1 
 
 REESE LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 u 
 
 Class 
 
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 A STUDY IN NATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 
 
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 A STUDY IN NATIONAL 
 PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 BY 
 
 A. MAURICE LOW 
 
 \\ 
 
 CHEVALIER DE L ORDRE DE LEOPOLD 
 
 IMPERIAL ORDER OF THE RISING SUN 
 
 AUTHOR OF "PROTECTION IN THE UNITED STATES" 
 
 "AMERICA AT HOME," ETC. 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 ftitertffte press Cambridge 
 1909 
 
COPYRIGHT, IQOQ, BY A. MAURICE LOW 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published October IQOQ 
 
 V 
 
 f 
 
MY DEAR LAWRENCE, 
 
 This book will recall to you how we thrashed out and argued 
 many a puzzling question and endeavored without prejudice 
 to find the truth, which was not always easy, for an American 
 and an Englishman do not see eye to eye in all things ; but our 
 purpose was ever the same : to ascertain the causes that have 
 produced results. To me this book voices your always sym 
 pathetic but judicious criticism and your generous help a 
 companionship as precious as it is rare. 
 
 A. MAURICE Low. 
 Washington, May, 1909. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY 3 
 
 II. THE AMERICAN PEOPLE A NEW RACE .... 19 
 
 III. THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT ON RACE . . 42 
 
 IV. CLIMATIC AMALGAMATION OF RACE 54 
 
 V. THE OLD IN THE NEW ENVIRONMENT .... 72 
 
 VI. NEW ENGLAND THE CRADLE OF RACE 84 
 
 VII. THE PURITAN 97 
 
 VIII. PURITANISM GIVES BIRTH TO DEMOCRACY . . . .111 
 
 IX. PURITANISM BECOMES A POLITICAL FORCE . . . 125 
 
 X. THE AMERICAN HAS ALWAYS BEEN A REBEL . .132 
 
 XI. THE BIBLE THE PURITAN CONSTITUTION . . . .146 
 
 XII. THE PURITAN HATRED OF COLOR A MYTH . . . 184 
 
 XIII. THE FOUNDATION ON WHICH THE AMERICAN 
 
 CHARACTER RESTS 212 
 
 XIV. TOBACCO AND SLAVERY 215 
 
 XV. VIRGINIA AN ARISTOCRATIC OLIGARCHY . . . .241 
 
 XVI. THE FIRST CATHOLIC COLONY . 275 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 XVII. RICE PRODUCES NEW SOCIAL CONDITIONS . . . 305 
 
 XVIII. AN EXPERIMENT THAT FAILED 326 
 
 XIX. THE FIRST WRITTEN CONSTITUTION 337 
 
 XX. RELIGIOUS FREEDOM is BORN 354 
 
 XXI. How THE DUTCH CAME AND WENT 377 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 411 
 
 INDEX . 423 
 
THE PLANTING OF A NATION 
 
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 NEARLY nine years ago, after living for more than 
 twenty years in the United States and studying 
 its political and social institutions, I asked myself 
 whether the American people were a new race 
 with distinct racial characteristics and a developed 
 psychology of their own or were simply the modi 
 fication of a parent stock retaining the characteris 
 tics of their begetting. It was a question that has 
 been widely discussed, but without an ^jtempt, so 
 far as I am aware, to reach a conclusion based on 
 scientific deductions. 
 
 I began the inquiry for my own satisfaction and 
 without any preconceived idea of putting my con 
 clusions in permanent form, and it is, I think, due 
 both to writer and to reader that I should say the 
 investigation was made without prejudice or bias; 
 I had no theory to sustain by alleged facts; it was 
 immaterial where the adventure ended, whether it 
 led to the discovery of a new race or the rediscovery 
 of an old race amidst new surroundings unmodified 
 by its new conditions, or only so slightly modified 
 that the species had remained uninfluenced by 
 
4 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 environment and other circumstances. With an 
 open mind, in the spirit of the investigator and not 
 of the advocate, I began the study. 
 
 It seemed to offer no great difficulties, at least 
 none that might not yield to reasonable intelligence 
 and fair industry, but I was little to realize then 
 how far I should wander, and how often I must 
 retrace my steps and begin anew, before my quest 
 was satisfied. There was a literature rich and 
 voluminous and varied; a literature that showed 
 much painstaking research and high ability, com 
 bined, in many instances, with a graceful and 
 attractive style. In the writing of history treating 
 of their country the Americans rank with any 
 other modern nation; during the last quarter of 
 a century America has been exploited by the 
 literary entrepreneur, native as well as foreign, and 
 the output has been thrown on the market in pro 
 digious quantities; for the American loves to read 
 about himself and is eager to see himself from the 
 point of view of the foreigner, although he does not 
 always agree with him ; and the foreigner has found 
 in America the romance of life that has long 
 departed from Europe. America and the Ameri 
 cans were an undiscovered country and an unknown 
 people, and each literary Columbus returned to feed 
 the imagination with a newer and more untrust 
 worthy tale. 
 
 Now all this, while interesting, was unsatisfactory, 
 and brought me no nearer to my objective. History 
 
INTRODUCTORY 5 
 
 written by men with a claim to be regarded as 
 serious historians subordinated everything to the 
 historical narrative. To understand a people, to 
 have a sympathetic comprehension of the spirit that 
 is in them, to know what has made them what they 
 are and what the future may have in store for them, 
 to be able to grasp not alone their material develop 
 ment but the much more vital and elusive working 
 of their mind, it is necessary as a foundation that 
 one shall have a thorough knowledge of the history 
 of that people; but history, using the word in its 
 strictly technical sense, is too narrow and too con 
 centrated. It remains for the historical psycholo 
 gist to treat in his own way and as a special branch 
 the subject in its widest relations. And the work 
 of the literary entrepreneur was too superficial, too 
 untrustworthy, too hasty, to be of value, although 
 it served one useful purpose. It was an impression 
 ist and brilliantly colored picture of the exaggera 
 tions of national character and usually a caricature ; 
 and caricature is not always malicious, for the 
 supreme art of caricature is the perfect likeness 
 with the accentuation of a salient feature. 
 
 If the impressions and observations and reflec 
 tions of Englishmen and Frenchmen and Germans, 
 of women as well as men, after a few weeks, and 
 sometimes only a few days, spent in a country the 
 size of all Europe, with a population more than 
 twice that of their own country and with political 
 and social institutions foreign to them and needing 
 
6 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 long and careful study to be understood, had any 
 value, it was this: the foreigner found nothing the 
 same as that to which he was accustomed, and 
 he criticised or approved according to tempera 
 ment or preconceived prejudice. The mind receives 
 its most sensitive impression from things new, not 
 from a reproduction of the old. The fact that 
 every foreigner found in America something new 
 a new view of life, new social institutions, new 
 methods of government confirms perhaps more 
 than anything else the conclusion reached by the 
 writer through other sources of investigation, that 
 America has given birth to a new race; that the 
 term America to-day is something more than a mere 
 geographical expression; that there has come into 
 being an American Nation, for a nation is the 
 product of not one but many things, and there 
 must be certain well-defined elements to constitute 
 nationality. 
 
 What those are shall be explained in their proper 
 place. It is sufficient now to set down as an asser 
 tion capable of scientific demonstration a fact of 
 the first importance. 
 
 My sole purpose being the ascertainment of this 
 truth, it is only necessary briefly to explain the 
 method pursued. In writing biography, in seeking 
 for the causes that made this man great and another 
 notorious, one does not begin when the character of 
 his subject has been formed. If the true man is 
 to be revealed, if we are to know him as he was, 
 
INTRODUCTORY 7 
 
 and especially if we are to know the influences that 
 moulded him and so profoundly affected him for 
 good or evil, we must begin at the beginning and 
 follow his life through his struggles, his temptations, 
 his triumphs. In a word, I have attempted to 
 write the biography of a people; and the more I 
 considered how that best could be done the stronger 
 became the conviction that I must begin with the 
 incunabula of the race. In the history of early 
 struggles is found the cradle. 
 
 Every other civilization of which we have any 
 knowledge is so much older than that of America 
 that we can take much for granted ; manners, morals, 
 customs have become stereotyped and we do not 
 have to ask the reasons for them or how they came 
 into existence; we accept them as matter of course, 
 precisely as we take the other phenomena of life; 
 so much are we accustomed to them that they 
 no longer excite wonder. But with America it is 
 different. The why and the wherefore is the con 
 stant question; the meaning of it all can only be 
 understood by an intimate knowledge of the funda 
 mental. Thus it becomes possible for an English 
 man to write a book on France and a Frenchman 
 on England, 1 and neither finds it necessary to go 
 back to history in his search for the foundation on 
 which national character is laid. 
 
 It is impossible to write a history, using that 
 word not merely to describe the deeds of a nation, 
 
 1 Bodley: France; Boutmy: The English People. 
 
8 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 but also its development and the formation of 
 character, its physical and mental growth, and 
 to bring into true relation all the various causes that 
 make life, unless it is written as a consecutive whole. 
 The proper function of the historian, the psycho 
 logist of history especially, as I conceive it, is from 
 the summit of the present to look back with clear 
 vision on the past, and with the advantage of 
 unobscured view, free from the distraction of being 
 an actor in the scene of life, behold the causes that 
 produced results, observe the play of dsedalian 
 forces which once released gain from within them 
 selves new impulses and form fresh centres of 
 energy, and with the past and the present as a 
 guide develop the future. The undulating wave of 
 human action sets in motion agencies the conse 
 quences of which man can no more foresee at the 
 time than he can follow each drop as it is hurled 
 up from the depths and is dissipated in ether, not 
 to be lost but to exert new power. Every human 
 action forecasts futurity as inevitably as life fore 
 casts death. History is acted in the present, but it 
 is written in the past and read in the future. 
 
 I make no pretensions to original historical re 
 search. I have gone to the best and most accepted 
 authorities for my information, carefully balancing 
 conflicting statements and endeavoring to reconcile 
 them by the preponderance of evidence. In the 
 historical section everything has been purposely 
 omitted that was not essential to a complete and, I 
 
INTRODUCTORY 9 
 
 hope, lucid explanation of the origin and develop 
 ment of the American people. Such things as en 
 cumber the pages of historians, which it is the duty 
 of the historian to relate, quarrels between parties, 
 petty conflicts, even conflicts on a grander scale, 
 have been either omitted or dismissed with merely 
 a reference; but those things that determine char 
 acter, that distinguish the offspring of a race, that 
 develop the mind, that prepare the ground for 
 the acceptance of ideas which are to be so fruitful 
 in results, have been treated at proper length. To 
 students of American history it may seem as if I 
 had simply repeated what is already well known; 
 but to this criticism, if it shall be made, my answer 
 is that it appeared to me to be essential to present 
 certain historical facts in their just relation to 
 psychological progress so as to show that the Ameri 
 can people have not sprung from the air. but are, 
 similar to all other highly developed races, the 
 product of evolution; in their case political and 
 sociological. 
 
 It may perhaps be thought that disproportionate 
 space has been given to the Puritan, but the more 
 I have come to study the causes that produced this 
 new race, the more I have been impressed with the 
 imperfect knowledge possessed by Americans 
 and if it is so among Americans in how much 
 greater degree must it be among Europeans ? of 
 the great and lasting influence exercised on Ameri 
 can civilization and the formation of character by 
 
10 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 the Puritans, who affected not only America but 
 have influenced all the rest of the world. 
 
 Tradition has invested the Puritan with certain 
 qualities. There lingers in the mind of every 
 American, the dim recollection of school-days, the 
 picture of the Puritan, grim, forbidding, sombre; 
 and so difficult is it to efface the impressions of 
 youth that Puritanism has become synonymous 
 with all that is harsh and gloomy and opposed 
 to innocent pleasure; and to be Puritanical im 
 plies rigidity of conscience and is construed as 
 reproach. To the average American, almost to 
 every American who is not a historical student, 
 Puritan and Pilgrim are interchangeable terms; 
 and so little is the distinction regarded that in a 
 carefully prepared address made by a distinguished 
 public man, himself a writer of American history, 
 delivered at the dedication of a monument to the 
 Pilgrims, he referred to the Puritans as if they and 
 the Pilgrims were one; as if they shared the same 
 views of religion and life; as if to the Pilgrims 
 belonged the honor of having made New England. 
 
