New Jersey, at last reunited, was made a royal colony; but until 1738, when given a governor of its own, it was under the administration of the governor of New York, who ruled through a deputy. The New Jersey council was appointed by the king, and there was a popularly elected representative assembly. All Christian sects were tolerated, but Roman Catholics were denied political privileges. There was a property qualification for suffrage,—the possession of two hundred acres of land, or other property worth £50. The inhabitants were generally prosperous. Their isolated geographical position secured them immunity from attacks by hostile Indians; they had scrupulously purchased the lands from the native inhabitants, and with the few who were now left they maintained friendly relations. The new government brought them greater political security, and under it they thrived even better than before.
The annals of New Jersey are like the population and political system,—confused and uninteresting. It was many years before a tradition of common interest could be established between East and West New Jersey. One of the most remarkable lessons in government furnished by the colony was a decision of the courts that an Act of the assembly was void because not in accordance with the frame of government.
In 1676 William Penn, prominent among the English Quakers, became financially concerned, with others of his sect, in the colony of West New Jersey, and thereby acquired an interest in American colonization. His father, an admiral in the English navy, had left him (1670) a claim against the government for sixteen thousand pounds; in lieu of this he induced Charles II. (1681) to give him a proprietary charter of forty thousand square miles in America. The king called the region Pennsylvania, in honor of the admiral, but against the protest of the grantee, who "feared lest it be looked on as vanity in me."
Penn at once widely advertised his dominions. He offered to sell one hundred acres of land for £2, subject to a small quit-rent, and even servants might acquire half this amount. He proposed to establish a popular government, based on the principle of exact justice to all, red and white, regardless of religious beliefs; there was to be trial by jury; murder and treason were to be the only capital crimes; and punishment for other offences was to have reformation, not retaliation, in view. By the terms of the charter Penn was, in conjunction with and by the consent of the free-men, to make all necessary laws. The proposals of the new proprietor were received with enthusiasm among the people of his religious faith throughout England.
In October three ship-loads of Quaker emigrants were sent out, and a year later (1682) Penn himself followed, with a hundred fellow-passengers. At the time of his arrival the Dutch had a church at Newcastle, Del., which was within his grant, the Swedes had churches at Christina, Tinicum, and Wicacoa, and Quaker meeting-houses were established at Chester, Shakamaxon, and near the lower falls of the Delaware.
The constitution drawn up by Penn for his colony provided that the proprietor was to choose the governor, but the people were to elect the members of the council, and also deputies to a representative assembly; it was practically the West New Jersey plan. The laws decided upon by the first assembly, convened by the proprietor soon after his arrival, were beneficent. They included provisions for the humane treatment of Indians; for the teaching of a trade to each child; for the useful employment of criminals in prisons; for religious toleration, with the qualification that all public officers must be professing Christians, and private citizens believers in God. The principles set forth in Penn's original announcement were thus given the sanction of law.
A distinction was made between the original Pennsylvania, as granted by the king to Penn, and the territory afterwards known as Delaware, which the latter had obtained in a special grant from the Duke of York,—the royal grant being known as "the province," and the purchase from the duke as "the territories," of Pennsylvania. In the province three counties were established, and in the territories three more. These counties were given popularly elected governing boards, and were made the unit of representation in the assembly; the towns were merely administrative subdivisions of the counties, without any form of local government.
Penn was eminently successful in treating with the Indians in his neighborhood. Circumstances favored him greatly in this regard, but nevertheless much was due to his shrewd diplomacy and humane spirit; and for a long period the Quaker district of Pennsylvania was exempt from the border warfare which harassed most of the other colonies.
Obliged to return to England in 1684, Penn did not again visit his American possessions until fifteen years had elapsed, and then but for a brief time (1699-1701). This intervening period was one of continuous political disquiet for the proprietor and the colonists alike, despite the fact that the material condition of the people—Quakers, Swedes, Dutch, Germans, and Welsh alike—continued to improve. A boundary dispute with Maryland required the intervention of the English government (1685) as an arbitrator; during two years (1692-1694), Penn was dispossessed of his colony by the Crown; and the turbulent "territories" gave him so much trouble that he sought peace by erecting them into the separate colony of Delaware in 1703.
