After five weeks of careful inspection of the coast they selected
for their colony a spot which Captain John Smith had already named
Plymouth, in honor of the lovely harbor from which they had sailed.
Here, as tradition says, upon a great rock, now known throughout the
world as Plymouth Rock, they landed on December 21, plowed through the
deep snow, and amid the “murmuring pines and the hemlocks” began to
build a House of God and about it rude cabins of logs. To this scene
every true American heart should turn with reverence, whatever his
creed, political affiliation, or sectional tradition; for it, more
than any other in American colonial history, typifies the spirit which
has made of America a great nation. At Plymouth, more even than at
Jamestown, the political doctrines which had grown out of Calvinistic
theology took firm root. In religion the Puritans were bigoted and
intolerant; but in political theories they represented the idea of
the freedom and dignity of the individual. The God-given right of
self-government was their political motto, and from it they never
swerved. The great contest which we call the American Revolution was
not, as is sometimes asserted, an attempt to throw off the shackles of
tyranny, but was, on the contrary, a determined refusal to allow these
shackles to be put on. George the Third and his obsequious minister,
Lord North, were the real revolutionists; for they sought to take
away from the American colonies rights of self-government as old as
Jamestown and Plymouth. In this they failed, and their failure cost
England an empire.
[Illustration: PLAN OF FORT TICONDEROGA
_A restoration begun in 1909. The first fort, called Fort Carillon, was
built by the French in 1755. It was taken by the British in 1758 and
rebuilt as Fort Ticonderoga._]