reckoning, a mature man of about seven-and-thirty; he had visited the
prisons, and convinced himself that there was neither political economy
nor humanity in this method of preserving the impecunious class. Why
not take them to America? Why not found a new colony there where men
might dwell in peace and comfort, with the aim not of amassing wealth,
but of living sober and useful lives? On the southern side of South
Carolina there was a region fitted for such an enterprise, which, owing
to its proximity to the Spanish colony at St. Augustine, had been vexed
by border quarrels; but Oglethorpe, with his military experience, would
be able to keep the Spaniards in their place with one hand, while he
was planting gardens for his proteges with the other. Thus his colony
would be useful on grounds of high policy, as well as for its own ends.
And in order additionally to conciliate the good will of the home
government, controlled as it was by mercantile interests chiefly, the
silk-worm should be cultivated there, and England thus saved the duties
on the Italian fabrics. Should there be slaves in the new Eden?--On all
accounts, No: first because slavery was intrinsically wrong, and
secondly because it would lead to idleness, if not to wealth, among the
colonists. For the same reason, land could only pass to the eldest son,
or failing male issue, back to the state; if permission were given to
divide it, or to sell it, there would soon be great landed properties
and an aristocracy. Nor should the importation of rum be permitted, for
if men have rum, they are prone to drink it, and drunkenness was
incompatible with the kind of existence which the good General wished
his colonists to lead. In a word, by removing temptations to vice and
avarice, he thought he could make his people forget that such evils had
ever belonged to human nature. But experiments founded upon the innate
impeccability of man have furnished many comedies and not a few
tragedies since the world began.
The Oglethorpe idea, however, appealed to the public, and became a sort
of fashionable fad. It was commended, and after Parliament had voted
ten thousand pounds toward it, it was everywhere accepted as the
correct thing. The charter was given in June, 1732, and a suitable
design was not wanting for the corporation seal--silkworms, with the
motto, Non Sibi, sed Aliis. This might refer either to the colonists or
to the patrons, since the latter were to receive no emoluments for
their services, and the former were to work for the sake, in part at
least, of vindicating the nobility of labor. It is true that the
silkworm is an involuntary and unconscious altruist; but we must allow
some latitude in symbols; and besides, all executive and legislative
power was given to the trustees, or such council as they might choose
to appoint.
In November the general conducted his hundred or more human derelicts
to Port Royal, and, going up the stream, chose the site for his city of
Savannah, and laid it out in liberal parallelograms. While it was
building he tented beneath a quartette of primeval pines, and exchanged
friendly greetings and promises with the various Indian tribes who sent
deputies to him. A year from that time, the German Protestant refugees
began to arrive, and started a town of their own further inland. A
party of Moravians followed; and the two Wesleys aided to introduce an
exalted religious sentiment which might have recalled the days of the
Pilgrims. For the present, all went harmoniously; the debtors were
thankful to be out of prison; the religious folk were happy so long as
they might wreak themselves on their religion; and the silk-culture
paid a revenue so long as England paid bounties on it. But the time
must come when the colonists would demand to do what they liked with
their own land, and other things; when they would import rum by stealth
and hardly blush to be found out; when some of the less
democratically-minded decided that there were advantages in slaves
after all; and when some of the more independent declared they could
not endure oppression, and migrated to other colonies. After struggling
a score of years against the inevitable, the trustees surrendered their
trusteeship, and the colony came under the management of the Second
George. Oglethorpe had long ere this retired to England, after having
kept his promise of reducing the Spaniards to order; and at his home at
Cranham Hall in Essex he continued to be the friend of man until after
the close of the American Revolution.
The war with Spain, of which Oglethorpe's unsuccessful attack upon St.
Augustine and triumphant defense of his own place was but a very minor
feature, raged for a while in the West Indies with no very marked
advantage to either contestant, and then drew the other nations of
Europe into the fray. Nothing creditable was being fought for on either
side. England, to be sure, had declared war with the object of
expunging Spain from America; but it had been only in order that she
herself might replace Spain there as a monopolist. France came in to
prevent England from enjoying this monopoly. The death of the Austrian
king and a consequent dispute as to the succession added that power to
the melee. Russia received an invitation to join, and this finally led
to the Peace of Aix La Chapelle in 1748, which replaced all things in
dispute just where they were before innumerable lives and enormous
treasure had been expended. But the Eighteenth was a fighting Century,
for it was the transition period from the old to the new order of
civilized life.
