COLONIAL RACE ELEMENTS
Doubtless the most fascinating topic in the study of races is that of
the great men whom each race has produced. The personal interest
surrounding those who have gained eminence carries us back over each
step of their careers to their childhood, their parents, and their
ancestry.[6] Pride of race adds its zest, and each race has its
eulogists who claim every great man whose family tree reveals even a
single ancestor, male or female, near or remote, of the eulogized race.
Here is a "conflict of jurisdiction," and the student who is without
race prejudice begins to look for causes other than race origin to which
should be ascribed the emergence of greatness.
Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge[7] attempted, some years ago, to assign to the
different races in America the 14,243 men eminent enough to find a place
in "Appleton's Encyclopedia of American Biography." He prepared a
statistical summary as follows:--
EMINENT AMERICANS
English 10,376
Scotch-Irish 1,439
German 659
Huguenot 589
Scotch 436
Dutch 336
Welsh 159
Irish 109
French 85
Scandinavian 31
Spanish 7
Italian 7
Swiss 5
Greek 3
Russian 1
Polish 1
------
Total 14,243
When we inquire into the methods necessarily adopted in preparing a
statistical table of this kind we discover serious limitations. Mr.
Lodge was confined to the paternal line alone, but if, as some
biologists assert, the female is the conservative element which holds to
the type, and the male is the variable element which departs from the
type, then the specific contribution of the race factor would be found
in the maternal line. However, let this dubious point pass. We find that
in American life two hundred years of intermingling has in many if not
in most cases of greatness broken into the continuity of race. True, the
New England and Virginia stock has remained during most of this time of
purely English origin, but the very fact that in Mr. Lodge's tables
Massachusetts has produced 2686 notables, while Virginia, of the same
blood, has produced only 1038, must lead to the suspicion that factors
other than race extraction are the mainspring of greatness.
It must be remembered that ability is not identical with eminence.
Ability is the product of ancestry and training. Eminence is an accident
of social conditions. The English race was the main contributor to
population during the seventeenth century, and English conquest
determined the form of government, the language, and the opportunities
for individual advancement. During the succeeding century the
Scotch-Irish and the Germans migrated in nearly equal numbers, and their
combined migration was perhaps as great as that of the English in the
seventeenth century. But they were compelled to move to the interior, to
become frontiersmen, to earn their living directly from the soil, and to
leave to their English-sprung predecessors the more prominent
occupations of politics, literature, law, commerce, and the army. The
Germans, who, according to Lodge, "produced fewer men of ability than
any other race in the United States," were further handicapped by their
language and isolation, which continue to this day in the counties of
Pennsylvania where they originally settled. On the other hand, the
Huguenots and the Dutch came in the first century of colonization. They
rapidly merged with the English, lost their language, and hence
contributed their full share of eminence. Finally, the Irish,
Scandinavian and other races, inconspicuous in the galaxy of
notables, did not migrate in numbers until the middle of the nineteenth
century, and, in addition to the restraints of language and poverty,
they found the roads to prominence preoccupied.
[Illustration: "RETURN OF THE MAYFLOWER" Painting by Boughton, 1834]
Besides the accident of precedence in time, a second factor distinct
from race itself has contributed to the eminence of one race over
another. The Huguenots and the French, according to Lodge's statistics,
show a percentage of ability in proportion to their total immigration
much higher than that of any other race. But the Huguenots were a select
class of people, manufacturers and merchants, perhaps the most
intelligent and enterprising of Frenchmen in the seventeenth century.
Furthermore the direct migration from France to this country has never
included many peasants and wage-earners, but has been limited to the
adventurous and educated. Had the French-Canadians who represent the
peasantry of France been included in these comparisons, the proportion
of French eminence would have been materially reduced.
The same is true of the English. Although sprung from one race, those
who came to America represented at least two grades of society as widely
apart as two races. The Pilgrims and Puritans of New England were the
yeomen, the merchants, the manufacturers, skilled in industry, often
independent in resources, and well trained in the intellectual
controversies of religion and politics. The Southern planters also
sprang from a class of similar standing, though not so strongly addicted
to intellectual pursuits. Beneath both these classes were the indentured
servants, a few of whom were men of ability forced to pay their passage
by service. But the majority of them were brought to this country
through the advertisements of shipowners and landholders or even
forcibly captured on the streets of cities or transported for crimes and
pauperism. Though all of these classes were of the same race, they were
about as widely divergent as races themselves in point of native ability
and preparatory training.
