V '0^. ./ •, ^^..^^ .^i<^fA"» ■%...*' y^m-. ^-^ ! "oK '^0^ ^oV ^ 'f^: .^^ ^« .^^ %/ •#- 0^ O " C ^ /^, eVfx^;^/). ^ s -oV^ ^•^.^^^'. ^^-^..^ O' '^^ .S^ sO .V ^^0^ ?/ JV SKETCH OF THE POLITICAL HISTORY of the United States of America From the Settlement of Jamestown and Plymouth to the Present Time ; or the Anglo-Saxon, the Celt, the Negro As the Tliree Great Races that Constitute the American People. By y. B. MANSFIELD. A DUAL NATIONALITY, Originating in the Settlement ot the (Jountry in two Geograpliieal Sections witli the Ar-glo-Saxon_or Teutonic Race predominating in the one, and the Celtic and the Negro in the other. " Ours is a never ceasing struggle of two rival confederacies."— JbTin Adam. 7 CONTENTS. Part I. Extends from the two colonial grants of James I. to the London and Plymouth companies, in 1G06, to the battle of Blenheim, in 1704, on the banks of the Danube, where, in the words of Mr. Alison, in his life of Marlborough, the victorious arms of Queen Anne decided that America should belong to the Anglo Saxon race. It embraces the period of the first century of the history of the British American colonies. Part II. Extends from the close of the reign of Queen Anne to the close of the Revolutionary war, and the signing of the treaty of peace, in 1783— seventy years. Part III. Extends over a period of twenty five years, from 1783 to the close of the second term of President Jefferson in 1808, when the foreign slave trade came to an end by constitutional limita- tion. This was the period of the organization of the national government under the constitution, and of three rebellions: one in Massachusetts, one in Pennsylvania, and the rebellion of the southern states under the resolutions of 1798-'99 of Thomas Jefferson against the execution of the laws of congress in states opposed to them. Part IV. Extends from the close of Jefferson's administration to the passage of the Missouri compromise in 1821 — thirteen years: the principal events of which were the war of 1812 and the establish- ment of the dividing line between freedom and slavery in the United States. Part V. Extends from 1821 to the close of the second term of Presi- dent Jackson's administration in 1836 — fifteen years— the principal events of which were Calhoun's rebellion in South Carolina, and the commencement of the great antislavery struggle, which culminated in the war of 1861-'65 between the north and south. Part VI. Extends from 1836 to the second rebellion of the south under Calhoun in 1850 — fourteen years. It was the period of the inauguration of the southern shot gun policy for controlling political elections, and the intervention of the Roman catholic church in American politics. It embraces the administrations of Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, and two years of Fillmore. '•1 CONTENTS. Part VII. Extends from J 850 to the close of the administration of President Buchanan in 1860 and the rebellion of the southern states under the lead of Mr. Calhoun's successor, Jeff. Davis, when the Celtic race went out of power, after a period of sixty years of almost continuous rule. Part VIII. Extends from 1860 to the close of 1862— two tremendous years in the history of the United States. It was the first half of the war of the rebellion. Part IX. Embraces a period of two years and four months from the issuing of the proclamation'of emancipation, January 1st, 1863, by President Lincoln, to his assassination, in April, 1865, and was the last half of the period of the war of the rebellion. Part X. Extends from the inauguration of Andrew Johnson as President Lincoln's successor to the election of General Grant as president in 1868— three years and nine months. Herein will be found the history of the reconstruction of the rebel states, the abolition of slavery, the negro raised to citizenship and political power, and the unwilling and forced return of the rebel states to the union. Part XI. Extends from 1868 to 1876 — eight years. It embraces the two presidential terms of General Grant, the main features of which were the restoration of the national credit, the social and political demoralization following the close of the war, revolt in the Republican party, the financial crash of 1873, operations of the Ku Klux Klan, abandonment by the north of their republican allies in the south, and the reign of terror that followed. Part XII. Extends from the election of President Hayes in 1876 to the opening of the presidential canvass in 1884 — eight years. The main features of which are the change of policy of the republican party, the electoral commission, the withdrawal of the army from the south, the overthrow of the legal southern state governments, return of the southern ■ oligarchy to the political control of the south and lower house of congress, administrations of Garfield and Arthur, new questions of politics and government, hopeful solicitude of the people in regard to the future of the republic. PREFACE, The design of the author in offering this sketch ot American history to the public is to show what three incongruous races of immigrants — the Anglo Saxon and the Celt from Europe, and the negro from Africa — have accomplished in the way of settling, civilizing, and building up a country for themselves and their posterity, in the short space of two hundred and seventy five years from the first landing upon its shores. The colonization of the country was of itself the greatest feat upon record. The Anglo Saxons did not undertake it alone, as they did the conquest of the Isle of Britain, but they brought along with them two other races — the Celt and the negro — mobilizing them both into their invading armies of civilization that were to open up a new age for humanity and for empire, in this western world. It is doubtful if at any time previous to the commence- ment of the seventeenth century such a wholesale migration was possible — the means for locomotion, whether by sea or land, not being adequate for the transportation of such vast masses. A century or thereabouts had intervened between the time of the discovery of Columbus, and the colonization of America by England. During that intervening period John Cabot and his son Sebastian had sailed along the Atlantic coast and taken possession in the name of the English king. James Cartier had planted the standard of Erance upon the banks of the St. Lawrence. Amerigo Yespucci had published a glowing account of the sights 4 PREFACE. and scenes lie had witnessed, giving his name to the country; and Yerozani had made three voyages here, and given the earliest account of the extent of the Atlantic coast of the present United States. Memorable events had transpired on this continent during that time. Pizarro had overrun, plundered and destroyed the civilization of Peru. Balboa had ascended the mountain heights of Darian upon which he had planted the cross of Spain, and after which he had discovered the Pacific ocean and taken possession of that also in the name of his sovereign. Cortez had pushed his conquests till he revelled in the hall of Montezuma; and De Soto, emulating the examples of Pizarro and Cortez, having vainly sought the gold he coveted in the miasmatic swamps and jungles of the south, had found his grave on the banks of the Mississippi. Other daring and hardy adventurers had found fabulous revenues in the fisheries of Newfound- land, the fur trade ot Arcadia, and the gold mines on the Pacific coast ; and Gaspar Cortereal had found a source of revenue in kidnapping the natives of America and selling them in European marts. Great events had also transpired in Europe during this time. The great German Keformation by Martin Luther and others had agitated every country from the Straits of Gibraltar to Cape E'orth, as by an earthquake. The art of printing had been discovered and was enlighten- ing the people by diffusing inteUigence among them. The Eoman catholic church was reehng under the blows of the Keformation, against which it was struggling to maintain itself, by punishing its victims with torture and death, in prison, on the block, or at the stake; bloody Mary im- mortalized Kogers, Latimer, and Cramner at the stake ; and the horrors of St. Bartholomew echoed in one wild wail all over Europe, to be paid back in kind on the accession of Queen Elizabeth to the English throne, when PREFACE. O the puritans had the grim satisfaction of seeing the dun- geons open and the fagot applied to their catholic persecutors. Political parties came to be built upon the differences in the church. The whipping post and the jibbet were familiar objects no less than the fagot and the stake, all over Europe. Heads and quarters of church victims and state criminals were exposed in the market places as warn- ings to all who dare to think, or to speak, or to act different from what the priest, or the king and his ministers should direct. This is but a brief statement of the social earthquake heavings that were agitating the nations of Europe at the time the London and Plymouth companies entered upon the colonization and settlement of their respective grants in America; but it is sufhcient to show that there were two elements of European society at that time strongly antag- onized in their political and religious opinions, one of which was the old aristocracy, or the high caste idiots of the royal houses and their appendages of nobility, in the process of hereditary degeneration; and the other was that religious and political element which had been developed by the reformation of Luther and Calvin. One was monarch- ical, and the other republican in spirit, and the latter only waited the lapse of time and an opportunity to become so in fact and form; and when emigration opened to this western continent these two elements of European society segregated as by instinct — the monarchical element going to Virginia and the south, and the puritan and republican to New England and the north. This method of settling these two sections of the country with populations so unlike, socially and politically, has been an important factor in shaping the entire course of our national history. The south and the north have suited to the fish and live — where the fish could not share 6 PREFACE. grown up from these antagonistic national germs — the one monarchical and the other republican — until they have settled and divided the continent between them. These two forms of society are as variant in structure and distinct in form as any two beings in animated nature; one is the embodiment of the principle that equality is the right of man, and it expands upon the horizontal plane of a pure democracy; the other denies the principle that equality is the right of man, but the right of equals only, and takes the form of a social aristocracy. The labor of one is voluntary, hired and paid, and the other, until our late great civil war, involuntary and enforced; in the one there is a free elective franchise; in the other, the reins of government are in the hands of the aristocracy only. In the one, government is guided by the best intelligence of the masses; in the other, by the interests of the ruling class. In the one there is a disfranchised . element which can never rise to political equality, while in the other the poorest laborer has equal political power with the wealth- iest citizen. Such are some of the more obvious differences in the constitution of society which divide the people of the two sections of our common country. Between these two forms of society a contest for existence was continual ; neither could concur in the requisitions of the other, neither could expand within the forms of a single government without encroaching upon the other. The tendency to social conflict preexisted in these two forms of society, and a conflict such as they came to in 1861 was inevitable. They have been compared to "twin lobsters in a single shell, if such things were possible, in which the natural expansion of one must be inconsistent with the existence of the other; or like an eagle and a fish joined by an indis- soluble band — which, for no reason of its propriety, could act together, where the eagle could not share the fluid PREFACE. i the fluid suited to the bird and live — and when one must perish that the other may survive, unless the unnatural union shall be severed — so these societies could not if they vi^ould concur." The principle that races are unequal, politically, and that among unequals inequality is right, would have been destructive to that form of republican liberty which had been planted by our puritan ancestry, and was growing naturally in the north; and the principle that all men are politically equal would have been equally destructive of slavery and slave institutions at the south. Each required the element suited to its social nature. Had the foreign slave trade never been suppressed, slave society would have triumphed. It extended to the borders of JSTew England, and would have grown stronger from year to year with continued immigrations from Europe, and importations of slaves from Africa; but with the slave trade suppressed northern civilization triumphed, and when the states of JSTew York, Pennsylvania, and E'ew Jersey abolished slavery and substituted hired labor, wealth and political power increased in the north in a far greater proportion than in the south. Then came the war of 1812, brought on by the south to suppress the growing power of the north, but resulted in a greater detriment to their own. When the north became strong enough to grasp and hold the government they reached out and took possession of it. Slavery was then within their grasp, and, forced to the option of extinction in the union or independ- ence out of it, rose in rebellion and fought a four years war for independence. They lost their institution of slaVery as a result of the war, but have since gained in politics what they could not by war, and that is a land renting peasantry, with a limited franchise and a priv- ileged ruling class, tliough not established by the authority of law, nevertheless exists. b PREFACE. The south has risen upon its ruins to be a threatening and formidable pcjwer in the union again, and their sectional hate only slumbers because of a transverse antagonism in the negro race. That race now constitutes their vulnerable point; but the southern oligarchy will not permit them to rise as a rival political force in their midst