MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, CAROLINA
[1675]
The establishment of Charles II. as king fully restored Lord Baltimore
as proprietary in Maryland, and for a long time the colony enjoyed much
peace and prosperity. In 1660 it boasted twelve thousand inhabitants, in
1665 sixteen thousand, in 1676 twenty thousand. Plantation life was
universal, there being no town worthy the name till Baltimore, which,
laid out in 1739, grew very slowly. Tobacco was the main production, too
nearly the only one, the planters sometimes actually suffering for food,
so that the raising of cereals needed to be enforced by law. For long
the weed was also the money of the province, not disused for this even
when paper currency was introduced, being found the less fluctuating in
value of the two. Partly actual over-production and partly the
navigation acts, forcing all sales to be effected through England,
fatally lowered the price, and Maryland with Virginia tried to establish
a "trust" to regulate the output.
[Illustration: Charles, Second Lord Baltimore.]
In its incessant and on one occasion bloody boundary disputes with
Pennsylvania and Delaware, Maryland had to give in and suffer its
northern and eastern boundaries to be shortened.
[1689]
One of the most beautiful traits of early Maryland was its perfect
toleration in religion. Practically neither Pennsylvania nor Rhode
Island surpassed it in this. Much hostility to the Quakers existed, yet
they had here exceptional privileges, and great numbers from Virginia
and the North utilized these. All sorts of dissenters indeed flocked
hither out of all European countries, including many Huguenots, and were
made welcome to all the rights and blessings of the land.
But from the accession of Charles Calvert, the third Lord Baltimore, in
1675, the colony witnessed continual agitation in favor of establishing
the English Church. False word reached the Privy Council that immorality
was rife in the colony owing to a lack of religious instruction, and
that Catholics were preferred in its offices. This movement succeeded,
in spite of its intrinsic demerit, by passing itself off as part of the
rising in favor of William and Mary in 1688-89.
[1690]
James II. had shown no favor to Maryland. If its proprietary, as a
Catholic, pleased him, its civil and religious liberty offended him
more. He was hence not popular here, and the Marylanders would readily
have proclaimed the new monarchs but for the accidental failure of the
proprietary's commands to this effect to reach them. This gave occasion
for one Coode, with a few abettors, to form, in April, 1689, an
"Association in Arms for the Defence of the Protestant Religion, and for
Asserting the Right of King William and Queen Mary to the Province of
Maryland." The exaggerated representations of these conspirators
prevailed in England. The proprietary, retaining his quit rents and
export duty, was deprived of his political prerogatives. Maryland became
a Crown province, Sir Lionel Copley being the first royal governor, and
the Church of England received establishment therein.
The new ecclesiastical rule did not oppress Protestant dissenters,
though very severe on Catholics, whom it was supposed necessary, here as
all over America, to keep under, lest they should rise in favor of James
II., or his son the Pretender.
[1660]
The third Lord Baltimore died in 1714-15. The proprietaries after this
being Protestants, were intrusted again with their old political
headship. By this time a spirit of independence and self-assertion had
grown up among the citizens, enforcing very liberal laws, and the vices
of the sixth Lord, succeeding in 1751, made his subjects more than
willing that he should, as he did, close the proprietary line.
Virginia, passionately loyal, at first gloried in the Restoration. This
proved premature. It was found that the purely selfish Charles II. cared
no more for Virginia than for Massachusetts. The Commonwealth's men were
displaced from power. Sir William Berkeley again became governor, this
time, however, by the authority of the assembly. A larger feeling of
independence from England had sprung up in the colony in consequence of
recent history at home and in the mother-land. It was developed still
further by the events now to be detailed.
[1676]
The Old Dominion contained at this time 40,000 people, 6,000 being white
servants and 2,000 negro slaves, located mainly upon the lower waters of
the Rappahannock, York, and James Rivers. Between 1650 and 1670, through
large immigration from the old country, the population had increased
from 15,000 to 40,000, some of the first families of the State in
subsequent times arriving at this juncture. About eighty ships of
commerce came each year from Great Britain, besides many from New
England. Virginia herself built no ships and owned few; but she could
muster eight thousand horse, had driven the Indians far into the
interior, possessed the capacity for boundless wealth, and had begun to
experience a decided sense of her own rights and importance. The last
fact showed itself in Bacon's Rebellion, which broke out in 1676, just
one hundred years before the Declaration of Independence. The causes of
the insurrection were not far to seek.
[1673]
The navigation acts were a sore grievance to Virginia as to the other
colonies. Under Cromwell they had not been much enforced, and the
Virginians had traded freely with all who came. Charles enforced them
with all possible rigor, confining Virginia's trade to England and
English ships manned by Englishmen. This gave England a grinding
monopoly of tobacco, Virginia's sole export, making the planters
commercially the slaves of the home government and of English traders.
Duties on the weed were high, and mercilessly collected without regard
to lowness of price. All supplies from abroad also had to be purchased
in England, at prices set by English sellers. Even if from other parts
of Europe, they must come through England, thus securing her a profit at
Virginia's expense.
This was not the worst. The colonial government had always been abused
for the ends of worthless office-holders from England. Now it was farmed
out more offensively than ever. In 1673 Charles II. donated Virginia to
two of his favorites, Lords Arlington and Culpeper, to be its
proprietaries like Penn in Pennsylvania and Baltimore in Maryland. They
were to have all the quit rents and other revenues, the nomination of
ministers for parishes, the right of appointing public officers, the
right to own and sell all public or escheated lands; in a word, they now
owned Virginia. This shabby treatment awoke the most intense rage in so
proud a people. The king relented, revoked his donation, made out and
was about to send a new charter. But it was too late; rebellion had
already broken out.