Dissensions, however, did not cease either in the provinces or in Delaware. Penn died in 1718, leaving to his heirs a legacy of petty but harassing disputes which lasted until the Revolution.
Planted as Pennsylvania was, half a century after the earlier Southern and New England colonies, and aided by rich men and court favorites, its progress was rapid and its prosperity assured from the beginning. The pacific policy of Penn towards the Indians saved his colony from the expense and danger of frontier wars. Nevertheless from the beginning the colony showed the same indisposition to submit to the control of proprietors that had so disturbed Maryland and the Carolinas. Notwithstanding, Pennsylvania shortly became the most considerable of the middle colonies, and eventually equalled Virginia and Massachusetts in importance.
CHAPTER X.
SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES IN 1700.
90. References.
Bibliographies.—Same as § 82, above.
Historical Maps.—Same as § 82, above.
General Accounts.—Doyle, Colonies, IV.; Lodge, Colonies, chs. xiii., xv., xvii.; Andrews, Colonial Self-Government, chs. xviii., xix. See also histories of separate colonies, § 82, above.
Special Histories.—Topography: Semple, American History and its Geographic Conditions, chs. i.-iv.; Roberts, New York, I. ch. viii.; Scharf, Delaware, ch. i.—Manners and Customs: Fisher, Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial Times, I. chs. vi., vii., II. ch. viii.; Wilson, Rambles in Colonial Byways; Earle, Colonial Days in Old New York; C. Hemstreet, When Old New York was Young; T. Janvier, Old New York; E. Singleton, Dutch New York; J. Van Rensselaer, Goede Vrouw of Mana-ha-ta; A. Gummere, The Quaker: a Study in Costume; novels by S. W. Mitchell.—Industries: Bishop, History of American Manufactures.—Slavery: J. Brackett, Negro in Maryland. See also § 82, above, and biographies of prominent men.
Contemporary Accounts.—Same as § 82, above.
91. Geographical Conditions in the Middle Colonies.
The middle section of the Atlantic plain in the United States is distinguished by three deep indentations,—Chesapeake, Delaware, and New York bays; each of these is the expanded mouth of a comprehensive river system, and furnishes abundant anchorage,—New York bay being the finest harbor on the continent. Along the coast south of New York is a low, level base-plain of sand and clay, from twenty-five to fifty miles in width, the larger towns being generally situated on the uplands beyond. The Appalachian mountains extend in several ridges across the middle district from southwest to northeast, the highest elevations being those of the Catskill group in southeastern New York, where Slide Mountain towers 4,205 feet above sea-level. New Jersey is largely occupied by the base-plain, with hills in the northwest. From the eastern range of mountains, the surface of New York slopes gently down, with great diversity, to Lake Ontario; the mountains are rent by the interesting and important water-gap of the Mohawk valley, which in an earlier geological age connected the lake basin with the trough of the Hudson. Pennsylvania has three distinct topographical divisions: (1) the highly fertile district between the Blue Mountains and the sea,—including Delaware; (2) the middle belt of elevated valleys, separated by low parallel ridges of mountains rich in anthracite coal and iron ore; (3) the upland north and west of the mountain walls, sloping down to the tributaries of the Ohio with a wealth of bituminous coal, oil, and natural gas.
In the New York and Pennsylvania hills the numerous rivers of the region have their rise. These rivers either flow westward into the Mississippi basin, northward into the Great Lakes, eastward into the deep cleft cut through the mountains by the Hudson, or southward into the estuaries of the Delaware and Chesapeake. Within a short distance of each other are waters which will reach the Atlantic ocean by three divergent routes,—through the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the bays we have mentioned. This fact has had a potent influence on the course of American settlement and trade, which have persistently followed the water highways into the interior of the continent; and along those rivers were fought two great wars.
