this time is seen in the map of North Carolina in Ogilby’s America (1671), which is reproduced in Hawks’ North Carolina (ii. p. 53).

In 1671 Sir Peter Colleton wrote to Locke that Ogilby was printing a “Relation of the West Indies,” and desired a map of Carolina, and asked Locke to get the drafts of Cape Fear and Albemarle from “my lord,” and suggest to him also “to draw up a discourse to be added to this map, in the nature of a description such as might invite people without seeming to come from us, as would very much conduce to the speedy settlement.” There remains, in Locke’s handwriting, a list of books to be consulted for this task, but otherwise he does not seem to have done anything to produce such a description.

Meanwhile another explorer had approached this region from the north, entering a country which no European had visited since the incursions of Lane’s company in the preceding century. We have record of this expedition in a tract of the following title: The discoveries of John Lederer in three several marches from Virginia to the west of Carolina, March, 1669-Sept., 1670. Collected out of the latine from his discourse and writings by Sir William Talbot. London, 1672.[781]

[339]

LEDERER’S MAP (1669-1670).

Fac-simile of the original in the Harvard College library copy. There is a sketch of it in Hawks’ North Carolina, ii. 52.

[340]

Lederer was a German, and was sent out by Governor Berkeley, of Virginia. He seems to have penetrated westward “to the top of the Apalatœan mountains.” He announced his disbelief in the views of such as held the distance from the Atlantic to the Pacific to be but eight or ten days’ journey, as shown in the “Mapp of Virginia discovered to the Hills,”[782] but was nevertheless inclined to believe that the Indian ocean may indeed stretch an arm into the continent as far as the Appalachian range.

It was on the second of Lederer’s expeditions, going west and southwest from the falls of the James, that he extended his course into North Carolina, and Hawks has endeavored to trace his track. Following him by his names of places, as Ogilby adopted them in his map of 1671, Lederer would appear to have traversed the breadth of South Carolina. “We cannot believe this,” says Dr. Hawks. “The time occupied would not have been sufficient for it. Lederer’s itinerary presents difficulties which we confess we cannot satisfactorily solve.” It seems at least certain that Lederer did not penetrate far enough to encounter the new-comers who were about founding the commonwealth of Locke.

The earliest account which we have of the English settlers at Port Royal, before their removal to the west bank of the Ashley River, is in Thomas Ash’s Carolina, or a description of the present state of that country. London, 1682. The author was clerk on board his majesty’s ship “Richmond,” which was on the coast 1680-82, “with instructions to enquire into the state of the country.”[783]

During the next few years several brief accounts of the new settlements were printed which deserve to be named: Samuel Wilson’s anonymous Account of the Province of Carolina in America; together with an abstract of the Patent and several other necessary and useful particulars, to such as have thoughts of transporting themselves thither. London, 1682 (text, 26 pp.).[784] John Crafford’s anonymous New and most exact Account of the fertile and famous Colony of Carolina.... The whole being a compendious account of a voyage made by an ingenious person, begun Oct., 1682, and finished 1683. Dublin, 1683.[785] Crafford is called supercargo of the ship “James of Erwin.”

Carolina described more fully than heretofore ... from the several relations, ... from divers letters from the Irish settled there and relations of those who have been there several years. Dublin, 1684.[786]

The first edition of Blome’s Present state of his majesty’s isles and territories in America, London, 1687,[787] gave “A new map of Carolina by Robert Morden” (p. 150), and through translations it became a popular book throughout Europe, and did something to bring the new colony to their attention.

Courtenay, in the Charleston Year Book, 1883, p. 377, gives a fac-simile of a map (with a corner map of Charlestown and vicinity) which marks the lots of settlers, and is thought by him to be earlier than 1700.

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For the next fifteen years there is little in print about the history of Carolina; but not long after 1700, the attempt of the High-Church party, led by Nicholas Trott, the chief justice, and James Moore, to enforce conformity produced a controversy not without results.

MORDEN’S CAROLINA (1687.)

Cf. “A Generall Mapp of Carolina describeing its Sea Coast and Rivers. London, printed for Ric. Blome,” which appeared in Blome’s Description of the Island of Jamaica, with the other Isles and Territories in America, to which the English are related. London, 1678.

The establishment of the “Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,” which had been chartered June 16, 1701, had given a certain impulse to the movement; and the society had its historiographer in David Humphreys, who in 1730 published at London his Historical Account[788] of it. This and the abstracts of the early reports of[342] the society, published with their anniversary sermons, afford data of its work in the colonies.

The first Episcopal church had been built in Charlestown about 1681-2, and its history and that of those later founded in the province, as well as of the movement at this time in progress, can be followed in Frederick D. Dalcho’s Historical Account of the Protestant Episcopal Church in South Carolina, from the First Settlement of the Province to the War of the Revolution; with Notices of the Present State of the Church in each Parish, and some Account of the Early Civil History of Carolina never before published. (Charleston, 1820.)[789]

The early years of the century were distinguished by the sharp retaliatory attacks of the Carolinians and the neighboring Spanish. The letter which Colonel Moore sent to the governor respecting his plundering incursion into Florida is fortunately printed in the Boston News-Letter, May 1, 1704, whence Carroll copied it for his Hist. Collections (ii. 573). Of this and of later attacks, we can add something from the Report of the committee of the South Carolina Assembly, in 1740, on Oglethorpe’s subsequent failure, and from the narratives of Archdale and Oldmixon, later to be mentioned. Of the French and Spanish naval attack on Charlestown in 1706,[790] Mr. Doyle, in his English in America, says that the MS. reports preserved in the Colonial Papers confirm the contemporary account (Sept. 13, 1706) printed in the Boston News-Letter, and the statements in the Report of 1740 on Oglethorpe’s later defeat at St. Augustine. The News-Letter account was reprinted in the Carolina Gazette, at a later day.