The Indians having made some attacks on the upper plantations, one
Nathaniel Bacon, a spirited young gentleman of twenty-eight, recently
from England, applied to Sir William Berkeley for a commission against
them. The governor declined to give it, fearing, in the present excited
condition of the colony, to have a body of armed men abroad. Bacon,
enraged, extorts the commission by force. The result is civil war in the
colony. The rebels are for a time completely victorious. Berkeley is
driven to Accomac, on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake, but,
succeeding in capturing a fleet sent to oppose him, he returns with this
and captures Jamestown. Beaten by Bacon in a pitched battle, he again
retires to Accomac, and the colony comes fully under the power of his
antagonist, the colonists agreeing even to fight England should it
interpose on the governor's side, when a decisive change in affairs is
brought about by the rebel leader's death.
[Illustration: Reverend Dr. Blair, First President of William and Mary
College.]
[1690]
The rebellion was now easily subdued, but it had soured and hardened old
Governor Berkeley's spirit. Twenty-three in all were executed for
participation in the movement. Charles II. remarked: "That old fool has
hanged more men in that naked country than I for the murder of my
father."
After Bacon's Rebellion the colonial annals show but a dull succession
of royal governors, with few events specially interesting. Under the
governorship of Lord Howard of Effingham, which began in 1684, great
excitement prevailed in Virginia lest King James II. should subvert the
English Church there and make Catholicism dominant, which indeed might
possibly have occurred but for James's abdication in 1688.
Under Governor Nicholson, from 1690, the capital was removed from
Jamestown to Williamsburg, and the College of William and Mary founded,
its charter dating from 1693. The Attorney-General, Seymour, opposed
this project on the ground that the money was needed for "better
purposes" than educating clergymen. Rev. Dr. Blair, agent and advocate
of the endowment, pleading: "The people have souls to be saved," Seymour
retorted: "Damn your souls, make tobacco." But Blair persisted and
succeeded, himself becoming first president of the college. The initial
commencement exercises took place in 1700.
[Illustration: George Monk, Duke of Albemarle.]
[1710]
Governor Spotswood, who came in 1710, did much for Virginia. He built
the first iron furnaces in America, introduced wine-culture, for which
he imported skilled Germans, and greatly interested himself in the
civilization of the Indians. He was the earliest to explore the
Shenandoah Valley. It was also by his energy that the famous pirate
"Black beard" was captured and executed. Lieutenant Maynard, sent with
two ships to hunt him, attacked and boarded the pirate vessel in Pamlico
Sound, 1718. A tough fight at close quarters ensued. Blackbeard was shot
dead, his crew crying for quarter. Thirteen of the men were hung at
Williamsburg. Blackbeard's skull, made into a drinking-cup, is preserved
to this day. The great corsair's fate, Benjamin Franklin, then a
printer's devil in Boston, celebrated in verse.
Carolina was settled partly from England, France, and the Barbadoes, and
partly from New England; but mainly from Virginia, which colony
furthermore furnished most of its political ideas.
[1663]
[Illustration: Lord Shaftesbury.]
In March, 1663, Carolina was constituted a territory, extending from 36
degrees north latitude southward to the river San Matheo, and assigned
to a company of seven distinguished proprietaries, including General
Monk, who had been created Duke of Albemarle, and John Locke's patron,
the famous Lord Ashley Cooper, subsequently Earl of Shaftesbury.
Governor Sir William Berkeley, of Virginia, was also one of the
proprietaries.
[1720]
[Illustration: Seal of the Proprietors of Carolina.]
Locke drew up for the province a minute feudal constitution, but it was
too cumbersome to work. Rule by the proprietaries proved radically bad.
They were ignorant, callous to wrongs done by their governors, and
indifferent to everything save their own profits. Many of the settlers
too were turbulent and criminals, fugitives from the justice of other
colonies. The difficulty was aggravated by Indian and Spanish wars, by
negro slavery, so profitable for rice culture, especially in South
Carolina, by strife between dissenters and churchmen, by the question of
revenue, and by that of representation.
[Illustration: John Locke.]
[1730-1752]
A proprietary party and a larger popular party were continually at feud,
not seldom with arms, support of the Church allying itself mainly with
the former, dissent with the latter, Zealots for the Church wished to
exclude dissenters from the assembly. Their opponents would keep
Huguenot immigrants, whom the favor of the proprietaries rendered
unwelcome, entirely from the franchise. The popular party passed laws
for electing representatives in every county instead of at Charleston
alone, and for revenue tariffs to pay the debt entailed by war. The
proprietaries vetoed both. They even favored the pirates who harried the
coast. Civil commotions were frequent and growth slow. Interference by
the Crown was therefore most happy. From the time the Carolinas passed
into royal hands, 1729, remarkable prosperity attended them both.
Assuming charge of Carolina, the Crown reserved to itself the Spanish
frontier, and here, in 1732, it settled Oglethorpe, the able and
unselfish founder of Georgia, under the auspices of an organization in
form much like a mercantile company, but benevolent in aim, whose main
purpose was to open a home for the thousands of Englishmen who were in
prison for debt. Many Scotch and many Austrians also came. Full civil
liberty was promised to all, religious liberty to all but papists.
Political strife was warm here, too, particularly respecting the
admission of rum and slaves. Government by the corporators, though
well-meaning, was ill-informed and a failure, and would have been
ruinous to the colony but for Oglethorpe's genius and exertions. To the
advantage of all, therefore, on the lapse of the charter in 1752,
Georgia, like the Carolinas, assumed the status of a royal colony.
[Illustration: Savannah, from a Print of 1741.]
[Illustration: James Oglethorpe.]