 "Acting at the sources of life, instruments other 
 wise w r eak became mighty for good or evil, and 
 men, lost elsewhere in the crowd, stand forth as 
 agents of Destiny." 1 In all history there is no 
 thing so extraordinary as the effect of that religious 
 persecution which led to the establishment of 
 Massachusetts and laid the foundation of the great 
 
 1 Parkman: Pioneers of France in the New World, Introduction, p. xv. 
 
INTRODUCTORY 11 
 
 American Republic. Puritanism left its impress 
 upon the life and thought of England, and having 
 done its work as the agent of Destiny became 
 merged in other forces. Puritanism in America, 
 when it ceased to be merely a religious symbol, was 
 still a social force, and it is to-day. :< Vitalized by 
 the principles of its foundation, the Puritan com 
 monwealth grew apace." She sowed the seeds of 
 intolerance and brought forth liberty. She preached 
 blind obedience to authority and was the first to 
 resist when it became galling. She taught thrift 
 and elevated the material to the dignity of a virtue. 
 She made acquisition a duty. She was free, and 
 she was shackled to a narrow and harsh theology 
 that dwarfed expansion. And yet she expanded, 
 sending forth her sons into the barren places, who, 
 full of energy and the love of gain that was as much 
 a part of the Puritan character as his faith in the 
 immutable workings of a higher power, gave new 
 lustre to his name and made the world marvel. 
 Where France failed, England succeeded. What 
 Spain attempted, England accomplished. Holland 
 planted and England reaped. Sweden dreamed 
 and England worked. 
 
 In those long years of struggle and adversity, in 
 those years when England was master of a contin 
 ent and compelled the recognition of her power 
 and Englishmen were competing with each other 
 in the rivalry of trade and in widening their own 
 possessions, those men of the North, inspired by a 
 
12 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 great purpose, were building a civilization differ 
 ent from Englishmen in the South, and as the 
 agents of Destiny were unconsciously preparing 
 for the part they were fated to play. Would the 
 American Colonies have severed the tie that bound 
 them to England if Massachusetts had been settled 
 by the men who made Virginia and Maryland ? 
 There is, of course, no answer, but we can well be 
 lieve that if there had been no Puritan element in 
 America, if all that we understand by Puritanism 
 had not vitalized the American, the breach might 
 have come -- possibly it was Destiny, and was 
 inevitable but it would have been closed in 
 another way. But this, however, we do know, 
 that while the men of the South were no less quick 
 to respond to the clarion call that sounded the note 
 of freedom, it was the spirit of the Puritan that 
 pervaded the land; it was Puritanism that made 
 resistance a duty; it was the influence of Puritan 
 ism, then as now, that has given the American 
 character its stability, and has ever been an ele 
 ment to counterpoise the sometimes menacing 
 mutability of the infusion of foreign blood; it was 
 the Puritan love of gain and expansion that could 
 be appeased only by new colonies planted in the 
 wilderness; it was the Puritan sense of thrift and 
 order and commerce that made the American 
 people a nation devoted to business and more by 
 the right of birth a nation of shopkeepers using 
 that historical expression in no sense derogatory 
 
INTRODUCTORY 13 
 
 but as characterizing the strongest quality of the 
 American mind, its commercial instinct than 
 any other people in the world. There would, 
 I am confident, have been an America if the 
 Puritans had never been driven out of Eng 
 land and found shelter when and how they did, 
 but it would not have been the America we now 
 know. 
 
 Such comments as I make from time to time in 
 sketching historical progress are to impress on the 
 reader that almost against their will Englishmen 
 were driven on the road that led to Americanism; 
 that they became Americans without conscious ef 
 fort, and ceased to be Englishmen, which was for 
 eign to their inclination; and certainly with no 
 conception of the tremendous results that were to 
 follow. Actions in themselves trifling, but which 
 produced momentous psychological consequences, 
 have too often escaped notice. The historian feels 
 that he has more important matters to record, but 
 they are essential in tracing the growth of the mind 
 of a people and observing how they were influenced 
 by causes remote from the climax. 
 
 What follows is original in that the results of 
 observation and study develop their own conclu 
 sions. It is an effort to search the spring to its 
 source. It is the subjection of phenomena to min 
 ute analysis, and although at times there is seem 
 ingly no connection between the consequence and 
 its primal cause, in the continuity of thought there 
 
14 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 is no break; the present foreshadows the future by 
 the reflection of the past. 
 
 Avowing myself to be a uniformitarian, repudiat 
 ing the doctrine of the catastrophic process of human 
 development, believing that mental growth and so 
 cial expansion are wrought by slow and gradual 
 change, which is always working to a higher plane, 
 the psychology of the American people presents no 
 miracle and is reducible to exact terms. We have 
 here no unfathomable mystery. There are no wide 
 gaps to be filled by speculative soaring. It is a com 
 plex but at the same time compelling study of widen 
 ing spiritual and mental powers, logical in all its 
 processes; inevitable in its results. 
 
 Can the history of a people best be written by one 
 of themselves or by a foreigner? It is a question 
 which every one will answer for himself. My own 
 opinion is that a foreigner who approaches his task 
 with sympathy, who comes not as a critic but as a 
 judicious investigator, who is neither a partisan nor 
 a eulogist, who erects no false standard of compari 
 son, and who is not afflicted with that distressing form 
 of intellectual cecity which measures everything by 
 the narrow vision of its own national perfection, is 
 better qualified for the work. For it is axiomatic that 
 we do not see ourselves as others see us, and what 
 is true of the individual is even in a larger sense 
 true of a people. They see themselves as a man 
 looks at his mirror, who having seen his reflection 
 every day for forty years is still a stranger to his own 
 
 A 
 
INTRODUCTORY 15 
 
 face; while the foreigner, if he is not blinded by 
 patriotic conceit, has the definite advantage of com 
 parison, which is the starting-point of investigation, 
 which leads the inquiring mind to ask whether that 
 which is new and strange may not be better than 
 that which is old and familiar, and makes it neces 
 sary to try to ascertain what has brought about the 
 change and the result it has produced. The for 
 eigner has the advantage of detachment and is 
 uninfluenced by prejudices which are accounted 
 national virtues; he is frequently more discriminat 
 ing but not less just than the native. And yet so 
 profoundly am I impressed with the truism that 
 almost no one understands any one else, and very 
 seldom even himself, and so difficult is it to appre 
 ciate the motives and actions of our fellow beings, 
 that one s feeling of confidence is shaken when he 
 attempts the almost stupendous task of interpret 
 ing national psychology. Realizing this, I am very 
 well aware that the point of view of the alien can 
 never be that of the native, and that some of the 
 conclusions reached in the following pages will be 
 challenged. If so, they may be attributed to the im 
 possibility of that mysterious barrier that nationality 
 raises ever being quite leveled. 1 It may be over- 
 
 1 This may appear to conflict with the views expressed in later pages on 
 the absorption of the foreigner, the immigrant, into the American, but it does 
 not. There is a difference between the immigrant, who comes to America 
 with the definite purpose to become an American and who divests himself of 
 his nationality as he does his strange clothes the more quickly to adjust 
 himself to his new life, and the foreigner, who while he may make his home 
 in America, and perhaps contributes a little to its development and progress, 
 
16 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 thrown by long years of residence, by constant and 
 intimate association, by marriage and new family 
 ties ; but here and there a little of that barrier will be 
 left, like an old walled city whose defenses have long 
 crumbled, but where a tower still stands to remind 
 the visitor that there were walls to be beaten down 
 before the stranger could enter the gates. 
 
 Unless a writer is content merely to wander aim 
 lessly in the beaten track and is satisfied so success 
 fully to conceal his convictions that by pleasing 
 everybody he satisfies nobody, he is forced at times 
 to disagree with the conclusions reached by other 
 authors and to view actions from his own experience. 
 The rule imposed upon himself by Bodley l has been 
 observed by me never to make a harsh criticism 
 unless my own impression was corroborated by 
 the published opinion of a respected and impartial 
 American authority. A regard for the feelings of 
 others should make a foreigner sparing in his judg 
 ment. I do not concede that all disapprobation 
 must necessarily be avoided, or that a useful pur 
 pose is served by profuse and indiscriminate praise, 
 which is a sure and ready means of gaining an 
 ephemeral popularity; neither is captious fault 
 finding to be indulged in simply to magnify one 
 people or civilization at the expense of another ; but 
 
 still retains his nationality and is always conscious that he is, say an English 
 man instead of an English-American ; and who while making no claim to 
 being an American has not been influenced by Americanism. It is the for 
 eigner, sharply to distinguish him from the American of foreign stock, to 
 whom my remarks on the foreign point of view apply. 
 1 Bodley: France, vol. i, p. 50. 
 
INTRODUCTORY 17 
 
 a judicious discussion of national characteristics is 
 not only valuable but essential if the evidence is 
 sufficient to lead to a positive conclusion. No for 
 eigner has more harshly criticised the Americans 
 than the Americans have so often criticised them 
 selves; much of which, I believe, is unwarranted. 
 It is the idealism of the Americans that makes them 
 such searching self-critics. Buried deep in the nature 
 of every child of this race is an intense spiritual 
 aspiration, overlaid, it is true, by the material, but 
 against which the spiritual ever struggles. It is this 
 idealism, this longing to triumph over the material, 
 that is perpetually voiced in self-reproach, that 
 breaks out in revolt against the sordidness of politics 
 and the commercialism of life ; it is this which makes 
 the American criticise himself at times so fiercely, 
 that makes him so quick to resent the criticism that 
 comes from without; and that the American is 
 extremely sensitive to foreign criticism cannot be 
 denied. But this is not the place to elaborate the 
 theme ; later it will be discussed in its wider relation 
 to the American character. 
 
 If I repeat that this work is the result of nine years 
 conscientious study and preparation, it is not to ask 
 the indulgence of the reader for any deficiencies 
 which the text may reveal, and that it falls short 
 of what such a book ought to be no one more keenly 
 appreciates than myself, but it is my protest 
 against what I may, I hope with moderation, 
 call the impertinence of the literary journalist, who 
 
18 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 approaches a serious task lightly, and without re 
 gard for his responsibilities turns out the stock book 
 on America; who, after a week in New York or 
 Boston and a couple of days in Washington and a 
 day in Chicago, poses as an authority and considers 
 himself qualified to instruct his own people on a 
 subject of which he is totally ignorant, and fre 
 quently unsuited by temperament and training. 
 Would it be making undignified a serious subject to 
 suggest that in this day of frequent international 
 conference and congresses it should be regarded as 
 a violation of international comity for a person to 
 write a book on a foreign country, its people or its 
 customs, who has not given proof of the proper 
 qualifications for the task? 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE A NEW RACE 
 
 I PURPOSE to write of the origin, growth, and de 
 velopment of the American people and to trace the 
 causes that have produced a new race. From the 
 feeble seed thrown by destiny on a rock-bound shore 
 there has sprung a mighty race and a civilization 
 the marvel of the world; a new system of political 
 philosophy that made man conscious of the dignity 
 of his birthright. The causes that have produced 
 the American race and American civilization lie 
 buried in no obscurity. No lava of a culture long 
 dead must be cleared away before the truth stands 
 revealed. On the palimpsest of a virgin continent, 
 on verdure-clad mountains, in primeval forests, on 
 the trackless waste of inland oceans, and rivers so 
 vast that they gave to man a new conception of the 
 might of nature, the American people have written 
 in enduring language the record of a race. 
 
 Just as the story of the struggle and intellectual 
 progress and spiritual development of a man is of 
 vastly more interest than the record of his posses 
 sions and material success, so the history of the 
 mental growth of a people is tenfold more vital and 
 enthralling than the chronicle of their wars and con 
 quests. With wars, with battles, with the rise and fall 
 
20 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 of political parties this history will not concern itself 
 except as the aspirations and passions of men, 
 now facing death in defense of an ideal, then en 
 gaged in a peaceful but equally determined struggle 
 to preserve that ideal, so moulded character that 
 they produced a new type and gave to the world a 
 new race. 
 
 For although the American people spring from 
 an old stock and have been influenced by many 
 races and the civilization of all races, climate, envi 
 ronment, social conditions, and a system of political 
 philosophy far-reaching in its moral influence have 
 produced not a mongrel race but mentally and 
 physically a new race. "In a society living, grow 
 ing, changing, every new factor becomes a perman 
 ent force; modifying more or less the direction of 
 movement determined by the aggregate of forces." 1 
 In both the animal and the vegetable kingdoms 
 species, by the irresistible law of evolution and their 
 adjustment to new conditions, retain many of the 
 characteristics of the parent stock, but by conform 
 ing to their environment in the struggle for existence 
 create a new type. This has been accomplished in 
 the American people after little more than a century 
 of national existence. They are not English, al 
 though they speak and think in English. They are 
 not German, or Irish, or French, although the Ger 
 mans, the Irish, the French, and many other races 
 have influenced them. Saxon, Teuton, Celt, Latin 
 
 1 Spencer: The Study of Sociology, p. 95. 
 
A NEW RACE 21 
 
 have been the elements fused in the alembic of a 
 social, political, and moral code which have pro 
 duced a new metal with many of the attributes of its 
 constituent elements but with properties of its own. 
 