The ease with which the French and English in America could approach each other, along the almost continuous water-route formed by Hudson River and Lake Champlain and their tributaries, made this central region the theatre of a protracted and desperate struggle throughout the French and Indian war; while we shall see that during the Revolution the Hudson was regarded as the key to the military situation. It has already been remarked (page 202) how important the English government deemed the possession of the Hudson, in 1664, as a means to the unification of the Anglo-American empire. Through its Mohawk arm, waters running into the Great Lakes could be readily reached.
The soil in the middle district, back from the sandy coast-belt, is for the most part fertile. Originally the entire country was densely wooded, even to the summits of the mountains, which nowhere rise to the snow-line. The climate is, judged by the record of average temperature, an agreeable compromise between New England and the South; although, as elsewhere on the Atlantic slope, it is subject to rapid and extreme variations. Penn wrote that the "weather often changeth without notice, and is constant almost in its inconstancy."
92. People of the Middle Colonies.
The population of the middle colonies was noted for its heterogeneous character. New York was first settled by the Dutch, who ruled the district for fifty years. After the English conquest (1664), Dutch immigration practically ceased; nevertheless in 1700 a majority of the whites were Dutch, although the English, more of whom had emigrated from New England than from the parent isle, were widely spread and politically dominant. There were in 1700 about twenty-five thousand inhabitants, perhaps two thousand five hundred being blacks. Besides the prevailing Dutch and English, there were many French Huguenots, a number of Palatine Germans who had fled from persecution at home, and a few Jews. The New York colonists chiefly dwelt on the islands and shores of New York bay, and the banks of the Hudson and Mohawk. Beyond this thin fringe of settlement, the forest wall was for the most part still unbroken. Agricultural development was as yet slow, but the fur-trade was spreading far into the interior.
East Jersey had a population of about ten thousand, composed of Quakers, New England men, and Scotch Presbyterians. Of the four thousand inhabitants of West Jersey, the Quakers were the prevailing element. The population of New Jersey was homogeneous, being very largely English; the few Dutch, Germans, and Swedes having little effect on the character of the colony. Jerseymen were vigorous and quick-witted, although Governor Belcher (1748-1757) wrote, "They are a very rustical people, and deficient in learning."
Pennsylvania and Delaware had, together, a population of about twenty thousand in 1700, having developed more rapidly than any other of the American colonies. Somewhat over one half were English Quakers, the others being sectaries from New England, French, Dutch, Germans, Swedes, Finns, Welsh, and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. The Germans moved in large numbers to what were then the western borders, where they evolved a distinct dialect, popularly known as "Pennsylvania Dutch." Although valuable pioneers of civilization, they exhibited a stubborn temper, which, with their strong opposition to the bearing of arms, made them untrustworthy during the French and Indian wars. The rugged, liberty-loving Scotch-Irish were a later acquisition. The pure Irish, destined to become so prominent on the frontier, did not commence arriving until 1719. The Swedes were strong, sturdy, and simple agriculturists. The English Quakers were of the middle class of tradesmen and small farmers. Their prejudice against taking up arms made it difficult for the colonial military officers to defend the province against the disastrous Indian forays of the eighteenth century, and was a fruitful source of political and social disturbance.
By the close of the seventeenth century a people had grown up in most of the middle colonies which was largely English in composition, with habits of speech, thought, and manner greatly affected by English traditions, but still much modified by the liberal infusion of blood from kindred nationalities on the continent of Europe. The eager, enterprising spirit of the English, quickened by removal to the New World, had, after a generation or two of amalgamation, been noticeably tempered by the phlegmatic temperament of the German, Dutch, and Scandinavian settlers.
