[Sidenote: England's Acquirements.]
The Colonial Era, intervening between the permanent colonization of the
Atlantic coast and the momentous time when the colonies united to assert
their independence, may be said to have been comprised within a period
of a little more than a century. In 1664 England had acquired possession
of the whole colonized territory from the Kennebec to the southern
boundary of South Carolina. Georgia was still unsettled, and remained
to be colonized some sixty years after by that good and gallant General
Oglethorpe, who forbade slavery to be introduced into the province, and
prohibited the sale of rum within its limits. Florida was still held by
the Spanish, the only continental power which then had a foothold on the
Atlantic border of what is now the United States.
[Sidenote: Colonial Progress.]
The century of settlement and growth which we call the Colonial Era was
full of hardship, romance, brave struggling with great difficulties,
fortitude, and alternate misfortune and success. As we look back upon it
from this distance, however, we do not fail to be struck with the steady
and certain progress made towards a compact and enduring nationality.
Even then the same variety of race and habits and characteristics which
the United States reveal to-day were to be observed in the population
which was scattered over the narrow strip of territory extending
a thousand miles along the seaboard. There were English
everywhere--predominant then, as English traits still possess, in a yet
more marked degree, the prevailing influence. There were, however, Dutch
in New York and Pennsylvania, some Swedes still in Delaware, Danes in
New Jersey, French Huguenots in the Carolinas, Austrian Moravians, not
long after, in Georgia, and Spaniards in Florida.
[Sidenote: The New England Colonies.]
Amid such a diversity of races, of course the habits, the laws, and
the religious opinions of the colonies widely differed. But these
differences were not confined to those arising from variety of origin.
The English in New England presented a very marked contrast to the
English in New York and in Virginia. The settlements of Plymouth and
Massachusetts Bay comprised communities of zealous Calvinists, rigid
in their religious belief and ceremonies, codifying their religious
principles into political law, and adhering resolutely, through thick
and thin, to the idea expressed, by one of the early Puritans, that
"our New England was originally a plantation of religion, and not a
plantation of trade."
[Sidenote: Roger Williams.]
Roger Williams founded Rhode Island on the principle of religious
toleration; but he carried thither the sobriety and diligence and
courage of his former Puritan associations. He provided, as he himself
said, "a shelter for persons distressed for conscience." Connecticut was
also essentially a "religious plantation," which for many years accepted
the Bible as containing the only laws necessary to the colony,
and confined the right of suffrage to members of the church; and
Connecticut, as well as Massachusetts, vigorously punished offenders
by the rough, old-fashioned methods of the pillory, the stocks, and the
whipping-post.
[Sidenote: Colonial New York and Virginia.]
No contrast could be more striking than that between colonial New
England and colonial New York and Virginia. The Puritans gathered
together in towns and villages; they lived in log or earth cottages, one
story high, with no pretensions to ornament, and but little to comfort.
The wealthier New Englanders, after a time, built two-story brick
houses; but these were still plain and substantial, and not imposing.
[Sidenote: Puritan Costumes]
The men wore short cloaks and jerkins, short, loose breeches, wide
collars with tassels, and high, narrow-crowned hats with wide brims. The
women dressed in plain-colored homespun, but bloomed forth on Sundays
with silk hoods and daintily worked caps. The proximity of Indians
required that every New England village should be a fortress, and every
citizen a soldier. Two hundred years ago, muster-days and town-meetings,
means of defence from attack and of self-government within, were as
prominent features of New England life as they are to-day.
[Sidenote: New England Industries.]
The New Englanders were mainly farmers, hunters, and fishermen. Commerce
was slow to grow up among them. Trade was the means towards supporting a
religious state; not a method for the acquirement of wealth. By and by,
however, manufactures of cotton and woollen fabrics grew up, lumber was
floated down to the coast, gunpowder and glass were made, and fish were
cured for winter use and to be sent abroad. They ate corn-meal and milk,
and pork and beans were a favorite New England dish from the first; and
they drank cider and home-brewed beer. The first coins appeared in
1652; and the oldest college on American soil, Harvard, was founded at
Cambridge in 1636.
[Sidenote: Dutch and Cavaliers.]