 In history there are no haphazard events, al 
 though at times there is no juxtaposition of cause 
 and effect, and the real meaning can be interpreted 
 only when it is projected on the background of 
 age. Superficial thinking and inaccurate investi 
 gation ascribe a divine or miraculous interposition 
 to events that are the result of purely human action, 
 which is as convenient for the historian and saves 
 him as much trouble in his search for first causes 
 as it was for the persecutors of witches to obtain a 
 conviction on "spectral evidence." 
 
 In the study of race growth, which is the study 
 of the ever advancing tide of civilization, although 
 there are times when the tide appears to ebb, two 
 facts obtrude themselves so insistently that their 
 significance cannot be mistaken. One is that his 
 tory using that term in its broadest sense as 
 embracing all human activity and its progress and 
 development is written on a palimpsest ; the 
 other is that mankind does not learn from the teach 
 ings of the past, but knowledge comes only from 
 experience. In this the race differs not at all from 
 the individual, who is taught the great lesson of 
 life not from the wisdom of the ancients, which is 
 common to all, but by that knowledge which is 
 peculiar to himself. 
 
22 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 If it were otherwise, if the discipline of the long 
 line of the past counted for anything, the wheel of 
 life would revolve more slowly but on a truer centre. 
 With monotonous, exasperating regularity the fol 
 lies, the errors, the crimes of former generations are 
 repeated by the present. If the guide of the past 
 were effectual the world after a thousand years 
 would not allow its emotions to run riot; it would 
 know that every emotion exacts its price, "for life 
 goes on from generation to generation without heed 
 ing the wisdom of the wise or the goodness of the 
 good. Her force breaks out afresh in every child 
 that is born." 
 
 Fundamentally human nature does not change. 
 It advances with the ever advancing perfection of 
 mechanical progress (it is an interesting speculation 
 whether civilization is the result of mechanical im 
 provement or mechanical improvement produces 
 civilization), its morals and manners adjust them 
 selves to a conventional standard, and however 
 inadequate they may appear viewed from the present 
 were all sufficient for their age, and, it is important 
 to remember, were a stage in the higher develop 
 ment of civilization. All the great developments of 
 the internal man, Guizot says, have turned to the 
 profit of society; all the great developments of the 
 social stage to the profit of the individual man. 1 
 But while society has changed extrinsically, in all 
 that is organic it is the same. Truth, honesty, jus- 
 
 1 Guizot: History of Civilization, vol. i, p. 14. 
 
A NEW RACE 23 
 
 tice are the cardinal virtues of an age that prides 
 itself on having attained the summit of civilization, 
 but they are the virtues that have been handed 
 down from the past and are not the creation 
 of the present. Wherein does the moral train 
 ing of our children differ from that of the Per 
 sians, or how have we improved upon their theory 
 or practice? "The moral nature of the child w^as 
 trained with assiduous attention. As far as pos 
 sible, it was preserved from contact with vice, 
 while the virtues of self-control, truthfulness, and 
 justice were constantly enjoined and practiced. 
 Ingratitude and lying were considered the most 
 shameful vices, while truthfulness was looked on as 
 the highest virtue." 1 The wheel of civilization for 
 ever revolves, but its mass is so immense and it 
 turns with such deliberation that man the pigmy, 
 with narrowed vision, in the conceit of pride in 
 what he believes to be discoveries, sees only what is 
 before his eyes and thinks he has beheld a new 
 truth, and all that he has seen is the civilization of 
 the past in its periodic return coming to the surface 
 to confound the present. 
 
 ) Nor is it only in morals that the present repeats 
 J the past. The diversions of the idle rich in all ages 
 )show a singular similitude. The unrestrained li 
 cense of undergraduates celebrating their triumphs 
 on the river or the football field is merely the sur 
 vival of the days of the Restoration, when it was 
 
 1 Painter: A History of Education, p. 22. 
 
24 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 the fashion for dissolute young men to band to 
 gether to molest respectable people in the streets. 
 Yet the worthy burgesses of London who were the 
 victims of the curious sense of humor entertained 
 by the Mohocks simply experienced the fate of the 
 citizens of Rome at the height of her glory, when 
 elegant aristocrats found their sport in rudely 
 assaulting quiet citizens returning from dinner, or 
 plundering some poor huckster s stall in the Sub- 
 urra, or insulting a lady in her chair. 1 In little 
 things "often regarded as peculiar to America," an 
 American writer satirically remarks, "we are only 
 preserving old English forms and customs. For 
 example, when a vigilance committee in the South 
 or West decorate an obnoxious stranger with a coat 
 of tar and feathers, they are only exercising a form 
 of English hospitality practiced in the seventeenth 
 century." 2 The wheel forever revolves. 
 
 If I emphasize that in the progress of society 
 nothing is new and at every stage its virtues and 
 vices are simply a reproduction of society at a 
 former period, it is because the lesson is peculiarly 
 applicable to the United States. Many Europeans 
 who have written of the United States with the 
 spirit of the philosopher or the historian, without 
 deliberate intent, but in good faith, adopt this men 
 tal attitude: We have given you literature, science, 
 art, the refinements of life; you have given us, 
 
 1 Dill: Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, p. 76. 
 
 3 Campbell : The Puritan in Holland, England, and America, vol. i, p. 72. 
 
A NEW RACE 25 
 
 what ? Nothing except the materialism of life and 
 the corruption of politics. Now the reason for this 
 is not, as Americans have so frequently believed, 
 "a certain condescension in foreigners," that con 
 descension that makes the foreigner regard him 
 self and his culture, his morals and his habits, as 
 superior to the American. It is purely psychologi 
 cal. In viewing his own development the European 
 cannot stand outside himself; the genesis of his 
 civilization is too remote for him to be able to com 
 prehend that it has experienced the same " cyclical 
 evolution" as a much younger civilization. 
 
 No living European has seen the society with 
 which he is most familiar and of which he is a 
 part, that is, of his own country, come into exist 
 ence with the resistless and at times destructive 
 force of a volcano that levels mountains and fills 
 valleys. In the memory of living man in Europe 
 human advancement has been the slow, steady, 
 almost unperceived progress of a river that scours 
 its own bed and with calm but irresistible force, so 
 placid despite its power that at times the drift of 
 the current is unnoticed, bears its detritus to the 
 ocean. But in America the movement has been 
 cataclysmic. It has cut a new channel, violently, 
 with a sudden wrench, at times with great disorder, 
 when a new channel was necessary. Like its own 
 Mississippi it has made mock of tradition and 
 scoffed sociological geographers, with their precise 
 charts and their mathematical lines of boundaries. 
 
26 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 In America man stands face to face with a civiliza 
 tion in the making, and the making of civilization 
 has always been the play of primordial forces. He 
 sees all that is noble and all that is base revealed 
 in all its nobility and all its baseness. He sees the 
 mind stripped of its covering. Civilization that is 
 old, that has become fashioned into a mould and 
 is a stereotyped convention, conceals its workings. 
 Much that is shameful and sordid exists, but as 
 civilized men cover their bodies, so civilized society 
 has a horror of frankly revealing its mental pro 
 cesses. In America that stage has not yet been 
 reached. What is bad is candidly pronounced bad, 
 so that a remedy may be found. What is good all 
 the world shall be told ; it shall be to the world an 
 inspiration, and to Americans an encouragement 
 for redoubled effort. In England, says Master- 
 man, reticence still forbids an eager sincerity about 
 ultimate questions, but in America "a new child 
 race will discuss its own spiritual anatomy with all 
 the candor of interested children." 1 
 
 It is because the Americans came from England, 
 it is because the mother tongue of America is Eng 
 lish, and it is from England that America has 
 derived her ideals, her law, and her literature, that 
 England has been made the yardstick of compari 
 son. The two countries have so much in common 
 mentally and spiritually that Europe, which knows 
 England so much better than it knows the United 
 
 1 Masterman : In Peril of Change, p. 60. 
 
A NEW RACE 27 
 
 States, has fallen into the fashion of using England 
 as the common denominator in which to express 
 the terms of American civilization. But this is a 
 mistake and leads to an error so grave that it 
 makes all calculation worthless. America is no 
 longer England or even a reflex of England. 
 America is American, and if the character of the 
 American people is to be understood and their 
 civilization is to be correctly interpreted they must 
 be measured by their own standards and not 
 weighed in the scales of foreign make. And bear 
 ing this in mind, we shall see again with what exact 
 fidelity the present reproduces the past. The cor 
 ruption of politics, perhaps the most fruitful theme 
 of European writers, and not entirely neglected 
 by American commentators, the sordidness of 
 place-hunters, the dishonesty of demagogues, the 
 lust for wealth, the vulgarity of display, these 
 things are neither new nor peculiar to America. 
 For everything that has happened or is now hap 
 pening in the United States we shall find its 
 parallel and its precedent in English civilization 
 in its various evolutionary stages; nor shall we 
 find them at a time so remote from the present 
 that they were merely the survival of the manners 
 and customs of a people then but slowly emerging 
 from barbarism and whose civilization was still 
 rudimentary. Long after England had given to 
 the world some of the world s greatest and most 
 enduring literature; long after Newton had dis- 
 
28 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 covered his great principle, and Flamsteed had 
 created the science of modern astronomy, and 
 Hooke and Boyle and Wilkins (the list might be 
 prolonged almost indefinitely) had made their 
 great contributions to science; long after the 
 courage and valor and patriotism of England had 
 become the glorious heritage of Englishmen, the 
 morals of England were so unspeakably vile that 
 the titles of some of the poems of Lord Rochester, 
 a fashionable poet, "are such as no pen of our day 
 could copy " ; 1! and politics were so openly a matter 
 of barter and sale that seats in Parliament were 
 sold to the highest bidder. "I came into Parlia 
 ment for Newton in the Isle of Wight, a borough 
 of Sir Leonard Holmes," wrote Lord Palmerston 
 in his diary, May, 1807. "One condition required 
 was that I would never, even for the election, set 
 foot in the place, so jealous was the patron lest any 
 attempt be made to get a new interest in the 
 borough." Samuel Wilberforce, the great philan 
 thropist, paid <9000 for Hull, which he represented 
 when he first entered Parliament; the Earl of 
 Shaftesbury, the friend of the working classes and 
 the champion of protective labor legislation, as 
 Lord Ashley, contested the County of Dorset at a 
 time so near the present as 1831, and spent <15,600 
 only to meet defeat. 
 
 Parliamentary seats are no longer put up at 
 auction, but the lock to Saint Stephens turns with a 
 
 1 Green: A Short History of the English People, p. 589. 
 
A NEW RACE 29 
 
 golden key. The cost of getting a seat in England 
 is often heavy. A considerable proportion of the 
 English members of Parliament, a modern English 
 writer says, would be satisfied if their annual out 
 lay upon their divisions came to no more than 
 500. Many spend less, some a great deal more. 
 There are large county divisions, and certain small 
 and greedy urban communities, debauched by a 
 succession of over-affluent members, in which the 
 annual expenditure could be reckoned in thousands 
 of pounds rather than hundreds. And this is ex 
 clusive of the actual cost of the election, which may 
 be anything from 600 to 2000, and may have to 
 be defrayed at any moment determined by the 
 Fates and the Prime Minister. A man in straitened 
 circumstances cannot meet all these demands with 
 the open-handed liberality the electors appreciate. 
 Against the average member of Parliament, es 
 pecially if he be a Conservative, there can hardly 
 be a more injurious imputation than that he 
 "does nothing" for the place that he spends no 
 money there. And unless he is a politician of real 
 distinction, or of exceptional personal popularity, 
 he is in some danger of finding that his local asso 
 ciation is angling industriously for a more muni 
 ficent patron. 1 
 
 " In these days of so-called debased politics," an 
 American writer says, the Duke of Newcastle of 
 George the Third s time, " would be denounced as 
 
 1 Low: The Governance qf England, p. 181. 
 
30 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 a machine boss of the most pronounced type; for 
 it was he who controlled the patronage barrel; who 
 received church dignitaries in quest of preferment; 
 influenced Whigs in search of profitable contracts; 
 and any individual that had rendered partisan serv 
 ice of any character and believed he should obtain 
 a valuable concession of any kind. It was the Duke 
 who patted this follower on the back, who gave 
 money now and a promise then, who shook hands 
 with the public generally and who tried to send away 
 happy every person who called upon him for a favor. 
 His methods were no better or no worse than polit 
 ical methods that have been practiced in our own 
 day. To gain a point he never hesitated at bribery." 1 
 Or we may go back to the century before George 
 III reigned and see where the lesson of corruption 
 was learned. When Randolph was sent to London 
 in 1682 he wrote to the Bishop of London of " their 
 great friend the L. P. S. [Lord Privy Seal] who can 
 not withstand their weighty arguments" ; and it was 
 the weight of gold. Anglesey was the Lord Privy 
 Seal, and he is described by Burnet as one who 
 "stuck at nothing and was ashamed of nothing; 
 neither loved nor trusted by any man or any side; 
 seemed to have no regard to common decencies, but 
 sold everything that was in his power, and sold him 
 self so often that at last the price fell so low that he 
 grew useless." 2 
 
 1 Hastings: Introduction to Public Papers of George Clinton, vol. i, p. 24. 
 3 Doyle: English Colonies in America, vol. iii, p. 208. 
 