93. Social Classes.
In the middle colonies, as in New England and the South, there existed an acknowledged aristocracy, although there was a wide gap between the haughty and elegant Dutch manor-chiefs in New York and the rude gentlemen farmers who headed New Jersey society. The servile classes common to the Southern colonies were also present here, as a foundation for aristocratic distinction; but they were comparatively insignificant in number. Nowhere in this middle group was free white labor regarded as degrading; nearly all the colonists were workers, whether behind the desk or the counter, in the shop or in the field. Trade was exalted to a high station.
New York had many negroes, left over from the Dutch rule, but there was a strong physical prejudice against them, and their further importation was gradually restricted. In 1711 and 1741, on insufficient evidence, the blacks were accused of plots against the whites of New York city, and were cruelly dealt with,—on the former occasion nineteen were hanged; on the latter, eighteen suffered death by the gallows, and thirteen were burned at the stake. The laws against negroes were harsh in all of the middle colonies. But in practice, slaves were mildly treated, compared with those in the South. The Quakers were opposed to human bondage on principle, yet many employed slaves, chiefly as house-servants. There were numerous indented servants, especially in Pennsylvania, and most stringent laws were adopted for their regulation. From these and the negroes the criminal class was recruited. Among Pennsylvania Quakers were formed the first abolition societies.
No aristocrats in America so nearly resembled the nobility of the Old World as the great-landed Dutch proprietors in New York,—such as the Van Rensselaers, the Cortlandts, and the Livingstons. Their vast estates up the Hudson, granted to their fathers in the days of the Dutch West India Company, were rented out to tenant-farmers, over whom they ruled in princely fashion, dispensing justice, and bountifully feasting the tenants on semi-annual rent-days. Some of these estates were entitled to representatives in the assembly, and the lords of the manor practically held such appointments in their keeping. There was an impassable gulf between the rural aristocrats and the small freeholders and tradesmen. This condition of affairs was not calculated to encourage settlement; and out of these feudal privileges, often harshly exercised, there arose conflicts which became riotous as the Revolution approached.
The aristocrats of Pennsylvania and Delaware were also the wealthy landed gentry, chiefly Penn's followers; but the class was not strongly marked, and almost imperceptibly faded away into the ranks of the merchants and small freeholders. Each village, however, had its Quaker "squire" or magistrate, in powdered wig, broad ruffles, cocked hat, and gold-headed cane, who meted out justice at the neighboring tavern and was highly regarded. Rich and poor alike, among the Quakers, were simple in tastes and habits. In New Jersey there was a mild recognition of the social superiority of the gentlemen farmers, notwithstanding a strong underlying spirit of democracy; a rude plenty prevailed, and the gentlemen's houses were not without some degree of elegance.
94. Occupations.
The judicial system was very similar to that which obtained elsewhere in America. In each province was an upper court, consisting of a chief justice and associates, appointed by the governor; from this an appeal might go in important cases to the governor and council, and in causes involving £200 or over, to the king in council. Below the upper court was a regular series of courts, ranging down to the local justices of the peace. Justice was cheap, and court practice simple. In New York, the quality of both bench and bar was inferior, and remained so down to the Revolution; the judges had often no legal training, and the law was not recognized as a profession. In Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania men of ability and character were engaged on the bench and at the bar, and their calling won universal respect. Penn brought out two physicians with him, and in the Quaker colonies the art of medicine had from the first an honorable standing; but in New York physicians were not licensed until 1760. In all four colonies the clergymen for the most part were zealous, upright men, of learning and ability, and took high social rank.
Except in New York, where trade was equally important, agriculture was the chief industry; but as the soil was fertile and the average farmer consequently careless, farming was, except among the painstaking Quakers of Pennsylvania, in a low condition. The principal crop was wheat, although there was much variety in farm products, and New Jersey raised large herds of cattle on her broad lowland meadows. There were many small manufactures for domestic use, the most important being among the Germans of Germantown, who made, in a small way, paper and glass, and also some varieties of knit goods and coarse cloths; the spinning-wheel was a familiar household machine, for homespun was much worn by all except the rich. But the bulk of manufactured goods was imported from England and the continent of Europe. Little picturesque windmills, with broad canvas sails, after the Dutch fashion, were numerous. Many of the Maryland and Virginia colonists came long distances to patronize the Pennsylvania mills. It was not until 1720 than an iron furnace was erected in the latter province,—the first in the middle group of colonies.
