THE CAVALIER COLONIES OF THE SOUTH
VIRGINIA has often been called the Cavalier colony. Do any of you know
why, or who the Cavaliers were? Perhaps I had better tell you. They were
the lords and the proud people of England. Many of them had no money,
but they would do no work, and cared for nothing but pleasure and
fighting. There were plenty of working people in that country, but there
were many who were too proud to work, and expected others to work for
them, while they hoped to live at ease.
Some of this kind of men came out with John Smith, and that is why he
had so much trouble with them. The Puritans and the Quakers came from
the working people of England, and nobody had to starve them to make
them work, or to pour cold water down their sleeves to stop them from
swearing.
While religious people settled in the North, many of the proud Cavalier
class, who cared very little about religion, came to the South. So we
may call the southern settlements the Cavalier colonies, though many of
the common people came there too, and it was not long before there was
plenty of work.
The first to come after John Smith and the Jamestown people were some
shiploads of Catholics. You should know that the Catholics were treated
in England even worse than the Puritans and the Quakers. The law said
they must go to the English Church instead of to their own. If they did
not they would have to pay a large sum of money or go to prison. Was not
this very harsh and unjust?
The Catholics were not all poor people. There were rich men and nobles
among them. One of these nobles, named Lord Baltimore, asked the King
for some land in America where he and his friends might dwell in peace
and have churches of their own. This was many years before William Penn
asked for the same thing. The King was a friend of Lord Baltimore and
told him he might have as much land as he could make use of. So he chose
a large tract just north of Virginia, which the King named Maryland,
after his wife, Queen Mary, who was a Catholic. All Lord Baltimore had
to pay for this was two Indian arrows every year, and a part of the gold
and silver, if any were found. This was done to show that the King still
kept some claim to Maryland, and did not give away all his rights.
And now comes a story much the same as I have told you several times
already. A shipload of Catholics and other people came across the ocean
to the new continent which Columbus had discovered many years before.
These sailed up the broad Chesapeake Bay. You may easily find this bay
on your maps. They landed at a place they called St. Mary's, where there
was a small Indian town. As it happened, the Indians at this town had
been so much troubled by fighting tribes farther north that they were
just going to move somewhere else. So they were very glad to sell their
town to the white strangers.
All they wanted for their houses and their corn fields were some
hatchets, knives and beads, and other things they could use. Gold and
silver would have been of no value to them, for they had never seen
these metals. The only money the Indians used was round pieces of
seashell, with holes bored through them. Before these people left their
town they showed the white men how to hunt in the woods and how to plant
corn. And their wives taught the white women how to make hominy out of
corn and how to bake johnny-cakes. So the people of Maryland did not
suffer from hunger like those of Virginia and New England, and they had
plenty to eat and lived very well from the start.
This was in the year 1634, just about the time Roger Williams went to
Rhode Island. Lord Baltimore did the same thing that Roger Williams did;
he gave the people religious liberty. Every Christian who came to
Maryland had the right to worship God in his own way. Roger Williams
went farther than this, for he gave the same right to Jews and all other
people, whether they were Christians or pagans.
It was not long before other people came to Maryland, and they began to
plant tobacco, as the people were doing in Virginia. Tobacco was a good
crop to raise, for it could be sold for a high price in England, so that
the Maryland planters did very well, and many of them grew rich. But
religious liberty did not last there very long, and the Catholics were
not much better off than they had been in England. All the poor people
who came with Lord Baltimore were Protestants. Only the rich ones were
Catholics. Many other Protestants soon came, some of them being Puritans
from New England, who did not know what religious liberty meant.
These people said that the Catholics should not have the right to
worship in their own churches, even in Maryland, and they went so far
that they tried to take from Lord Baltimore the lands which the king had
given him. There was much fighting between the Catholics and the
Protestants. Now one party got the best of it, and now the other. In
the end the province was taken from Lord Baltimore's son; and when a new
king, named King William, came to the throne, he said that Maryland was
his property, and that the Catholics should not have a church of their
own or worship in their own way in that province. Do you not think this
was very cruel and unjust? It seems so to me. It did not seem right,
after Lord Baltimore had given religious liberty to all men, for others
to come and take it away. But the custom in those days was that all men
must be made to think the same way, or be punished if they didn't. This
seems queer now-a-days, when every man has the right to think as he
pleases.
In time there was born a Lord Baltimore who became a Protestant, and the
province was given back to him. It grew rich and full of people, and
large towns were built. One of these was named Baltimore, after Lord
Baltimore, and is now a great city. And Washington, the capital of the
United States, stands on land that was once part of Maryland. But St.
Mary's, the first town built, has gone, and there is hardly a mark left
to show where it stood.
Maryland, as I have said, lies north of Virginia. The Potomac River runs
between them. South of Virginia was another great tract of land,
reaching all the way to Florida, which the Spaniards then held. Some
French Protestants tried to settle there, but they were cruelly
murdered by the Spaniards, and no one else came there for many years.
About 1660 people began to settle in what was then called "the
Carolinas," but is now called North Carolina and South Carolina. Some of
these came from Virginia and some from England, and small settlements
were made here and there along the coast. One of these was called
Charleston. This has now grown into a large and important city.