A NEW RACE 31 
 
 If England in the eighteenth century could have 
 been compared say with Germany, Germany with 
 two hundred years more of civilization behind her, 
 with the same liberal political institutions and the 
 same language as England, what would Germany 
 have thought of English political corruption, of 
 English manners, of the brutality of justice ? Eng 
 land to-day is no longer the England of the eight 
 eenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, 
 because she has experienced and learned. So will 
 the United States. The political corruption in Eng 
 land, as I have already shown, was greater, more 
 shameless, more destructive of popular liberties than 
 it has ever been in the United States. In England 
 men and women were hanged where the money 
 value of the article stolen was trifling because the 
 hanging of a thief was supposed to be for the protec 
 tion of society. In the United States men women 
 seldom, if ever are lynched because society, rude, 
 violent, primitive, with stern ideas of justice, de 
 mands death for self-protection. Can any one doubt 
 that the time will come when lynching in the United 
 States will be as unknown as is to-day the spectacle 
 of an English judge sentencing a woman to death 
 for having stolen a few yards of cloth to save herself 
 and her children from starvation ? 
 
 Society is always striving for higher ethical 
 standards and before attaining them it passes 
 through the same stages of development that the 
 body does physically. It must grow slowly, it must 
 
32 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 experience the pains of growth; life comes to it as 
 a practical experience and not as the theoretical 
 teachings of the past. The child learns only by 
 experience. Society at every stage has been like the 
 child dimly groping for something better, ignoring 
 precept and counsel, often hurt before it reaches a 
 higher development; but society like the child, if it 
 survives, if in it is implanted the vital essence, rises 
 to a higher standard as a result of its experiences, 
 its stumblings, its pains, and its sorrows. 
 
 In their analysis of the American mind and their 
 explanation of the psychology of the American 
 people most writers have based their conclusion on 
 a false premise. It has come to be the fashion to 
 believe that the chain of English civilization was 
 unbroken in its transmission to the American colo 
 nies; that in the century and a quarter of national 
 existence the United States should have developed 
 along the same lines, and at the same pace, and sub 
 ject to the same influences as the mother land. The 
 intellectual phases of American history, therefore, 
 are to be judged as exalted, arrested, or retrograded 
 according as they measure up with contemporane 
 ous conditions in England. 
 
 It cannot be too strongly asserted that nothing is 
 more misleading than this belief in the transmission 
 intact and the continuance of the established civil 
 ization of England among pioneer colonizers in a 
 new country and with severed political allegiance. 
 Its constant iteration has invested it with the sane- 
 
A NEW RACE 33 
 
 tity that age gives to a "natural law," and having 
 been accepted by the world at large it has become 
 a conviction. But even "natural laws" buttressed 
 by the ignorance of centuries have been proved to 
 be a perversion of the principles of truth when the 
 test of knowledge has been scientifically applied. 
 Copernicus destroyed the "natural law" of the 
 universe and gave to man the truth of astronomy. 
 
 The English who came as the first settlers to 
 America were in all things Englishmen in a foreign 
 environment, at heart alien, just as the Englishman 
 of to-day who serves his country in India or South 
 America or Germany remains an Englishman, al 
 though he adopts the language of the country in 
 which he lives and adjusts himself to its customs. 
 But with the permanency of settlement, the revo 
 lutionizing influences of the struggle with natural 
 conditions, and above all with a declared political 
 independence of the British Crown, the bond with 
 the old civilization snapped. Thus a new and dis 
 tinct racial psychology began in America. After a 
 race has been formed and bred to certain qualities 
 within a limited field, Shaler says, after it has come 
 to possess a certain body of characteristics which 
 give it its peculiar stamp, the importance of the 
 original cradle passes away. 1 
 
 The civilization of England flowed on. Society 
 was established, its traditions were fixed, there was 
 no interruption in its orderly and progressive devel- 
 
 1 Shaler: Nature and Man in America, p. 165. 
 
34 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 opment. Civilization in America, when America 
 was no longer English but was American in fact as 
 well as in name, paused long enough to give birth 
 to a new civilization, the like of which the world 
 before had never dreamed of. A new system of 
 political philosophy, which was a moral code no 
 less than a political, that gave man "kingship in 
 right of his mere manhood," produced its own 
 needs of civilization, which was largely influenced 
 by natural conditions, as society always has been 
 at every stage in its development. And there began 
 a new civilization, a civilization that, whether good 
 or bad, whether superior to or inferior to the civil 
 ization of the English, obeyed the inexorable law 
 of evolution and in its own way has served its own 
 purpose. 
 
 Democracy is not alone a polity. It is something 
 much more than that. A people born in a demo 
 cracy unconsciously acquire ideas and a mental 
 process that make them unlike the subjects of a 
 monarchy or the citizens of a country in which 
 established class distinctions exist. We shall see, 
 as the theme unfolds, the moral and psychological 
 effects of a democratic form of government. 
 
 American civilization is the youngest of which 
 the world knows. It is still formative. This makes 
 a serious study fantastic almost, for judgment is but 
 another name for comparison ; we can reach a con 
 clusion only by comparing it with something else, 
 and when we compare American civilization with 
 
A NEW RACE 35 
 
 that of any other modern people it is almost as if we 
 had to resort to a miracle to explain causes. It is 
 as if the boy overnight had been touched by the 
 magician s wand and awakes a man, a giant in 
 force and intellect, and yet with all the vital enthu 
 siasm of youth, who is conscious of his strength 
 and who has the stripling s contempt for age. Men 
 sneer at his juvenescence and think it surprising that 
 he is still so crude, and w r onder when, if ever, he will 
 emerge from adolescence and arrive at the dignity 
 of man s estate, and yet they stand amazed at his 
 pow r er and his mind. He defies every tradition, the 
 wisdom of his elders he laughs at and becomes a 
 law unto himself, the fallacy of theory he joyously 
 mocks, and with it all he grows stronger, better, 
 spiritually more exalted. 
 
 The same difficulty that confronted Bagehot 
 meets me, but in a much greater degree. There is 
 great difficulty, he says, in the way of a writer who 
 attempts to sketch a living Constitution a Con 
 stitution that is an actual work and power. The 
 difficulty is that the subject is in constant change. 
 If this is so in the case of a Constitution, how much 
 more so must it be when a study is made of a civili 
 zation that is still in a state of flux, that is constantly 
 being moulded to receive new impressions ? A con 
 temporary writer, Bagehot says, who tries to paint 
 what is before him is puzzled and perplexed; what 
 he sees is changing daily. 1 In America this change 
 
 1 Bagehot: The English Constitution, pp. 1-2. 
 
36 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 is perpetual. I have watched it in the few years that 
 have elapsed since I began this study ; it has caused 
 me more than once to revise my judgment. America, 
 says Bryce, changes so fast that every few years a 
 new crop of books is needed to describe the new 
 face which things have put on, the new problems 
 that have appeared, the new idea germinating 
 among her people, the new and unexpected develop 
 ments for evil as well as for good of which her 
 established institutions have been found capable. 1 
 
 With equal force Reich has pointed out the per 
 plexities one encounters at every turn. But sup 
 pose we wish, he says, to investigate a question 
 of national psychology, we have no laboratory to 
 appeal to; we must seek sense impressions in the 
 world abroad. In order to comprehend the char 
 acteristics of one s own nation, we must subject it 
 to a scrutinizing comparison with other nations. 
 How difficult is this comparison to make. How 
 few have even the opportunity of making it. It 
 implies a long sojourn in foreign countries of a 
 person endowed with keen and critical faculties of 
 observation, and a mastery of the literature and 
 language of those countries. These are the essen 
 tials, and how rarely are they fulfilled. But with 
 out comparison after this manner there can be no 
 real advance. 2 
 
 When Europeans, and not alone Europeans but 
 
 1 Bryce: The American Commonwealth, vol. i, p. 2. 
 8 Reich: Success Among Nations, p. 91. 
 
A NEW RACE 37 
 
 many Americans also, deplore the crudeness of 
 American civilization and become despondent be 
 cause America has not yet produced a Leonardo 
 da Vinci, a Wren, a Shakespeare, a Mozart, and 
 pronounce their obiter dicta that America is deaf to 
 the higher voices, they forget that Europe has a 
 heritage of a thousand years and America but a 
 hundred ; that men are the product of their soil and 
 their environment, and art is born not in the stress 
 of commercialism, but comes later. History has 
 served us to no purpose if we do not recognize this. 
 Art is the expression of luxury and fashion and 
 idleness, of a certain form of voluptuousness; it 
 flourishes best where there is a Maecenas and his 
 order to give to it the approval of their patronage; or 
 it is the expression of religion; or it is the soul cry 
 of a people despairing of the present and hopeless 
 of the future. In the beginning art was the sym 
 bolism of religion or superstition; later it lost its 
 original meaning and became conventionalized, and 
 then commercialized. In America there is great 
 luxury, fashion peculiar to American conditions, 
 but little idleness; voluptuousness as a national 
 quality does not exist; of religion there is much, 
 but it does not take the form that inspired the 
 Greeks and the cathedral builders of mediaeval 
 Europe; the American people instead of despairing 
 face the problems of the present and the unknown 
 questions of the future with supreme self-reliance. 
 In a word, their national vitality is too high for 
 
38 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 them yet to have reached that stage when imag 
 ination makes a greater appeal than action. The 
 artistic temperament and the strenuous, masterful, 
 almost brutal qualities of the man of action do not 
 reside in the same body. Almost universally the 
 men who have sung their songs of incomparable 
 beauty, "too wise to be wholly poets and yet too 
 surely poets to be implacably wise," in whom 
 Weltschmerz has colored their whole vision of life, 
 have shrunk from the rough contact of the world 
 and hated the very thought of strife. 
 
 If we have read history aright, if we do not 
 confuse causes with effects or underestimate the 
 forces that produced such momentous results, one 
 conclusion is ineluctable. No race has ever given 
 proof of a high order of mental attainments until 
 after it has enjoyed a long period of great material 
 prosperity. Art and literature are not born in the 
 dregs of national poverty; no people struggling for 
 a bare existence and content with food or raiment 
 enough merely to keep themselves alive have given 
 birth to the deathless voice of the bard. After the 
 struggle for existence has been won there comes 
 the desire for comfort, and then follows luxury; 
 and what is luxury but the appeal to the senses, 
 the gratification of the body or the delight of the 
 mind, the enjoyment of the sensual or the quick 
 ening of the emotions aroused by music or art or 
 poetry ? 
 
 But it will be said that the poets whose songs 
 
A NEW RACE 39 
 
 are in the hearts of the people have been of the 
 people; that it was suffering and poverty and great 
 compassion that made them articulate; that it was 
 their protest against wrongs too great to be silently 
 endured; that it was only because they knew the 
 hopeless misery of the downtrodden that they were 
 able to voice it; that prosperity would have made 
 them content and dumb; which is much like say 
 ing that the world has been deprived of its great 
 poets because there are so many successful green 
 grocers. The greater the wealth of a people, 
 whether a community or a nation, the greater its 
 poverty, so far apart are the two ends of the social 
 scale, so far apart must they be when wealth is the 
 reward of individual endeavor or is dependent upon 
 audacity, courage, industry, or an intuitive sense 
 of possibilities. Among a people where the dead 
 level of conditions exists there is, it is true, no 
 sense of social injustice because all are practically 
 equal, but there is also no stimulus; there is no 
 Promethean voice to flame, no heart to be touched. 
 If it is true that the poets of the people have been 
 of the people and it is a generalization to be 
 accepted only with the respect due to all general 
 izations we now see why; we now see why there 
 can be no great poets when life flows placidly like 
 a stream in which there is not even a rock to add 
 the variety of a ripple to its dull monotony or 
 momentarily to reflect the sun s glint. 
 