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PLAN OF CHARLESTOWN, 1704. (Survey of Edward Crisp.)

The Key: A, Granville bastion. B, Craven bastion. C, Carteret bastion. D, Colleton bastion. E, Ashley bastion. F, Blake’s bastion. G, Half-moon. H, Draw-bridge. I, Johnson’s covered half-moon. K, Draw-bridge. L, Palisades. M, Lieut.-Col. Rhett’s bridge. N. Smith’s bridge. O, Minister’s house. P, English Church. Q, French Church. R, Independent Church. S, Anabaptist Church. T, Quaker meeting-house. V, Court of guard. W, First rice patch in Carolina.—Owners of houses as follows: 1, Pasquero and Garret. 2, Landsack. 3, Jno. Crosskeys. 4, Chevelier. 5, Geo. Logan. 6, Poinsett. 7, Elicott. 8, Starling. 9, M. Boone. 10, Tradds. 11, Nat. Law. 12, Landgrave Smith. 13, Col. Rhett. 14, Ben. Skenking. 15, Sindery.

This same map is one of the three side maps given in H. Moll’s Map of the Dominions of the King of Great Britain in America, 1715. It is repeated in Ramsay’s South Carolina, vol. ii., and in Cassell’s United States, i. 432.]

[344]

Rivers points out that Ramsay (i. 135) adds a few details, perhaps from tradition. Professor Rivers had earlier contributed to Russell’s Mag. (Charleston, Aug., 1859, p. 458) a paper from the London State Paper Office, entitled “An impartial narrative of y^e late invasion of So. Carolina by y^e French and Spanish in the month of August, 1706.” Governor John Archdale printed at London, in 1707, A new Description of that fertile and pleasant province of Carolina, with a brief account of its discovery, settling, and the government thereof (pp. 32).[791]

The next year (1708) we have an account of the condition of the colony in a letter signed by Sir Nathaniel Johnson, and dated September 17. It is quoted in large part by Rivers in his Sketches.[792] The name of John Oldmixon (died in England in 1742) is signed to the dedication of the British Empire in America, London, 1708, and it passes under his name. A second corrected and amended edition appeared in 1741.[793] Herman Moll made the maps which it contains, including one of Carolina, and some have supposed that he wrote the text. Dr. Hawks says of the book that it contains almost as many errors as pages, and unsupported is not to be trusted (ii. p. 481).

In 1708 John Stevens began in London to issue in numbers a work, which when completed in 1710 and 1711 (copies have both dates) was called A new Collection of Voyages and Travels into several parts of the world, none of which ever before printed in English. The second of this series, “printed in the year 1709,” was A new Voyage to Carolina, containing the exact description and natural history of that country, together with the present state thereof and a Journal of a thousand miles travel’d thro’ several nations of Indians, giving a particular account of their customs, manners, etc., by John Lawson, Gent., Surveyor-General of North Carolina. Other issues of the same sheets, with new title-pages, are dated 1714 and 1718.[794]

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Lawson was a young Englishman, who arrived in Charleston in September, 1700. After a few months’ tarry in that settlement, he started with five white men and four Indians, and went by canoe to the Santee, where he turned inland afoot, and as he journeyed put down what he saw and experienced. In North Carolina he was made Surveyor-General, and this appointment kept him roaming over the country, during which he came much in contact with the Indians, and made, as Field says,[795] acute and trustworthy observations of them. With this life he practised a literary craft, and wrote out his experiences in a book which was taken to London to be printed,—an “uncommonly strong and sprightly book,” as Professor Tyler calls it.[796] His vocation of land-surveyor was not one calculated to endear him to the natives, who saw that the compass and the chain always harbingered new claims upon their lands. Three years after his book had been printed he was on a journey (1712) through the wilds with the Baron de Graffenreid, when the two were seized by the Tuscaroras, who suffered the German to agree for his release. The Englishman, however, was burned with pine splinters stuck in his flesh, as is generally believed, though Colonel Byrd, in his History of the dividing line between Virginia and Carolina, says he was waylaid and his throat cut.[797]

[346]

WAR MAP, 1711-1715.

[347]

Of about this time we also find a number of tracts, incentives to and records of German and Swiss emigration.[798] For the Carey rebellion and the Indian war of 1711,[799] Hawks used a transcript from an early copy of Governor Spotswood’s letter-book, which had been in his family and was placed by him in the State Department of North Carolina, where it had apparently originally belonged. In 1882, the Virginia Historical Society published the first volume of the Spotswood letters, and the student finds this material easily accessible now.[800]

In 1715 the General Assembly of North Carolina revised and reënacted the body of statute law then in force,[801] and twelve MS. copies were made, one for each precinct court. About a quarter of a century ago, says Mr. Swain, the State Historical Agent, in his Report of 1857, two of these copies, moth-eaten and mutilated, were discovered, and about 1854 a third copy, likewise imperfect, was found. From these three copies the body of laws was reconstructed for the State Library.

