LIFE IN THE COLONIES IN 1763
%91. Things unknown in 1763.%--Had a traveler landed on our shores in
1763 and made a journey through the English colonies in America, he
would have seen a country utterly unlike the United States of to-day.
The entire population, white man and black, freeman and slave, was not
so great as that of New York or Philadelphia or Chicago in our time. If
we were to write a list of all the things we now consider as real
necessaries of daily life and mark off those unknown to the men of 1763,
not one quarter would remain. No man in the country had ever seen a
stove, or a furnace, or a friction match, or an envelope, or a piece of
mineral coal. From the farmer we should have to take the reaper, the
drill, the mowing machine, and every kind of improved rake and plow, and
give him back the scythe, the cradle, and the flail. From our houses
would go the sewing machine, the daily newspaper, gas, running water;
and from our tables, the tomato, the cauliflower, the eggplant, and many
varieties of summer fruits. We should have to destroy every railroad,
every steamboat, every factory and mill, pull down every line of
telegraph, silence every telephone, put out every electric light, and
tear up every telegraphic cable from the beds of innumerable rivers and
seas. We should have to take ether and chloroform from the surgeon, and
galvanized iron and India rubber from the arts, and give up every sort
of machine moved by steam.
[Illustration: Lamp and sadiron]
[Illustration: Postrider (Footnote: From an old print, 1760)]
%92. State of the Arts, Sciences, and Industry.%--The appliances left
on the list, because in some form they were known to the men of 1763,
would now be thought crude and clumsy. There were printing presses in
those days,--perhaps fifty in all the colonies. But they were small,
were worked by hand, and were so slow that the most expert pressman
using one of them could not have printed so much in three working days
as a modern steam press can run off in five minutes. There was a general
post, and Benjamin Franklin was deputy postmaster-general for the
northern district of the colonies. But the letters were carried thirty
miles a day by postriders on horseback, and there were never more than
three mails a week between even the great towns. Every Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday a postrider left New York city for Philadelphia.
Every Monday and Thursday another left New York for Boston. Once each
week a rider left for Albany on his way to Quebec. On the first
Wednesday of each month a packet boat sailed from New York for Falmouth,
England, with the mail, and this was the only mail between Great Britain
and her American colonies. We put electricity to a thousand uses; but in
1763 it was a scientific toy. Franklin had just proved by his experiment
with the kite that lightning and electricity were one and the same, and
several other men were amusing themselves and their hearers by ringing
bells, exploding powder, and making colored sparks. But it was put to no
other use. If we take up a daily newspaper published in one of our great
cities and read the column of wants, we find in them twenty occupations
now giving a comfortable living to millions of men. Yet not one of these
twenty existed in 1763. The district messenger, the telegraph operator,
the typewriter, the stenographer, the bookkeeper, the canvasser, the
salesman, the commercial traveler, the engineer, the car driver, the
hackman, the conductor, the gripman, the brakeman, the electrician, the
lineman, the elevator boy, and a host of others, follow trades and
occupations which had no existence in the middle of the
eighteenth century.
Run away, the 23d of this Instant _January_, from _Silas Crispin_
of _Burlington_, Taylor, a Servant Man named _Joseph Morris, _by
Trade a Taylor, aged about 22 Years, of a middle Stature, swarthy
Complexion, light gray Eyes, his Hair clipp'd off, mark'd with
a large pit of the Small Pox on one Cheek near his Eye, had on
when he went away a good Felt Hat, a yelowish Drugget Coat with
Pleits behind, an old Ozenbrigs Vest, two Ozenbrigs Shirts, a pair
of Leather Breeches handsomely worm'd and flower'd up the Knees,
yarn Stockings and good round toe'd Shoes. Took with him a large
pair of Sheers crack'd in one of the Bows & mark'd with the Word
[_Savoy_]. Whoever takes up the said Servant, and secures him so
that his Matter may have him again, shall have _Three Pounds_
Reward besides reasonable Charges, paid by me _Silas Griffin._
From a Philadelphia newspaper
%93. Labor.%--On the other hand, if we take up a newspaper of that
day and read the advertisements, we find that a great deal of what
existed then does not exist now. The newspapers were published in a few
of the large towns, and appeared not every day, but once a week. In the
largest of them would be from seventy-five to eighty advertisements,
setting forth that such a merchant had just received from England or the
West Indies a stock of new goods which he would sell for cash; that the
_Charming Nancy_ would sail in a few weeks for Londonderry in Ireland,
or for Barbados, or for Amsterdam in Holland, and wanted a cargo; that a
tract of land or a plantation would be sold "at vendue," or, as we say,
at auction; that a reward of five pistoles would be paid for the arrest
of "a lusty negroe man" or an "indented servant" or an "apprentice lad,"
who had run away from his owner or master. Very rarely is a call made
for a mechanic or a workman of any sort.