 Out of the depths of his soul man voices his faith 
 
40 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 or his despair; from his innermost self comes the 
 hymn of victory or the cry of desolation. And the 
 poets sing and the people hearken when there are 
 great deeds to be done or great wrongs to be re 
 dressed, when men are to be inspired to resist or 
 to defend themselves. War and poverty, the mate 
 rial there is the inspiration of the poets. 
 
 It is something more than a theory that has here 
 been advanced. It rests on the facts of history. 
 The great art and literature of Greece and Rome 
 were given to the world at a time when their 
 splendor was unrivaled, when their riches were 
 beyond compare, when with great wealth there was 
 poverty equally as great. Ferrero calls our attention 
 to the same phenomenon in Egypt. At the time 
 when her agriculture was prosperous, her manufac 
 tures flourishing, her commerce widely spread, her 
 schools famous, then also "her artistic life was vig 
 orous." The artisans of Alexandria manufactured 
 the most delicate fabrics, perfumes, glassware, papy 
 rus, and numerous other articles of art and luxury 
 which were ever sold in the markets of the world. 
 Egypt was the home of luxury and elegance, and 
 her painters and her decorators went everywhere, 
 even to Italy; while to Egypt, then a centre of learn 
 ing, from all parts of the world, even from Greece, 
 students came to study in the schools of medicine 
 and astronomy and literature at Alexandria. 1 
 
 The great intellectual movement in England came 
 
 1 Ferrero: The Greatness and Decline of Rome, vol. iii, pp. 240-241. 
 
A NEW RACE 41 
 
 at a time when she was rich as she had never been 
 before. The Elizabethan age was an age of intense 
 material prosperity, when wealth was being rapidly 
 accumulated, when commerce possessed the whole 
 people, when the spirit of adventure had seized 
 them, and yet it presented the same contrast that 
 has always been witnessed at this stage of national 
 development. On the one hand there was great 
 luxury and great wealth, on the other there was 
 great suffering and great poverty, and the condition 
 of the poor was deplorable. The imagination is 
 fired by the deeds of Raleigh and his captains; by 
 that brave battle in the Channel ; we stand with un 
 covered head before the tomb of Shakespeare; the 
 great statesmen and philosophers have left their im 
 perishable record; but let not our emotions nor our 
 admiration blind us to the direful fact that it was in 
 the reign of Elizabeth that the first poor-law was 
 placed on the statute-books. In a subsequent chap 
 ter I shall more at length discuss the causes that 
 have produced as well as arrested American art. 
 
 I have laid down the proposition that the civil 
 ization of America is not that of England ; that the 
 American people are no longer English, but a new 
 race. I shall now endeavor to show how it came 
 about that the civilization of England was checked 
 in America and ran in new channels, the causes that 
 have produced a new race, and the conclusions to be 
 drawn from the facts established. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT ON RACE 
 
 IN tracing the development of American civiliza 
 tion, the growth of the American race, and the for 
 mation of national characteristics, we are impressed 
 with the fact that the history of the American people 
 properly divides itself into four grand divisions, each 
 epochal in character-building. It is unnecessary to 
 resort to empirical or arbitrary methods to ascertain 
 where the dividing lines fall. They are the strata of 
 human formation. These four epochs are: 
 
 1. Colonial Days the period from the arrival 
 of the first settlers at Jamestown and the establish 
 ment of the Plymouth Colony until the American 
 nation was born in the throes of the revolt against 
 oppression. 
 
 2. Independence the period that saw the birth 
 of a new political and moral creed. 
 
 3. The Civil War the period that was the form 
 ative stage in the American character; that began 
 in war in defense of justice and closed in war in 
 defense of human liberty and political solidarity. 
 
 4. The Spanish War the period from the close 
 of the Civil War to the present; that hardened the 
 mould of the American character and opened the 
 vista to the future. 
 
ENVIRONMENT ON RACE 43 
 
 Observe, as throwing a vivid light on the causes 
 that have produced the mental and moral charac 
 teristics of the American people, that each of these 
 epochs was born in the passion of war, at each suc 
 cessive stage of American progress the heavens were 
 riven with the storm of conflict, and the daughters of 
 Jupiter came forth. 
 
 " Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be, 
 
 And freedom find no champion and no child, 
 Such as Columbia saw arise, when she 
 
 Sprang forth a Pallas, armed and undefiled ? " 
 
 The beginning of America was a resistance 
 against religious oppression and a revolt against 
 the suppression of personal liberty; and rebellion 
 unless quickly checked leads to war, and it led, in 
 this case, as was inevitable, to w^ar to preserve 
 liberty and to perpetuate an ideal. Each period 
 was unconsciously but inexorably the prepara 
 tion and precursor of that which followed, and 
 each in passing wrought with iron hand in Ameri 
 can development. Perhaps in all the history of 
 all the world we shall find nothing so remarkable 
 as this race development that can be directly 
 traced to the effects of war. But observe again, 
 because it is one of those antinomies with which 
 the history of the American people abounds, that 
 while war has more profoundly affected their char 
 acter than that of any other modern race, for the 
 first one hundred and fifty years succeeding their 
 birth they fought no war in defense of religious 
 
44 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 freedom or in the name of religion, they were not 
 passed over like chattels from one sovereign to 
 another, they knew no flag but their own, they 
 engaged in no war of conquest solely to bring an 
 alien people under their domination. While all 
 Europe was involved in that great Thirty Years 
 struggle; while the history of Europe for a century 
 and a half following the English settlement of 
 America is a continuous record of war; while wars 
 of the Spanish Succession, of the Polish Succession, 
 of the Austrian Succession, even of Jenkins s Ear, 
 burden the pages of history and make one weary 
 to discover what it was all about and why it was 
 worth fighting for; while Europe was one vast 
 armed camp drenched in blood and the breeding- 
 ground for the sordid ambitions of kings and 
 statesmen, America, far removed from the scene 
 of conflict, went forward in her spiritual and 
 material development. We shall see later how pro 
 foundly American political institutions and Ameri 
 can psychology were influenced by the conflict 
 with the French and Indians, but the consequences 
 were entirely different from those resulting from 
 the wars of Europe, which made every man a 
 soldier, who when he was not fighting under his 
 sovereign s banner as his liegeman or as his mer 
 cenary became a rebel against the kingly power. 
 The border warfare kept the colonist alert to defend 
 his foothold in the New World, but his aim was se 
 curity, his ambition the unmolested homestead right. 
 
ENVIRONMENT ON RACE 45 
 
 As the American mind gradually reveals itself, the 
 effect of this political isolation at the formative 
 stage of the race will be clearly seen. 
 
 A nation is the sum of many influences, but none 
 have more weight in the formation of character 
 and the mental type of a people than the natural 
 phenomena of the country in which they live. 
 Extreme heat and cold are reflected not only in the 
 physical appearance of the race, but also in its 
 mental characteristics. Nature, to help man adapt 
 himself to his environment, has made the races 
 that dwell nearest the sun more lithe, more sinewy, 
 less burdened with superfluous flesh than those 
 who live in colder climates, who need greater pro 
 tection from the extreme rigors of their long 
 winters; and as they are physically so they are 
 mentally. The men and women of the south, in 
 whose veins run the fire and heat of the sun, who 
 bask in a riot of color, who are influenced by 
 the witchery of radiant, caressing moonlight, have 
 always been gifted with temperaments more vivid, 
 more poetic, and more imaginative than the men 
 and women of the north, slower, more precise, 
 more practical. The plainsman is a different type 
 from the mountaineer, and both show a variation 
 from the inhabitant of the seacoast. An arid, sterile 
 country produces a race unlike that in which the 
 land is fruitful and rivers abound. Trees and 
 mountains, valleys and prairies are the indelible 
 pictures of memory that unconsciously color life, 
 
46 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 as the pictures of childhood leave an ineffaceable 
 recollection. 1 
 
 These things are not new, they are as old as 
 creation itself. Man has always been influenced 
 by his surroundings, always keenly sensitive to 
 exterior impressions. To a certain extent their 
 force is blunted when countless generations have 
 looked upon the same mountains or the same 
 valleys, for each succeeding generation has in ifr 
 a part at least of the stored emotions and sensa 
 tions of its predecessors, the inherent faculty of 
 comprehension without ratiocination, exactly as 
 the animal instinctively takes to the water or 
 avoids it. To the child who opens his eyes on the 
 unfathomable mystery of the sea, the sea is as 
 natural as the mountain, which he beholds for the 
 first time, is abnormal and terrifying. The civil 
 ization of most peoples runs too far back for us to 
 appreciate the influences of climate and natural 
 phenomena in moulding the characteristics of race, 
 but in America we are so close to its genesis that 
 we not only know but we can actually see what 
 the effects have been. 
 
 To have a correct understanding of the American 
 character it is necessary at the outset to establish 
 certain facts which nearly all writers on American 
 race development have treated, if they touched on 
 them at all, as only incidental instead of being 
 a primary cause. I maintain that when a highly 
 
 1 Cf. May: Democracy in Europe, introduction, p. xxxix et seq. 
 
ENVIRONMENT ON RACE 47 
 
 civilized race is transplanted to a new environment, 
 that environment entirely different from the old, 
 different in climate and other physical characteris 
 tics, and to support life it is necessary for these 
 people from the very first to engage in an unrelent 
 ing struggle against nature, the effect of that struggle 
 will be seen in the mental characteristics of the 
 people new to the soil. It is a remarkable fact that 
 the great evolutionary authorities - - Darwin, Spen 
 cer, Wallace, Haeckel, Le Conte, to mention only a 
 few of the most eminent are either silent on this 
 important branch of psychological investigation, or 
 else dismiss it with merely a passing reference, and 
 yet its truth cannot be doubted. It is sustained by 
 the teachings of biogeny, morphology, and sociology, 
 and is further fortified by the historical study of 
 race development. No one, I think, can study the 
 psychology of history and not be profoundly im 
 pressed by the dominant influence that nature has 
 exercised in the progress of organized society. In 
 the ascertainment of the causes that have resulted 
 in the shoot of the race varying so materially from 
 the parent stem the importance of the physical 
 cannot be overestimated. 
 
 Spencer says : " We see that . . . the changes or 
 processes displayed by a living body are especially 
 related to the changes or processes in its environ 
 ment. And here we have the needful supplement to 
 our conception of life. Adding this all important 
 characteristic, our conception of life becomes 
 
48 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, 
 both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence 
 with external coexistences and sequences." 1 
 
 At much greater length in his Principles of 
 Sociology, under the title of "Original External 
 Factors," Spencer treats of the influence of climate 
 and physical conditions on race development, but 
 stops just short of the question involved, frankly 
 admitting that it is outside of his province and is 
 the property of the specialist. After showing that 
 temperature, heat, light, moisture, the configuration 
 of the surface, the fertility of the soil, and the na 
 ture of the flora and fauna all "have their effects 
 on human activities, and therefore on social phe 
 nomena," he says: "But a detailed account of the 
 original external factors, whether of the more im 
 portant kinds outlined in the preceding pages or 
 of the less important kind exemplified, pertains to 
 Special Sociology. Any one who, carrying with him 
 the general principles of the science, undertook to 
 interpret the evolution of each society, would have 
 to describe completely these many local causes in 
 their various kinds and degrees. Such an under 
 taking must be left for the sociologists of the future. 
 