The authorities for the Yamassee war of 1715-16, so far as printed, are the account in the Boston News-Letter (June 13, 1715), reprinted in Carroll (ii. 569), where (ii. 141) as well as in Force’s Tracts (vol. ii.) is one of the chief authorities for this and for that other struggle which shook off the rule of the Proprietors, published in London in 1726, under the title of A narrative of the Proceedings of the People of South Carolina in the year 1719, and of the true causes and motives that induced them to renounce their obedience to the Lords Proprietors, as their governors, and to put themselves under the immediate government of the Crown.[802] Yonge, who professes to write in this tract from original papers, is thus made of importance as an authority, since in 1719 the records of South Carolina seem to have been embezzled, as Rivers infers from an act of February, 1719-20, whose purpose was to recover them “from such as now have the custody thereof,” and they are not known to exist. We get the passions of the period in The liberty and property of British subjects asserted: in a letter from an assembly-man in Carolina to his friend in London. London, 1726.[803] It is signed N., and is dated at Charleston, January 15, 1725, and sustains the discontents, in their criticism of the Proprietary government. The preface, written in London, gives a history of the colony.

In 1729 all of the Proprietors, except Lord Granville, surrendered their title in the soil to the Crown;[804] and in 1744 his eighth part was set off to him,[805] being a region sixty-six miles from north to south, adjoining the southern line of Virginia and running from sea to sea. Lord Granville retained this title down to the Revolution, and after that event he endeavored to reëstablish his claim in the Circuit and Supreme Courts, till his death, during the continuance of the war of 1812, closed proceedings.

Meanwhile some sustained efforts were making to induce a Swiss immigration to South Carolina. Jean Pierre Purry, a leader among them, printed in London in 1724 a tract, which is very rare: Mémoire presenté à sa Gr. Mylord Duc de Newcastle sur l’état présent de la Caroline et sur les moyens de l’ameliorer. Londres, 1724.[806] In 1880 Colonel C. C. Jones, Jr., privately printed an English version of it at Augusta, Georgia, as a Memorial ... upon the present condition of Carolina and the means of its amelioration by Jean Pierre Purry of Neufchâtel, Switzerland.

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The Gentleman’s Magazine of August, September, and October, 1732, contained an English rendering of a description of Carolina, drawn up by Purry and others, at Charlestown in September, 1731. This last paper has been included by Carroll in his Historical Collections (vol. ii.), and by Force in his Tracts (vol. ii.).[807] Purry’s tracts were in the interest of immigration, and his and their influence seem to have induced a considerable number of Swiss to proceed to Carolina, where they formed a settlement called Purrysburg on the east side of the Savannah River. Hardships, malaria, and unwonted conditions of life discouraged them, and their settlement was not long continued.[808]

Bernheim, German Settlements in Carolina (p. 99), points out how the busy distribution of the rose-colored reports of Purry doubtless also led to the German and Swiss settlement at Orangeburg, S. C., in 1735, the history of which he derives from the journals of the council of the province in the state archives, and from those church record-books, which are preserved. It is to Bernheim we must look for the best accounts of the other German settlements in different parts of the province.

In 1851 the Lutheran synod of South Carolina put the Rev. G. D. Bernheim in charge of its records, and in 1858 he began to collect the minutes of the synod of North Carolina, and to interest himself generally in the history of the German settlements of both States. From 1861 to 1864 he printed much of the material which he had gathered in the Southern Lutheran. He found that the writers in English of the histories of the Carolinas had largely neglected this part of the story, perhaps from unacquaintance with the tongue in which the records of the early German settlers are written. The settlements of these people at Newbern and Salem had not indeed been overlooked; but their plantations in the central and western parts of the State, comprising more than three fourths of the German population, had been neglected. In the histories of South Carolina the settlements of Purrysburg and Hard Labor Creek had alone been traced with attention. In 1872 Mr. Bernheim recast his material into a History of the German settlements and of the Lutheran church in North and South Carolina, from the earliest period [to 1850], and published it at Philadelphia. It may be supplemented by a little volume, The Moravians in North Carolina, by Rev. Levin T. Reichell, Salem, N. C. 1857.[809]

We find some assistance in fixing for this period the extent of the domination of the English Church in a map which accompanies David Humphreys’ Historical Account of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, London, 1730, which is called “Map of the Province of Carolina, divided into its parishes, according to the latest accounts, 1730, by H. Moll, geographer.” It has a corner “map of the most improved parts of [South] Carolina,” which shows the parish churches and the English and Indian settlements. A fac-simile of this lesser map is annexed. George Howe’s History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina, from 1685 to 1800, Columbia, S. C., 1870, is another local monograph of interest in the religious development of the province.[810]

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INDIAN MAP, 1730.