There were some noblemen in England who thought that this region might
become worth much money, so they asked the king, Charles II., to give it
to them. This was the same king who gave the Dutch settlement to the
Duke of York and who afterwards gave Pennsylvania to William Penn. He
was very ready to give away what did not belong to him, and told these
noblemen that they were welcome to the Carolinas. There were eight of
these men, and they made up their minds that they would have a very nice
form of government for their new province. So they went to a famous man
named John Locke, who was believed to be very wise, and asked him to
draw up a form of government for them.
John Locke drew up a plan of government which they thought very fine,
but which everybody now thinks was very foolish and absurd. I fancy he
knew more about books than he did about government. He called it the
"Grand Model," and the noble lords thought they had a wonderful
government indeed. There were to be earls, and barons, and lords, the
same as in Europe. No one could vote who did not hold fifty acres. The
poorer people were to be like so many slaves. They could not even leave
one plantation for another without asking leave from the lord or baron
who owned it.
What do you think the people did? You must not imagine they came across
the ocean to be made slaves of. No, indeed! They cared no more for the
"Grand Model" than if it was a piece of tissue paper. They settled where
they pleased, and would not work for the earls and barons, and fought
with the governors, and refused to pay the heavy taxes which the eight
noble owners asked.
In time these noblemen got so sick of the whole business that they gave
their province back to the king. It was then divided into two colonies,
known as North Carolina and South Carolina. As for the lords and barons,
nobody heard of them any more.
The people of the Carolinas had other things beside the Grand Model of
government to trouble them. There were savage Indians back in the
country who attacked them and killed many of them. And there were
pirates along the coast who attacked ships and killed all on board. But
rice and indigo were planted, and afterwards cotton, and much tar and
turpentine were got from the pine trees in North Carolina, and as the
years went on these colonies became rich and prosperous, and the people
began to have a happy time.
I hope none of my young readers are tired of reading about kings and
colonies. I am sure they must have enjoyed reading about John Smith and
Miles Standish and William Penn and the rest of the great leaders. At
any rate, there is only one more colony to talk about, and then we will
be through with this part of our story. This is the colony of Georgia,
which lies in the tract of land between South Carolina and Florida.
I am sure that when you are done reading this book you will be glad that
you did not live two or three hundred years ago. To-day every one can
think as he pleases, and do as he pleases, too, if he does not break the
laws. And the laws are much more just and less cruel than they were in
former times. Why, in those days, every man who owed money and could not
pay it might be put in prison and kept there for years. He could not
work there and earn money to pay his debts, and if his friends did not
pay them he might stay there till he died. As I have told you, even the
good William Penn was put in prison for debt, and kept there till his
friends paid the money.
There were as many poor debtors in prison as there were thieves and
villains. Some of them become sick and died, and some were starved to
death by cruel jailers, who would not give them anything to eat if they
had no money to pay for food. One great and good man, named General
James Oglethorpe, visited the prisons, and was so sorry for the poor
debtors he saw there, that he asked the king to give him a piece of land
in America where he could take some of these suffering people.
There was now not much land left to give. Settlements had been made all
along the coast except south of the Carolinas, and the king told General
Oglethorpe that he could have the land which lay there, and could take
as many debtors out of prison as he chose. He thought it would be a good
thing to take them somewhere where they could work and earn their
living. The king who was then on the throne was named King George, so
Oglethorpe called his new colony Georgia.
It was now the year 1733, a hundred years after Lord Baltimore had come
to Maryland. General Oglethorpe took many of the debtors out of prison,
and very glad they were to get out, you may be sure. He landed with them
on the banks of a fine river away down South, where he laid out a town
which he named Savannah.
The happy debtors now found themselves in a broad and beautiful land,
where they could prove whether they were ready to work or not. They were
not long in doing this. Right away they began to cut down trees, and
build houses, and plant fields, and very soon a pretty town was to be
seen and food plants were growing in the fields. And very happy men and
women these poor people were.
General Oglethorpe knew as well as William Penn that the land did not
belong to the king. He sent for the Indian chiefs and told them the land
was theirs, and offered to pay them for it. They were quite willing to
sell, and soon he had all the land he wanted, and what is more, he had
the Indians for friends.
But if he had no trouble with the Indians, he had a good deal with the
Spaniards of Florida. They said that Georgia was a part of Florida and
that the English had no right there. And they sent an army and tried to
drive them out.
I fancy they did not know that Oglethorpe was an old soldier, but he
soon showed them that he knew how to fight. He drove back their armies
and took their ships; and they quickly made up their minds that they had
better let the English alone. There was plenty of land for both, for the
Spaniards had only one town in Florida. This was St. Augustine.
Before long some Germans came from Europe and settled in the new
colony. People came also from other parts of Europe. Corn was planted
for food, and some of the colonists raised silkworms and made silk. But
in the end, cotton came to be the chief crop of the colony.
General Oglethorpe lived to be a very old man. He did not die till long
after the American Revolution. Georgia was then a flourishing state, and
the little town he had started on the banks of the Savannah River was a
fine city, with broad streets, fine mansions, and beautiful shade trees.
I think the old general must have been very proud of this charming city,
and of the great state which owed its start to him.