The third and most important cause of eminence, apart from ancestry, is
the industrial and legal environment. An agricultural community produces
very few eminent men compared with the number produced where
manufactures and commerce vie with agriculture to attract the youth. A
state of widely diversified industrial interests is likely to create
widely diversified intellectual and moral interests. Complicated
problems of industry and politics stimulate the mind and reflect their
influence in literature, art, education, science, and the learned
professions. Most of all, equal opportunity for all classes and large
prizes for the ambitious and industrious serve to stimulate individuals
of native ability to their highest endeavor. It was the deadening
effects of slavery, creating inequalities among the whites themselves,
that smothered the genius of the Southerner whether Englishman,
Huguenot, or Scotch-Irish, and it was the free institutions of the
North that invited their genius to unfold and blossom.
These considerations lead us to look with distrust on the claims of
those who find in race ancestry or in race intermixture the reasons for
such eminence as Americans have attained. While the race factor is
decisive when it marks off inferior and primitive races, yet, in
considering those Europeans races which have joined in our civilization,
the important questions are: From what social classes is immigration
drawn? and, Do our social institutions offer free opportunity and high
incentive to the youth of ability? In so far as we get a choice
selection of immigrants, and in so far as we afford them free scope for
their native gifts, so far do they render to our country the services of
genius, talent, and industry.
=Incentives to Immigration.=--It is the distinctive fact regarding
colonial migration that it was Teutonic in blood and Protestant in
religion. The English, Dutch, Swedes, Germans, and even the
Scotch-Irish, who constituted practically the entire migration, were
less than two thousand years ago one Germanic race in the forests
surrounding the North Sea. The Protestant Reformation, sixteen centuries
later, began among those peoples and found in them its sturdiest
supporters. The doctrines of the Reformation, adapted as they were to
the strong individualism of the Germanic races, prepared the hearts of
men for the doctrines of political liberty and constitutional government
of the succeeding century. The Reformation banished the idea that men
must seek salvation through the intercession of priests and popes, who,
however sacred, are only fellow-men, and set up the idea that each soul
has direct access to God. With the Bible as a guide and his own
conscience as a judge, each man was accountable only to one divine
sovereign.
From the standpoint of the age this doctrine was too radical. It tended
to break up existing society into sects and factions, and to precipitate
those civil and religious wars which ended in a Catholic or aristocratic
reaction. When this reaction came, the numerous Protestant sects of the
extremer types found themselves the objects of persecution, and nothing
remained but to seek a new land where the heavy hand of repression could
not reach them. Thus America became the home of numberless religious
sects and denominations of these several races. From England came
Congregationalists (the "Pilgrims"), Puritans, Quakers, Baptists; from
Scotland and Ireland came Presbyterians; from Germany came Quakers,
Dunkards, Pietists, Ridge Hermits, Salzburgers, and Moravians.
It is not to be inferred that religious persecution alone in the early
colonial period caused emigration. In point of numbers commercial
enterprise was probably equally influential. In Holland all religious
sects were welcomed with a liberality far in advance of any other
nation, and at the same time the Dutch people were the most advanced in
the modern pursuits of trade and commerce. The Dutch settlement of New
Amsterdam was therefore a business enterprise, and neither before nor
after the conquest by the British was there any religious obstacle to
the reception of other races and religions. In this respect New York
differed widely from New England, where religious exclusiveness
preserved the English race as a peculiar people until the middle of the
nineteenth century. So diverse were the races in New York, and so
liberal were the opportunities open to all, that Governor Horatio
Seymour was able to say that nine men prominent in its early history
represented the same number of nationalities. Schuyler was of Dutch
descent, Herkimer of German, Jay of French, Livingston of Scotch,
Clinton of Irish, Morris of Welsh, Hoffman of Swedish, while Hamilton
was a West India Englishman and Baron Steuben a Prussian.[8]
Another colony to which all races and religions were welcomed was
Pennsylvania. William Penn established this colony both as a refuge for
the persecuted Quakers of England and as a real estate venture. He was
the first American to advertise his dominions widely throughout Europe,
offering to sell one hundred acres of land at two English pounds and a
low rental. His advertisements combined humanity and business, for they
called attention to popular government and universal suffrage; equal
rights to all regardless of race or religious belief; trial by jury;
murder and treason the only capital crimes, and reformation, not
retaliation, the object of punishment for other offences. Thus
Pennsylvania, although settled a half century later than the Southern
and Northern colonies, soon exceeded them in population. Penn sent his
agents to Germany and persuaded large numbers of German Quakers and
Pietists to cast their lot in his plantation, so that in twenty years
the Germans numbered nearly one-half the population. Again, in the
beginning of the eighteenth century, when Louis XIV overran the
Palatinate and thousands of Germans fled to England, the English
government encouraged their migration to America. In one year four
thousand of them, the largest single emigration of the colonial period,
embarked for New York, but their treatment was so illiberal that they
moved to Pennsylvania, and thenceforth the German migration sought the
latter colony. These people settled at Germantown, near Philadelphia,
and occupied the counties of Bucks and Montgomery, where they continue
to this day with their peculiar language, the "Pennsylvania Dutch." Not
only William Penn himself, but other landowners in Pennsylvania and also
the shipowners advertised the country in Germany, and thousands of the
poorer sort of Germans were induced to indenture themselves to the
settlers to whom they were auctioned off by the ship captains in payment
for transportation. Probably one-half of all the immigrants of the
colonial period came under this system of postpaid transportation, just
as at the present time nearly two-thirds come on prepaid tickets. It was
in Pennsylvania that the largest portion of the Scotch-Irish settled,
and before the time of the Revolution that colony had become the most
populous and most diversified of all the colonies. It was the only
colony, except Maryland, that tolerated Roman Catholics, and with all
phases of the Christian religion and all branches of the Teutonic and
Celtic races, Pennsylvania set the original type to which all of America
has conformed, that of race intermixture on the basis of religious and
political equality.