without another effort to retard, restrict, or destroy them, and there are those who see a fearful strife impending between the two races (the Celtic and the negro), in the near future, in which the north will be compelled to take sides. "The war for the extension of Anglo Germanic civil- ization over this continent, that commenced when the iirst pilgi'im stepped ashore on Plymouth rock," which General Sherman characterized in one of his speeches to the grand army, "as the greatest war in all history, and not yet ended," must go on until that ideal future for which our puritan ancestry hoped and struggled, and their descendants toiled and fought, has been secured in the south as it has been in all the north and west. It may be that to that end another revolution may be necessary. It is to be apprehended that the contest between free and slave institutions is not yet over. A SKETCH — OF THE Political History "i^ieUnited States. PART I. CHAPTER I. The two Knglish grants from which our dual nationality of " North- ern " and " Southern ■' States is derived— Claims to the country* by France and Spain, contested by the English— Teutonic origin of the English people— Organization of the London and Plymouth companies to colonize the country — Unfortunate results of their first expeditions — Rebellion of the Virginia colonists, and Cap- tain Smith's proclamation to the rebels. The United States of America have grown up to their present proportions of a great and powerful nation from the two English grants of its territory, made by King James I, to the London, and Plymouth Emigration and Mercantile Companies, in 1606. Spain then occupied a considerable portion of the conti- nent, which it claimed by virtue of the discoveries made by Columbus ; the French also occupied a portion it, which they claimed by the discoveries made by Cartier ; and the English claimed all the territory occupied by both the Spanish and French, under the discoveries made by John- Cabot. The English people possessed far superior qualifica- tions for colonizing and settling the country, than either the 10 POLITICAL HISTORY OF Spanish or the French. They were the born soldiers, sailors, merchants, and farmers, that the successful prose- cution o± such an enterprise required. They took more readily to clearing off the forests, cultivating the land, building towns and cities, and organizing political com- munities, than any other race or people. They were the descendants of the all-conquering Teu- tonic race, from the tribes of the Angles, the Saxons, and the Normans ; the two former crossing the German ocean and taking possession of the Isle of Britain, in the fifth and sixth centuries, and giving it the name of England, from their native Angeln ; and the latter becoming its in- vaders and conquerors, in the tenth century, under William of Normandy. From England they crossed the Atlantic ocean in 1606-7, to take possession of and settle this West- ern Continent, following the example of their fathers in taking possession of the Isle of Britain, '• The good old rule, the simple plan, That they shall take who have the power ; And they shall keep, who can." Two companies of English merchants and capitalists were formed in 1606 ; one known as the London company, and the other as the Plymouth company ; to each of which the King made a grant of territory in North America, sev- eral times larger than all England, Scotland, and Ireland combined. The grant to the London company embraced all the country on the coast of Virginia and North Carolina, between the parallels of 34 degrees and 38 degrees, north latitude ; and the grant to the Plymouth company em- braced all that portion of country on the coast of New England, from the mouth of the Hudson river to Passama- quoddy bay, between the parallels of 41 degrees and 45 degrees north latitude. Between these two grants there was an intervening, or neutral, territory of three degrees in breadth, 38 to 41 de- grees, which was open to either company ; but neither was THE UNITED STATES. 11 to build •establiskments within one hundred miles of the other. From these two English grants the people of the United States as a nation derive their dual origin and character. On each grant was planted the seed germ of a nation — Massachusetts becoming the nucleus of one, and Yirginia the other ; dividing the country between them in two great geographical sections, Northern and South- ern. They were the representatives ol the two elements •of European population; that of the South consisted of the titled orders and appendages of rank, while that of the IN'orth consisted of the untitled class who came here to escape the thraldom of caste, and to labor and enjoy the fruits of their toil. These classes were unhomogeneous and hostile in Europe, and showed no dis- position to assimilate here, but were generally on opposite sides on all subjects of an economical, industrial, or politi- cal character, and have grown up as two distinctive peoples in one common nationality, each inspiring and reciprocating prejudice, and engaged in a perpetual struggle for the domination of one over the other. These two companies, having received the titles to their grants, commenced fitting out expeditions to colonize and settle them. There w^as a prevailing opinion in England at that time, that there were gold mines here, along the Atlantic coast, as numerous and rich as those on the Pacific, from which the Spaniards were taking immense quantities of the precious metal ; and it was also believed that when the Atlantic coast became better known, and further discoveries had been made, that the Northwest passage to the Indies would be found, which had so long been looked for in vain. The Plymouth company sent out their first expedition • in 1606, consisting of two ships, one of which was captured and confiscated by the Spaniards ; the other escaped, and, .after making a survey of the coast, returned to England 12 POLITICAL HISTORY OF with such a glowing account of the country — of its mag- nificent harbors, rivers, fisheries, and great woods — that the company fitted out the next year two more ships, with one hundred adventurers, whom they sent out to find, both the reported inexhaustible gold mines, and the northwest passage to the Indies. They landed on the coast of Maine, and remained there all summer, engaged in building log cabins, a store- house for their provisions, and a fort for protection from the Indians, in case they should be attacked by them. They then commenced a diligent search for gold mines ; but finding none, a part of these adventurers became dis- couraged and abandoned the the search as hopeless, and returned to England in the fall, leaving fortyfive of their number, who were more sanguine to remain over winter, and continue the search for gold ; but the rigors of the climate, and the hostitity of the Indians soon made this little company wish that they had also gone with their comrades. The Indians burned their cabins and the store- house containing their provisions, so that between the rigors of a ^ew England winter and the loss of their provisions they had a very narrow escape from death; when the ships arrived from England in the spring, bringing supplies to enable them to prosecute their enterprise, they had fully determined to abandon it, and went on board ship and re- turned home. That was the result of the first attempt of the Enghsh to colonize and settle JS^ew England. It was the counterpart of the attempt of Sir Walter Raleigh, to establish a colony on Roanoke Island in 1585, with the exception that they did not all perish as Raleigh's colony did. Nothing more was done by the Plymouth company to colonize their grant, with any promise of success, until the arrival of the colony of Puritans from the north of England^ in 1620. THE UNITED STATES. 13 The London company sent out their first expedition to Virginia the same year (1606) that the Plymouth com- pany sent theirs to New England ; but it was all winter making the voyage, and did not arrive at the mouth of James river until the middle of the following May, 1607. The expedition consisted of three small vessels, one of one hundred tons burthen, one of forty tons, and one of twenty tons, all under the command of Captain IS'ewport, who was also a member of the corporation. There were also six other members of the London company on board, among whom was the celebrated Captain John Smith. These men constituted the officers for the government of the colony, having been appointed by the King, under seal, with instructions that the seal should not be broken and the names of the officers be made known until their arrival in Virginia. There were 105 immigrants in this expedition, besides the members of the company, and the small company of soldiers who were brought over as a police force to aid the company in maintaining their government. All of these immigrants, with the exception of a dozen or so who were mechanics, were the thriftless younger sons of the aristoc- racy, men born and raised in affluence, and none of whom had families, or had ever performed any labor. They were all styled "gentlemen," and passed as such among their fellows, not because they had either wealth or character to give them such a standing in respectable society, but because of their birth and family connections ; some were broken down merchants, and others were educated men without occupation ; sporting men who had fallen into vicious courses, and, having committed crimes that would subject them to the penalties of the law, and to save them from it, their influential relatives and triends had secured their transportation to these shores. They had a boisterous passage over ; in addition to the perils of the sea, a fearful mutiny broke out in the ' 14 POLITICAL HISTORY OF "gentleman" class, which was finally quelled by the Kev. Mr. Hunt, Chaplain of the expedition, to whose judicious and earnest appeals the mutineers yielded, and quiet and order was restored. On landing, the carpenters and laborers went to work in putting up log cabins to live in, also a store-house,, church, tavern, fort, and outbuildings for the stock. The seven members of the corporation met and organized their government for the colony. It was only a corporation despotism. All authority was vested in the members of the corporation who^held the charter. Their ordinances constituted the only law of the colony, and from the decision of the colonial council there was no appeal. Under the King their power was supreme, and all who immigrated here were to all intents and purposes their subjects. The English statute and the common law were not recognized at all. The gentlemen class commenced, immediately on land- ing, their search for the Yirginia gold mines. They scoured the forests and forded the streams, but .found no signs of the presence of gold, and after a few weeks, in utter discouragement and despair they gave up the search; but they made raids upon the Indians, and provoked their hostility by stealing their corn, robbing their gardens, breaking into their wigwams and assaulting and carrying off their women. Captain Newport returned to England after a short stay, leaving the twenty ton pinnace for the use of the colony ; but he had not been long gone before the colonists became reduced to the most wretched condition. Coming into this malarious climate at a most unfavor- able season of the year, their provisions which they had brought over becoming spoiled from climatic influences, they were obliged to depend upon the native fruits to be found in the forests, and the fish with which the rivers / ( THE UNITED STATES. 15 abounded. They soon fell sick with the fevers incident to this region of the country, and there were times when there were not five men in the colony fit for duty, and the outcries of the sick and the groans of the dying rent the air night and day. Three or four often died of a night, and their corpses were dragged out of the cabins in the morning like dead dogs, to be buried. Their sufi'erings were so great as to excite the sympathy of the Indians whom they had so greatly wronged; but notwithstanding that, these dusky savages brought them food and remedies to mitigate their sufi'erings. (1) Before the end of that summer nearly half of these colonists had died ; when the sickness had abated the survivors brought new miseries upon themselves by their violent quarrels. The ofticers of the colonial government proved to be a set of thieves and scoundrels unworthy of any trust or responsibility. They quarreled and stole from the company and from each other, and conspired first against one and then another, and between their quarrels and conspiracies and those of their unruly subjects, the speedy breaking up and destruction of the colony seemed inevitable. Wingfield, the Governor, was detected in pilfering the choicest stores of the company and appropri- ating them to his own use, and also in a conspiracy to steal the company's vessel and proceed to sea with it on a cruise of piracy, leaving the colony to its fate. For this he was deposed, and the new Governor, who became his suc- cessor, proved in a short time to be as base a villain as Wingfield, and he, loo, was deposed. Afi*airs iu the colony had reached a crisis. There was now only one man in it who had the capacity to govern it, and that was Captain Smith. He was, as we 1 Our soldiers who were encamped in that same locality where these pioneer colonists were (the swnmps of the Chickahominy and thf- James, in 1862) know but too well what the sickness of that regrion is. Our army met with heavier losses there from fever than it ever did in any campaign fight- ing the enemy. 