The middle-colony people had a keen sense for trade. The fur-traffic was widespread and of the first importance, particularly in New York and Pennsylvania; while the personal danger to the adventurous forest trader was very great, the profits on packs of peltries successfully landed in New York and Philadelphia were such as to warrant the hazard. The principal exports were grain, flour, and furs, and vessels with these American products sailed to England, Lisbon, Madeira, and the West Indies; the exports of goods were never equal to the imports, however, and ships bringing over wines, sugar, and miscellaneous manufactured articles often found it difficult to obtain return cargoes. There was a profitable 'longshore commerce in farm products and small manufactures, boats penetrating up the rivers far inland. New England bottoms were largely employed, although a shipbuilding industry soon sprang up at Philadelphia. New York was the chief port of the middle colonies for foreign trade; her merchants were highly active and prosperous.
95. Social Life.
In 1700 the Dutch were still the largest landowners in New York. The English and other nationalities, jealously excluded from the landed class as far as possible, were to be mainly found in the large towns in the southern portion of the province, engaged in trade. The Dutch adhered to old dress and customs with remarkable tenacity. Their farm-houses were usually of wood, with the second story overhanging; the great rafters showed in the ceilings; the fireplaces were ornamented with pictured tiles, and above were rows of great wooden and pewter dishes, and racks of long tobacco-pipes; the floors were daily scrubbed and sanded, and evidences of neatness and thrift were distinguishing features. In the little hamlets, as well as on the farms, there was plenty of good plain living; but the people, while thrifty, sober, contented, and industrious, were superstitious, ignorant, grasping, and slow. Life with them was narrow and monotonous. The wealthy landed proprietors lived on their estates up the Hudson in summer, and moved to New York city in winter; their manor-houses were large and richly furnished, they had trains of servants, black and white, and maintained a degree of splendor scarcely equalled elsewhere in the colonies. The Dutch women, rich and poor, were noted for their excellence as housekeepers, their unaffected piety, and their love of flowers.
In Pennsylvania and Delaware there was a wide difference between the condition of the dwellers in the long-settled portions, where there was intelligent progress, sobriety, and neatness, and that of the western borderers, who were a rude, turbulent people, living amid wretched economic and sanitary conditions. The better class of farmers in the eastern section were prosperous but simple; men and women alike worked in the fields, and a patriarchal system of family life prevailed. The soberly attired Quakers still exercised a large influence on society, which was pervaded by a healthy moral tone; tradesmen had a particularly keen sense of business honesty. New Jersey was also a well-to-do colony; but her farms and villages long had the reputation of presenting an untidy appearance.
Although life among the middle-colony folk was sober and filled with toil, there were the customary rough and simple popular diversions of the period,—for the farmers corn-huskings, spinning-bees, house-raisings, and dancing-parties, at which hard drinking was not infrequent; for the townsfolk horse-racing, bull-baiting, cock-fighting, tavern-parties, balls, and picnics. The people were, as a whole, of a more social temperament than their New England neighbors. There was little luxury within their reach, but they appear to have been as a rule satisfied in their condition, and above want.
The principal town was New York. Society there was more gay than in Boston, and more fashionable than in any other American city, except perhaps Charleston. The wealthy landed proprietors spent money freely during the winter season, and the latest London styles were eagerly sought and followed. A social polish was aimed at, clubs were fostered, and pride was taken in the fact that no other American city was so cosmopolitan in tone,—a result of its being the centre of a far-reaching foreign trade. There was much that was English in New York, yet even here the Dutch influence was strong. Visitors speak of the wide, pleasant streets lined with trees, the low brick and stone houses, with their projecting eaves and their gables to the street,—a fashion general in the colonies,—and the insignificant character of the few public buildings. Albany was the centre of the northern fur-trade, and purely Dutch in composition and architecture.