In the Kohl collection (no. 220). The original is in the British Museum, describing the situation of the Indian tribes in the northwest parts of South Carolina, and drawn by an Indian chief on a deer-skin, and presented to Gov. Nicholson.

The Huguenot element in Carolina became an important one, and as early as 1737 these French founded in Charleston the “South Carolina Society,” a benevolent organization, which in 1837 celebrated its centennial, the memory of which is preserved in a descriptive pamphlet published at Charleston in that year, containing an oration by J. W. Toomer, and an appendix of historical documents. There is no considerable account yet published of these Carolina Huguenots, and the student must content himself with the scant narrative by Charles Weiss, as given in the translation of his book by H. W. Herbert, History of the French Protestant Refugees (New York, 1854), which has, in addition to the narrative in Book iv. on refugees in America, an appendix on American Huguenots, not, however, very skilfully arranged. There is a similar appendix by G. P. Disosway[811] at the close of Samuel Smiles’ Huguenots (New York, 1868); and briefer accounts in Mrs. H. F. S. Lee’s Huguenots in France and America (Cambridge, 1843, vol. ii. ch. 29), and in Reginald Lane Poole’s History of the Huguenots of the Dispersion (London, 1880).[812]

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Professor Rivers contributed to Russell’s Magazine (Charleston, Sept., 1859) a paper on “The Carolina regiment in the expedition against St. Augustine in 1740.”

The natural aspects of the country, as they became better known, we get from Mark Catesby’s Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, etc., which was published in London, from 1732 to 1748, and again in 1754;[813] and a German translation appeared at Nuremberg in 1755. The English text was revised in the second edition by Edwards, and again printed at London in 1771.

The files of the early newspapers of the Carolinas afford needful, if scant, material. Thomas, in his History of Printing, records all there was. The South Carolina Gazette, beginning in January, 1731-2, was published for little more than a year as a weekly; but this title was resuscitated in new hands in February, 1734, when the new journal of this name continued its weekly issues up to the Revolutionary period. No other paper was begun in that province till 1758, when a new weekly, the South Carolina and American General Gazette, was started. Three years before this, the first paper had been established at Newbern, The North Carolina Gazette, which lived for about six years.

To Governor Glen is attributed A description of South Carolina, which was printed in London in 1761,[814] and is reprinted in Carroll’s Historical Collections, vol. ii. It gives the civil, natural, and commercial history of the colony. It is the completest survey which had up to this time been printed.

In the war with the Cherokees some imputations were put upon the South Carolina rangers, under Henry Middleton, by Grant, the commander of the expeditions against those Indians; and this charge did not pass unchallenged, as would seem from a tract published in 1762 at Charleston, entitled Some Observations on the two Campaigns against the Cherokee Indians in 1760 and 1761.[815]

For the geography of this period we have two maps in the New and complete History of the British Empire in America, an anonymous publication which was issued in parts in London, beginning in 1757. One is a map of Virginia and North Carolina, the other of South Carolina and Georgia, both stretching their western limits beyond the Mississippi.

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THE SOUTH CAROLINA COAST.

Cf. the Carolina of Moll in his New Survey, no. 26 (1729), and a reproduction of Moll in Cassell’s United States, i. 439. A map of Carolina and Charlestown harbor (1742) is in the English Pilot, no. 19.

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At the very end of the period of which we are now writing the MS. description of South Carolina by the engineer William De Brahm, which is preserved in the library of Harvard University, becomes of importance for its topographical account, and its plans and maps, executed with much care. It is included in a volume, containing also similar descriptions of Georgia and Florida, which portions are noticed in the following chapter. There are transcripts of this document which have an early date,[816] and some at least have a title different from the Harvard one, and are called A Philosophico-historico-Hydrography of South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida. From such a one, which is without the drawings, that portion relating to South Carolina was printed in London in 1856, by Mr. Plowden Charles Jennett Weston, in a volume of Documents connected with the History of South Carolina. An engraved map by De Brahm, Map of South Carolina and a part of Georgia, composed from surveys taken by Hon. Wm. Bull, Capt. Gascoigne, Hugh Bryan, and William De Brahm, published in four sheets by Jefferys, also appeared in the General Topography of North America and the West Indies, London, 1768. The map itself is dated Oct. 20, 1757, and gives tables of names of proprietors of land in Georgia and Carolina.[817]

The earliest account of the history of South Carolina cast in a sustained retrospective spirit is the anonymous Historical Account of the rise and progress of the Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia (London, 1779), which is known to have been prepared by Dr. Alexander Hewatt,—as his signature seems to fix the spelling of his name, though in the bibliographical records it appears under various forms.[818] Carroll, in reprinting the book in the first volume of his Historical Collections, added many emendatory notes.[819] The next year (1780) produced a far more important book, in respect to authority, in George Chalmers’ Political Annals of the Present United Colonies, from their Settlement to the Peace of 1763 (London), the first volume of which, however, was the only one published.[820] Chalmers, who was born in 1742, had practised law in Maryland, but he could not sympathize with the revolution, and at the outbreak returned to England, where in time (August, 1786) he became the clerk of the Board of Trade and died in office, May 31, 1825, at the age of eighty-two.

