SETTLEMENT OF THE MIDDLE STATES.
The present State of New Jersey was a part of New Netherland, and the
Dutch had a trading-post at Bergen as early as 1618. After New
Netherland passed into the hands of the Dutch, the Duke of York gave the
land lying between the Hudson and the Delaware to Lord Berkeley and Sir
George Carteret for Christmas.
[Illustration: BERKELEY IN NEW JERSEY.]
The first permanent English settlement made in the State was at
Elizabethtown, named so in honor of Sir George's first wife.
Berkeley sold his part to some English Quakers. This part was called
West Jersey. He claimed that it was too far from town. It was very hard
for a lord to clear up land, and Berkeley missed his evenings at the
Savage Club, and his nose yearned for a good whiff of real old Rotten
Row fog.
So many disputes arose regarding the title to Jersey that the whole
thing finally reverted to the crown in 1702. When there was any trouble
over titles in those days it was always settled by letting it revert to
the crown. It has been some years now, however, since that has happened
in this country.
Thirty-six years later New Jersey was set apart as a separate royal
province, and became a railroad terminus and bathing-place.
Delaware was settled by the Swedes at Wilmington first, and called New
Sweden. I am surprised that the Norsemen, who it is claimed made the
first and least expensive summer at Newport, R. I., should not have
clung to it.
[Illustration: CHEAPEST NEWPORT SEASON.]
They could have made a good investment, and in a few years would have
been strong enough to wipe out the Brooklyn police.
The Swedes, too, had a good foothold in New York, Jersey, and Delaware,
also a start in Pennsylvania. But the two nations seemed to yearn for
home, and as soon as boats began to run regularly to Stockholm and
Christiania, they returned. In later years they discovered Minneapolis
and Stillwater.
William Penn now loomed up on the horizon. He was an English Quaker who
had been expelled from Oxford and jugged in Cork also for his religious
belief. He was the son of Admiral Sir William Penn, and had a good
record. He believed that elocutionary prayer was unnecessary, and that
the acoustics of heaven were such that the vilest sinner with no
voice-culture could be heard in the remotest portion of the gallery.
The only thing that has been said against Penn with any sort of
semblance of truth was that he had some influence with James II. The
Duke of York also stood in with Penn, and used to go about in England
bailing William out whenever he was jailed on account of his religious
belief.
Penn was quite a writer (see Appendix). He was the author of "No Cross,
No Crown," "Innocency with her Open Face," and "The Great Cause of
Liberty of Conscience."
From his father he had inherited a claim against the government for
sixteen thousand pounds, probably arrears of pension. He finally
received the State of Pennsylvania as payment of the claim. The western
boundary took in the Cliff House and Seal Rocks of San Francisco.
Penn came to America in 1682 and bought his land over again from the
Indians. It is not strange that he got the best terms he could out of
the Indians, but still it is claimed that they were satisfied, therefore
he did not cheat them.
The Indian, as will be noticed by reading these pages thoughtfully, was
never a Napoleon of finance. He is that way down to the present day. If
you watch him carefully and notice his ways, you can dicker with him to
better advantage than you can with Russell Sage.
Take the Indian just before breakfast after two or three nights of
debauchery, and offer him a jug of absinthe with a horned toad in it for
his pony and saddle, and you will get them. Even in his more sober and
thoughtful moments you can swap a suit of red medicated flannels with
him for a farm.
Penn gathered about him many different kinds of people, with various
sorts and shades of belief. Some were Free-Will and some were
Hard-Shell, some were High-Church and reminded one of a Masonic Lodge
working at 32°, while others were Low-Church and omitted crossing
themselves frequently while putting down a new carpet in the chancel.
[Illustration: A FEW OF PENN'S PEOPLE.]
But he was too well known at court, and suspected of knowledge of and
participation in some of the questionable acts of King James, so that
after the latter's dethronement, and an intimation that Penn had
communicated with the exiled monarch, Penn was deprived of his title to
Pennsylvania, for which he had twice paid.
Penn was a constant sufferer at the hands of his associates, who sought
to injure him in every way. He rounded out a life of suffering by
marrying the second time in 1695.
In 1708 he was on the verge of bankruptcy, owing to the villany and
mismanagement of his agent, and was thrown into Fleet Street Prison, a
jail in which he had never before been confined. His health gave way
afterwards, and this remarkable man died July 30, 1718.