16 POLITICAL HISTORY OF have said, one of the corporate proprietors, and, jealous of his superior abilities, the other members of this conclave of scoundrels formed a conspiracy against him and deposed him from membership. Two other conspiracies were formed for stealing the company's vessel and proceeding to sea with it, on a piratical expedition; but they were detected in season to be defeated, and one man was killed. Smith saw that the time had come for him to act; that there was only one course to be pursued to save the colony from self destruction, and that was for him to assume the control ot it, and the exercise of autocratic power. This he did, and with his corporal's guard of soldiers, joined by a few volunteers, soon reduced the malcontents to obedience, but not to loyalty. They then plotted to assassinate him, but he discovered the plot and threw the would be assassins into close confinement, where he kept them until he could 3end them to England. At this juncture Captain Newport arrivedfrom England with his two vessels, bringing fresh supplies. This had the effect of abating for a while the prevailing discord and tumult. He brought over in this second expedition one hundred and twenty more emigrants, but they were, un- fortunately for the prosperity of the colony, of the same class he had brought before — vagabond gentlemen, im- poverished in spirit and fortune, a turbulent horde of rakes and libertines better fitted for the rope of the hangman than to become the founders of a commonwealth. Cap- tain Smith, justly indignant at the arrival of such a class of emigrants, and at the want of judgment on the part of the company as to the kind of men most needed here, wrote home to them not to send any more such, but in their next shipment to send farmers, mechanics, and tradesmen of various kinds — that a few of such men w^ould be worth more than a thousand such as they had sent here; but they paid no heed to his request. THE UNITED STATES. 17 On the arrival of this lot of newcomers the gold craze l^roke out afresh, and there was nothing talked of but digging, washing, and refining gold. For purposes of a more thorough exploration of the country they formed themselves into two companies — one under the leadership of Mr. Martin, who was one of the corporate proprietors, to search for gold mines; and the other, under Captain Newport, to search for the northwest passage to the Pacific Ocean. They had been absent but a few days from Jamestown w^hen both parties returned, reporting the most astonishing success in the discoveries they had made, in which it will appear that their credulity was as boundless as their avarice and passion for gold was unbridled. Mr. Martin's party had noticed the shining pyrites in the sands on the banks of the James, and, mistaking them for gold, now believed themselves possessed of riches far transcending anything; ever dreamed of. Mr. Martin supposed himself to be the richest man in all Europe. Captain Newport's supposed discoveries were no less important an'd marvelous in their character. He reported that his expedition had discovered the Pacific Ocean at or near James River Falls, and that that river was the outlet or channel connecting that ocean with the Atlantic. Thus had been discovered the long sought for northwest passage to the Pacific and to the riches of Asia. But when the Indian chief Powhatan came to hear of it he scouted the idea, and asserted that to his positive knowledge there was no ocean, nor any other great body of water, anywhere about there; but Captain New^port persisted in his belief that he had discovered the Pacific, against the strongest statements of Powhatan to the contrary. But Captain Newport was more immediately interested, ^as were the rest of the colonists, in the discoveries of Mr. iMartin's party, than in the discovery of the Northwest 18 POLITICAL HISTORY OF passage, and that became a matter of secondary considera- tion. He ordered his two vessels to be loaded with auriferous (?) sand, having learned no lesson from a former shipment of worthless earth to England, from Hudson's Straits, a quarter of a century previous. After spending fourteen weeks in loading, the vessels set sail for England. On their arrival and the discovery, by the company, of the worthlessness of the cargo, " their disappointment and angry covetousness was fully dis- played." (Bancroft's CoL Hist. U. S., p. 69.) In their rage over this expensive and worthless consign- ment they sent Newport immediately back to Virginia, and told him that unless he should return next time with a sufficient amount of gold or other commodities correspond- ing in value to the cost of the adventure, the colonists should be left in Virginia as banished men, {ihid.^ p 69,) and they gave him seventy more emigrants, from the floating scum of London, such as he had brought before. But no remunerative return came. They had seem their capital expended, and now realized that it was lost beyond recovery ; that their enterprise in Virginia, like that of the Plymouth company in New England, was a. failure ; that there were no gold mines in Virginia, and they had no disposition to make any further search for them. They had also become satisfied of another thing, and. that was, that the Pacific Ocean was not to be reached by sailing up the James river. But the wonder is that these- men, the descendants of the Scandinavian pirates of the tenth century, whose ships were cruising in every sea, and whose adventurers were roaming over every country, should persist with such pertinacity in searching for gold mines onx the eastern coast of this continent, where none existed,, without ever making the slightest effort for getting pos- session of the mines on the west, or Pacific coast, of whose^ existence they must have known, as English privateers^ THE UNITED STATES. 19' from Francis Drake down to much later times, cruised on that coast to capture and rob Spanish galleons as they came out from its ports, bound homeward, laden with gold from those mines. They had failed; but they sent no informa- tion of it to their colonists in Virginia, or any further supplies, nor any instructions as to what they should do. Captain Smith was governor, dictator, king — exercising absolute power over not only his own turbulent and rebel- lious colonists, but over the Indian tribes also. The greatest anxiety prevailed in the colony as to the cause of the interruption of all communication with En- gland, of which they were kept in such profound ignorance; and it was well, perhaps, that they were. Their supplies of provisions had become exhausted, and they were once again on the point of starvation; and that, too, in a country where the forests abounded with game and the rivers with fish. But they were too proud and indolent to gather their own food when so near at hand and easy to be obtained, or to cook it when obtained for them. They insisted, our Yirginia gentlemen did, that their birth and condition ought to exempt them from the degra- dation of work; that it was the duty of the corporation to feed them; and as to the requirement that they should work, hunt, fish, or gather fruit, they protested that they would not do it, even to save themselves from starvation. Would they do it to save the colony ? A rebellion was plotted by the gentlemen class, but Smith nipped it in the bud by arresting the leaders, and placing them in close confinement. He then obtained a short supply of provisions from the Indians to tide over the time when he could put his plans into execution, and then issued the following proclamation, which we find in his History of Virginia : Countrymen ! The long experience of our late miseries, I hope, is sufficient to persuade every one to a present correction of himself, and think not that either my pains nor the adventurers' purses wilK "20 POLITICAL HISTOEY OF ever maintain you in idleness and sloth. I speak not this to you all, for divers of you, I know, deserve both honor and better reward than is yet here to be had, but the greater part must be more industrious or starve. 1 You see now that power resteth wholly in myself. You must obey this now for a law, that he that will not work, shall not eat, (except by sickness he be disabled,) for the labors of thirty or forty honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintain a hun- dred and fifty idle loiterers ; and though you presume the authority here is but a shadow, and that I dare not touch the lives of any, for fear my own must answer it. The letters patent ishall each week be read to you, whose contents will tell you the contrary. I would wish you, therefore, without contempt, lo seek to observe these orders set down; for there are now no more counsellors to protect you or curb my endeavors. Therefore, he that otfendeth, let him assuredly expect his due punishment. Immediately on the issuing oi this proclamation, Smith divided the whole colony into gangs of ten and fifteen men €ach, laid out their work for them, and ordered them out to their allotted tasks. The turbulent and refractory, rather than to take the knout, or whatever other punishment Smith might devise to inflict upon them, performed theirs ; but his life was in constant danger from them on account of their conspiracies to assassinate him. 1 Such was the strange condition of some of one hundred and fifty, that had tliey not been forced, nolens volens, to perlorm together and prepare their victuals, tliey would all have starved or eaten one another. IRichard Potts, clerk of the council, in Smithes History of Virginia, p. 228.] THE UNITED STATES. 21 CHAPTER II. Reorganization of the London company— Sailing of the second ex- pedition to Virginia — Captain John Smith the life and soul of the colony — His abandonment of it, and return to England — Impor- tation of the criminal classes as slave laborers for the proprietors — Attempt to absorb the native population by blending with the English, unsuccessful— Importation of marriageable girls from England and Ireland for wives for the colonists — A company chartered by the King to deal in slaves and kidnap negroes on the coast of Africa for that purpose— Negro slavery introduced in Virginia in 1620— Confiscation, by the King, of the grant made to the Virginia company, and the company dissolved — the death of the King and the accession of his son, Charles I, to the throne of England. After remaining for some months in a state of inac- tivity and indecision as to what they would do. the Lon- don company finally determined on a reorganization of their company, and to renew their enterprise of colonizing Virginia, but on a different plan, that is, to establish regu- lar industries in which to employ the idle, criminal and pauper class of the population, and make them earn their living. This would not only really relieve the Kingdom of its overcrowded population, but would be fairly remu- nerative to themselves. They obtained a new charter, and enlisted in their enterprise a number of new men possessed of large capital^ and resumed their work of colonizing Yirginia. Lord Delaware was appointed governor for life, and under the new charter they had agreed, in consideration thereof, to take out to Yirginia "all the dissolute persons whom the Knight Marshal would deliver for that purpose." They fitted out an expedition of nine ships, and took on board 22 POLITICAL HISTORY OF five hundred emigrants, consisting principally of those who T^ere delivered to them under the act of 39 Elizabeth, ch. 4, which authorized the banishment of rogues and vagabonds. As for good laborers, they did not wish to take any of them, as they were more useful in England. This expedition sailed in the latter part of May, under the command of Captain Newport, having on board Lieutenant Governor Gates and Admiral George Somers, who were to relieve Captain Smith in the government of the colony, until the arrival of Lord Delaware, who was not to come out for several months; but the vessel on which they had taken passage was separated from the rest in a storm, and wrecked on one, of the Bermuda islands, and one vessel was lost, so that only seven reached Yirginia. The emigrants by this expedition, intended to be the salvation of the colony, came near proving its destruction. They brought the news ol the failure of the company, and the reorganization of a new company, under a new charter, and the appointment of new officers, all of whom were on the missing vessel and supposed to be lost. This information set all of Smith's desperadoes in commotion again, and they determined not to submit to his government any longer. New acts of insubordination were of daily occurrence, and Smith's capacity for con- trolling men was brought to the severest trial; but he proved equal to the emergency, and he would have con- tinued to carry on the government till the arrival of the new officers who were appointed to succeed him, but for an accident by which he came near losing his life. It accomplished all, however, that his mutinous subjects most ardently desired: it brought his career in Yirginia to a close. He was blown up by the explosion of a bag of gun- powder, while out on an expedition to obtain food for his colony, and the necessity for surgical treatment which was not to be had in Yirginia, compelled him to turn over the THE UNITED STATES. 