The part borne by the American colonies in this struggle was quite
subordinate and sympathetic; but it was not the less interesting to the
Americans. In 1744 the Six Nations (as the Five had been called since
the accession of the Tuscaroras) made a treaty of alliance with the
English whereby the Ohio valley was secured to the latter as against
the French--so far, that is, as the Indians could secure it. But the
Pennsylvanians understood that more than Indian treaties would be
needed against France, and as their country was likely to be among the
first involved, they determined to raise money and men for the
campaign. There were, of course, men in Pennsylvania who were not of
the Quaker way of thinking; but even the Quakers forbore to oppose the
measure, and many of them gave it explicit approval. The incident gains
its chief interest however from the fact that the man most active and
efficient in getting both the funds and the soldiers was Benjamin
Franklin, the Boston boy, in whose veins flowed the blood of both
Quaker and Calvinist, but who was himself of far too original a
character to be either. He was at this epoch just past forty, and had
been a resident of Philadelphia for some twenty years, and a famous
printer, writer, and man of mark. He hit upon the scheme--which, like
so many of his, was more practical than orthodox--of persuading dollars
out of men's pockets by means of a lottery. He knew that, whatever a
fastidious morality might protest, lotteries are friendly to human
nature; and if there be any part of human nature with which Franklin
was unacquainted, it has not yet been announced. Having got the money,
his next care was for the men; and his plans resulted in assembling an
organized force of ten or twelve thousand militiamen. But the energy
and ingenuity of this incomparable Franklin of ours could be equaled
only by his modesty; he would not accept a colonelcy, but shouldered
his musket along with the rank and file; and doubtless the company to
which he belonged forgot the labors of war in their enjoyment of his
wit, humor, anecdotes, parables, and resources of all kinds.
After so much waste and folly as had marked the conduct of the war in
Europe, it is good to hear the tale of the capture of Louisburg. It was
an adventure which gave the colonists merited confidence in themselves,
and the character of the little army, and the management of the
campaign, were an excellent and suggestive dress rehearsal of the great
drama of thirty years later. The army was a combination of Yankees with
arms in their hands to effect an object eminently conducive to the
common welfare. For Louisburg was the key to the St. Lawrence, it
commanded the fisheries, and it threatened Acadia, or rather Nova
Scotia, which was inhabited chiefly by Bretons, liable to afford succor
to their belligerent brethren. The fort had been built, after the close
of the former war, by those who had preferred not to live under the
government of the House of Hanover, on the eastern extremity of the
island called Cape Breton, itself lying northeast of the Nova Scotian
promontory. The site was good for defense, and the fortifications,
scientifically designed, were held to be impregnable. Had Louisburg
rested content with being strong, it might have been allowed to remain
at peace; but at the beginning of the war, and before the frontier
people in Nova Scotia had heard of it, a French party swooped down from
Louisburg on the settlement at Canso (the gut between Cape Breton and
Nova Scotia), destroyed all that was destructible, and carried eighty
men as prisoners of war to their stronghold. After keeping them there
during the summer, these men were paroled and went to Boston. This was
a mistake on the Louisburgers' part; for the men had made themselves
well acquainted with the fortifications and the topography of the
neighborhood, and placed this useful information at the disposal of
William Shirley, a lawyer of ability, who was afterward governor of the
colony, and a warrior of some note. It was Shirley's opinion that
Louisburg must be taken, and the idea immediately became popular. It
was the main topic of discussion in Boston, and all over New England,
during the autumn and winter; Massachusetts decided that it could be
done, and that she could do it, though the help of other colonies would
be gladly accepted. Yet the feeling was not unanimous, if the vote of
the legislature be a criterion; the bill passed there by a majority of
one. Be that as it may, once resolved upon, the enterprise was pushed
with ardor, not unmingled with prayer--the old Puritan leaven
reappearing as soon as deeds of real moment were in the wind. In every
village and hamlet there was excitement and preparation--the warm
courage of men glad to have a chance at the hated fortress, and the
pale bravery of women keeping down the heavy throbbing of their hearts
so that their sons and husbands might feel no weakness for their sakes.