 "Here my purpose has been," he says, "to give 
 a general idea of the original external factors, in their 
 different classes and orders ; so as to impress on the 
 reader the truth, barely enunciated in the preceding 
 chapter, that the characters of the environment 
 
 1 Spencer: The Principles of Biology, vol. i, p. 74. 
 
ENVIRONMENT ON RACE 49 
 
 cooperate with the characters of human beings in 
 determining social phenomena." 1 
 
 I give one more quotation from Spencer. "Di 
 vesting this conception of all superfluities, reducing 
 it to its most abstract shape, we see that Life is 
 definable as the continuous adjustment of internal 
 relations to external relations. And when we so 
 define it, we discover that the physical and the 
 psychical life are equally comprehended by the 
 definition." 2 
 
 Huxley says: "It is a general belief that men of 
 different stocks differ as much physically as they do 
 morphologically ; but it is very hard to prove, in any 
 particular case, how much of a supposed national 
 characteristic is due to inherent physiological pecul 
 iarities, and how much to the influence of circum 
 stances." 3 
 
 Darwin gives the weight of his authority to the 
 influence of conditions upon physical development. 
 "We have seen in the second chapter," he says, 
 " that the conditions of life affect the development 
 of the bodily frame in a direct manner, and that the 
 effects are transmitted. Thus, as is generally ad 
 mitted, the European settlers in the United States 
 undergo a slight but extraordinarily rapid change of 
 appearance. Their bodies and limbs become elon 
 gated ; and I hear from Colonel Bernys that during 
 the late war in the United States, good evidence was 
 
 1 Spencer: The Principles of Sociology, vol. i, part 1, p. 16 et seq. 
 
 2 Spencer: First Principles, p. 86. 
 
 3 Huxley : Methods and Results of Ethnology, p. 240. 
 
50 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 afforded of this fact by the ridiculous appearance 
 presented by the German regiments, when dressed 
 in ready-made clothes manufactured for the Ameri 
 can market, and which were much too long for the 
 men in every way. There is, also, a considerable 
 body of evidence showing that in the Southern States 
 the house slaves of the third generation presented 
 a markedly different appearance from the field 
 slaves." * 
 
 And Darwin again says: "Adaptation to any spe 
 cial climate may be looked at as a quality readily 
 grafted on an innate wide flexibility of constitution, 
 common to most animals. On this view, the capac 
 ity of enduring the most different climates by man 
 himself . . . ought not to be looked at as anoma 
 lies, but as examples of a very common flexibility of 
 constitution, brought, under peculiar circumstances, 
 into action." 2 
 
 "Races would advance and become improved," 
 Wallace says, "merely by the harsh discipline of a 
 sterile soil and inclement seasons. Under their in 
 fluence a hardier, a more provident, a more social 
 race would be developed than in those regions where 
 the earth produces a perennial supply of vegetable 
 food, and where neither foresight nor ingenuity is 
 required to prepare for the rigors of winter. And is 
 it not a fact that in all ages, and in every quarter of 
 the globe, the inhabitants of temperate have been 
 
 1 Darwin: The Descent of Man, p. 196. 
 
 2 Darwin: The Origin of Species, vol. i, pp. 175-176. 
 
ENVIRONMENT ON RACE 51 
 
 superior to those of hotter countries ? All the great 
 invasions and displacements of races have been from 
 north to south, rather than the reverse; and we 
 have no record of there ever having existed, any 
 more than there exists to-day, a solitary instance of 
 an indigenous inter-tropical civilization." 1 
 
 Buckle ascribes to climate, food, soil, and "the 
 general aspect of nature" those physical agents "by 
 which the human race is most powerfully influ 
 enced," and by "the general aspect of nature," he 
 says, "I mean those appearances which, though 
 presented chiefly to the sight, have, through the 
 medium of that or other senses, directed the associa 
 tion of ideas, and hence in different countries have 
 given rise to different habits of national thought." 2 
 That Buckle was a profound believer in the physical 
 agents already mentioned is known to every student 
 of his monumental work, and he elaborates his the 
 sis at length. " It now remains for me," he says, 
 "to examine the effects of those other physical 
 agents to which I have given the collective name of 
 Aspects of Nature, and which will be found suggest 
 ive of some very wide and comprehensive inquiries 
 into the influence exercised by the external world in 
 predisposing men to certain habits of thought, and 
 thus giving a particular tone to religion, arts, litera 
 ture, and, in a word, to all the principal manifesta 
 tions of the human mind." 3 
 
 1 Wallace: Natural Selection and Tropical Nature, p. 177. 
 
 3 Buckle: History of Civilization, vol. i, p. 29. s Buckle, op. cit., p. 85. 
 
52 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 I think the conclusion can be properly reached, 
 based not on a priori reasoning but sustained by 
 evidence, that environment has an enormous influ 
 ence on the mind of man, and this influence is as 
 powerful mentally as the physical characteristics of 
 a country are upon his structure ; just as the struggle 
 for existence has developed certain organs, both in 
 animals and men, and no physiologist will chal 
 lenge the correctness of this assertion. But phys 
 ical and structural variations are easily recognized ; 
 mental processes are not only slower but more 
 subtle ; the mind is concealed, and the changes that 
 affect the mind of a race are so gradual that they 
 can be ascertained only by long and laborious re 
 search. I may go further and assume an even more 
 positive tone. With the sole exception of the Ameri 
 can people it has been impossible scientifically to 
 study the influence of environment on mentality, 
 because of four obstacles. 
 
 In the first place, the early records of all other 
 races are lost in obscurity, and although we have 
 in many instances literature and traditions, we 
 have no such precise literature, no such accurate 
 record of any people from their beginning as we 
 have of the Americans. Secondly, other races have 
 been influenced in greater or lesser degree by the 
 native civilization of which they became a part. 
 This was absent in America. There was no native 
 civilization. We shall have occasion later to refer 
 to this. Again, every other race, whether as con- 
 
ENVIRONMENT ON RACE 53 
 
 queror or emigrant, that have spread beyond the 
 confines of their own country or territory, whether 
 merely as a nomadic tribe or a people with a defined 
 civilization, grafted themselves on the native stock 
 or absorbed it into themselves, their own civiliza 
 tion becoming tempered and modified in the pro 
 cess. And lastly, all other races have engaged in 
 wars and conquests, and the effect of war in the 
 formative period of national character has lasting 
 results. The American people, as we have remarked 
 in a previous chapter, engaged in war in their 
 formative period, but it was a war neither for 
 conquest nor aggression; it was a war inspired 
 by a cause unlike that of any other in history, 
 and it produced certain well-defined psychological 
 tendencies. 
 
 We shall now consider the climatal conditions 
 found in the United States and see how far-reach 
 ing they have been in the formation of American 
 character. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 CLIMATIC AMALGAMATION OF RACE 
 
 THE United States is in the temperate zone, but 
 it enjoys all variations of temperature; in some 
 parts its summers are almost tropical in their 
 intensity and the winters are arctic in their severity. 
 These wide variations in temperature in a people 
 of common stock, under one political system, in 
 spired by the same ambitions, have resulted in 
 remarkable race characteristics. The people of 
 the North of all those states lying north of the 
 fortieth degree of latitude, whose winters are long 
 and severe, but whose summers compensate, the 
 temperature rising west of the eightieth meridian - 
 have the vigor, energy, and physical alertness of the 
 people of northern Europe. South of the fortieth 
 parallel of latitude winter is milder and summer 
 long and hot, at times and in places rivaling the 
 heat of the East, but still not so hot that the white 
 man cannot labor and live without injury to his 
 health. In some parts of some of the states of the 
 South snow is practically unknown and frost is 
 rarely experienced. The long hot summers and 
 mild winters have made the Southern man differ 
 ent from the Northern; he is less energetic, more 
 inclined to take life easy, in a measure less enter- 
 
AMALGAMATION OF RACE 55 
 
 prising, and his resource and his initiative have not 
 been so highly developed; and environment has 
 also had its effect. The South was formerly purely 
 an agricultural region, and the nature of its crops 
 -cotton, tobacco, rice and the conditions under 
 which they were grown were conducive to laissez- 
 faire and invited to a leisurely life. The struggle 
 for existence pressed with less severity in the 
 South and held latent those qualities that are 
 brought out by the stress of competition or the con 
 flict with nature. Since the South has ceased to be 
 purely an agricultural region and has turned its 
 energies to manufactures, its iron furnaces and 
 cotton mills now fast competing with the North, it 
 has lost some of its former characteristics and there 
 is in progress another of those psychological trans 
 itions that have at successive periods produced 
 American racial development. The change, how 
 ever, is slow, and its full effect will not be seen in 
 this generation. 
 
 Speaking broadly, it may be said that all the 
 gradations of temperature to be found in Europe 
 are experienced in the United States, which is one 
 of the physical factors that have entered into the 
 composition of a new race. The constant effort of 
 breeders of stock and of floriculturists is to improve 
 the breed or the flower by crossing it with a strain 
 the product of a different environment, or to graft 
 on it a growth that has its own peculiarities of soil 
 and climate. Here we see the recognition of the 
 
56 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 fundamental law that in the animal and vege 
 table kingdoms what corresponds to character in 
 man in animals and fruits and flowers struc 
 ture, size, color is the result of environment. 
 Man has less scientifically endeavored to improve 
 the human race and has trusted to the happy- 
 go-lucky chance of natural selection. There is 
 to-day no unmixed race. The theory of the un- 
 vitiated strain, both in man and animals, is now 
 known to be a fallacy. The great races are races 
 of mixed blood and cross-breeding. King Cophe- 
 tua needs the blood of the beggar maid to revive 
 the royal line. Nations like trees die from the top 
 and are strengthened at the roots; they must be 
 fed from the ground up. A nation whose people 
 marry and intermarry in their own class has pro 
 nounced its doom, for strength is to be found only 
 in a judicious admixture of blood to overcome 
 the degeneration of luxury and the absence of 
 effort. 
 
 The effect on a homogeneous people living in 
 a country whose climatic variations are extreme is 
 eventually to amalgamate in the race the composite 
 climatic influence. The daughter of a Russian 
 father and a Spanish mother will, under normal 
 conditions, inherit some of the temperamental or 
 climatic qualities of one or both; and that child 
 marrying an Englishman will transmit to her child, 
 in a more or less marked degree, her own qualities 
 as well as those of its father. But between the Rus- 
 
AMALGAMATION OF RACE 57 
 
 sian and the Spaniard, between two people of alien 
 races, there is always the insurmountable barrier 
 of race and language, of customs and traditions, of 
 history and political institutions, frequently of re 
 ligion. In the United States climatic influence en 
 counters no obstacles. The man from Maine, where 
 winter is Siberian in its severity, marries a girl from 
 Louisiana, whose summer is as voluptuously en 
 ticing as that of Spain, and they move to California, 
 where in some parts roses bloom in the open air in 
 winter and in other parts the fog is as cold and 
 penetrating as it is off the English coast ; their child 
 marries a man from Dakota, where the summer is 
 dry and hot and in winter the land lies buried deep 
 under its covering of snow. But the man from 
 Maine and the woman from Louisiana, the Califor- 
 nian or the Dakotan, are as one in language, in 
 thought, in purpose, and the same ambitions ani 
 mate both ; both owe allegiance to the same political 
 institutions ; neither knows any other country which 
 means more to the one than it does to the other. A 
 woman, an alien, may merge herself in the life and 
 country of her husband, and yet there is that inde 
 finable something, the result of heredity and envi 
 ronment, that makes her a little apart from her 
 husband and his people, no matter how completely 
 she adjusts herself to her new surroundings. No 
 thing of this kind exists in the United States, where 
 the people are one people; sectional rivalries and 
 physical conditions and the influence of descent pro- 
 
58 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 duce a variation in the type, but not a departure 
 from it. 1 
 
 The United States, as a whole, enjoys about the 
 same average temperature as western Europe as 
 a whole, but the winters are much colder and the 
 summers are much warmer in America than in 
 Europe. 2 Climatically the United States is a north 
 ern and a southern country, but with distinctive 
 phenomena not elsewhere found. The isothermal 
 lines ascend as they approach New York; the tem 
 perature at fifty-two degrees of latitude in the 
 United Kingdom is similar to that at thirty-two 
 degrees of latitude in the United States, a difference 
 of nine hundred and fifty-six miles. 3 The inhab 
 itants of the British Isles, Boutmy says, can travel 
 from one end of the country to the other without 
 experiencing any change of temperature, but in the 
 United States the passage from ocean to ocean is 
 marked by frequent changes of temperature, as it is 
 also by frequent variations of soil. The soil is rich 
 and fertile in places, arid and sterile in others, but 
 the fertile area vastly overbalances the sterile re 
 gions, and the spirit of enterprise is encouraged 
 because energy intelligently directed is sure to be 
 
 1 " How rapidly nationalities merge in this country is seen in a case that is 
 not imaginary, of a young man whose father was a Frenchman and whose 
 mother was an American of English descent. His wife s mother is an Irish 
 woman, and her father a German. Thus that marriage rolled four nation 
 alities into one within two generations." Horace Graves: "The Huguenot 
 in New England," The New England Magazine, vol. xi, p. 503. 
 
 2 Channing: A Student s History of the United States, p. 2 et seq. 
 8 Boutmy: The English People, p. 4. 
 
AMALGAMATION OF RACE 59 
 
 profitably rewarded. Nature says to the American 
 that if he works hard and brings to his labor that 
 intelligence which is demanded, he can feel sure of 
 ample returns, but he must not relax his efforts. 
 