23 •government of ithe colony to other hands and return to England. He sailed about Michaelmas time in 1609, and never again returned to Virginia. At the time of his departure there were in the colony four hundred and ninety persons, with a supply of provis- ions in store for ten weeks, twenty-four pieces of artillery, three hundred muskets, and a sufficient supply of other arms and ammunition, and farming tools, seven horses, six hundred hogs, and the same amount of poultry, besides a few sheep and goats. He had also a military force of one hundred well drilled soldiers to execute his authority. Here were all the elements of prosperity but women for wives for the settlers, unless they formed alliances or mesalliances with the natives. The wrecked passengers on the island of Bermuda lived there for nine months on its spontaneous productions; for the most part on wild hogs they found there, and the fish with which the small streams and the sea shore abounded. They had been ashore but a few days, however, before they began to quarrel. One of the historians says ''that it seemed as if the air of America was infectious and inclined men's minds to wrangles and contention, so soon did this people fall out. They separated into cliques and factions, and lived apart from each other, more like enemies and strangers than like a party of acquaintances and friends involved in one common calamity." They soon began to form plans for building a vessel to escape from the island; but they quarreled so that they could not agree to work upon one, so they commenced two. They built these out of timber they found upon the island, in connection with the timber they had saved from the wreck. This expedition was the first to bring out families of ^women and children. During the time this little com- 24 POLITICAL HISTORY OF munity were on the island there were two births, one' wedding, one execution, and one murder. Two of the; men who were about to be executed for crimes which thej had committed lied into the woods, and were left on the- island when the ships sailed. On their arrival at Jamestown they were horror stricken< at the appalling scenes of misery, death, and desolation that everywhere met their eyes. They ascertained that as soon as Smith had left the colony, universal anarchy and all its attendant horrors followed; that a party of thirty had seized one of the vessels and proceeded to sea as pirates;, that their stock of ten weeks provisions left in store by Smith had been rapidly consumed; that they had become involved in a series of dreadful quarrels among themselves,, and also with the Indians, by whom many of their number- had been killed. Sickness had also broken out among them, by which many had died; so that when these vessels arrived from Bermuda, the miserable survivors here had become reduced to such extremeties of woe as no pen can describe, and out of the four hundred and ninety persons left by Smith on his departure, all were dead but sixty, and these were rapidly sinking into a state of absolute^ despair. The commissioners, as soon as they saw the desperate condition of these people, decided that any further attempt at colonization in Virginia was hopeless, and determined to embark the few persons and effects that remained, on board such vessels as they had, and return to Ensjland. Every one was exultant at the thought of leaving the land where they had experienced such dreadful suffering, and some proposed to make a bonfire of the town and go. away in the blaze of it ; but this the commander would not allow. They embarked on board their vessels and dropped down the stream, happy, as they supposed, in the prospect of leaving the country forever; but they had gone only half THE UNITED STATES. 25 way down the river when tliej were siir])risecl by meeting- the advance ot Lord Dehaware's tleet coming up, having on board a large number of emigrants, a company of soldiers, and ample supplies of provisions, and, what was of the greatest importance, authority — and a sufHcient military force for the maintenance of an efficient govern- ment. The refugees were persuaded to return, and that night occupied tlie fort and the houses of the town, which they were now glad they had not burned. Lord Delaware adopted Smith's industrial system, and put his colonists to work in gangs, under overseers, who' were ordered to shoot the first man who was disobedient, or refused to labor. Six hours labor a day was all that was deemed prudent or necessary to require ; yet Smith said there were those who would ^^refei' to starve rather than perform that much. One days labor ^ was anqDly sufficient to provide the laborer with food for a week. Lord Delaware had been here but a short time when his health became so affected by the climate that he was obliged to resign and return to England. He was suc- ceeded soon after by Thomas Dale, who w^as a man of sterling good sense and a rigid disciplinarian. He fully agreed with what Smith had said — "that no prosperity could be expected in Yirginia except by labor, and the establish- ment of regular industry." It was during the early part of Dale's administration that the English undertook the experiment of absorbing the Indian race into the English by intermarriage, as a more preferable way of conquering them, than by fighting them. Lord Palmerston, it will be remembered, once proposed to make the conquest of Ireland by intermarriage with the Ii'ish, and offered a reward of £20 to every Eng- lishman who would marry an Irish woman. One of the English colonists by the name of John Rolfe, said tohave been a widower, became attached to Pocahontas, the; c 26 POLITICAL HISTORY OF daughter of the Indian chief Powhatan. He wrote a letter to Governor Dale asking his permission to marry her, and promised to convert her to Christianity, if the governor •would give his consent. Dale approved his application most cordially, and the authorities of the church also gave it their sanction. Her true name was said to be Matoax; but owing to the superstitions of her father, who believed the English to possess powers for working supernatural -enchantments might work her some harm, if they knew her true name, it was carefully concealed from them. She had previously been strongly attached to Captain John Smith, but he had left the country, and she had announced her determination never to marry any other man than Smith. To change her purpose she was deceived by the story that Smith was dead, and in that belief she agreed to marry Rolfe. She had on one occasion saved Smith's life from the treachery of her father, who had arranged to surprise Smith, and destroy him and his whole party while at sup- per : but not exactly in the w\ay our tradition has it. Instead of throwing herself across Smith's neck, as his head was laid upon the fatal block to take the blow from the club that her father had raised to dash out his brains, she travelled one dark night through the woods to warn Captain Smith of his danger. For this he offered to re- ward her with such trinkets as she would have been delighted to have received ; but she dare not take them, she said, " for fear her father might see them, and, suspecting how she came by them, would kill her." She had refused to go to Jamestown, ever since the departure of Smith, and a plot was now laid to capture her, and take her there as a prisoner. The reason for her cap- ture was to hold her as a hostage, and make her father give up some English prisoners, and some stolen arms, in exchange for her; and the plot was successful. It was THE UNITED STATES. 27 carried out in the following manner : Pocahontas was staying with the Potomac Indians in 1613, and Captain Argall, a man notorious for his dishonest and infamous practices, who happened to be trading on the river at the time, bribed Japazaws, the Indian chief, with whom he was staying, with a copper kettle, to entice her on board his vessel, where he detained her and took her to Jamestown. Here she was detained while the negotiations were going on between the English and her father for her exchange. Meanwhile affairs took a new turn, and she was married to Rolfe, with all the imposing ceremonial that the church and state could give. The marriage was acceptable to Powhatan, who sent an uncle and two brothers of Pocahontas to witness it, besides a present of buckskins to his daughter and her husband. This marriage brought about peace during Powhatan's lifetime between the English and the Indians. A free intermingling of the two races now took place, which lasted for eight years. Bancroft says, in his colonial history : ' ' That it seemed that the European and native races were about to become blended." There were many other marriages, probably, between the two races, following this. The Indians demanded to be called Englishmen, and declared them- selves the subjects of King James; but the amalgamation of the races proceeded very slowly, as well as the nation- alizing of the Indians as Englishmen, and finally it ceased entirely, and the two races again became enemies, and returned to their fighting. In a little more than two years after their marriage Polfe and Pocahontas went to England on a bridal tour, accompanied by Governor Dale, and some Indians whom Powhatan had sent with his daughter. Their arrival .om,$2D0 to $500.,., THE UNITED STATES. 3^ and the indenture which limited this time of bondage soon came to be as often disregarded as observed, and perpetual service followed. Prisoners of war in England were reduced to slavery and sold. Criminals and debtors were added to the num-- ber, and unfortunate gamesters who had staked their liberty. — Henry'^s History of England. There were also hereditary slaves who derived their condition from their parents, and who were sold and trans- ferred from hand to hand. The lowest class of people in England were abject and unprivileged, and sold as slaves.. — Chamber's History of Laws. The grandmother of Benjamin Eranklin was a white slave. Her name was Mary Morrill. She belonged to the famous Hugh Peters, who came to America in 1635.- Peter Folger purchased her of Peters for £20, and she became his wife, and the daughter that she bore him became the mother of Benjamin Franklin. — Parker'^ s Historic Americans^ p. W, In addition to this source of supply for slave labor, the king granted a charter to a company of London merchants to kidnap negroes on the coast of Africa, and bring out and. sell to the planters. This trade in Negroes had been; carried on for many years by British subjects in an irreg- ular way. John Hawkins was the first Englishman to engage in it, who as early as 1562, took out cargoes of negroes to the Spanish colonies, where he sold them, and brought back to England a return cargo of hides, ginger,, and sugar. The Yirginia planters had a great dislike to negroes, not only on account of race and color, but they cost them more than white slaves, and it was very doubtful' if they would be as profitable. In 1620, the same year that the puritans landed in^ New England, a Dutch man of war, having on board a. cargo of negroes for slaves, sailed up the James river.. .•36 POLITICAL HISTOEY OF Kobody wanted to buy the Dutchman's "niggers" at any price, but he finally succeded in trading off twenty of them conditionally, and left them with the planters on trial. This was the commencement of negro slavery in the United States. So strong was the prejudice against negroes, that the traffic went on very slowly, so that in 1660, forty years afterwards, they did not amount to one in filly of the population. I^ot withstanding the large numbers of convicts, and idle and dissolute persons that proprietors were bringing over here, they were not drawing oif that class of popula- tion near as fast as it was desired, and a great meeting was held on the .13th of JSTovember, 1622, in St. Paul's, under the auspices of the king and nobility, to which the London Company were invited, and they numbered now one thousand members, to listen to an address on American emigration from the Rev. John Donne, the king's favorite preacher. He urged upon the company the importance of greater energy and activity in relieving England from its overcrowded population, and in commending them for what they had already done in emptying the jails and prisons, and as an encouragement for still further and greater eflforts in transporting the criminal classes, said: "It shall redeem many a wretch from the jaws of death— from the hands of the executioner. It shall sweep your streets and wash your doors from idle persons, and employ them; and truly, if the whole country (America) is such a Bridewell, to force the idle persons to work, it has a good use. It is already a spleen to drain the ill humors of the body." The London Company were decidedly opposed to continuing the shipping of criminals to their colony. They thought they had already too many of that class for the good of their colony, and they desired to make it some- thing better than what the king's preacher had termed it: '*a spleen to draw the ill humors of the body" of England. The king insisted on the fulfillment of the conditions on THE UNITED STATES. ST which they held the grant. They answered that they had done so. The king then appointed a committee to investi- gate their affairs. The commissioners reported according to- the king's wishes; but the company made so stubborn a. light that another committee was appointed, and shortly after it had been sent to Virginia the king caused a qico iiyirranto to be issued against the company, and the trial came on during the Trinity Term, in 162tl:. But the case was already prejudged, and before the end of the term Lord Chief Justice \jny were largely the descendants of the nobility — men of rank, wealth and culture — and the object -of their emigration was to escape the impending revohition •which they foresaw under the ill starred reign of Charles I. Fifteen hundred of these people came over in one year, and brought their wealth with them. The celebrated John Endicott ^nd Governor Winthrop belonged to this colony. On their arrival here they assimilated with the puritans, and aided them in the prosecution of their industrial enter- prises, and following out what they believed to be for the best interest of the colony, free schools, the orthodox Con- gregational church, and popular government became the distinguishing feature of their social and political economy. Within fifteen years after the landing of this colony of Puritans, (and there was never afterwards any consider- able increase from England), there came over twenty-one thousand two hundred persons, or four thousand families, and their descendants have spread over and settled in all the Middle and Western States, carrying with them, wherever they went, their principles of free schools, free government, and free men. In 1609 the famous English sailor, Henry Hudson, in command of the Dutch ship Tlalfmoori^ came to an anchor in the bay of New York, discovered the mouth ot Hudson river, to which he gave his own name, and then explored it as far up as Albany, and took possession of the country in the name of the Dutch government, and gave it the name of "New Netherlands." In 1621, the next year after the landing of the puritans at Plymouth, the great Dutch West India company was chartered for the purpose of trade, and the settlement of the country. They brought over a colony that year consisting of perse- cuted French protestants, called Huguenots; other colo- THE UNITED STATES. 