When Williamson was engaged on his History of North Carolina (i. p. 9), he applied for assistance to Chalmers, whose Political Annals shows that he had access to papers not otherwise known at that time, but was refused. Grahame, in his Colonial History of the United States (i. p. xii.), says he got ready access to Chalmers’ papers, but as he disclosed in his text little new, it was conjectured that before Grahame’s opportunity much had passed out of Chalmers’ hands. Sparks, in a letter (1856) to Mr. Swain, the historical agent of North Carolina, says of Chalmers that “he undoubtedly procured nearly the whole of his materials from the archives of the Board of Trade. His papers, after having been bound in volumes, were sold by his nephew a few years ago (1843) in London. I purchased six volumes of them, relating mostly to New England. They are not important, being memoranda, references, and extracts, used in writing his Annals.”[821] Two large volumes of Chalmers’ notes and transcripts also came into the hands of George Bancroft, and were entrusted by him to the care of Dr. Hawks and Mr. Rivers, when they were at work upon their histories of North and South Carolina. Bancroft, from his own use of them, and of Chalmers’ printed Annals, and speaking particularly of the Culpepper revolution (1678), in the original edition (ii. p. 162) of his United States, says: “Chalmers’ account in all cases of the kind must be received with great hesitancy. The coloring is always wrong; the facts usually perverted. He writes like a lawyer and disappointed politician, not like a calm inquirer. His statements are copied by Grahame,[822] obscured by Martin, and, strange to say, exaggerated by Williamson.[353]” Dr. William Smyth, in his Lectures on Modern History, calls the work of Chalmers an “immense, heavy, tedious book, to explain the legal history of the different colonies; it should be consulted in all such points, but it is impossible to read it.”[823]

Near the close of the Revolutionary War Chalmers began the printing of another work, a succinct sketch of the history of the colonies. A very few copies exist of the first volume, which is without title or preliminary matter, and in the copy before us a blank leaf contains a manuscript title in Chalmers’ own handwriting as follows: An Introduction to the History of the Colonies, giving from the State Papers a comprehensive view of the origin of their Revolt. By George Chalmers, Vol. I. Printed in 1782, But suppressed. This volume, beginning with the reign of James I. and ending with that of George I., was the only one printed. The present copy[824] is marked as being the one from which Mr. Sparks printed an edition published in Boston in 1845,[825] in which the preface says that the original issue was suppressed, “owing to the separation of the colonies, which happened just at the season for publication, December, 1782, or the prior cause in April precedent, the dismission of a tory administration.”[826]

When Chalmers’ papers were sold, a manuscript continuation of this Introduction in the handwriting of the author was found, completely revised and prepared for the press. When Sparks reprinted the single volume already referred to, he added this second part to complete the work, and it was carefully carried through the press by John Langdon Sibley. Sparks in his introductory statements speaks of the book as “deduced for the most part from the State Papers in the British offices, or to speak with more precision, from the confidential correspondence of the governors and other officers of the Crown in the colonies.” In regard to its suppression he adds that “no political ends could now be answered by its publication, and it is probable that he thought it more politic to sacrifice the pride and fame of authorship than to run the hazard of offending the ministers.”[827]

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Of the later histories it is most convenient to treat each province separately, as will be done in the annexed note.

NOTE.

The Later Histories of the Carolinas.

I. North Carolina.—The first published of the general accounts of this State was the History of North Carolina, by Hugh Williamson,[828] at Philadelphia, in 1812, in two volumes. Dr. Hawks, the later historian, says (ii. p. 540) that North Carolinians do not recognize Williamson’s work as a history of their State. It is inaccurate in a great many particulars, and sometimes when there is proof that the original record was lying before him. Sparks calls it “meagre and unsatisfactory,” and adds that it contains but few facts, and these apparently the most unimportant of such as had fallen in his way.[829] More care and discrimination, though but little literary interest, characterized another writer. François Xavier Martin had a singular career. He was born in Marseilles, became a bankrupt in Martinique, went friendless to Newbern, in North Carolina, and rose to distinction as a jurist, after beginning his career in the State as a translator and vendor of French stories. He had removed to Louisiana, when he published at New Orleans his History of North Carolina, in 1829 (two volumes), and in that State he rose to be chief justice, and published a history of it, as we have seen. Martin’s accumulation of facts carries no advantage by any sort of correlation except that of dates. A painstaking search, as far as his opportunities permitted, and a perspicuous way of writing stand for the work’s chief merits. He stops at the Declaration of Independence. Up to Martin’s time Bancroft[830][355] might well speak of the carelessness with which the history of North Carolina had been written.

Next came John H. Wheeler’s Historical Sketches of North Carolina from 1584 to 1851, compiled from original records, official documents, and traditional statements, with biographical sketches of her distinguished Statesmen, Jurists, Lawyers, Soldiers, etc., Philadelphia, 1851. It is not unfairly characterized by Mr. C. K. Adams, in his Manual of Historical Reference (p. 559), as “a jumble of ill-digested material, rather a collection of tables, lists, and facts than a history.”

David L. Swain,[831] who had been governor of the State, had done much to collect transcripts of documents from the archives of the other States and from England, and in 1857, as historical agent of the State, he made a report, which was printed at Raleigh, in which, speaking of the statutes at large, which Virginia and South Carolina had published, he referred to “both of these collections, especially the former, the earlier and better work, as deeply interesting in connection with North Carolina history.”