The fishermen of Marblehead, used to face the storms and fogs of the
Newfoundland Banks; the farmers and mechanics, who could hit a Bay
shilling (if one could be found in that era of paper money) at fifty
paces; and the hunters, who knew the craft of the Indians and were
inured to every fatigue and hardship--finer material for an army was
never got together before: independent, bold, cunning, handy,
inventive, full of resource; but utterly ignorant of drill, and
indifferent to it. Their officers were chosen by themselves, of the
same rank and character as they; their only uniforms were their
flintlocks and hangers. They marched and camped as nature prompted, but
they had common-sense developed to the utmost by the exigencies of
their daily lives, and they created, simply by being together, a
discipline and tactics of their own; they even learned enough of the
arts of fortification and intrenchment, during the siege, to serve all
their requirements. They had the American instinct to break loose from
tradition and solve problems from an original point of view; they
laughed at the jargon and technicalities of conventional war, but they
had their own passwords, and they understood one another in and out.
The carpenters and other mechanics among them carried their skill
along, and were ever ready to put it in practice for the general
behoof. Most of them left wives and children at home; but "Suffer no
anxious thoughts to rest in your mind about me," writes his wife to
Seth Pomeroy, who had sent word to her that he was "willing to stay
till God's time comes to deliver the city into our hands":--"I leave
you in the hands of God," added she; and subjoined, by way of village
gossip, that "the whole town is much engaged with concern for the
expedition, how Providence will order the affair, for which religious
meetings every week are maintained." We can imagine those meetings,
held in the village meeting-house, with an infirm old veteran of King
William's War to lead in prayer, and the benches occupied by the women,
devout but spirited, with the little children by their sides. What
hearty prayers: what sighs irrepressibly heaving those brave, tender
bosoms; what secret tears, denied by smiles when the face was lifted
from the clasping hands! Righteous prayers, which were fulfilled.
Over three thousand men went from Massachusetts alone; New Hampshire
added five hundred, and more than that number arrived from Connecticut,
after the rest had gone into camp at Canso. The three hundred from
little Rhode Island came too late. Other colonies sent rations and
money. But the four thousand were enough, with Pepperel of Kittery for
commander, and a good cause. They set out alone while the Cape Breton
ice still filled the harbors; for Commodore Warren of the English fleet
at Antigua would not go except by order from England--which, however,
came soon afterward, so that he and his ships joined them after all
before hostilities began. The expedition first set eyes on their
objective point on the day before May day, 1745.
The fortress bristled with guns of all sizes, and the walls were of
enormous thickness, so that no cannon belonging to the besiegers could
hope to make a breach in them. But the hearts of the garrison were less
stout than their defenses; and when four hundred cheering volunteers
approached a battery on shore, the Frenchmen spiked their guns and ran
away.
The siege lasted six weeks, with unusually fine weather. In the
intervals of attacks upon the island battery, which resisted them, the
men hunted, fished, played rough outdoor games, and kept up their
spirits; and they pounded Louisburg gates with their guns; but no
advantage was gained; and a night-attack, in the Indian style, was
discovered prematurely, and nearly two hundred men were killed or
captured. Finally, there seemed to be nothing for it but to escalade
the walls, Warren--who had done nothing thus far except prevent relief
from approaching by sea--bombarding the city meanwhile. It hardly seems
possible the attempt could have succeeded; at best, the losses would
have been enormous. But at the critical moment, depressed, perhaps, by
having witnessed the taking of an incautious French frigate which had
tried to run the blockade, what should the French commander do but hang
out a white flag! Yes, the place had capitulated! The gates that could
not be hammered in with cannon-balls were thrown open, and in crowded
the Yankee army, laughing, staring, and thanking the Lord of Hosts for
His mercies. Truly, it was like David overcoming Goliath, without his
sling. It was a great day for New England; and on the same day thirty
years later the British redcoats fell beneath the volleys on Bunker
Hill.