[Illustration: From a Philadelphia newspaper]
The reason for this was two fold. In the first place, negro slavery
existed in all the thirteen colonies. In the second place, there were
thousands of whites in many of the colonies in a state of temporary
servitude, which was sometimes voluntary and sometimes involuntary.
Those who served against their will were convicts and felons, not only
men and women who had been guilty of stealing, cheating, and the like,
but also forgers, counterfeiters, and murderers, who were transported by
thousands from the English prisons to the colonies and sold into slavery
or service for seven or fourteen years.[1] Advertisements are extant in
which the masters from whom such servants have run away warn the people
to beware of them.
[Footnote 1: One act of Parliament, for instance, provided that persons
sentenced to be whipped or branded might, if they wished, escape the
punishment by serving seven years in the colonies, and never returning
to England. Another allowed convicts sentenced to death to commute the
sentence by serving fourteen years.]
But all "indented" or bond servants were not criminals. Many were
reputable persons who sold themselves into service for a term of years
in return for transportation to America. Others, generally boys and
young women, had been kidnaped and sold by the persons who stole them.
%94. Indentured Servants.%--In the case of such as came voluntarily,
carefully drawn agreements called indentures would be made in writing.
The captain of the ship would agree to bring the emigrant to America.
The emigrant would agree in return to serve the captain three or five
years. When the ship reached port, the captain would advertise the fact
that he had carpenters, tailors, farmers, shoemakers, etc., for sale,
and whoever wanted such labor would go on board the ship and for perhaps
fifty dollars buy a man bound to serve him for several years in return
for food, clothes, and lodging. Not only men, but also women and
children, were sold in this way, and were known as "indented servants,"
or "redemptioners," because they redeemed their time of service with
labor. Their lot seems to have been a hard one; for the young men were
constantly running away, and the newspapers are full of advertisements
offering rewards for their arrest.
What we call the workingman, the day laborer, the mechanic, the mill
hand, had no existence as classes. The great corporations, railroads,
express companies, mills, factories of every sort, which now cover our
land and give employment to five times as many men and women as lived in
all the colonies in 1763, are the creatures of our own time.
[Illustration: Wigs and wig bag]
[Illustration: Flax wheel]
%95. No Manufacturers.%--For this state of things England was largely
to blame. For one hundred years past every kind of manufacture that
could compete with the manufactures of the mother country had been
crushed by law. In order to help her iron makers, she forbade the
colonists to set up iron furnaces and slitting mills. That her cloth
manufacturers might flourish, she forbade the colonists to send their
woolen goods to any country whatever, or even from one colony to
another. Under this law it was a crime to knit a pair of mittens or a
pair of socks and send them from Boston to Providence or from New York
to Newark, or from Philadelphia across the Delaware to New Jersey. In
the interest of English hatters the colonists were not allowed to send
hats to any foreign country, nor from one colony to another, and a
serious effort was made to prevent the manufacture of hats in America.
People in this country were obliged to wear English-made hats. Taking
the country through, every saw, every ax, every hammer, every needle,
pin, tack, piece of tape, and a hundred other articles of daily use came
from Great Britain.
Every farmhouse, however, was a little factory, and every farmer a
jack-of-all-trades. He and his sons made their own shoes, beat out nails
and spikes, hinges, and every sort of ironmongery, and constructed much
of the household furniture. The wife and her daughters manufactured the
clothing, from dressing the flax and carding the wool to cutting the
cloth; knit the mittens and socks; and during the winter made straw
bonnets to sell in the towns in the spring.
Even in such towns as were large enough to support a few artisans, each
made, with the help of an apprentice, and perhaps a journeyman, all the
articles he sold.
[Illustration: Hand loom[1]]
%96. The Cities.%--If we take a map of our country and run over the
great cities of to-day, we find that except along the seacoast hardly
one existed, in 1765, even in name. Detroit was a little French
settlement surrounded with a high stockade. New Orleans existed, and St.