Of the History of North Carolina, by Francis Lister Hawks, D. D., LL. D., the second volume, published at Fayetteville in 1858, covers the period of the Proprietary government from 1663 to 1729, the first volume being given to the Raleigh period, etc. He availed himself of the fullest permission by state and local authorities to profit by the records within his own State; and he had earlier himself procured in London many copies of documents there. The author claims that more than three fourths of this volume has been prepared from original authorities, existing in manuscript. He tells at greater length than others the story of the law and its administration, of the industrial and agricultural arts, navigation and trade, religion and learning.

The latest local treatment is that of Mr. John W. Moore’s History of North Carolina from the earliest discoveries to the present time, Raleigh, 1880, in two volumes. There is not much attempt at original research, and he does not reprint documentary material, as Hawks did, in too great profusion to make a popular book. Mr. Moore aims to give a better literary form to the story; but his style somewhat overlays his facts.

II. South Carolina.—To turn to the more southern province,—Dr. David Ramsay, who was a respectable physician from Pennsylvania, domiciled and married in Charleston, gained some reputation in his day as a practised writer, and as an historical scholar of zeal and judgment. He published first, in 1796, a Sketch of the Soil, Climate, etc., of South Carolina; and later, in 1809, at Charleston, a History of South Carolina, 1670-1808, in which he made good use of Hewatt, as far as he was available.

In 1836 Carroll republished many of the early printed tracts upon South Carolina history in his two volumes of Historical Collections. Referring to this publication, a writer in the Southern Quarterly Review, Jan., 1852, p. 185, says: “But for a timely appropriation by the legislature of two thousand dollars for his relief, Carroll would have been seriously the sufferer by his experiment on public taste and sectional patriotism.”

Grahame in 1836 had published the first edition of his Colonial History of the United States, including the early history of the Carolinas, and Bancroft, in 1837, published the second volume of his History of the Colonization of the United States, and in chapter xiii. he discussed how Shaftesbury and Locke legislated for South Carolina,—a chapter considerably changed in his last edition (1883).

The South Carolina novelist, William G. Simms, first published a small history of the State in 1840, which served for school use. This he revised in 1860 as a History of South Carolina, which was published in New York. It was spirited, but too scant of detail for scholarly service.[832]

The South Carolina Historical Society was formed in 1855, Mr. Rivers, the writer of the preceding chapter, being one of the originators. The first volume of their Collections, published in 1857, contained, beside an opening address by Professor F. A. Porcher, the beginning of a list and abstracts of papers in the State Paper Office, London, relating to South Carolina. This enumeration was continued in the second and third volumes.[833] There are also in the second volume, beside Petigru’s oration, a paper on the French Protestants of the Abbeville district, an oration [356]by J. B. Cohen, and O. M. Lieber’s vocabulary of the Catawba language. In vol. iii. we find an oration by W. H. Trescott. No further volumes have been printed.

Mr. Rivers’ Sketch of the History of South Carolina to the Close of the Proprietary Government by the Revolution of 1719, published in Charleston in 1856, was continued by him in A Chapter in the Early History of South Carolina, published at Charleston in 1874, which largely consists of explanatory original documents. This section of a second volume of his careful history was all that the author had accomplished towards completing the work, when the civil war of 1861 “rendered him unable to continue its preparation.” Mr. Rivers says, in a note in this supplementary chapter, that an examination of the records at Columbia has shown him that, to perfect this additional task, it would be necessary to make examination among the records of the State-Paper Office in London.

Of these latter records Mr. Fox Bourne, in his Life of John Locke (London, 1876), says: “Locke’s connection with the affairs of the colony lasted only through its earliest infancy. Down to the autumn of 1672 he continued his informal office of secretary to the Proprietors. Nearly every letter received from the colony is docketed by him; and of a great number that have disappeared there exist careful epitomes in his handwriting. We have also drafts, entered by him, of numerous letters sent out from England, and his hand is plainly shown in other letters. Out of this material it would be easy to construct almost the entire history of the colony during the first years of its existence.”

It was some time before the period of Mr. Fox Bourne’s writing that the Earl of Shaftesbury deposited with the deputy keeper of the Public Records the collection of documents known as the Shaftesbury Papers, the accumulation which had been formed in the hands of his ancestor, and which yield so much material for the early history of the Carolina government.[834]

The latest use made of these and other papers of the State-Paper Office is found in The English in America, Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas (London, 1882), written by Mr. John A. Doyle, librarian of All Souls, Oxford. In a note to his chapter on the “Two Carolinas,” Doyle says (p. 427), respecting the material for Carolinian history in the English archives: “To make up for the deficiency of printed authorities, the English archives are unusually rich in papers referring to Carolina. There are letters and instructions from the Proprietors, individually and collectively, and reports sent to them by successive governors and other colonial officials. It is remarkable, however, that while we have such abundant material of this kind, there is a great lack of records of the actual proceedings of the local legislatures in North and South Carolina. In North Carolina we have no formal record of legislative proceedings during the seventeenth century. In South Carolina they are but few and scanty till after the overthrow of the Proprietary government.[835] Moreover, the early archives of Carolina, though abundant, are necessarily somewhat confused. The northern and southern colonies, while practically distinct, were under the government of a single corporation, and thus the documents relating to each are most inextricably mixed up. Again, while the Proprietors were the governing body, the colonies in some measure came under the supervision of the Lords of Trade and Plantations, and at a later day of the Board of Trade. Thus much which concerns the colony is to be found in the entry books of the latter body, while the Proprietary documents themselves are to be found partly among the colonial papers,[836] partly in a special department containing the Shaftesbury Papers.”