Philadelphia was the Quaker capital. Laid out like a checker-board, with architecture of severe simplicity, its best residences were surrounded by gardens and orchards. The town was substantial, neat, and had the appearance of prosperity. Germantown, near by, settled by the Germans (1683), was largely given over to small manufactures. Newcastle was ill-built and unattractive. The New Jersey towns were rather comely, but insignificant; Trenton was chiefly supported by travellers along the great highway between New York and Philadelphia.
There was little intercommunication, except between the larger towns, and the facilities for travel were meagre. Rude farm-wagons, two-wheeled chaises, and saddle-horses were the chief means of conveyance over the rough, stony roads; and on the many and far-reaching rivers, travellers and traders proceeded leisurely by slow-moving craft. New Jersey was traversed by the highways between New York and Philadelphia, over which post-boys rode weekly with the mail in saddlebags. Taverns were in every town in New York and Pennsylvania, and were favorite meeting-places for the village and country folk; but in New Jersey it required legislation to induce villages to maintain "ordinaries" for wayfarers.
96. Intellectual and Moral Conditions.
Under the Dutch domination common schools flourished in New York, each town supporting them by public aid. The English, however, jealous of educational enterprises under charge of a nonconforming church, suffered them to fall into neglect. Thus at the close of the seventeenth century education was neither general nor of good quality. The English Society for the Propagation of the Gospel established an excellent Church of England school in New York city (1704), but the Dutch did not take kindly to it; they long clung to their mother-tongue and the few rude schools of their own ordering. In Pennsylvania but little attempt was made by the English in the direction of popular education outside of the capital, where was opened (1698) the now famous Penn Charter School, destined for fifty years to be the only public school in the province. The Germans and Moravians maintained some good private schools in the larger Pennsylvania and New Jersey towns, but educational facilities in the rural places were generally wretched, where there were any at all.
The Church of England was nominally established in all except Pennsylvania; but it was managed with great lack of discretion, and aroused popular hostility against it and the mother-country. On Long Island and in New Jersey the Puritans exerted a powerful influence on manners and thought. Everywhere the laws against excesses in amusement and Sabbath-breaking were very severe, but only in the Puritan communities were they strictly enforced, although a strong sentiment of piety was general among all respectable classes of the people. Except in New York, towards the close of the seventeenth century there was toleration for all Protestant sects, but in Pennsylvania alone were Roman Catholics entitled to equal consideration; the New York laws against "Jesuits and Popish priests" were harsh, and founded on the false notion that they incited the Indians to acts of violence. In New York the Church of England endeavored for a time (commencing in 1692), by violent persecution, to repress all forms of dissent; but the sectaries flourished despite official opposition. The leading denominations were the Dutch Lutheran, Dutch Reformed, English Independent, and English Presbyterian. The Scotch Presbyterians and New England Congregationalists were most numerous in New Jersey. In Pennsylvania and Delaware, next to the Quakers stood the Lutherans and Scotch Presbyterians, and the preachers of the latter church were vigorous proselyters, especially successful among the western borderers. The Germans, brought over, at first, largely through Penn's efforts, included a number of persecuted groups,—Quakers, Palatines, Ridge Hermits, Dunkards, and Pietists. All Christian forms and creeds were liberally represented in Pennsylvania, where there was as genuine religious freedom as exists anywhere in the United States to-day.
In none of the middle colonies was crime so prevalent as to be a troublesome question, with the one exception of piracy,—the most common and widely demoralizing of all the dangers to which the colonists were subjected. Public officials often corruptly connived at the practice, and popular sentiment was not strongly against a set of men who brought wealth to the seaport towns and spent it lavishly. Hangings and whippings were not infrequent public spectacles in the colonies, and the pillory was much in use. In the Long Island towns the New Englanders, who were dominant there, faithfully reproduced their native customs in the punishment of crime as in most other particulars. The Quakers were, on the whole, the most lenient in their treatment of evil-doers, up to 1718, when the second generation of colonists abandoned the old theory of criminal legislation and adopted measures of harsh repression similar to those in vogue in other colonies. There was little pauperism, but perhaps more in Pennsylvania than elsewhere. In the treatment of this evil the Quakers were also wise, and in Philadelphia they established the first hospital for the insane, on the continent.