The French tried to recapture the place next year, but storms,
pestilence and other disasters prevented; and the only other notable
incident of the war was the affair of Commander Knowles at Boston in
1747. He was anchored off Nantasket with a squadron, when some of his
tars deserted, as was not surprising, considering the sort of commander
he was, and the charms of the famous town. Knowles, ignorant of the
spirit of a Boston mob, impressed a number of wharfmen and seamen from
vessels in the harbor; he had done the same thing before in England,
and why not here? But the mob was on fire at once, and after the timid
governor had declined to seize such of the British naval officers as
were in the town, the crowd, terrible in its anger, came thundering
down King Street and played the sheriff for itself. The hair of His
Majesty's haughty commanders and lieutenants must have crisped under
their wigs when they looked out of the windows of the coffee-house and
saw them. In walks the citizens' deputation, with scant ceremony:
protests are unavailing: off to jail His Majesty's officers must
straightway march, leaving their bottles of wine half emptied, and
their chairs upset on the sawdusted floor; and in jail must they abide,
until those impressed Bostonians have been liberated. It was a
wholesome lesson; and among the children who ran and shouted beside the
procession to the prison were those who, when they were men grown,
threw the tea into Boston Harbor.
In 1748 the Peace was made, and the Duke of Newcastle, a flighty,
trivial and faithless creature, gave place to the strict, honest, and
narrow Duke of Bedford as Secretary of the Colonies. The colonies had
been under the charge of the Board of Commissioners, who could issue
what orders they chose, but had no power to enforce them; and as the
colonial assemblies slighted their commands except when it pleased them
to do otherwise, much exasperation ensued on the Commissioners' part.
The difficulties would have been minimized had it not been the habit of
Newcastle to send out as colonial officials the offscourings of the
British aristocracy: and when a British aristocrat is worthless,
nothing can be more worthless than he. The upshot of the situation was
that the colonists did what they pleased, regardless of orders from
home; while yet the promulgation of those orders, aiming to defend
injustices and iniquities, kept up a chronic and growing disaffection
toward England. So it had been under Newcastle, who had uniformly
avoided personal annoyance by omitting to read the constant complaints
of the Commissioners; but Bedford was a man of another stamp, fond of
business, granite in his decisions, and resolved to be master in his
department. It was easy to surmise that his appointment would hasten
the drift of things toward a crisis. England would not tamely
relinquish her claim to absolute jurisdiction over her colonies. But
the bulwarks of popular liberty were rising in America, and every year
saw them strengthened and more ably manned. English legislative
opposition only defined and solidified the colonial resistance. What
was to be the result? There would be no lack of English statesmen
competent to consider it; men like Pitt, Murray and Townshend were
already above the horizon of history. But it was not by statesmanship
that the issue was to be decided. Man is proud of his intellect; but it
is generally observable that it is the armed hand that settles the
political problems of the world.
There were in the colonies men of ability, and of consideration, who
were traitors to the cause of freedom. Such were Thomas Hutchinson, a
plausible hypocrite, not devoid of good qualities, but intent upon
filling his pockets from the public purse; Oliver, a man of less
ability but equal avarice; and William Shirley, the scheming lawyer
from England, who had made America his home in order to squeeze a
living out of it. These men went to England to promote the passage of a
law insuring a regular revenue for the civil list from the colonists,
independent of the latter's approval; the immediate pretext being that
money was needed to protect the colonies against French encroachments.
The several assemblies refused to consent to such a tax; and the
question was then raised whether Parliament had not the right to
override the colonists' will. Lord Halifax, the First Commissioner, was
urgent in favor of the proposition; he was an ignorant, arbitrary man,
who laid out a plan for the subjugation of the colonies as lightly and
willfully as he might have directed the ditch-digging and
fence-building on his estates. Murray, afterward Lord Mansfield, held
that Parliament had the requisite power; but in the face of the united
protest of the colonies, that body laid the measure aside for the
present. Meanwhile the conditions of future trouble were preparing in
the Ohio Valley, where French and English were making conflicting
claims and planting rival stations; and in Nova Scotia, where the town
of Halifax was founded in an uninviting fir forest, and the project was
mooted of transporting the French Acadians to some place or places
where they would cease to constitute a peril by serving as a stage for
French machinations against the English rule.