Louis had just been founded, but they both belonged to Spain. Mobile and
Pensacola and Natchez and Vincennes consisted of a few huts gathered
about old French forts. There was no city, no town worthy of the name,
in the English colonies west of the Alleghany Mountains. Along the
Atlantic coast we find Portsmouth, Boston, Providence, New Haven, New
York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Alexandria, Williamsburg, Charleston,
Savannah, and others of less note. But the largest of these were mere
collections of a few hundred houses ranged along streets, none of which
were sewered and few of which were paved or lighted. The watchman went
his rounds at night with rattle and lantern, called out the hours and
the state of the weather, and stopped and demanded the name of every
person found walking the streets after nine o'clock. To travel on Sunday
was a serious and punishable offense, as it was on any day to smoke in
the streets, or run from house to house with hot coals, which in those
days, when there were no matches, were often used instead of flint and
steel to light fires.
[Footnote 1: From an old loom in the National Museum, Washington.]
[Illustration: Colonial mansion in Charleston]
Travel between the large towns was almost entirely by sailing vessel, or
on horseback. The first stagecoach-and-four in New England began its
trips in 1744. The first stage between New York and Philadelphia was not
set up till 1756, and spent three days on the road.
%97. The Three Groups of Colonies.%--It has always been usual to
arrange the colonies in three groups: 1. The Eastern or New England
Colonies (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut).
2. The Middle Colonies (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and
Delaware). 3. The Southern Colonies (Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina,
South Carolina, and Georgia). Now, this arrangement is good not only
from a geographical point of view, but also because the people, the
customs, the manners, the occupations, in each of these groups were very
unlike the people and the ways of living in the others.
[Illustration: New England mansion]
%98. Occupations in New England.%--In New England the colonists were
almost entirely English, though there were some Scotch, some
Scotch-Irish, a few Huguenot refugees from France, and, in Rhode Island,
a few Portuguese Jews. As the climate and soil did not admit of raising
any great staple, such as rice or tobacco, the people "took to the sea."
They cut down trees, with which the land was covered, built ships, and
sailed away to the Grand Banks off Newfoundland for cod, and to the
whale fisheries for oil. They went to the English, Dutch, and Spanish
West Indian Islands, with flour, salt meat, horses, oxen; with salted
salmon, cod, and mackerel; with staves for barrels; with onions and
salted oysters. In return, they came back with sugar, molasses, cotton,
wool, logwood, and Spanish dollars with which the New England Colonies
paid for the goods they took from England. They went to Spain, where
their ships were often sold, the captains chartering English vessels and
coming home with cargoes of goods made in England. Six hundred ships are
said to have been employed in the foreign trade of Boston, and more than
a thousand in the fisheries and the trade along the coast.
[Illustration: Dutch House at Albany[1]]
[Footnote 1: From an old print.]
Farming, outside of Connecticut, yielded little more than a bare
subsistence. Manufactures in general were forbidden by English law.
Paper and hats were made in small quantities, leather was tanned, lumber
was sawed, and rum was distilled from molasses; but it was on homemade
manufactures that the people depended.
%99. Occupations in the Middle Colonies.%--In the Middle Colonies the
population was a mixture of people from many European countries. The
line of little villages which began at the west end of Long Island and
stretched up the Hudson to Albany, and out the Mohawk to
Schenectady---the settled part of New York--contained Englishmen,
Irishmen, Dutchmen, French Huguenots, Germans from the Rhine countries,
and negroes from Africa. The chief occupations of those people were
farming, making flour, and carrying on an extensive commerce with
England, Spain, and the West Indian Islands.
[Illustration: Shoes worn by Palatines in Pennsylvania]
In New Jersey the population was almost entirely English, but in
Pennsylvania it was as mixed as in New York. Around Philadelphia the
English predominated, but with them were mingled Swedes, Dutch, Welsh,
Germans, and Scotch-Irish. Taken together, the Germans and the
Scotch-Irish far outnumbered the English, and made up the mass of the
population between the Schuylkill and the Susquehanna rivers. Both were
self-willed and stubborn, and they were utterly unable to get along
together peaceably, so that their settlements ran across the state in
two parallel bands, in one of which whole regions could be found in
which not a word of English was spoken. Indeed, then, and long after the
nineteenth century began, the laws of Pennsylvania were printed both in
English and in German. The chief occupation of the people was farming;
and it is safe to say that no such farms, no such cattle, no such grain,
flour, provisions, could be found in any other part of the country.
Lumber, too, was cut and sold in great quantities; and along the
frontier there was a lively fur trade with the Indians. At Philadelphia
was centered a fine trade with Europe and the West Indies. Had it not
been for the action of the mother country, manufactures would have
flourished greatly; even as it was, iron and paper were manufactured in
considerable quantities.