97. Political Conditions and Conclusion.
New Jersey having no foreign trade and but little manufacturing, her people were without experience of the harshness of the English Acts of Navigation and Trade (page 104). Since there was not much to complain of regarding treatment by the mother-country, they were generally loyal. Taxes were light, public salaries small, and the colony, with Pennsylvania and New York as buffers, was in no danger from Indians.
On the other hand, New York was constantly subjected to border warfare, which proved a serious financial burden; taxation, levied by duties on slaves and imports, and on real and personal property, was clumsy and oppressive, and the government corrupt and expensive. English officials and wealthy Dutch were loyal because it was their interest to be so; but the mass of the people, rich and poor, favored liberal candidates to the assembly. The men from New England exerted a strong influence on the general trend of political thought. Elections excited great bitterness and often rioting, and they were made an excuse for the usual holiday excesses. There was a strong feeling of resentment against the home government, growing out of the Navigation Laws and the impressment of seamen.
In Pennsylvania there prevailed a similar attitude of opposition to England; the Quakers were, however, conservative, and slow in action, and their dislike to bear arms made the colony a drag upon all attempts at continental union for common defence. As in New York, local politics ran in extremely narrow channels, and election riots were not uncommon.
Taking a general view of the middle colonies, we find that the fur-traffic, the fertile soil, a mixed system of agriculture, and an enterprising commercial spirit, were the chief sources of their material prosperity. There was prevalent a broader spirit of religious toleration; there was, perhaps, on the whole, a more democratic spirit among all classes of the people, than in New England or the South; except in the case of the Dutch patroons, aristocracy did not flourish among them; the state of popular education was pitiable; the population was more mixed than anywhere else in America. The continental nationalities gave a more cheerful tone to society than existed in New England and the South; the several communities varied greatly in speech, customs, and thought, according to their origin, although we find, as the eighteenth century opens, that the English Puritans from New England were coming more and more to exercise a considerable influence in political, social, and religious affairs.
CHAPTER XI.
OTHER ENGLISH NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES (1605-1750).
98. References.
Bibliographies.—Larned, Literature of American History, 430-438, 458-462; Winsor, VIII. 65-80, 175-177, 188-190, 270-291.
Historical Maps.—Nos. 2, 3, and 4, this volume (Epoch Maps, Nos. 2, 3, 4); Winsor, MacCoun, and school histories already cited.
General Accounts.—H. Fox-Bourne, Story of our Colonies, chs. i.-xi.; Egerton, British Colonial Policy; Morris, History of Colonization; E. Payne, European Colonies; Cotton and Payne, Colonies and Dependencies.
Special Histories.—West Indies: Lucas, Historical Geography, II., secs. i., ii.; C. Eden, West Indies; J. Froude, English in West Indies (answered by J. Thomas, Froudacity); A. Kennedy, Story of West Indies; J. Rodway, West Indies and Spanish Main; J. Lefroy, Discovery and Early Settlement of Bermudas; J. Esquemeling, Buccaneers of America (and similar books by Archenholtz, Burney, and Pyle); J. Masefield, On the Spanish Main.—Newfoundland: D. Prowse, Newfoundland; also histories of the island by Hatton and Harvey, Smith, and Pedley; S. Dawson, Canada and Newfoundland; W. Greswell, Geography of Canada and Newfoundland.—Nova Scotia: J. Bourinot, Builders of Nova Scotia; T. Haliburton, Nova Scotia; B. Murdoch, Nova Scotia; E. Richard, Acadia.—Canada: see § 107.—Hudson's Bay Company: G. Bryce, Remarkable History of Hudson's Bay Company; L. Burpee, Search for the Western Sea; A. Laut, Conquest of Great Northwest; B. Willson, Great Company. Consult also publications of Royal Society of Canada, and provincial historical and antiquarian societies.