Philadelphia was founded in 1683 and work begun on a beautiful building
known as the City Hall. Work has steadily progressed on this building
from time to time since then, and at this writing it is so near
completion as to give promise of being one of the most perfect
architectural jobs ever done by the hand of man.
In two years Philadelphia had sprung from a wilderness, where the rank
thistle nodded in the wind, to a town of over two thousand people,
exclusive of Indians not taxed. In three years it had gained more than
New York had in fifty years. This was due to the fact that the people
who came to Philadelphia had nothing to fear but the Indians, while
settlers in New York had not only the Indians to defend themselves
against, but the police also.
Penn and his followers established the great law that no one who
believed in Almighty God should be molested in his religious belief.
Even the Indians liked Penn, and when the nights were cold they would
come and crawl into his bed and sleep with him all night and not kill
him at all. The Great Chief of the Tribes, even, did not feel above
this, and the two used frequently to lie and talk for hours, Penn doing
the talking and the chief doing the lying.
It is said that, with all the Indian massacres and long wars between the
red men and the white, no drop of Quaker blood was ever shed. I quote
this from an historian who is much older than I, and with whom I do not
wish to have any controversy.
After Penn's death his heirs ran the Colony up to 1779, when they
disposed of it for five hundred thousand dollars or thereabouts, and the
State became the proprietor.
[Illustration: PENN AND THE BIG CHIEF.]
The seventeenth century must have been a very disagreeable period for
people who professed religion, for America from Newfoundland to Florida
was dotted with little settlements almost entirely made up of people who
had escaped from England to secure religious freedom at the risk of
their lives.
In 1634 the first settlement was made by young Lord Baltimore, whose
people, the Catholics, were fleeing from England to obtain freedom to
worship God as they believed to be right. Thus the Catholics were added
to the list of religious refugees,--viz., the Huguenots, the Puritans,
the Walloons, the Quakers, the Presbyterians, the Whigs, and the Menthol
Healers.
Terra Mariæ, or Maryland, was granted to Lord Baltimore, as the
successor of his father, who had begun before his death the movement for
settling his people in America. The charter gave to all freemen a voice
in making the laws. Among the first laws passed was one giving to every
human being upon payment of poll-tax the right to worship freely
according to the dictates of his own conscience. America thus became the
refuge for those who had any peculiarity of religious belief, until
to-day no doubt more varieties of religion may be found here than almost
anywhere else in the world.
In 1635 the Virginia Colony and Lord Baltimore had some words over the
boundaries between the Jamestown and Maryland Colonies. Clayborne was
the Jamestown man who made the most trouble. He had started a couple of
town sites on the Maryland tract, plotted them, and sold lots to
Yorkshire tenderfeet, and so when Lord Baltimore claimed the lands
Clayborne attacked him, and there was a running skirmish for several
years, till at last the Rebellion collapsed in 1645 and Clayborne fled.
The Protestants now held the best hand, and outvoted the Catholics, so
up to 1691 there was a never-dying fight between the two, which must
have been entertaining to the unregenerate outsider who was taxed to pay
for a double set of legislators. This fight between the Catholics and
Protestants shows that intolerance is not confined to a monarchy.
In 1715 the fourth Lord Baltimore recovered the government by the aid of
the police, and religious toleration was restored. Maryland remained
under this system of government until the Revolution, which will be
referred to later on in the most thrilling set of original pictures and
word-paintings that the reader has ever met with.
* * * * *
QUESTIONS FOR EXAMINATION.
_Q._ Who was William Penn?
_A._ He founded Pennsylvania.
_Q._ Was he a great fighter?
_A._ No. He was a peaceable man, and did not believe in killing men
or fighting.
_Q._ Would he have fought for a purse of forty thousand dollars?
_A._ No. He could do better buying coal lands of the Indians.
_Q._ What is religious freedom?
_A._ It is the art of giving intolerance a little more room.
_Q._ Who was Lord Baltimore?
_A._ See foregoing chapter.
_Q._ What do you understand by rebellion?
_A._ It is an unsuccessful attempt by armed subjects to overcome
the parent government.
_Q._ Is it right or wrong?
_A._ I do not know, but will go and inquire.