%100. Occupations in the Southern Colonies.%--South of Pennsylvania,
and especially south of the Potomac River, lay a region utterly unlike
anything to the north of it. In Virginia, there were no cities, no large
towns, no centers of population. At an early day in the history of the
colony the legislature had attempted to remedy this, and had ordered
towns to be built at certain places, had made them the only ports where
ships from abroad could be entered, had established tobacco warehouses
in them, had offered special privileges to tradesmen who would settle in
them, and had provided that each should have a market and a fair. But
the success was small, and Fredericksburg and Alexandria and Petersburg
were straggling villages. Jamestown, the old capital, had by this time
ceased to exist. Williamsburg, the new capital, was a village of 200
houses. There was no business, no incentive in Virginia to build towns.
The planters owned immense plantations along the river banks, and raised
tobacco, which, when gathered, cured, and packed into hogsheads, was
rolled away to the nearest wharf for inspection and shipment to London.
In those early days, when good roads were unknown and wagons few, shafts
were attached to each hogshead by iron bolts driven into the heads, and
the cask was thus turned into a huge roller. With each year's crop would
go a long list of articles of every sort,--hardware, glass, crockery,
clothing, furniture, household utensils, wines,--which the agent was
instructed to buy with the proceeds of the tobacco and send back to the
planter when the ships came a year later for another crop. The country
abounded in trees, yet tables, chairs, boxes, cart wheels, bowls, birch
brooms, all came from the mother country. The wood used for building
houses was actually cut, sent to England as logs to be dressed, and then
taken back to Virginia for use.
[Illustration: Tobacco rolling[1]]
[Footnote 1: From a model in the National Museum, Washington.]
Maryland was in the same condition. Her people raised tobacco, and with
it bought their clothing, household goods, brass and copper wares, and
iron utensils in Great Britain.
In South Carolina rice was the great staple, just as tobacco was the
staple of Virginia, and there too were large plantations and no towns.
All the social, commercial, legal, and political life of the colony
centered in Charleston, from which a direct trade was carried on
with London.
[Illustration: %An old Maryland manor house%]
Labor on the plantations of Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia was
performed exclusively by negro slaves and redemptioners.
%101. Civil Government in the English Colonies.%--If we arrange the
colonies according to the kind of civil government in each, we find that
they fall into three classes:
1. The charter colonies (Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island).
2. The proprietary colonies (Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland).
3. The royal, or provincial, colonies (New Hampshire, New York, New
Jersey, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia).
The charters of the first group were written contracts between the King
and the colonists, defined the share each should have in the government,
and were not to be changed without the consent of both parties. In
colonies of the second group some individual, called the proprietary,
was granted a great tract of land by the King, and, under a royal
charter, was given power to sell the land to settlers, establish
government, and appoint the governors of his colony. In the third group,
the King appointed the governors and instructed them as to the way in
which he wished his colonies to be ruled.
With these differences, all the colonies had the same form of
government. In each there was a legislature elected by the people; in
each the right to vote was limited to men who owned land, paid taxes,
had a certain yearly income, and were members of some Christian church.
The legislature consisted of two branches: the lower house, to which the
people elected delegates; and the upper house, or council, appointed by
the governor. These legislatures could do many things, but their powers
were limited and their acts were subject to review: 1. They could do
nothing contrary to the laws of England. 2. Whatever they did could be
vetoed by the governors, and no bill could be passed over the veto. 3.
All laws passed by a colonial legislature (except in the case of
Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Maryland), and approved by a governor,
must even then be sent to England to be examined by the King in Council,
and could be "disallowed" or vetoed by the King at any time within three
years. This power was used so constantly that the colonial legislatures,
in time, would pass laws to run for two years, and when that time
expired would reënact them for two years more, and so on in order to
avoid the veto. In this way the colonists became used to three political
institutions which were afterwards embodied in what is now the American
system of state and national government: 1. The written constitution
defining the powers of government. 2. The exercise of the veto power by
the governor. 3. The setting aside of laws by a judicial body from whose
decision there is no appeal.
%102. The Colonial Governors.%--The governor of a royal province was
the personal representative of the King, and as such had vast power.
