THE MIDDLE AND SOUTHERN COLONIES
%47. North and South Carolina.%--You remember that away back in the
sixteenth century the French under Jean Ribault and the English under
Ralegh undertook to plant colonies on what is now the Carolina coast.
They failed, and the country remained a wilderness till 1653, when a
band of emigrants from Virginia made the first permanent settlement on
the banks of the Chowan and the Roanoke. In 1663 some Englishmen from
Barbados began to settle on the Cape Fear River, just at the time when
Charles II. of England gave the region to eight English noblemen, who,
out of compliment to the King, allowed the name of Carolina given it by
Ribault to remain. In 1665 the bounds were enlarged, and Carolina then
extended from latitude 29° 00' to 36° 30', the present south boundary of
Virginia, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
[Illustration: CAROLINA AS GRANTED BY King Charles II]
There was at first no intention of dividing the territory, although,
after Charleston was founded (1670), North Carolina and South Carolina
sometimes had separate governors. But in 1729 the proprietors sold
Carolina to the King, and it was then divided into two distinct and
separate royal provinces.
%48. New York.%--An event of far greater importance than the
chartering of Carolina was the seizure of New Netherland. After the
conquest of New Sweden, in 1655, the possessions and claims of the Dutch
in our country extended from the Connecticut River to the Delaware
River, and from the Mohawk to Delaware Bay. Geographically, they cut the
English colonies in two, and hampered communication between New England
and the South. To own this region was therefore of the utmost importance
to the English; and to get it, King Charles II., in 1664, revived the
old claim that the English had discovered the country before the Dutch,
and he sent a little fleet and army, which appeared off New Amsterdam
and demanded its surrender. The demand was complied with; and in 1664
Dutch rule in our country ended, and England owned the seaboard from the
Kennebec to the Savannah.
The King had already granted New Netherland to his brother the Duke of
York, in honor of whom the town of New Amsterdam was now renamed
New York.
%49. New Jersey.%--The Duke of York no sooner received his province
than he gave so much of it as lay between the Delaware and the ocean to
his friends Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, and called it New
Jersey, in honor of Sir George Carteret, who had been governor of the
island of Jersey in the English Channel. The two proprietors divided it
between them by the line shown on the map (p. 56). In 1674 Berkeley sold
West Jersey to a company of Quakers, who settled near Burlington. A
little later, 1676, William Penn and some other Quakers bought East
Jersey. There were then two colonies till 1702, when the proprietors
surrendered their rights, and New Jersey became one royal province.
%50. The Beginnings of Pennsylvania.%--The part which Penn took in
the settlement of New Jersey suggested to him the idea of beginning a
colony which should be a refuge for the persecuted of all lands and of
all religions.
[Illustration]
Now it so happened that Penn was the son of a distinguished admiral to
whom King Charles II. owed £16,000, and seeing no chance of its ever
being paid, he proposed to the King, in 1680, that the debt be paid with
a tract of land in America. The King gladly agreed, and in 1681 Penn
received a grant west of the Delaware. Against Penn's wish, the King
called it Pennsylvania, or Penn's Woodland. It was given almost
precisely the bounds of the present state.[1] In 1683 Penn made a famous
treaty with the Indians, and laid out the city of Philadelphia.
[Footnote 1: There was a long dispute, however, with Lord Baltimore,
over the south boundary line, which was not settled till 1763-67, when
two surveyors, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, came over from England
and located it as at present. In later years, when all the Atlantic
seaboard states north of Maryland and Delaware had abolished slavery,
this "Mason and Dixon's Line" became famous as the dividing line between
the slave and the free Atlantic states.]
%51. The Three Lower Counties: Delaware.%--If you look at the map of
the British Colonies in 1764, you will see that Pennsylvania was the
only English colony which did not have a seacoast. This was a cause of
some anxiety to Penn, who was afraid that the settlers in Delaware and
New Jersey might try to prevent his colonists from going in and out of
Delaware Bay. To avoid this, he bought what is now Delaware from the
Duke of York.
The three lower counties on the Delaware, as the tract was called, had
no boundary. Lawfully it belonged to Lord Baltimore. But neither the
Dutch patroons who settled on the Delaware in 1631, nor the Swedes who
came later, nor the Dutch who annexed New Sweden to New Netherland, nor
the English who conquered the Dutch, paid any regard to Baltimore's
rights. At last, after the purchase of Delaware, the heirs of Baltimore
and of Penn (1732) agreed on what is the present boundary line. After
1703 the people of the three lower counties were allowed to have an
assembly or legislature of their own; but they had the same governor as
Pennsylvania and were a part of that colony till the Revolution.[1]
[Footnote 1: For Pennsylvania read Janney's _Life of William Penn_ or
Dixon's _History of William Penn_; Proud's or Gordon's _Pennsylvania_;
Lodge's _Colonies_, pp. 213-226.]