43 iiies followed, and in 1625 New Netherlands was erected into a province. Westward the star of empire was moving, and the settlement of New Jersey and New Netherlands by the Dutcli was followed by the settlement of Delaware by the Swedes; Pennsylvania by the English, Irish, and Germans; and Maryland by the English and Irish Roman catholics. During the latter years of the reign of King James a great change had been taking place in English public opinion in mattei's both religious and political. The Bible had been translated into the English language, and was finding its way into the hands of the people, and they were not only becoming protestant, and uniting in their demands tor s^reater religious freedom, but in political matters the idea of the right of the people to a voice in all matters of government had obtained a very strong hold npon the English mind. When Charles I. came to the English throne on the death of his father, in 1625, he undertook to repress this growing spirit of civil and relig- ious fieedora, and brought on a conflict which not only cost him his life, but stripped the Stuart dynasty, and their succsssors, of the power that had for centuries inhered in the crown. The Roman catholics wei'e generally his partisans, and that portion of the church of England who followed Bishop Laud, called cavillers. Thej were aiming to carry the church of England back to the old position. Green, the historian, says of them: '•They aped Roman ceremonies. Cautiously and tentatively they were introducing Roman doctrine. Bat they had none of the sacer- dotal independence which Rome had, at any rate, preserved. They were abject in their dependence on the crown. Their gratitude for the royal protection wliich enabled them to defy the religious instincts of the realm showed itself in their erection of the most dangerous pre- tensions of the monarchy into religious dogmas. Their model, Bishop Andrews, had declared James to have been inspired by God. They preached passive obedience to the worst tyranny. They declared the 44 POLITICAL HISTORY OF person and goods of the subject to be at the king's absolute disposal. They were turning religion into a systematic attack on English lib- erty."' There were also a large number who would have been glad to avoid the issue between the king and parliament, and waited to see which party would triumph, so as to join the winning side; there was also a very large class, such as we had in this country daring the rebellion, who had not intelligence enough to apprehend what the points of the controversy were, and they took the side of the king, a& the same class here did the side of the rebels. One of the most important results of this controversy was the impulse it gave to immigration and the settlement of these colonies. Political opinions here were shaped very much by the course of events in England, and they took a sectional character for the North or South, as between the puritans and the cavillers. In New England the people were puritan, and they espoused the cause of parliament against the king and his partisans, and all the enemies of the king and the Eoman church went there; while the adherents of the mon- archy went to Virginia, and emigi'ated to that colony in such large numbers as to crowd it ports with vessels engag- ed in bringing them over. Upon their arrival the Virginians welcomed them with the most unbounded hospitality. "Every house was a shelter and every planter a friend." In 1627 several ship loads of children, amounting to many thousand, were sent over by the British government and distributed all over the colony of Virginia. They were orphans, and street waifs, and the offspring of the intem- perate, idle, and vicious, and the poor who were not vicious, but unable to take care of them. In the Court and Times of Charles I, Vol. 1, p. 262, there is a letter from Rev. Joseph Meade to Sir Martin Stuteville, saying that ''there are many ships now going to Virginia, and witli them some 1400 or 1500 children which they have gather- ed up in divers places" in England, Ireland and Scotland.. THE UNITED STATES. 45 It would be interesting to know to wliat extent they grew up to be tlie first families of Virginia, and the ancestry of the southern bourbon of the present time. In 1628, the Lord Baron of Baltimore (Sir George Calvert) came to Virginia for the purpose of making arrangements for settling a large number of Irish catholics; but he was required, as a preliminary settlement, to subscribe to the oath of allegiance and supremacy, and, refusing to comply, was not allowed to settle in the colony. Then he applied to the king for the grant of a special territory in which to settle his catholic colony, and in the month of June, 1632, the province of Maryland was given to him and his heirs forever for that purpose. Virginia was very much opposed to the settlement of this class of population on her border, and on the arrival of the first shipment, February 2Y, 1634, at Old Point Comfort (Fortress Monroe), would have driven them away without permission to land had they not been protected by letters from the king and the chancellor of the exchequer. Father White, one of the Jesuits who came in charge of the colony, says in his journal: "We reached what they call Point Comfort, in Virginia, full of fear least the English inhabitants, to whom our plantation is very objectionable, should plot some evil against us. While on our voyage here we spent a day at Monserrat, one of the Caribbee islands, and found it inhabited by Irishmen who had been expelled by the Eng- lish of Virginia on account of their profession of the Catholic faith; but letters which we brought from the king and the chancellor of the exchequer to the governor of these regions served to conciliate their minds and enable us to obtain those things which were useful to us." — Peter Force's Tracts, vol. 4, pp. 17 and 18, article " White's Belation.** These Maryland catholics were harassed and raided upon for many years by the Virginians, and were constant- ly in fear for their lives. In 1646, Father White says in his journal that "there were in the neighborhood certain soldiers, unjust plunderers, English indeed by birth, of the orthodox faith, who, coming the year 46 POLITICAL HISTORY OF before with a fleet, had invaded with arms almost the entire colony; had plundered, burnt, and finally, having abducted the priests and driven the governor himself into exile, had reduced it to a miserable servitude." And in 1656 lie says: "During the past year our people in Maryland have escaped grievous dangers, and have had to contead with great difficulties and straits, and have sutfered many unpleasant things, as well from ene- mies as our own people. The English who inhabit Virginia had made an attack on the colonists, themselves being Englishmen, too, and, safety being guaranteed on certain conditions, received indeed the governor of Maryland, with many others, in surrender, but the conditions being treacherously violated, four of the captives, and three of them being Catholics, were pierced with leaden balls." * Under these circumstances the Marjdand catholics proclaimed a free toleration of religious opinion, and made no resistance to men of the heterodox faith settling among them. They dared not do otherwise. Had they attempt- ed to carry out the intolerant and proscriptive spirit of their church, they would have been so completely cleaned out of Maryland that no man would have been left to tell the story of their extermination; but they make loud boasts now and claim great credit to themselves for having been the first religious body to proclaim religious freedom in America. On the breaking out of the Kevolutionary war, against England, in the colonies, the Irish Roman catholics of Maryland took sweet revenge on their old English hered- itary enemies in Yirginia. They joined the northern colonies against them, and never omitted an opportunity for making raids upon them, and burning their plantations, and stampeding their negroes. In 1634 the king gave to the Archbishop of Canterbury and associates full power over the American plantations to establish their church government, and to revoke any charter which conceded liberties prejudicial to the royal prerogative. By means of this charter the church ulti- mately got entire control of public affairs, but, owing to THE UNITED STATES. 47 the terrible civil war then in progress in England, they did not exercise it during its continuance; and, as both the king and parliament had all they could attend to at homey the colonies here were allowed to run their governments pretty much as they pleased, and during that time Virginia enjoyed a very large share of popular liberty. Thix)ugli the liberality of the royal governor legislative assemblies were held, the members of which were elected by popular suffrage, which was extended to all freemen: none other were allow^ed to vote; and this practice continued long after the execution of King Charles. When Cromwell came into power he was desirous of making friends of these Virginians, and he never interfered with them. No governor ever acted under his commission. During the protectorateof Cromwell there was a large importation of white slaves into the colony. On the sur- render of the Irish army to General Ireton, "the prisoners," says the historian, "were oifered very fair and reasonable terms by parliament, but they woidd not accept them. They would not," they said, "live under the rule of regicides who had murdered their king," and asked leave to quit the country. Cromwell granted their request, and many of them embarked for France and Spain. Those, however, whom age and infirmity rendered unable to ac- company them were treated with the most savage barbarity. From fourteen thousand to twenty thousand, both soldiers and country people, were transported to America and sold as slaves, as likewise were the Scotch prisoners belong- ing to the army of Charles 11. , taken b}^ Cromwell at the battle of Worcester. — Mac Geoghegan'' s History of Ireland y p. 680. The Plymouth company, in order to build up their colony, which needed population and laborers, made a large importation of L'ish into New England, between 1640 and 1650. They cleaned out the jails and poorhouses, 48 POLITICAL HISTORY OF and Preiidergast says in his history of the Cromwellian settlement of Ireland, 2d edition, Dublin, 1875, p. 90, that '*the commissioners of Ireland gave the Plymouth com- pany orders upon the governors of garrisons to deliver to them prisoners of war; upon masters of work houses for the destitute in their care, who w^ere of an age to labor, or, if women, were of marriageable age, and not past breeding; and gave directions to all in authority to sieze those who had no visible means of support and deliver them to Messrs. Sellick and Leader, Mr. Robert Youmans, Mr. Joseph Lawrence, and others, all of Bristol, and active agents of the British slave merchants." Cap- tain John Yernon, he further says, made a contract on behalf of the commissioners in Ireland with Mr. Daniel Sellick and Mr. Leader, under his hand bearing date September, 14, 1653, to supply them ''with two hun- dred and fifty Irish women, abc)ve twelve years and under forty-live; also, three hundred men, above twelve and under fifty years ot age, to be found in the county within twenty miles of Cork, Yougliol, Kinsale, Water- ford, and Wexford, to transport them intt) IS^ew England." This was but one contract, among many, for infusing the native Celtic blood of the south of Ireland into the Anglo Saxon population of ]S"ew England. These English firms of slave dealers became largely engaged in the busi- ness of sending the Irish over here. The Rev. Augustus Thebaud says in his book, entitled ''The Irish Race in the Past and Present," that in four years "it is calculated that they had shipped 6,400 Irish men and women, boys, and maidens, to the British colonies of North America." At a grand assembly, held at James City, Virginia, on the 10th of October, 1649, the colony of Yirginia, by its first act, declared the decapitation of Cliarles I. treason, in denying the divine right ot kings, and theref(n-e enacted ^'that to defend the regicides by reasoning, discourse, or THE UNITED STATES. 49 ^argument, was to be accessory after the fact to the death •of the king; that to asperse his memory should be punish- able at the discretion of the governor, Sir William Berkley, and the council; that to doubt the right of succession of Charles II, should be deemed high treason; and that to propose a change of government should be equally high treason." This was a bold outlawing of the Protector, and he sent commissioners in 1651 to reduce Virginia to obedience, to whom the colony surrendered in articles agreed upon .and signed at "James Cittie" declaring "that the planta- tion of Virginia and all the inhabitants thereof shall be and remain in due obedience and subjection to the com- monwealth of England." There were eleven articles f?igned and countersigned; and then there were other articles agreed upon; among them was one to save the pride of Virginia, by allowing them to say that these articles were voluntary, not forced; that one year shall be allowed for the removal of all malcontents, with their effects; and that they were not to be censured for praying for the son and heir to the throne, or speaking well of their beheaded king. Notwithstanding their surrender, their loyalty to Charles II. remained unshaken. Though in exile at Breda, the sovereign was so much gratified by their manifestations of attachment to himself and the overthrown monarchy, the "lost cause" of that time, that he sent Governor Berkley, (a relative of the Irish Bishop Berkley) a renewal of his commission, and recommended candidates for him to appoint to the various offices in the colony; but he never sent a governor to Massachusetts, even after his restor- ation. Had he done so, the various towns and churches throughout that colony were resolved to oppose him. — JBancToffs Colonial IIisto7'y^ ])- 50 POLITICAL HISTOKY OF CHAPTEE lY. Restoration of the Stewart d3aiasty — Bacon's rebellion in Virginia — Migration from Virginia southward, into the wilderness — Admix- ture of races, whites, Negroes and Indians — De Foe's romance of Moll Flanders in Virginia — How felons from Newgate and Bridewell became great men on emigrating here — The new colony of the "Eight Lord Proprietors," on the south of Virginia- Contract to supply the colonies with Negro slaves— Arrival of the French Huguenots, and their settlement in South Carolina— Ar- rival of the first German colony in Pennsylvania. In 1660 Charles II. was restored to the English throne amidst the great rejoicings of the people. Virginia sent him, as a present, a robe made from silk grown in that colony. This he wore at his coronation, and that was all the recognition Virginia ever got from him for all her loyalty and obsequious devotion to his person and cause- As a man, there was scarcely one trait in his character that was not infamous. His whole life was a scene of licentiousness and debauchery, with an aversion to busi- ness and a devotion to his pleasures, making his reign in many respects more unfortunate and disastrous, besides being disgraceful, to the people of the kingdom and of these colonies than had been that of his father. Rigorous prosecutions were carried on against all who spoke of the irregularity of his morals and the licentiousness of his court. Exorbitant lines were imposed, and not unfrequently perpetual imprisonment was the late of the accused, and the renewal of party strife threatened all the violent political convulsions of the time of Cromwell. To effec- tually put down opposition he aspired to autocratic power. Encouraged in so doing by the Tories, the Whigs were intimidated into a compliance with his demands, and "the^ THE UNITED STATES. 