=The Scotch-Irish.=--It has long been recognized that among the most
virile and aggressive people who came to America in colonial times, and
who have contributed a peculiar share to the American character, are the
Scotch-Irish. Their descendants boast of their ancestry and cite long
lists of notables as their coderivatives. Yet until recent years it has
been the misfortune of the Scotch-Irish to have escaped historical
investigation; for American history has been written chiefly in New
England, whose colonial Puritans forbade them in their midst. In fact,
from the earliest settlement, the Scotch-Irish have been pioneers and
men of action. They have contributed to America few writers and artists,
but many generals, politicians, and captains of industry. In literature
they claim two eminent names, Irving and Poe; but in the army, navy,
politics, and business they claim John Paul Jones, Perry, Andrew
Jackson, Winfield Scott, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, Stonewall
Jackson, George B. McClellan, Alexander Hamilton, John C. Calhoun, James
G. Blaine, Jefferson Davis, Thomas Benton, Hendricks, John G. Carlisle,
Mark Hanna, William McKinley, Matthew S. Quay, Andrew Carnegie, John D.
Rockefeller, Horace Greeley, Henry Watterson, and hundreds alike famous
in the more strenuous movements of American life.
A paradoxical fact regarding the Scotch-Irish is that they are very
little Scotch and much less Irish. That is to say, they do not belong
mainly to the so-called Celtic race, but they are the most composite of
all the people of the British Isles. They are called Scots because they
lived in Scotia, and they are called Irish because they moved to
Ireland. Geography and not ethnology has given them their name. They are
a mixed race through whose veins run the Celtic blood of the primitive
Scot and Pict, the primitive Briton, the primitive Irish, but with a
larger admixture of the later Norwegian, Dane, Saxon, and Angle. How
this amalgamation came about we may learn from the geography of
Scotland.
The Highlands of Scotland begin at the Grampian Hills and the Lowlands
extend south from this line to the British border, and include the
cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. The Scotch-Irish came from that
southwestern part of the Lowlands which bulges out toward Ireland north
of the Solway Firth. Over these Lowland counties, bounded by water and
hills on three sides, successive waves of conquest and migration
followed. First the primitive Caledonian or Pict was driven to the
Highlands, which to this day is the Celtic portion of Scotland. The
Briton from the south, pressed on by Roman and then by Teuton, occupied
the country. Then Irish tribes crossed over and gained a permanent hold.
Then the Norwegian sailors came around from the north, and to this day
there are pure Scandinavian types on the adjacent islands. Then the
Saxons and Angles, driven by the Danes and Normans, gained a foothold
from the east, and lastly the Danes themselves added their contingent.
Here in this Lowland pocket of territory, no larger than a good-sized
American county, was compounded for five hundred years this remarkable
amalgam of races.
A thousand years later, after they had become a united people and had
shown their metal in the trying times of the Reformation, they furnished
the emigrants who displaced the Irish in the north of Ireland. James I,
whom Scotland gave to England, determined to transform Catholic Ireland
into Protestant England, and thereupon confiscated the lands of the
native chiefs in Ulster and bestowed them upon Scottish and English
lords on condition that they settle the territory with tenants from
Scotland and England. This was the "great settlement" of 1610, and from
that time to the present Ulster has been the Protestant stronghold of
Ireland. In 1901 the population of Ulster was 44 per cent Catholic, 23
per cent Episcopalian, and 27 per cent Presbyterian, an ecclesiastical
division corresponding almost exactly to the racial division of Irish,
English, and Scotch. During the whole of the seventeenth century--the
first century of this occupation--the Catholics and Episcopalians were
in a much smaller proportion than these figures show for the present
time, and the relative increase in Irish and Episcopalians during the
eighteenth century was closely connected with the migration of the
Scotch to America.