%52. Georgia.%--The return of the Carolinas to the King in 1729 was
very soon followed by the establishment of the last colony ever planted
by England in the United States. The founder was James Oglethorpe, an
English soldier and member of Parliament. Filled with pity for the poor
debtors with whom the English jails were then crowded, he formed a plan
to pay the debts of the most deserving, send them to America, and give
them what hundreds of thousands of men have since found in our
country,--a chance to begin life anew.
[Illustration]
Great numbers of people became interested in his plan, and finally
twenty-two persons under Oglethorpe's lead formed an association and
secured a charter from King George II. for a colony, which they called
Georgia. The territory granted lay between the Savannah and the
Altamaha rivers, and extended from their mouths to their sources and
then across the country to the Pacific Ocean. Oglethorpe had selected
this tract in order that his colonists might serve the patriotic purpose
of protecting Charleston from the Spanish attacks to which it was
then exposed.
Money for the colony was easily raised,[1] and in November, 1732,
Oglethorpe, with 130 persons, set out for Charleston, and after a short
stay there passed southward and founded the city of Savannah (1733). It
must not be supposed that all the colonists were poor debtors. In time,
Italians from Piedmont, Moravians and Lutherans from Germany, and
Scotchmen from the Highlands, all made settlements in Georgia.
[Footnote 1: The House of Commons gave £10,000.]
%53. The Thirteen English Colonies.%--Thus it came about that between
1606 and 1733 thirteen English colonies were planted on the Atlantic
seaboard of what is now the United States. Naming them from north to
south, they were: 1. New Hampshire, with no definite western boundary;
2. Massachusetts, which owned Maine and a strip of territory across the
continent; 3. Rhode Island, with her present bounds; 4. Connecticut,
with a great tract of land extending to the Pacific; 5. New York, with
undefined bounds; 6. New Jersey; 7. Pennsylvania and 8. Delaware, the
property of the Penn family; 9. Maryland, the property of the heirs of
Lord Baltimore; 10. Virginia, with claims to a great part of North
America; 11. North Carolina, 12. South Carolina, and 13. Georgia, all
with claims to the Pacific.
SUMMARY
1. The English seized New Netherland (1664), giving it to the Duke of
York; and the Duke, after establishing the province of New York, gave
New Jersey to two of his friends, and sold the three counties on the
Delaware to William Penn.
2. Meanwhile the King granted Penn what is now Pennsylvania (1681).
3. The Carolinas were first chartered as one proprietary colony, but
were sold back to the King and finally separated in 1729.
4. Georgia, the last of the thirteen English colonies, was granted to
Oglethorpe and others as a refuge for poor debtors (1732).
BEGINNINGS OF THE THIRTEEN COLONIES
_English_.
Failures:
1579. Gilbert.
1584. }Ralegh, Roanoke Island.
1587. }
Successes:
1606. London Company, Plymouth Company.
1607. Virginia settled.
1609. Boundary of London Company changed. Origin of
Virginia claim.
1620. Landing of the Pilgrims. Plymouth colony.
1622. Grant to Mason and Gorges.
1628. Land bought for Massachusetts Bay colony.
1629. Mason and Gorges divide their grant into Maine
and New Hampshire.
1632. Maryland patent granted.
1639. Connecticut constitution
(Windsor. Hartford. Wethersfield)
1643. New Haven colony organized
(New Haven. Milford. Guilford. Stamford.)
1643. Rhode Island chartered.
1662. Connecticut chartered.
(Connecticut. New Haven.)
1663. Rhode Island rechartered.
1663. Carolina patent granted.
After 1729 North and South Carolina.
1664. New Netherland conquered and New York founded.
1664. New Jersey granted to Berkeley and Carteret.
1681. Pennsylvania granted to Penn.
1682. Three counties on the Delaware bought by Penn.
1691. Plymouth and Maine (and Nova Scotia)
united with Massachusetts.
1732. Georgia chartered.
_Dutch_.
1613. Begin to colonize New Netherland
_Swedes_.
1638. South Company makes settlement on the Delaware.
1655. Conquered by the Dutch.