 It is one of the paradoxes of Nature, which has 
 had its effect on the character of the people, that in 
 those regions which produce the great staples to 
 support life, the wheat- and corn-growing belts, the 
 variations of temperature are extreme, intense heat 
 as well as intense cold being necessary properly to 
 germinate and ripen the crops. Hence it follows 
 that the farmer and the agricultural laborer must be 
 men of strong constitutions, able to withstand the 
 great drain on their vital forces that comes from 
 arduous labor under burning suns and the isolation 
 of long, hard winters. Boutmy quotes Leroy-Beau- 
 lieu to the effect that the extreme severity of the 
 climate in the Muscovite plains, and the great va 
 riations between the maximum and minimum tem 
 peratures, enervate and depress man instead of 
 stimulating him. The effect of winter in causing 
 mental depression has been well established in the 
 United States. It is a fact resting on competent au 
 thority that when the West was even less sparsely 
 settled than it is to-day insanity among the women 
 living in farmhouses was not infrequent; the silence, 
 the monotony, the absence of all society, the never- 
 ending vista of the snow-covered plains, deathlike 
 in their silence, with no moving creature or thing 
 to afford even a momentary diversion, unbalanced 
 
60 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 these women, their physical vitality lowered by the 
 enervating climate and unremitting toil. Men suf 
 fered less, because, while their lives were almost 
 equally monotonous, they were much in the open, 
 they went to the settlements and near-by towns ; but 
 the women saw nothing but the four walls of their 
 houses and the interminable plains gripped in the 
 iron hand of winter. 
 
 The latest evidence we have of the correspond 
 ence between climatic severity and isolation and in 
 sanity is found in the passage by the United States 
 Senate, on February 28, 1908, of a bill to increase 
 the appropriation for the care of the insane in 
 Alaska. In 1905 Congress passed a law providing 
 that "five per cent of the license moneys collected 
 from outside of the incorporated towns in the dis 
 trict of Alaska" should be devoted to the care of 
 the insane. This sum proving insufficient by reason 
 of the increase of insanity, the law of 1905 was re 
 pealed and the Secretary of the Interior was given 
 authority to draw on the Treasury for whatever 
 funds might be necessary properly to care for the 
 insane in Alaska. And in an American newspaper * 
 I find stated that the Chief Signal Officer of the 
 Army "has decided to withdraw from Alaska all 
 men of the Signal Corps who have been there for 
 two years or more." The immediate reason for this 
 decision, it is explained, is the mental breakdown of 
 Master Signal Electrician George Treffinger, who 
 
 1 The Washington Post, March 8, 1908. 
 
AMALGAMATION OF RACE 61 
 
 had been on duty in Alaska for four years. "The 
 trouble with Mr. Treffinger," the account says, "is 
 supposed to be due to the rigorous climate and the 
 hardships of service in Alaska. . . . The Treffinger 
 case is not the first in which mental trouble has re 
 sulted from long service in Alaska. Several years 
 ago an officer of the Signal Corps returned home 
 broken down in health and mentally impaired. 
 While he improved for a time, he was finally placed 
 on the retired list. Other officers, coming home 
 from long service in Alaska, are reported to have 
 exhibited abnormal mental tendencies, which, how 
 ever, disappeared after remaining in a temperate 
 climate for a short while." 
 
 It has often been erroneously asserted that the 
 fierce stress of modern competition and the excite 
 ment of city life are the inciting causes of insanity, 
 but careful investigation will show that isolation and 
 long and severe winters, to persons born and reared 
 under other circumstances, are largely responsible 
 for the increase of mental disturbance. 
 
 The physical characteristics of the United States 
 have had their effect on the American people 
 through the influence of things so much a matter 
 of course as clothing, food, and the structure of 
 houses. The great mass of Americans must be 
 warmly clad for more than half of every year ; they 
 must live in houses artificially heated, and they must 
 eat meat and other foods rich in proteids to repair 
 bodily waste. In this they are unlike the vine- 
 
62 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 growers of Italy or the planters of the West Indies, 
 where a small amount of clothing suffices and natu 
 ral heat supplies all the warmth necessary to keep 
 their houses at a comfortable temperature, and the 
 soil needs only lightly to be scratched to yield its 
 harvest. 
 
 Nor must we overlook the effect of heat on the 
 minds and bodies of men. For nearly six months 
 in the year the average mean temperature of the 
 United States, with a few isolated exceptions, is 
 higher than that of Europe, and it drains the phys 
 ical energies of Americans, who suffer intensely, 
 especially in the large cities. It is true that men and 
 women go about their allotted tasks in even the most 
 torrid days, but they are made listless, nervous, 
 irritable, and quick-tempered, and the effect is not 
 merely transitory, but produces lasting structural 
 and mental changes. Habits that have been long 
 continued are not merely second nature, but become 
 the very nature of man himself. From the begin 
 ning, Englishmen in America have been forced to 
 adapt themselves to extremes of temperature which 
 were unknown to them. The overheating of all 
 American houses in winter, which is the perpetual 
 and just complaint of every foreigner, who marvels 
 how Americans live in such a superheated atmos 
 phere, is easily explained. From the intense heat of 
 summer there is the sudden transition to the fierce 
 cold of winter, and the shock is too violent. The 
 man w r orking in the open, the farmer, the logger, the 
 
AMALGAMATION OF RACE 63 
 
 woodsman, can stand the cold, although not without 
 discomfort; but the city dweller must make artificial 
 conditions simulate the natural heat of summer. 
 These thermometric variations are not conducive 
 to poise or equability, they invite rather to nervous 
 ness and excitability; probably they are not with 
 out physiological effects. They dry up the secre 
 tions, and to keep the salivary glands moistened is 
 perhaps the reason the American indulges in such 
 copious libations of iced water; catarrh, I have been 
 told, is more prevalent in the United States than 
 elsewhere, which may be the result of excessive heat 
 in summer and the dry artificial heat of winter; the 
 unpleasant habit of expectoration so freely indulged 
 in, and the fondness of Americans for tobacco- 
 chewing, which is not confined as it is in England 
 to the lowest classes, are the mechanical efforts of 
 Nature to afford relief. But once again we see the 
 effect of heredity. The seed of this new race was 
 planted in the soil of New England and from there 
 sent forth its shoots to make a continent blossom; 
 the pioneers were the children of men who hardened 
 under the touch of long winters and withstood the 
 test of summer heat; who inured themselves to their 
 surroundings, and who were able to carry ever west 
 ward their civilization because they had been tried 
 and survived. 
 
 Two things the settler quickly learned were indis 
 pensable for his salvation heat for his body and 
 his home, and food containing the largest amount of 
 
64 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 strength-giving properties. Hence he became at an 
 early day a trapper and a hunter, for the skins of 
 the fur-bearing animals were necessary to clothe him 
 and the carcasses of some of them to feed him; he 
 felled the trees for fuel, until with greater knowledge 
 he uncovered the stored-up riches of the earth and 
 found in coal a better and more economical source 
 for the creation of heat and energy. 
 
 As powerful as human institutions, political 
 teachings, or the inspiration of religion, has been the 
 influence of Nature on American race development. 
 "The history of the United States, more than that 
 of any Old World country, is the record of its 
 physical achievements. The exploitation of virgin 
 territory by a race of extraordinary intelligence, 
 resource, and energy is the essential theme of our 
 national history. Political events and social changes 
 are conditioned on industrial evolution, and the 
 story of America can be comprehended only in the 
 light of her material aspirations and attainments." l 
 
 In America, perhaps to a greater degree than in 
 any other country of which we have intimate know 
 ledge, the basic characteristics of the race can be 
 traced to natural causes. This necessity to be 
 warmly clothed and warmly housed and well fed 
 made men from the first devote much time and 
 thought to purely material conditions, and at the 
 same time it developed to an extraordinary degree 
 the virtue of individual initiative. To suffer from 
 
 1 Coman: The Industrial History of the United States, preface, p. vii. 
 
AMALGAMATION OF RACE 65 
 
 the cold or to defy its rigor depended not upon the 
 general effort of the community as it does at the 
 present day when every activity of life is special 
 ized, but upon the skill, the resource, the industry 
 of the individual, who must match his cunning 
 against the cunning of his quarry, learn its habits, 
 display the same patience. And in this the hunts 
 man differed in no wise from the farmer, the woods 
 man, the early trader. The sense of community was 
 strong, each . man felt himself a part of the body 
 politic and social, and yet each knew that he must 
 rely on his good right arm for success. In countries 
 where life can be sustained on a handful of rice or a 
 small quantity of fruit that requires little or no cul 
 tivation and clothing is a burden, Nature does not 
 call upon her children to display their resource or 
 their initiative, but in climates where these things 
 are vital for the preservation and development of 
 life the inexorable demand must either be met with 
 the proper intelligence and skill or the race must 
 perish. The law of survival, especially in those 
 early days, has been strikingly demonstrated. Those 
 unsuited for their new environment and conditions* 
 who were too weak, or too lazy, or too ignorant to 
 adapt themselves to their physical and other sur 
 roundings, died ; the strong, the industrious, and the 
 intelligent survived and transmitted to their descend 
 ants their own qualities of mind and body. 
 
 The English people have been vastly influenced 
 by the physiography of their country, and it is 
 
66 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 peculiarly appropriate that the shoot from their 
 race that spread across the sea and from which 
 sprung a new race should have had its character 
 moulded by the same influences. It was the custom 
 of the early historians to attribute to certain influ 
 ences, political, military, dynastic, the rise and 
 fall of nations, and to find in them the causes that 
 made or wrecked nations ; and later historians, while 
 not ignoring what may be termed primary historical 
 causes, have included commerce as one of the ele 
 ments that go to the making of national character. 
 The methods of the historian an4 the political 
 psychologist differ. The latter must examine more 
 minutely remote causes, for he finds in them not 
 only the motives of action, but discovers that those 
 actions were the inexorable result of causes no more 
 to be defied or prevented than the movements of 
 the planets in their preordained orbits. No study 
 of race development can be complete unless proper 
 consideration is given to the geographic conditions 
 under which the race was nurtured. 
 
 "The effect of the size of their country can be 
 traced in the ideas of the American people, which 
 are marked by a certain largeness and daring. The 
 small territorial standards of the early European 
 settlers have become profoundly modified by Ameri 
 can continental conditions. The mere area of the 
 individual states increases from the east towards the 
 west. The commonwealths of New England seem 
 pigmies in size compared with the trans-Mississippi 
 
AMALGAMATION OF RACE 67 
 
 states. There are twenty-six states in the smaller 
 half of the country east of the Mississippi, and only 
 twenty-three states and territories west of it." 1 
 
 The larger area of the Western States show how 
 "profoundly modified" the American tempera 
 ment has become by American conditions. Begin 
 ning as an Englishman, accustomed to think in 
 small areas, the geographical unit being the com 
 pact English county, it was natural for the pioneer 
 to carry his conception of size with him and to 
 begin his planting on a diminutive scale. The 
 scattered and independent settlements and colo 
 nies, finally merged into states, were still to be held 
 within restricted areas, because the imagination of 
 man at that time was not vivid enough to grasp 
 the truth, so foreign to all past experience and tra 
 dition, that danger did not necessarily reside in 
 mere size, and that a political system was not de 
 pendent upon its geographic limits. It was only 
 when the Englishman ceased to be an Englishman 
 and became an American under the influence of 
 American conditions that he cast off his insularity 
 and became continental; it was then he quickly 
 adapted himself to the wide range and vision that 
 the size of the continent inspired, and size no longer 
 had terrors for him. The men who went from 
 New England to settle the West took on the large 
 ness of the domain over which they ruled. To this 
 day the less confined, broader view of the Westerner 
 
 1 Semple: American History and Us Geographic Conditions, p. 242. 
 
68 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 is contrasted with the more rigid conception of life 
 of the descendants of the Pilgrims and the Puritans. 
 Between the men of the East and those of the West 
 there is a difference, the difference that always 
 distinguishes an older and a newer civilization; 
 that is marked when the older civilization develops 
 under the stimulus of man touching elbows with 
 his fellow man and the majesty of Nature is less 
 fearful; and the newer, when men are isolated and 
 "range after range of mountains, and mile after 
 mile of rugged plateau separate them from the 
 seats of civilization and government." 
 
 To sum up and to bear in mind the physiographic 
 conditions of the United States as affecting a people 
 native to the soil or quickly brought in harmony 
 with it by the force of circumstances, these are the 
 principal things to be noticed : The climate is gen 
 erally drier, the alternating seasons both cooler and 
 hotter than those of northern Europe; because of 
 the relatively unclouded sky there is more sunlight. 1 
 There is a greater quantity of ozone in the northern 
 latitudes, and therefore it is more stimulating and 
 produces a kinetic energy and vitality that finds 
 its expression in constant activity and restlessness, 
 both mental and physical. 
 