The legislature could meet only when he called it. He could at any
moment prorogue it (that is, command it to adjourn to a certain day) or
dissolve it, and, if the King approved, he need never call it together
again. He was the chief justice of the highest colonial court, he
appointed all the judges, and, as commander in chief of the militia,
appointed all important officers. Yet even he was subject to some
control, for his salary was paid by the colony over which he ruled, and,
by refusing to pay this salary, the legislature could, and over and over
again did, force him to approve acts he would not otherwise have
sanctioned. In Connecticut and Rhode Island the people elected the
governors. This right once existed also in Massachusetts; but when the
old charter was swept away in 1684, and replaced by a new one in 1691,
the King was given power to appoint the governor, who could summon,
dissolve, and prorogue the legislature at his pleasure.
%103. Lords of Trade and Plantations.%--That the King should give
personal attention to all the details of government in his colonies in
America, was not to be expected. In 1696, therefore, a body called the
Lords of the Board of Trade and Plantations was commissioned by the King
to do this work for him. These Lords of Trade corresponded with the
governors, made recommendations, bade them carry out this or that
policy, veto this or that class of laws, examined all the laws sent over
by the legislatures, and advised the King as to which should be
disallowed, or vetoed.
In the early years of our colonial history the Parliament of England had
no share in the direction of colonial affairs. It was the King who owned
all the land, made all the grants, gave all the charters, created all
the colonies, governed many of them, and stoutly denied the right of
Parliament to meddle. But when Charles I. was beheaded, the Long
Parliament took charge of the management of affairs in this country, and
although much of it went back to the King at the Restoration in 1660,
Parliament still continued to legislate for the colonies in a few
matters. Thus, for instance, Parliament by one act established the
postal service, and fixed the rates of postage; by another it regulated
the currency, and by another required the colonists to change from the
Old Style to the New Style--that is, to stop using the Julian calendar
and to count time in future by the Gregorian calendar; by another it
established a uniform law of naturalization; and from time to time it
passed acts for the purpose of regulating colonial trade.
%104. Acts of Trade and Navigation.%--The number of these acts is
very large; but their purpose was four fold:
1. They required that colonial trade should be carried on in ships built
and owned in England or in the colonies, and manned to the extent of two
thirds of the crew by English subjects.
2. They provided a long list of colonial products that should not be
sent to any foreign ports other than a port of England. Goods or
products not in the list might be sent to any other part of the world.
Thus tobacco, sugar, indigo, copper, furs, rice (if the rice was for a
port north of Cape Finisterre), must go to England; but lumber, salt
fish, and provisions might go (in English or colonial ships) to France,
or Spain, or to other foreign countries.
3. When trade began to spring up between the colonies, and the New
England merchants were competing in the colonial markets with English
merchants, an act was passed providing that if a product which went from
one colony to another was of a kind that might have been supplied from
England, it must either go to the mother country and then to the
purchasing colony, or pay an export duty at the port where it was
shipped, equal to the import duty it would have to pay in England.
4. No goods were allowed to be carried from any place in Europe to
America unless they were first landed at a port in England.[1]
[Footnote 1: Edward Eggleston's papers in the _Century Magazine_, 1884;
Scudder's _Men and Manners One Hundred Years Ago_; Lodge's _English
Colonies_.]
SUMMARY
1. The men who began the long struggle for the rights of Englishmen
lived in a state of society very different from ours, and were utterly
ignorant of most of the commonest things we use in daily life.
2. Labor was performed by slaves, by criminals sent over to the colonies
and sold, and by "indented servants," or "redemptioners."
3. Manufactures were forbidden by the laws of trade. Nobody was
permitted to manufacture iron beyond the state of pig or bar iron, or
make woolen goods for export, or make hats.
4. Taking the colonies in geographical groups, the Eastern were engaged
in fishing, in commerce, and in farming; the Middle Colonies were
agricultural and commercial; the Southern were wholly agricultural, and
raised two great, staples--rice and tobacco.
5. As a consequence, town life existed in the Eastern and Middle
Colonies, and was little known in the South, particularly in Virginia.
6. Over the colonies, as a great governing body to aid the King, were
the Lords of Trade and Plantations in London. Under them in America were
the royal and proprietary governors, who with the local colonial
legislatures managed the affairs of the colonies.
LIFE IN THE COLONIES IN 1763.
_Social and Industrial Condition_.
Population.
Implements and inventions unknown.
The printing press.
The postal service.
Trades and occupations then unknown.
Labor.}The apprentice.
}The "indented servant."
}The redemptioner.
}The slave.
No manufactures. }Iron making
Acts of trade regulating. }Cloth making.
The cities. }Hat making.
Travel.
The Navigation Acts.
State of agriculture.
_Government_.
The charter colonies.
The proprietary colonies.
The royal colonies.
The colonial governor.
The Lords of Trade and Plantations.
The King.