Contemporary Accounts.—Whitbourne, Discourse and Discovery of Newfoundland (1620); Mason, Brief Discourse of Newfoundland (1620); Du Tertre, Histoire Générale des Antilles (1654); Denys, Description and Natural History of Arcadia (1672); Labat, Nouveau Voyage aux Isles d'Amérique (1724); Oldmixon, British Empire in America (1741); Dobbs, Countries adjoining to Hudson's Bay (1744); Ellis, Voyage to Hudson Bay (1748); Hakluyt, Voyages. Reprints in publications of historical and antiquarian societies.
99. Outlying English Colonies.
It is usual to think and speak of the English colonies in North America as though they included only the thirteen which, in 1775, revolted against the mother-country. In the eyes of the home government, however, and of the colonists themselves, the relations between the mother-land and the English West India Islands, the Bermudas, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Hudson's Bay, and, after 1763, Canada, were much the same as between it and Virginia or New Hampshire or Pennsylvania. The chief differences between the colonies were of race and occupation. Nova Scotia had, before the Revolution, but a few thousand English inhabitants; the West Indies were almost exclusively sugar-producing colonies. Both on the north and on the southeast the English colonies touched elbows with the French in active commercial and territorial competition. The West Indies were the emporium for sugar and slaves, and an extensive traffic was had in both commodities with the continental colonies. This important commerce has already been frequently referred to, particularly in the treatment of New England (page 185), whose vessels did the bulk of the colonial carrying trade.
Various causes conspired to prevent Englishmen in these outlying plantations from joining their brethren of New England, the middle colonies, and the South, in the movement for independence. The West India planters were largely aided by English capital, and in England, where many of them had summer residences, they enjoyed a profitable and exclusive market for sugar, cotton, and other tropical products. It was considered good policy by English statesmen to favor the island colonies as against the continental, for the products of the former did not compete with those of Great Britain; so that while the Navigation Acts (page 104), restricting all colonial trade to British ports, at first bore heavily on the island planters, they were compensated in part by numerous discriminations in their favor. Many of these planters were the sons of Cavaliers who had fled to the islands of the Caribbean Sea to escape from the rule of the Commonwealth; or wealthy men who had, in times of popular disturbance, been made to feel uncomfortable in their old homes on the American mainland. In Nova Scotia and Newfoundland the ports were filled with English traders and officers; and a great belt of untraversed forest separated them from the New Englanders, with whom they had little in common. But perhaps above all was the fact that His Majesty's fleet easily commanded these outlying colonies, and revolt was not to be thought of within the reach of the guns of ships.
It is worth our while briefly to review the history of these British American dependencies which for one reason or another did not enter the struggle that was soon to rend the empire in twain at the moment it had reached its greatest extent.
100. Windward and Leeward Islands (1605-1814).
Barbados, the easternmost of the Windward Islands, was first visited by a party of English adventurers in 1605, since which time it has been an English possession. But it was not until 1625 that a colony was planted on the island. Its plan of government was much the same as that of the mainland colonies.
During the Puritan uprising in England, Barbados was a place of refuge for loyalists, who were disposed, till the appearance of a parliamentary force (1651), to hold the island for the king. Under Cromwell's rule many prisoners of war were sent to the island, thus increasing the royalist population. The Restoration was promptly proclaimed.
The colony made rapid progress, although now and then checked by the fact that its exposed position made it in time of war a favorite point of attack by enemies of England. The numerous harbors along the coast were, in such troublous periods, infested by privateers, who seriously interfered with the commerce of the island. In the war between Great Britain and France, commencing in 1756, the West Indies was the theatre of a prolonged conflict, into which the Barbadians entered with zeal, supplying money and troops to the English side, and oftentimes suffering from reverses.