Another and final war with France was already appearing inevitable; the
colonists must bear a hand in it, but they also were at odds with
England herself on questions vital to their prosperity and happiness.
In the welter of events of the next few years we find a mingling of
conditions deliberately created (with a view, on England's part, of
checking the independent tendencies of the Americans and of forcing
tribute from them) and of unforeseen occurrences due to fortuitous
causes beyond the calculation and control of persons in power. Finally,
the declaration of war against France in 1756--though it had
unofficially existed at least two years before--and its able management
by the great Pitt, enabled England to dictate a peace in 1763 giving
her all she asked for in Europe and the East, and the whole of the
French possessions in America, besides islands in the West Indies. Her
triumph was great; but she did not foresee (though a few acute
observers did) that this great conquest would within a few years fall
into the hands of the colonists, making them potentially the greatest
of nations. At the era of the Revolution, the white inhabitants in the
colonies numbered about two millions, and the black about half a
million.
In 1754, the French had upward of sixty posts west of the Alleghanies,
and were sending expeditions to drive out whatever Englishmen could be
found. The Indian tribes who believed themselves to own the land were
aroused, and appealed to the Americans to assist them; which the latter
were willing to do, though not for the Indians' sake. Virginia was
especially concerned, because she claimed beyond the western mountains,
and had definite designs in that direction. In order to find out just
what the disposition of the French might be, Robert Dinwiddie, a Scot,
governor of Virginia, selected a trustworthy envoy to proceed to the
French commanders in the disputed districts and ask their purposes. His
choice fell upon George Washington, a young man of blameless character,
steady, courageous and observant, wise in judgment and of mature mind,
though he was but one and twenty years of age. He was the son of a
Virginia planter, had had such schooling as his neighborhood afforded
until he was sixteen, and had then begun life as a surveyor--a good
calling in a country whose inhabitants were daily increasing and whose
lands were practically limitless. Life in the open air, and the custom
of the woods and hills, had developed a frame originally powerful into
that of a tall and hardened athlete, able to run, wrestle, swim, leap,
ride, as well as to use the musket and the sword. His intellect was not
brilliant, but it was clear, and his habit of thought methodical; he
was of great modesty, yet one of those who rise to the emergency, and
are kindled into greater and greater power by responsibilities or
difficulties which would overwhelm feebler or less constant natures.
None would have been less likely than Washington himself to foretell
his own greatness; but when others believed in him he was compelled by
his religious and conscientious nature to act up to their belief. The
marvelous selflessness of the man, while it concealed from him what he
was, immeasurably increased his power to act; to do his duty was all
that he ever proposed to himself, and therefore he was able to
concentrate his every faculty on that alone. The lessons of experience
were never thrown away upon him, and his faith in an overruling
Providence rendered him calm at all times, except on the rare occasions
when some subordinate's incompetence or negligence at a critical moment
caused to burst forth in him that terrific wrath which was more
appalling to its object than the guns of a battery. There was always
great personal dignity in Washington, insomuch that nothing like
comradeship, in the familiar sense, was ever possible to any one with
him; he was totally devoid of the sense of humor, and was therefore
debarred from one whole region of human sympathies which Franklin loved
to dwell in. It is one of the marvels of history that a man with a mind
of such moderate compass as Washington's should have gained the
reputation, which he amply deserved, of being the foremost American of
his age, and one of the leading figures in human annals. But, in truth,
we attach far too much weight to intellect in our estimates of human
worth. Washington, was competent for the work that was given him to do,
and that work was one of the most important that ever fell to the lot
of a man. Faith, firmness, integrity, grasp, simplicity, and the
exceptional physical endowment which enabled him to support the
tremendous fatigues and trials of his campaigns, and of the opposition
he encountered from selfish and shortsighted politicians in
Congress--these qualities were almost sufficient to account for
Washington. Almost, but perhaps not quite; there must have been in
addition an inestimable personal equation which fused all into a
harmonious individuality that isolates him in our regard: a wholeness,
which can be felt, but which is hardly to be set down in phrases.