51 English nation then peaceably surrendered all its rights- and privileges, the acquisition and preservation of which had cost ages of contest and oceans of blood." — BlglancVs History of England^ vol. ^, j?. 280. The people of Virginia shared the fate of the people of England. The church and the aristocracy had obtained complete control in Virginia, and all popular rights were suppressed. ''The king now turned upon his obsequious partisans in Virginia and commenced dismembering their colony by lavish grants to his courtiers, till he had given away the whole colony for a generation as recklessly as a man would give away a life estate in a farm." — Bancroft's Colonial History^ p. 25 Jf. The judiciary of Virginia was reorganized so as to place that department of the government beyond the con- trol of the people, and Sir William Berkeley was now made governor, not, as heretofore, by the suffrages of the freemen, but by royal commission, and issued his writs for the meeting of the assembly in the name of the king instead of the people, as heretofore. Berkeley now writes an exulting letter to the king rejoicing in his achievements in suppressing the liberties that the people had heretofore enjoyed, and attributes to their ignorance the success of his triumph, saying: "I thank God that there are no free schools and no printing offices in Virginia, and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the best government. God keep us from both." It was not altogether on account of the ignorance of the people that they had lost their liberties: they lost them through all the forms of liberty, and at the ballot box. Every freeman had an opportunity to vote, and did vote for the candidate of his choice; but the sheriffs, the agents and instruments of the aristocracy, held the ballot boxes 52 POLITICAL HISTOEY OF and counted and declared the result of the ballot, and they always counted the votes so that none of the people's candidates were ever elected, but the candidates of the aristocracy invariably were; so that no matter how many votes were cast for the freeman's candidate, he never in any case was declared elected. The government now became so oppressive and intolerant that the people were goaded into open rebellion against it. A council of war was held, in which it was resolved to burn Jamestown. The buildings were tired at night, and the next morning the town was in ashes. The governor sent his troops after the rebels, but when they met them they fraternized with them. Other forces were raised, and the war continued for two years, when it was brought to a close by the arrival of a regiment of British troops. This is what is known as Bacon's rebellion. "The flag of freedom had been un- furled only to be stained with blood, and the accents of liberty uttered only to be choked by execution.*' — Ban- croft's Colonial History, p, 320. Maryland took advantage of these troubles in Virginia, and a portion of the settlers in that colony raised an insurrection against paying their taxes; but the execution of two or three of the leading malcontents stifled the further spreading of that flame. — Peter Force'' s Tracts, vol. 1,]). 21. The leaders in Bacon's rebellion were arrested, tried by courtmartial, and twenty two were executed. The others ^ere pardoned. This rebellion furnished the ruling class with an excuse for refusing to allow the people to exercise any of the rights and privileges of freemen. The decrees of the ■church were fulminated against the dissenters as rigorously as if they had emanated from Rome. The obsolete laws of Queen Elizabeth were revived and enforced with un- sparing severity, and the people were ever after kept under the feet of the aristocracy, supported by royal authority. THE UNITED STATES. 58 Resistance was hopeless, and, tired of tlie struggle against the exactions of the government and the intolerance of the church, the people sought relief by migrating in large numbers into what are now North and South Carolina, and far out towards the Mississippi, in that trackless wilderness, inhabited only by wild beasts and wilder men, where neither the colonial government nor its intolerant and proscriptive church could pursue and harrass them. Besides the freemen class a great many of the slaves, both black and white, escaped, and they scattered like the blows of the thistle down in a storm, all along the streams, in isolated and lonely retreats, and on the mountain slopes, and having no communication with civilization, grew up from one generation to another in all the gross- ness and ignorance of aboriginal barbarism. In 1662, forty-two years after the lirst arrival of negroes in Yirginia, there was discovered to be a mixed race growing up in the colony. There were many mulatto children the paternity of whom it would be disagreeable to inquire about; and the legislature passed a law that they should follow the condition of the mother instead of the father; and in 1692 another law was enacted to prevent what was called in the statute that "abominable admixture of the races by the intermarriage of mulattoes, negroes, and Indians with English or other white women, as also the unlawful living with one another." But the com- plexion and physiolofijical and other characteristics of the population show that the admixture of the races went on without much regard to the law. — H. Miller's Slavery and Slave Trade^ p. 375. Charles II. sent a ship load of quakers to Yirginia, where they were sold as slaves because they would not acknowledge his church as the true church, and their non resistence principles are said to have added much to their value. 54 POLITICAL HISTORY OF Some evidence of the iiotoriously bad character of the Yirgmia iininigration may be foimd in a novel written bv De Foe, in 1683, entitled "The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Celebrated Moll Flanders, who was Born in New- gate," from wdiicli the following extracts are taken. She said: "My mother often told me how the greatest part of the inhabitants of that colony (Virginia) came thither in very indifferent circum- stances from England; that, generally speaking, they were of two sorts, either, first, such as were brought over by masters of ships to be sold as servants; or, second, such as were transported after having been found guilty ot crimes punishable with death. 'Depend upon it,' says she, 'there is more thieves and rogues made by that one prison of Newgate than by all the clubs and societies of villians in the nation.' "Tis that cursed place,' says my mother, 'that half peoples this colony.' (Virginia), 'Hence, child,' says she, 'many a Newgate bird becomes a great man, and we have,' she continued, 'several jus- tices of the peace, officers of the trained band, and magistrates of the towns they live in, that have been burned in the hand.' " A criminal wdio was about to be tried for life said that he "had some intimation that if he would submit to trans- port himself, he might be admitted to it without a trial, but he could not think of it with any temper, and thought he could much easier submit to be hanged." One of the gentry, on being "ordered to be transport- ed (to Virginia) in respite of the gallows," said: "The mortification of being brought on board like a prisoner piqued him very much, since it was first told that he might transport hijnself, so that he might go as a gentleman at liberty." It is true he was not ordered to be sold when he came there. Moll and her husband were both convicts, transported here from Newgate prison. The latter took up a planta- tion to raise tobacco, and became a Yikginia Gentleman. Moll says of him: "The case was plain: he was a born gentleman, and was not only unacquainted but indolent, and when we did settle, would rather go into the woods with his gun, which they call here hunting, than attend to the natural business of the plantation." THE UNITED STATES. 55 She further says of the pLanters that the merchants ^ would trust them for tools and necessaries upon their crop before it was grown; so they again pLant every year a little more than the year before, and so buy everything that they want with tlie crop that is before them. She speaks of her own importations from England, as a sample of supplies that w^ere bi*ouglit over for the Virginia aristoc- racy, as follows: "We had by an arrival from England a supply of all sorts of clothes, as well for my husband as for myself, and I took special care to buy for him all those things which I knew he delighted to have: as two good long wigs, two silver hilted swords, three or four fowling pieces, a fine saddle with holsters and pistols, very handsome, with a cloak." The next colonial enterprise undertaken in this coun- try by the English was the attempt to establish a great southern empire, consisting of all that portion of the country south of Virginia to the gulf, and from the Atlantic to the west, without any very definite boundaiy. This immense tract of country was granted by Charles II., in 1663, to eight English noblemen, styled "The Eight Lords Proprietors." It was to be, in the framew^ork of its government and institutions, very much like that of Eng- land. There was to be a nobility who should owh the larger portion of all the lands of the colony, and constitute the governing power, and a middle class of small freehold- ers; but the main body of the people were to be serfs, to live on and cultivate the lands of the nobility. In addition to the serfs, the nobility were to work their estates with gangs of African slaves. The king had incorporated a company, with his brother at the head of it, who had entered into a contract to supply this colony, and Virginia, with three thousand African slaves annually. (1) 1. Sir John Yeamans brought a cargo of negroes herein 1671, thus making negro slavery coeval with the first planting of the colony ; and Mr. Von Reck, who accompanied Oglethorp here with his colony of German Protestants in 1734, speaking of the progress the people were making in settling the country, says in his journal : "Charleston is a fine town and enjoys an extensive trade. There are five negroes to one white, and there are imported generally 3,000 fresh negroes every year. There are computed to be .30,000 negroes in this province, all of them slaves and their posterity forever." 56 POLITICAL HISTORY OF The country was already occupied — sparsely, it is true- — by a population which had been coming in from Virginia for more than thirty years. Some were runaway convict slaves, some indentured apprentices, and some freemen who had been driven out of Virginia by the tyranny of the government and the intolerance of tiie church. They owned the lands upon which they lived, some holding their titles under the grant of James I. to a man by the name of Heath, which had long since been canceled, and others — which constituted by far the larger portion— held their titles from the Indians and lived with them, faring as they fared, occupying in many cases the same wigwam, devoted to the same pursuits, taking squaws for wives, and living in a condition of absolute lawless independence. The streams and forests furnished them food, and supplied most, of their animal wants. It was not the intention of the lords proprietors to remove these people from the lands they occupied; all they designed to do was to rob them of their proprietary interest,, the grant of the king having made null and void all the titles of the settlers, from whomsoever derived. They were to be allowed to cultivate the lands as the serfs or leet men of these lords proprietors, and pay them a rent. Agents were employed in England, Ireland, Scotland,, and the West Indies to obtain immigrants for them, and parliament passed an act authorizing the transportation to this colony of all thieves, malefactors, and other jail delivery wherever found. Their hrst lot of immigrants came here in 1665 from Barbadoes and settled on the Cape Fear river, where they founded a town. A Scotch colony came over and settled in 1684, and after this a very large population followed from Scotland and formed extensive settlements in North Carolina, which was formed into a a separate colony in 16^71. Tke most important immigration they obtained — and, perhaps, the most important, next to the puritans, that THE UNITED STATES. 57 ever came to this country — was that of the French protes- tants, sometimes called Huguenots, who settled principally in South Carolina. The king (^Charles 11.) had sent over, at his own expense, to that colony, in 1679, two ship-loads of these exiles ; and after the revocature of the edict of ^Nantes, October 18, 1685, by which they were outlawed, many others came here, and their shipment was continued at intervals till 1752, when 1,600 came over, and twelve years later 200 more. The lords proprietors passed an act for their naturalization, and granted them lands. Similar acts were also passed by the' legislatures of Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, and Maryland, in which colonies they had settled in considerable numbers. Everywhere they were spoken of as good members of society. Enter- prising, sober and industrious, they acquired wealth and became the leaders in every important social and political movement, evidences of which are seen all along the course of our history from the time of their first coming here. In our earlier history we find that they were at the forefront in the revolution as leaders in the cause of independence; and among the honored names on the roll of American statesmen there are none more illustrious than those of Hamilton, Marion, Jay, and Laurens, and at a later period they have furnished some of our worthiest and ablest public men. Bowdoin College, in Maine, owes its name and endowment to one of their descendants; and Faneuil Hall, in Boston, known as the ''Cradle of Liberty," was a gift to that city by another descendant of these people; while another, the son of Judith Manigault, (Gabrille, born in 1704), showed his patriotic devotion to the country, as well as his gratitude for its having aflPorded an asylum and protection to his mother, by loaning to it the sum of $220,000 for carrying on the war of the revolution, and that, too, at a period so early that it was extremely doubtful how the war would terminate. 