[Illustration]
_By ROBERT McNUTT McELROY_
_Head of the Department of History and Politics, Princeton University_
A few years before the settlement of the territory now known as the
United States the people of Europe had witnessed a great naval battle
in which two kinds of civilizations contended for supremacy. England
and Spain were the combatants, and the issue, as we now clearly see,
was whether the old idea of monarchy or the new idea of democracy
should dominate two continents. Gold from Mexico and Peru had made
Spain a great power. Successive royal inheritances had given to her
kingly line the control of a large part of Europe. She was the champion
of the Church of Rome, and regarded it as her mission to prevent all
heretics from planting colonies in the New World. England, on the
other hand, was the champion of Protestantism, whose doctrine of the
direct responsibility of the individual led logically to democracy in
government. England won the battle, destroying Spain’s great Armada,
and thus opening the New World to the settlement of men professing
Protestant doctrines; for as soon as Spain’s power on the seas was
shattered Protestants could plant colonies without danger of having
them destroyed by a Spanish man-of-war.
[Illustration: JAMESTOWN ISLAND
_The exact site of the original settlement. Once a peninsula, this
ground has been cut away from the mainland by the constant washing of
the river. It is now protected by a stone wall._]