The Dutch, in New York, and the Cavaliers, in Virginia, set out upon
their colonial careers in a very different way. The Dutch came to
America as traders; the Cavaliers came to be landed proprietors and to
seek rapid fortunes. Instead, therefore, of clustering close in towns
and villages, both the Dutch and the Cavaliers spread out through the
country and established large and isolated estates. Wealthy Dutchmen
came hither with patents from the East India Company, took possession
of tracts sixteen miles long, settled colonies upon them, and lived in
great state on their "manors," ruling the colonies, working their lands
with slaves, and assuming the aristocratic title of "Patroon." Thus
a sort of feudal system grew up, in which the "Patroons" exercised an
authority well nigh as absolute as that of the mediaeval barons on the
Rhine; and this system long flourished side by side with the democratic
simplicity of the Puritan commonwealths.
[Sidenote: Captain John Smith.]
In the same way the Virginians scattered themselves in the fruitful and
sunny valleys between the sea and the Alleghanies, and in time created
lordly domains and plantations, over which the possessors exercised
feudal sway. But this colony, composed originally in the main of
gentlemen unused to manual labor, and indisposed to bear patiently the
hardships of early settlement, did not become established without many
and serious difficulties. The colonists at first hung tents to the
trees to shelter them from the sun; and the best of their houses "could
neither well defend wind nor rain." Captain John Smith wrote to England,
begging his friends there to "rather send thirty carpenters, husbandmen,
gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths, and diggers-up of the roots, well
provided, than a thousand of such as we have."
[Sidenote: Tobacco in Virginia.]
The Virginians cultivated tobacco; and in the same year that the
Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock, the first cargo of African slaves was
carried up the James River in a Dutch trading ship. It is an interesting
fact that so extensive and profitable was the early cultivation of
tobacco in Virginia that it became the general medium of exchange. Debts
were paid with it; fines of so much tobacco, instead of so much money,
were imposed; a wife cost a Virginian five hundred pounds of the
narcotic weed; and even the government accepted it in discharge of
taxes.
[Sidenote: Virginian Customs.]
Virginia early became divided into classes; the landlords being a
virtual nobility, the poorer colonists a middle class, and the slaves
comprising the lower social stratum. The Church of England was the
prevailing sect, and English habits of hospitality and ease of manner
replaced the Puritan austerity of the North. Yet Virginia had a severe
code of punishments; and at one time, if a man stayed away from church
three times without good reason, he was liable to the penalty of death.
The Virginians were tolerant of all faiths excepting those of the
Quakers and the Roman Catholics. Persons professing these creeds were
sternly excluded from the colony.
[Sidenote: The Indians.]
Just one hundred years before the outbreak of the Revolution, the white
population of New England had reached fifty-five thousand: while the
Indians, retreating at the approach of the European, had become reduced
to two-thirds of that number. The presence of the aborigines on the
borders of the whole line of the colonies seemed at first, destined to
become fatal to the settlement of the continent. But had it not been
for Indian hostility, the colonies might never have grown together and
merged, first into a close defensive alliance, and then into a great
and united state. It was mainly the sentiment of the common preservation
that brought about the intimate relations which gradually grew up
between Puritan, Dutchman, and Cavalier.
[Sidenote: Indian Wars.]
The Puritans treated the Indians with strict justice: Penn made friends
of the powerful tribes along the Delaware; and Roger Williams succeeded
in conciliating the Narragansetts. But a time came when the Indians saw
clearly that they were being pushed further and further back, away
from their ancient homes. Then followed the terrible wars which so
long threatened the existence of the struggling colonies, and which the
dauntless courage and hardihood of the settlers alone rendered vain.
King Philip arose, and struggled fiercely for more than a year to
exterminate the New England intruders. The Canadian French, jealous of
English supremacy on the continent, joined hands with the Indians, and
incited them constantly to fresh assaults. These French had explored the
Lakes, and the Mississippi as far as what is now New Orleans; and they
feared lest the English should deprive them of these western domains.
Wars succeeded each other with alarming rapidity. After King Philip's
War came King William's War in 1689, Queen Anne's War in 1702, King
George's War in 1744, the Canadian War (which lasted from 1755 to 1763,
and in which Quebec was taken by Wolfe, and Canada was conquered by the
English), and finally, Pontiac's bold but futile rebellion, aided by
the French, in 1763. It was these wars, and the growing need of combined
resistance to the tyrannical assumptions of the British government,
which together drew close the bonds of friendship and mutual support
between the colonies, and made them capable of striking a successful
blow for independence.