For one hundred years the Scotch multiplied in Ulster and had no
dealings with the remnants of the Irish, whom they crowded into the
barren hills and whom they treated like savages. They retained their
purity of race, and although when they came to America they called
themselves Irish and were known as Irish wherever they settled, yet they
had no Irish blood except that which entered into their composition
through the Irish migration to Scotia fifteen hundred years before.
Yet, though they despised the Irish, they could not escape the unhappy
fate of Ireland. The first blow came in 1698, nearly one hundred years
after their settlement. English manufacturers complained of Irish
competition, and the Irish Parliament, a tool of the British crown,
passed an act totally forbidding the exportation of Irish woollens, and
another act forbidding the exportation of Irish wool to any country
save England. Their slowly growing linen industry was likewise
discriminated against in later years. Presbyterian Ulster had been the
industrial centre of Ireland, and these acts nearly destroyed her
industry. Next Queen Anne's Parliament adopted penal laws directed
against Roman Catholics and Presbyterians, and the Test Act, which
compelled public officials to take the communion of the Established
Church, deprived the entire Scotch population of self-government.
Nevertheless they were compelled to pay tithes to support the
Established Church to which they were opposed. Lastly, the hundred-year
leases of the tenants began to run out, and the landlords offered
renewals to the highest bidders on short leases. Here the
poverty-stricken Irish gained an unhappy revenge on the Scotch who had
displaced them of their ancestral lands, for their low standard of
living enabled them to offer rack-rents far above what the Scotch could
afford. No longer did religion, race pride, or gratitude have a part in
holding Ulster to Protestant supremacy. The greed of absentee landlords
began to have full sway, and in the resulting struggle for livelihood,
hopeless poverty was fitter to survive than ambitious thrift.
The Scotch tenants, their hearts bitter against England and aristocracy,
now sought a country where they might have free land and
self-government. In 1718 it is stated that 4200 of them left for
America. After the famine of 1740 there were 12,000 who left annually.
Altogether, in the half century just preceding the American Revolution,
200,000[9] persons, or one-third of the Protestant population of Ulster,
are said to have emigrated, and the majority came to America. This was
by far the largest contribution of any race to the population of America
during the eighteenth century, and the injustice they suffered at the
hands of England made them among the most determined and effective
recruits to the armies that won our independence.
Before the Scotch-Irish moved to America the Atlantic coast line had
been well occupied. Consequently, in order to obtain land for
themselves, they were forced to go to the interior and to become
frontiersmen. They found in Massachusetts a state church to which they
must conform in order to be admitted to citizenship. But what they had
left Ireland to escape they would not consent in a new country to do.
The Puritans were willing that they should occupy the frontier as a
buffer against the Indians, and so they took up lands in New Hampshire,
Vermont, Western Massachusetts, and Maine. Only a few congregations,
however, settled in New England--the bulk of the immigrants entered by
way of Philadelphia and Baltimore and went to the interior of
Pennsylvania surrounding and south of Harrisburg. They spread through
the Shenandoah valley and in the foothill regions of Virginia and
North and South Carolina. Gradually, they pushed farther west, across
the mountains into Western Pennsylvania about Pittsburg, and into Ohio,
Kentucky, and Tennessee. In all of these regions they fought the
Indians, protected the older inhabitants from inroads, and developed
those pioneer qualities which for one hundred years have characterized
the "winning of the West."
[Illustration: ANGLO-SAXON MOUNTAINEERS, BEREA COLLEGE, KENTUCKY]
The Scotch-Irish occupied a peculiar place in the new world. More than
any other race they served as the amalgam to produce, out of divergent
races, a new race, the American. The Puritans of New England, the
Quakers of Pennsylvania, the Cavaliers of Virginia, were as radically
different as peoples of different races, and they were separated from
each other in their own exclusive communities. The Germans were
localized in Pennsylvania and Maryland, the Dutch in New York, but the
Scotch-Irish "alone of the various races in America were present in
sufficient numbers in all of the colonies to make their influence count;
and they alone of all the races had one uniform religion; had
experienced together the persecutions by state and church which had
deprived them at home of their civil and religious liberties; and were
the common heirs to those principles of freedom and democracy which had
been developed in Scotland as nowhere else. At the time of the American
Revolution there were ... in all above five hundred settlements
scattered over practically all the American colonies."[10] Trained as
they were in the representative democracy of the Scottish kirk, thrown
on their own resources in the wilderness, mingling with the pioneers of
many other races, they took the lead in developing that Western type
which in politics and industry became ultimately the American type; yet
they retained their original character, and the American to-day is more
at home in Glasgow than in London.