58 POLITICAL HISTORY OF The lords proprietors, having organized their govern- ment, next attempted to put it into operation ; but in this tliey were met by the most determined opposition from a large portion of the people, who rejected their government absolutely and set their authority at defiance. A struggle ensued between the proprietors and their partisans on the one side, and the hostile factions on the other, which cuhiiinated in a civil war that was kept up intermittingly for fifty years. At the end of that time, having failed to establiSii their dominion and scheme of government, and seeing no prospect of any return for all their expenditures, and threatened with more serious trouble in tlie future by attacks froin the Indians and Spaniards, they gave up the struggle and sold out to the British government in 1719 for a nominal sum. From this time on until the revolution, all that portion of the south which constituted the empire of the eight lords proprietors came under the direct gov- ernment of the crown; but England succeeded very little better than the lords proprietors did in governing this anarchical people, of whom Governor Spottswood said that "they had scarcely any form of government, and that every one did what was right in his own eyes, paying tribute neither to God nor Ctesar." To South Carolina is due the credit of being the first to establish the culture of rice, indigo, and cotton ; and from that colony all the others in the south received their first impulse in the culture of those staples. A vessel entering the port of Charleston from Madagascar accidentally dropped a bag of rice. This was planted for a few years as an experiment, and the planters were surprised at their success in being able to produce an article vastly superior to the rice grown in the east, and from that time it became an article of staple culture. Indigo also became a valuable staple, though never equal to the product of Bengal, and it was only finally set aside for cotton. Another source of THE UNITED STATES. 59 revenne they had in kidnapping the Indians and selling them as slaves in the west Indies, but they lost more than they gained by that; for the tribes retaliated by burning their plantations and massacring the inhabitants. Out of this grew an Indian war which was carried on in a desul- tory manner for many years. While the great lords proprietors were directing all their energies to the establishment of their empire, and were bringing in from the overcrowded population of Europe all that they could provide transportation for, as the basis on whicli their dominion was to rest, wealthy people also came here, principally from England and Scotland, and not a few from Ireland, to receive their investitures of nobility — landgraves, caziques, &c. — in the new empire, and took up large tracts of land preliminary thereto. They settled principally along the seaboard, and devoted themselves to the improvement of their own per- sonal fortunes, and to politics. They maintained great palatial establishments and equipages, and lived in all the splendor of the nobility of Old England, after whose style they had built and furnished their houses. They kept their own carriages and drove the fleetest and most elegant horses, owning in some instances as many as a thousand of the finest breeds of English and Arabian stock. They had their summer houses in Charleston, coming in about the middle of May and remaining until about the middle of October; they gave grand dinners, sent their sons to England to be educated, and, like the Brahmin of India, looked down with a most withering contempt upon all the ordinary avocations of life and business, and upon those who followed them as pariahs. The rich merchant aped their style and manners, and was never seen at his store after the hour for dinner; men •of less wealth imitated them and indulged in expenditures 60 POLITICAL HISTORY OF far beyond their means, and their influence extended ta the inland portion of the country, where society became^ moulded by their example. They grew up into an oligarchy as easily and naturally as the JN'ew England puritans grew up into a republic. Haughty, capricious, and imperious in disposition, rec- ognizing no law but that of their own caste, and being owners of the property, they established a blood and iron rule that has come down to the present time, never more rigorously executed than it has been during the past twenty years. There was another immigration that commenced about this time which has had a greater influence in developing the resources of the country, and giving shape and vigor to its institutions, than all others combined, (excepting- that from England), and that was the immigration from Germany. Other nationalities have given some of the best of men and women to enrich this country, but none so largely and permanently as Germany. In 1681 a society of Germans, was formed, in the town of Frankfort, for the purpose of sending settlers here. This society purchased through their agent, Francis Dan- iel Pastorius, a tract of 5,700 acres of land of William Penn, near the city of Philadelphia. A colony was found- ed in the cities of Cresheim and Crefelt, which constituted a palantinate. This colony was first composed of ten gen- tlemen and they came here August 12, 1683, and purchased of Penn 25,000 acres; 22,377 acres was set apart for the Manatanny patent, and on the 6th of October of that year the main colony arrived, and gave to their settlement tha name of Germantown, which it has ever since borne. It was incorporated as a borough town, by a patent from Penn, executed in England in 1689. This colony brought with them the same upright and substantial elements of character that the puritans did who- THE UNITED STATES. 61 settled Massachusetts. They were healthy, frugal, mdus- trious, and free from bigotry, differing very materially in that respect from their Celtic neighbors on the south — Calvert's Irish Koraan catholic colony in Maryland. These Germans Were generally members of the society of Friends, and it was in consequence of their religion that they were so bitterly persecuted in Germany that they were forced, like the puritans of England, to seek a home in this country. With the English branch of the Teutonic race they readily assimilated, and these two branches of that race have, on all occasions since, rallied together in support of religious freedom and free govern- ment when assailed; proving that in the Teutonic race civil and religious liberty has its surest and most stable foundation. (1) (1) Two hundred years ago the Germans In person began to foUow their English cousins to the new world, and during that period the ever swelling tide of that people has increased to countless numbers, who, in their pecu- liarly earnest manner, have engaged in the affairs of government, in clearing wildernesses and in following every art, trade and profession known to American industry. The Germans in this country are citi- zens, not aliens; they do not meet in conventions to dictate terms or cry out because they are, or are not, estimated socially; they stand as an in- tegral part of this country, and point with pride and conscious satisfaction to their achievements in every walk in life. They need not point to the great thinkers in every field of art and science in fatherland, whose brain labors belong to the world. They can here right at home name thousands who have enriched the annals of our country with historic names. At home and abroad, in the pnmival forest and the cleared prairies and savannahs, on the tented field and on turbulent oceans, in the hut and palace, in the city and hamlet, in the workshop and counting house, in the departments of the government and in the studio and closet of the brain artisans, every- where, they have shown themselves equal to the best, and in many depart- ments of skilled labor superior to all, and they recognize all this, not as Germans of the Germans, but as Americans of the Americans. The loyalty of the German American freedom of thought and action, his firm, unswerving devotion to sound finances, stand out prominently in the history of this country. To him unquestionably more than to any other one does this country owe thanks for destroying slavery, inspiring liberty and national honesty. Long before the abolition party was heard or dreamed of, the grand words, "Slavery is a crime and should not exist," had been uttered hy German colonists in this country. "The German exiles of 1848, who fled to this country," continued Mr. Wolf, "formed the basis and inspiration of the Republican party. Everywhere they identified themselves with the friends of liberty and against slavery. They sought no office. Self was foreign to their nature. 'Their lines had not been cast in pleasant places.' Hence their intensity and devotion to and for republican institutions. It was the German Americans of Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland during our late civil war that upheld the flag of the Union, and stood a solid phalanx against the heresy of secessioo, and when war actually came they were found on every battlefleld as heroic and self sacriflcing as those 'to the manner born.' The woods of the great west have been cleai-ed by them, and great cities, thriving villages and fertile flelds have taken their place. Factories, foundries and workshops of every grade have been erected by them, colleges, schools, hospitals and asylums founded. They are preeminently the friends of the 62 POLITICAL HISTORY OF Penn spoke of these Cxerman colonists, in his letters, in the highest terms, for their industry, economy, charity, liberality, independence, love of order and liberty. They early began the manufacture of linen and woolen fabrics in which they established a profitable trade. They were the first immigrants to this country to take a stand against the institution of slavery. Their preacher, Benjamin Lay, declared publicly against it, and in 1688 this society addressed the Philadelphia yearly meeting at Burlington, "protesting against the buying, selling, and holding men in slavery, declaring it in their opinion 'an act irrecon- cilable with the precepts of the Christian religion.' " This was the origin of that Philadelphia anti slavery society of which Benjamin Franklin was president, and which pursued the institution until they had hunted it to its grave. There is another fact which may not be generally known connect- ing the Germans with this country. The charts prepared for Columbus' voyage were made by a German and the continent itself derived its name from a German name — Emmerick. This statement was made at the second centennial celebration of the German settlements in America, on the 6th of October, 1883, in Washington, D. C, by Mr. Theodore Poesche, of that city, and in reply to a letter from the writer asking for his authority, he says: "In my statement about the origin of the name ''America'' I did not mean to question the fact that that name is derived from "Amerigo Vespucci." I only showed the source the name "Amerigo" came from. This is the old (merman name, "Emmerick," which came to Italy with the Longobards and was formerly used there in its Latin ' form Americus. It is a man's name, yet there is alsv) a town on the Rhine bearing it. The savant who coined the name "America" out of the name "Amerigo'- was Hylacomylas;; he did so in a new edition of Ptolemy, which he published about the year 1540 in St, Die Lorraine." common school system. They are the greatest foes of cant and hypocrisy in political and social problems. The curse of disintegration rested upon Germany and her sons for centuries, but the last decade has witnessed a unification of German. power and enterprise unparalleled in history, and the spirit that has achieved so much for fatherland has been caught up by the German Americans on this side of the ocean They are no longer divided, they are united, one in impulse, thought, and action with their Anglo American cousins hexey—Mjctract from a sjDeech by Hon. Simon Wolf at the second centennial celebration of the settlement of the Germans in America, Oct. 6, 1883. THE UNITED STATES. 63 CHAPTER Y. Death of Charles II., and the ascension of his brother to the throne. Under the title of James II.— Rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth, capture and execution; trial, confiscation, and execution of his soldiers — Four thousand prisoners transported to the American plantations and sold — Abdication and flight of the king after a short reign — William III. and Mary called to the throne — Rebel- lion of Ireland and the colonies of Maryland and Virginia — War with France of seven years — Deatii of the king, and Princess Anne, of Denmark, called to the throne— Queen Anne's war — Crushing defeat of the French — The peHcn of Utrecht — Death of the queen, and ascension of George I. to the tlirone — The effect of these Euro- pean wars on the American colonies. The reign of Charles II. was ternimatecl very suddenly by death, on the 6th of February, 1685, and a few hours after, his brother, the Duke of York, was proclaimed^king of England under the title of James II. He came to the throne under the most favorable auspices, and by the exer- cise of a moderate share of discretion might have had a long and prosperous reign. At the commencement he propitiated the people by a promise to protect and support the religion and laws of the country, but in a short time became infatuated with the idea of restoring the Roman catholics to power in England, and in his efforts to do that alienated his subjects to such an extent that they forced him to abdicate. In the early part of his reign the Duke of Monmouth, the son of Charles 11. , and the king's nephew, but who had forfeited his claim to the throne by a previous re- bellion and banished the kingdom, had returned to reclaim it, with an army of five thousand men to support him. He was met by the forces of the king at Sedgemore and Bridgewater, where a battle ensued, in which he was 64 POLITICAL HISTORY OF defeated and his army taken prisoners. He was tried for treason and executed. His deluded tollowers were tried by that man of infamous memory, Judge Jeffries, and treated with barbarous cruelty. Six hundred of them were condemned to be hanged and their quarters exposed to the highway. Some were able to purchase their lives by appeals to the venality of the judge, and conveyed to him their estates. One gentleman gave him £14,000, equiva- lent to about $70,000, and those who were not rich enough to purchase their lives at his price were hanged or cruelly whipped, or, as Bigland says in his history of England, sent to the American plantations and sold as slaves. They numbered about four thousand, and found their way mostly to Virginia and the Carolinas. Their sale here was but a formal one, under the apprentice system, for a number of years; but the king expressly commanded that it should not be for a less term than ten years, and that they should not be permitted to redeem themselves, by money or otherwise, until the term was fully completed. There were many wealthy and educated men among them, and such was the sympathy of the people here for them, on account of their misfortunes, that they paid but little regard to the commands of the king, and on the accession of William III. and Mary such as had been transported for political oifenses merely, were pardoned. Had the government of the United States treated Mr. Jefferson Davis and his soldiers, for their rebellion, as the Duke of Monmouth and his soldiers were treated by the government of England, the southern people might have some reason to complain of its harshness and cruelty; but our chief justice (Chase) refused to try Siuj of our rebels, and the president and congress pardoned them without their suffering any punishment at all, or, at most, merely a disability precluding some of the leaders from holding a national office, and that was in little time removed as to THE UNITED STATES. 65 most of tliem. The assassins of President Lincoln and the keeper of Andersonville prison (Wirz) were the only ones who were executed. Such clemency was never before known in the worlds history, and the barbarous manner in which the ex rebels liave since behaved in shooting and hanging northern men residing in the south because they l)elonged to the victorious party in the war, and the cold blooded massacres of hundreds of their former slaves for th« same reason, show that it is a very doubtful question whether the extraordinary clemency extended to these men (many of them, too, descendants of the soldiers of the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion) was well advised. Abandoned by the nobility, by his court and council, by the illigitimate sons of Charles II, who had been raised to the peerage, by Princess Anne, his second daughter, who afterwards became queen of England, and by the army, which refused to obey him, James saw his desperate situation, and, fearing the fate of his father, Charles I, resolved upon flight, and set out at once for France. His escape was easy for no one had orders to stop him or in any wa}^ hinder him from disposing of himself as he pleased. The danger of being left without a king was fully appreciated by the British nation, and both of the great political parties, and the clergy which constituted a third party, united in calling in the Prince of Orange to take the throne. He accepted the invitation, and landed in Eng- land without opposition, at the head of a Dutch army of thirteen thousand men. This is what is called the British revolution and the fixing of the British constitution. It was the commence- ment of a new era in Great Britain, and constituted one of the most important events in English history. It was the peaceable revolt of the people against their sovereign, and the calling in and seating of a foreign prince on the 6Q POLITICAL HISTORY OF throne. It was the fixing of the line of succession and the limit of sovereign power, so that thereafter parliament, and not the king shonld represent the British nation; that parliament should make the laws, not he; and by those laws he should govern the kingdom. The immediate result of this revolution in England was war with France and the commencement of hostilities between the colonies of those two powers here. James II. was kindly received by the French king, Louis XIY., who encouraged him to undertake the recov- ery of his lost throne and crown, and furnished him with an army for that purpose. With this force he made a descent upon Ireland, which was still loyal to him, and, placing himself at the head of the Irish Roman catholic army there, laid siege to Londonderry, a city which bad declared for William III. and Mary. King William pro- ceeded against him at the head of a powerful English army, raised the siege, and afterwards met him on the banks of the Boyne, where he completely routed him. The reduc- tion of Limerick soon followed, which completed the conquest and decided the fate of Ireland. James escaped to France, but his army was taken prisoners, placed on board ship and transported out of the kingdom, the king adopting the same means, says Bigland, in his history of England, for securing the tranquility of Ireland that Cromwell practiced. (1.) A war between England and France of seven years duration now followed this invasion of Ireland, and their respective colonies here immediately conmienced hostilities. Maryland rebelled, and joined the French and Indians to fight for James and Komanism against their king and. 1. That general, in order to break the force of the Irish rebels, published a permission to their officers and men to enter into the service of foreijjn princes with a promise not to ofTer them any molesiation. By this expedi- ent Cromwell found means to send above forty thousand of his enemies out of the kingdom, and from that time to tlie entire reduction of the Irish it is supposed that about one hundred thousand of these desperadoes were per- mitted to leave the country.— Bigland' s History of England, vol. 2, p. 186. THE UNITED STATES. 67 country. Virginia, when called upon for her quota of troops, refused to furnish either men or money, on the ground that it would be of no benefit to Virginia, as that colony was not attacked or threatened; so the brunt of the war fell upon the northern colonies. Virginia cared not how much others suffered while her own territory was unmo- lested. The royal governor, I^icholson, wrote to the king advising that Virginia be compelled to contribute to the war. The king referred the subject to the next assembly, and that body reluctantly voted £500, but requested that the crown be excused from making any further grant. — Lippincott-s Cabinet History of Virginia^ pp>. 203, W5, 216. This was known as King William's war. It was brought to a close by a treaty of Kyswick, in September, 1697. It gave to each nation possession of all the places held by them respectively at the commencement of the war, so that neither had gained anything; but the king punished the Marylanders for their rebellion by taking away their charter, appointing a governor over them, and establishing the Church of England as the only lawful re- ligion of their colony. Here was another instance in which the Maryland catholics had substantial reason for advocating a free toleration to all religions, now that they were deprived of the exercise of their own. This suppres- sion of their authority in Maryland lasted till 1715, when that colony was restored to the heirs of Lord Baltimore. In 1698 the king sent orders to the authorities in Virginia to extend to their people the benefit of the English toleration acts, but they did not do it, and it • was not till 1776, and through the most strenuous efforts of Jefferson and Mason, that the supremacy of the church was broken down and all forms of religion were placed on an equal footing. Following the treaty of Ryswick there was an interval of peace of five years, when it was seen that the rapid. '68 POLITICAL HISTOKY OF strides by which France was advancing to supremacy upon the continent of Europe was threatening the independence of every nationality, and, alarmed for their safety, or pre- tending to be, England, Holland, and Austria formed a league to oppose any further increase of the power of France, and this league was afterward joined by Portugal, Prussia, Denmark, and the Duke of Savoy. The immedi- ate occasion of this alarm was that the dynasty of Spain :had become extinct by the death of King Charles 11. , who had appointed in his will as his successor the Duke of Anjou, grandson of Louis XI Y., king of France, and he (Louis) claimed for his family the inheritance of the the Spanish monarchy. It was evident that Louis aimed at the consolidation of the Spanish dominions with France in one preponderating empire, and the peril which the consummation of such a scheme threatened Europe is thus summed up by Mr. -Alison: "Spain had threatened the liberties of Europe in the end of the sixteenth century; France had all but overthrown them in the close of the seventeenth; what hope was there of their being able to make head against them both, united under such a monarcy as Louis XIV?" — Military History of the Duke of Marlborough, p. 52. The death of William III., king of England, took place soon after the formation of this European alliance against the house of Bourbon. The precise date was March 8, 1702, after a reign of thirteen years. The Princess Anne, of Denmark, now came to the English throne, and great anxiety was felt least, by the death of the king, the league which he had been mainly instrumental in forming might be dissolved; but all such apprehensions were put to rest by the queen, who, on the third day after her accession to the throne, went to the house of lords and declared her purpose to carry on the war according to the plans of the late king. THE UNITED STATES. 69' The war was then commenced and continued for eleven years. It was known as Queen Anne's war. In this war England was fighting France and Spain combined, and her colonies here were assailed by those powers and their Indian allies with the most vindictive fury and atrocity during the whole time. This war of Queen Anne's was not only a gigantic strug- gle between France and England for supremacy on the conti- nent of Europe, but it was a struggle between those two powers for supremacy here. The fate of this continent hung in the scales, to be decided by the issue of battle, whether it should be English or French, and that determination was made, not, as has been claimed by some writers, on the Plains of Abraham, overlooking the St. Lawrence, in 1Y59, but in Europe, in 1704, on the banks of the Danube, at the battle of Blenheim. It was then and there that the decision was made that America should belong to the Anglo Saxon race. Mr. Alison, in his military history of the Duke of Marlborough, says of the battle of Blenheim: "If France had been victorious the destinies of the world would have been changed. The Stuart dynasty and the Romish church would haye been reestablished in England, and the energy breathed by religious freedom into the Anglo Saxon race might have expired, and the colonial empire of England would have withered away and perished, as that of Spain had done in the grasp of the Inquisition. The Anglo Saxon race would have been arrested in its mission to overspread the earth and subdue it, and the centralized despotism of the Roman empire would have been renewed on continental Europe." — AllisOTVi Life of Marlborough^ p. 248. America would have been Roman catholic in religion and French in nationality. " This war was concluded in 1713 by the peace of Utrfecht, when France ceded to England all of the territory of Hudson's Bay in North America, all of Newfoundland, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, and the supremacy in 70 POLITICAL HISTORY OF the American fisheries. England further secured by this treaty the monopoly of the slave trade in the Spanish ports and its exclusive control in the new world. For the pos- session of this franchise she bound herself in that treaty to furnish 4,800 negro slaves annually for thirty years, amounting in all to 144,000 negroes. At the time of the conclusion of this treaty the total population of the English colonies here is supposed to have been about 500,000. — Bancrofts Colonial History^ p. W5. The death of Queen Anne took place on the 1st of August, 1714, having reigned thirteen years. Among the great cpestions which had been settled, or thought settled during her reign, were: first, the power of France as no longer a menace against the independence of European nations; second, that America should be an exclusively English possession; and third, that African slavery should be a permanent domestic and state-supported institution of its southern colonies in North America. She bestowed the ofiice of governor of Virginia upon the Earl of Orkney as a life sinecure in 1705, and provided a deput}^ to per- form the functions of the office. Tlie white population of Yirginia at the time of the death of the queen was esti- mated by the British board of trade at 95,000. All these questions, with one exception, have since been reopened and submitted anew to the arbitrament of the sword. That of the French possessions in North America was fought over again on the Plains of Abraham; that of J^^vai^d as the sovereign power over all North America, in the revolt of her colonies here in 1776; and that of African slavery, as a permanent domestic and state supported institution in the southern states reopened by their rebellion in 1861 and the war that followed. The only remaining question to be reopened is the domination >of the country by the Celtic race (the Irish branch of I B I'd! THE UNITED STATES. 7l it,) and the Roman catholic church, and that will be the issue, as shown further on in this work, which will signal the opening of the second century of this republic, unless the country is influenced by a more enlightened and patriotic statesmanship, and wiser councils than have prevailed since 1874. ^o■' "^^ * r, , - ' <.,'^ .. -. .'.dfe.'. -^^z .^1^ ^^^^ .'^1-.,^ •'■ao^ " c ^ <:>