In the Fifth Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission there is a calendar of the Shelburne Papers, belonging to the Marquis of Lansdowne, which shows a considerable number of documents of interest in the history of Carolina: as, for instance (p. 215), Governor Barrington’s account of the State of North Carolina, January 1, 1732-33; Governor Glen’s answers with respect to inquiries about South Carolina; an offer (p. 218) of a treaty for the sale of Lord Granville’s district in North Carolina to the Crown, signed by the second Lord Granville; and (p. 228, etc.) various reports of law officers of the Crown on questions arising in the government of the colonies.

CHAPTER VI.

THE ENGLISH COLONIZATION OF GEORGIA.

1733-1752.

BY CHARLES C. JONES, JR., LL. D.

ACTING under the orders of Admiral Coligny, Captain Ribault, before selecting a location for his fort and planting his Huguenot colony near the mouth of Port Royal, traversed what is now known as the Georgia coast, observed its harbors, and named several of the principal rivers emptying into the Atlantic Ocean.[837] “It was a fayre coast, stretchyng of a great length, couered with an infinite number of high and fayre trees.” The waters “were boyling and roaring, through the multitude of all kind of fish.” The inhabitants were “all naked and of a goodly stature, mightie, and as well shapen and proportioned of body as any people in ye world; very gentle, courteous, and of a good nature.” Lovingly entertained were these strangers by the natives, and they were, in the delightful spring-time, charmed with all they beheld. As they viewed the country they pronounced it the “fairest, fruitfullest, and pleasantest of all the world, abounding in hony, venison, wilde foule, forests, woods of all sorts, Palm-trees, Cypresse, and Cedars, Bayes ye highest and greatest; with also the fayrest vines in all the world, with grapes according, which, without natural art and without man’s helpe or trimming, will grow to toppes of Okes and other trees that be of a wonderfull greatness and height. And the sight of the faire medowes is a pleasure not able to be expressed with tongue: full of Hernes, Curlues, Bitters, Mallards, Egrepths, Wood-cocks, and all other kinds of small birds; with Harts, Hindes, Buckes, wilde Swine, and all other kindes of wilde beastes, as we perceiued well, both by their footing there, and also afterwardes in other places by their crie and roaring in the night.... Also there be Conies and Hares, Silk Wormes in merueilous number, a great deale fairer and better than be our silk wormes. To be short, it is a thing vnspeakable to consider the thinges that bee scene there and shal be founde more and more in this incomperable lande, which, neuer yet broken with plough yrons, bringeth forth al things according to his first nature wherewith the eternall God indued it.”

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Enraptured with the delights of climate, forests, and waters, and transferring to this new domain names consecrated by pleasant associations at home, Captain Ribault called the River St. Mary the Seine, the Satilla the Somme, the Alatamaha the Loire, the Newport the Charante, the Great Ogeechee the Garonne, and the Savannah the Gironde. Two years afterward, when René de Laudonnière visited Ribault’s fort, he found it deserted. The stone pillar inscribed with the arms of France, which he had erected to mark the farthest confines of Charles IX.’s dominion in the Land of Flowers, was garlanded with wreaths. Offerings of maize and fruits lay at its base; and the natives, regarding the structure with awe and veneration, had elevated it into the dignity of a god.

As yet no permanent lodgment had been effected in the territory subsequently known as Georgia. The first Europeans who are known to have traversed it were Hernando de Soto and his companions, whose story has been told elsewhere.[838] The earliest grant of the lower part of the territory claimed by England under the discovery of Cabot, was made by His Majesty King Charles I., in the fifth year of his reign, to Sir Robert Heath, his attorney-general. In that patent it is called Carolina Florida, and the designated limits extended from the river Matheo in the thirtieth degree, to the river Passa Magna in the thirty-sixth degree of north latitude. There is good reason for the belief that actual possession was taken under this concession, and that, in the effort to colonize, considerable sums were expended by the proprietor and by those claiming under him. Whether this grant was subsequently surrendered, or whether it was vacated and declared null for non user or other cause, we are not definitely informed. Certain it is that King Charles II., in the exercise of his royal pleasure, issued to the Lords Proprietors of Carolina two grants of the same territory with some slight modifications of boundaries. The latter of these grants, bearing date the 30th of June in the seventeenth year of his reign, conveys to the Lords Proprietors that portion of the New World lying between the thirty-sixth and the twenty-ninth degrees of north latitude. While the English were engaged in peopling a part of the coast embraced within these specified limits, the Spaniards contented themselves with confirming their settlements at St. Augustine and a few adjacent points.

Although in 1670 England and Spain entered into stipulations for composing their differences in America,—stipulations which have since been known as the American Treaty,—the precise line of separation between Carolina and Florida was not defined. Between these powers disputes touching this boundary were not infrequent. In view of this unsettled condition of affairs, and in order to assert a positive claim to, and retain possession of, the debatable ground which neither party was willing either to relinquish or clearly to point out, the English established and maintained a small military post on the south end of Cumberland Island, where the river St. Mary empties its waters into the Atlantic.

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Apprehending that either the French or Spanish forces would take possession of the Alatamaha River, King George I. ordered General Nicholson, then governor of Carolina, with a company of one hundred men, to secure that river, as being within the bounds of South Carolina; and, at some suitable point, to erect a fort with an eye to the protection of His Majesty’s possessions in that quarter and the control of the navigation of that stream. That fort was placed near the confluence of the Oconee and Ocmulgee rivers, and was named Fort George.

Although by the treaty of Seville commissioners were appointed to determine the northern boundary line of Florida, which should form the southern limit of South Carolina, no definite conclusion was reached, and the question remained open and a cause of quarrel until the peace of 1763, when Spain ceded Florida to Great Britain.

In recalling the instances of temporary occupancy, by Europeans, of limited portions of the territory at a later period conveyed to the trustees for establishing the Colony of Georgia, we should not omit an allusion to the mining operations conducted by the Spaniards at an early epoch among the auriferous mountains of upper Georgia. Influenced by the representations made by the returned soldiers of De Soto’s expedition of the quantity of gold, silver, and pearls in the province of Cosa, Luis de Velasco dispatched his general, Tristan de Luna, to open communication with Cosa by the way of Pensacola Bay. Three hundred Spanish soldiers, equipped with mining tools, penetrated beyond the valley of the Coosa and passed the summer of 1560 in northern Georgia and the adjacent region. Juan Pardo was subsequently sent by Aviles, the first governor of Florida, to establish a fort at the foot of the mountains northwest of St. Augustine and in the province of the chief Coabá. It would seem, therefore, that the Spaniards at this early period were acquainted with, and endeavored to avail themselves of, the gold deposits in Cherokee Georgia.

By the German traveller Johannes Lederer[839] are we advised that these peoples in 1669 and 1670 were still working gold and silver mines in the Appalachian mountains; and Mr. James Moore assures us that twenty years afterward these mining operations were not wholly discontinued.

Thus, long before the advent of the English colonists, had the Spaniards sojourned, in earnest quest for precious metals, among the valleys and mountains of the Cherokees. Thus are we enabled to account for those traces of ancient mining observed and wondered at by the early settlers of upper Georgia,—operations of no mean significance, conducted by skilled hands and with metallic tools,—which can properly be referred neither to the Red Race nor to the followers of De Soto.

In June, 1717, Sir Robert Mountgomery secured from the Palatine and Lords Proprietors of the Province of Carolina a grant and release of all lands lying between the rivers Alatamaha and Savannah, with permission to form settlements south of the former stream. This territory was to[360] be erected into a distinct province, “with proper jurisdictions, privileges, prerogatives, and franchises, independent of and in no manner subject to the laws of South Carolina.” It was to be holden of the Lords Proprietors by Sir Robert, his heirs and assigns forever, under the name and title of the Margravate of Azilia. A yearly quit rent of a penny per acre for all lands “occupied, taken up, or run out,” was to be paid. Such payment, however, was not to begin until three years after the arrival of the first ships transporting colonists. In addition, Sir Robert covenanted to render to the Lords Proprietors one fourth part of all the gold, silver, and royal minerals which might be found within the limits of the ceded lands. Courts of justice were to be organized, and such laws enacted by the freemen of the Margravate as might conduce to the general good and in no wise conflict with the statutes and customs of England. The navigation of the rivers was to be free to all the inhabitants of the colonies of North and South Carolina. A duty similar to that sanctioned in South Carolina was to be laid on skins, and this revenue was to be appropriated to the maintenance of clergy. In consideration of this cession, Sir Robert engaged to transport at his own cost a considerable number of families, and all necessaries requisite for the support and comfort of settlers within the specified limits. It was understood that if settlements were not formed within three years from the date of the grant, it should become void.

In glowing terms did Sir Robert unfold the attractions of his future Eden “in the most delightful country of the Universe,” and boldly proclaim “that Paradise with all her virgin beauties may be modestly supposed at most but equal to its native excellencies.” After commending in the highest terms the woods and meadows, mines and odoriferous plants, soil and climate, fruits and game, streams and hills, flowers and agricultural capabilities, he exhibited an elaborate plan of the Margravate, in which he did not propose to satisfy himself “with building here and there a fort,—the fatal practice of America,—but so to dispose the habitations and divisions of the land that not alone our houses, but whatever we possess, will be inclosed by military lines impregnable against the savages, and which will make our whole plantation one continued fortress.”

Despite all efforts to induce immigration into this favored region, at the expiration of the three years allowed by the concession Sir Robert found himself without colonists. His grant expired and became void by the terms of its own limitations. His Azilia remained unpeopled save by the red men of the forest. His scheme proved utterly Utopian. It was reserved for Oglethorpe and his companions to wrest from primeval solitude and to vitalize with the energies of civilization the lands lying be