 This was quickly recognized by the first settlers. 
 "Experience doth manifest," one of their chroni 
 clers writes, "that there is hardly a more healthful 
 place to be found in the world that agreeth better 
 
 1 Shaler: Nature and Man in America, p. 264. 
 
AMALGAMATION OF RACE 69 
 
 with our English bodies. Many that have been 
 weak and sickly in Old England, by coming hither 
 have been thoroughly healed, and grown healthful 
 and strong. For here is an extraordinary clear and 
 dry air, that is of most healing nature to all such as 
 are of a cold, melancholy, phlegmatic, rheumatic 
 temper of body." And he ends his glowing tribute 
 to the life-giving properties of New England air 
 with this happy epigram : " I think it is a wise course 
 for all cold complexions to come to take physic in 
 New England; for a sup of New England s air is 
 better than a whole draught of Old England s 
 ale." 1 
 
 The "keen, alert mind" and the "incessant, 
 unremitting energy" of the present-day American 
 are ascribed by an American writer to climatic 
 influences, and he finds in the so-called "cold 
 wave," or sudden drop of temperature accompany 
 ing a downrush of cool air, something that clearly 
 differentiates American from European weather. 
 This is the theory of Gilbert H. Grosvenor, 2 and it 
 is this cold wave, he believes, that stirs up the 
 sluggish immigrant and fires his ambition. "We 
 Americans," he says, "are always talking about 
 our mountains of gold and coal and iron, of our 
 fat fields of corn and wheat, but few of us ever 
 realize that we have in our climate a great advant 
 age over all other nations. In the cold wave, which 
 
 1 Young s Chronicles of Massachusetts, pp. 251-252. 
 3 The Century Magazine, June, 1905. 
 
70 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 in summer and winter so often sweeps across the 
 land and sends the thermometer tumbling thirty 
 degrees in almost as many minutes, we have a con 
 stant, a never diminishing asset of priceless value. 
 The wave acts as a tonic, but, unlike any tonic 
 made by man, it carries no reaction. No other land 
 has cold waves like ours. To the cold dry air of 
 this periodic cold wave, which brings extraordinary 
 changes of temperature, we owe much of the keen, 
 alert mind, the incessant, unremitting energy of 
 our American race. . . . 
 
 "The cold wave is born in the heavens miles 
 above our heads, usually over the Rocky Moun 
 tains plateau. Suddenly a mass of bitterly cold air 
 will tumble down upon Montana. It rushes down 
 as though poured through an enormous funnel. 
 As it falls it gains momentum, and, reaching the 
 earth, spreads over the Mississippi Valley and then 
 over the Atlantic States, covering them like a 
 blanket. It scatters the foul, logy, breath-soaked 
 atmosphere in our towns and cities, and puts ginger 
 into the air. We fill our lungs with it and live. 
 New waves are always coming, following each 
 other in regular procession like the waves on a 
 seashore." 
 
 On the Atlantic and Pacific coasts there are 
 numerous good harbors; on the Southern coast 
 from Hatteras around Florida to Mexico, there are 
 fewer ports. "Despite the imperfection of the 
 harbors from Hatteras southward, the coast of 
 
AMALGAMATION OF RACE 71 
 
 North America is, on the whole, the most com 
 pletely maritime of any continent except Europe. 
 Its landlocked waters, including the Great Lakes, 
 are of vast extent; the total number of excellent 
 ports possibly exceeds that of the Old World." * 
 Rainfall, except in the arid and subarid regions of 
 the West and Southwest, is generally distributed, 
 and the average precipitation is of sufficient vol 
 ume to nourish the soil and produce abundant 
 crops. The great climatal variations make it pos 
 sible for all cereals and fruits found in the temper 
 ate zone to be grown, and in those regions where 
 the temperature is subtropical the products of the 
 soil show their exotic origin. Vast plains are the 
 breeding-grounds of the animals that man needs 
 for food and his convenience; forests and fields are 
 the habitation of birds and game ; the waters, both 
 coastal and inland, teem with many varieties of 
 edible fish; mineral wealth is inexhaustible. These 
 things the size of the continent, the climate, the 
 rainfall, the abundance of food are the elements 
 that go to make a race what it is and produce 
 their clearly defined psychological characteristics. 
 
 1 Shaler, op. cit., p. 217. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE OLD IN THE NEW ENVIRONMENT 
 
 THERE came in the first place to America English 
 men from a small, compact country to whom the 
 extremes of heat or cold were unknown, who had 
 been accustomed to an almost stable climate, so 
 that it justified the saying of Charles II that it "in 
 vited men abroad more days in the year and more 
 hours in the day than another country." Its soil 
 was fertile and yielded its reward to effort intelli 
 gently directed, and yet not so luxuriant that it did 
 not demand persistent industry. Remote as the 
 villages of Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire and 
 Yorkshire were from London in those days, they 
 were still not isolated from the capital, and their 
 people enjoyed that sense of security that comes 
 from contact with the great world. England in the 
 beginning of the seventeenth century was a land of 
 cities and towns and villages, whose people tilled 
 their farms and went about their ordained tasks in 
 an orderly manner and whose civilization and con 
 ventions had come to them as a natural growth. 
 
 The Englishmen in America faced an unbroken 
 wilderness, stern, harsh, forbidding. Of the im 
 mensity of the country they knew nothing, and not 
 being gifted with the vivid imagination of the 
 
ENVIRONMENT 73 
 
 Southerner they dreamed still less. What they con 
 fronted was Nature in her most savage mood. 
 
 "In similar circumstances Popham s settlers had 
 despaired and fled ; but the Plymouth Pilgrims were 
 strong in religious faith, and in the sense of a divine 
 mission." These Englishmen, as Fiske tells us, had 
 heard of warm countries like Italy and cold coun 
 tries like Russia ; harsh experience soon taught them 
 that there are climates in which the summer of 
 Naples may alternate with the winter of Moscow. 
 As if to forbid them entrance the water froze when 
 the Pilgrims landed; consumption soon reaped its 
 rich harvest. These intrepid adventurers learned 
 then that truth which not until nearly three centu 
 ries later did science establish that between Nature 
 and man wages a never-ending war, and only man 
 fit to survive lives. There at the very beginning the 
 choice was forced upon them either to subdue Na 
 ture and make of her their slave or surrender to her. 
 They conquered, but the far-reaching consequences 
 of that struggle between man and Nature we are 
 only now beginning to appreciate. 
 
 These Englishmen, these pioneers of their race, 
 must subjugate Nature, who assumed a form hith 
 erto unknown to them, and whose moods were so 
 varied. It was from the beginning a savage, brutal, 
 unrelenting fight; and it would result in making men 
 morose, taciturn, harsh, weighed down by the im 
 mensity of the struggle, despairing, hopeless almost 
 of overcoming their gigantic adversary; or it would 
 
74 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 make them self-reliant, determined to the verge of 
 obstinacy, full of hope, supremely confident in their 
 ultimate success. If the weight of Nature did not 
 press upon them and crush them and deaden all 
 power of imagination, and imagination is only 
 another name for hope, then it would make them 
 take everything in the spirit of a rude jest, a Gar 
 gantuan practical joke, that was not enjoyed, 
 but pride forbade that they should wince. And 
 that was their attitude. They jested with Nature, 
 they gave back to her what she gave to them, 
 and it made them rough, boisterous, fond of horse 
 play and the commonplace, and yet could it be 
 otherwise? it produced a certain gravity and 
 melancholy. This has left its ineradicable impress 
 on national character. We have to-day the Ameri 
 can love of fun, which must be obvious and broad 
 without being coarse. Dainty humor, that lightness 
 and delicacy of touch for which the French are 
 famous, does not appeal to them; and of wit, as 
 distinguished from humor, there is almost no na 
 tional appreciation. The screaming farce rather 
 than the gossamer comedy, whose words are as 
 elusive almost as the intangible essence of the per 
 fume of the forest, is their measure of enjoyment. 
 It has come to be believed that the Americans 
 have a livelier sense of the ridiculous than any other 
 people, but this is one of those cases of endowing 
 a race with mythical qualities. Exaggeration, rough 
 caricature, they understand, but they have no nice 
 
ENVIRONMENT 75 
 
 perception of proportion or perspective, and with 
 out that a fine discernment of the absurd is im 
 possible; it, is their extravagance of emotion that 
 makes them so prone to the use of the superlative. 
 At one time I believed that this national weakness 
 for the superlative was simply blague, but I now 
 know that it is constitutional. As deficient in the 
 power to estimate true values as certain persons 
 are wanting in the ability to differentiate colors or 
 recognize harmony, their reflection of life is one of 
 those convex mirrors so mirth-provoking to the 
 yokel, who sees his features enormously distorted 
 and grins back in delight at the exaggerated like 
 ness. It is this constitutional tendency for exagger 
 ation and the inability to measure men and things 
 for what they really are that is responsible for the 
 American belief, which is the cardinal doctrine of 
 their faith, in the sw^anlike attribute of American 
 geese, in the "bigness" of their country and the 
 extraordinary ability of their men; in this respect 
 similar to little children who, having mastered the 
 elementary multiplication table, talk of millions 
 and think, to their limited capacity, in billions. 
 There is seldom a man elected to an office (immedi 
 ately after his election), whether it be constable or 
 President, who is not either in intellect or virtue 
 without a peer, whose genius is not the admiration 
 of all the world ; without discriminating whether his 
 place was the gift of a boss or the recognition of 
 real merit. If the Americans had a keener appre- 
 
76 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 ciation of the ridiculous, their newspapers would 
 be less amusing, but they would also be more 
 informing. No newspaper, for instance, with a 
 sense of proportion would attempt seriously to 
 defend its cartoonist by bracketing in the same 
 sentence the name of a quite unknown and crude 
 amateur and Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Phid 
 ias! 1 Yet the incongruity and absurdity of the 
 juxtaposition does not make the paper the laughing 
 stock of the country. But it is a dangerous pastime 
 for the inmates of glass houses to throw stones, and 
 as hardly any newspaper excludes the superlative 
 from its vocabulary there is reason why criticism 
 is hushed. 
 
 In a democracy man is much given to the con 
 templation of himself, and there is tendency to 
 exalt the individual and minimize the force of 
 organized society. Where classes exist the person 
 is of less consequence than the class he represents, 
 the order whose champion he is, the traditions he 
 defends. What gives weight to the utterance of the 
 possessor of a historical name in a monarchy is not 
 alone his talents or his virtues, but the feeling that 
 through him speaks the historic past, that he voices 
 not merely his own opinion but that of his class. 
 Democracy undoubtedly is a spur to individual 
 initiative, but man becomes so proud of what he has 
 accomplished that he is apt to forget the obligation 
 he owes the state. 
 
 1 San Francisco Examiner, July, 1908. 
 
ENVIRONMENT 77 
 
 It was an acute English observer who was over- 
 impressed by the seeming gravity and melancholy 
 of the Americans. He observed them at work, on 
 the streets, in traveling, at play, and it was his con 
 clusion that they were a sombre race. Compared 
 with the volatile Latin untempered by the restrain 
 ing influence of the Saxon strain, or the mercurial 
 Celt, or even the phlegmatic Teuton, whose phlegm 
 is partly the conventional habit of controlling emo 
 tions, the American appears markedly more quiet 
 and as if weighed down by the burden of life, and 
 yet distinguished by alertness that sets him apart. 
 Had the original English stock spread across the 
 continent undiluted by the blood of Europe, we 
 should to-day have in the United States not a new 
 race but simply a variation of the parent stem. It 
 is this foreign element absorbed into the native 
 stock (meaning by this not the indigenous race, the 
 Indians, but the English, who in the second genera 
 tion became native to the soil) that has been one 
 of the causes to produce the new race, and that, in 
 addition to the influence of environment and a 
 political code that is not less a moral and social law ? 
 explains the many contradictions in the American 
 character. The gravity, the melancholy, that feeling 
 of national despair that finds its expression in the 
 savage attacks of the press on the motives and 
 integrity of public men, which is almost the ago 
 nized cry whether anything is worth while, is the 
 spirit of the Puritan, which for three centuries has 
 
78 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 quickened the conscience of America and still 
 lives. And the cynical indifference so often dis 
 played, the levity with which things spiritual are 
 treated, the sudden flaming emotion frequently akin 
 to hysteria, the balance and sound judgment after 
 the first gust of passion has spent itself, the feverish 
 haste and the dogged persistence, the selfishness 
 and the altruism, the suspicion and the almost 
 childlike confidence, the self-consciousness and the 
 poise, these are the product of environment, of 
 blood, and political and social institutions. 
 
 It is only the superficial observer who can dog 
 matically assert what the American temperament is. 
 It is as true to say that the American is grave as it is 
 to say that he is volatile; as true as it would be to 
 say that America has mountains and plains ; as mis 
 leading as it would be to say that its striking phys 
 ical characteristics are mountains and to ignore the 
 fact of its plains or rivers ; as to say that the soil is 
 influenced by the heat and to disregard the fructi 
 fying effect of cold. The American volubly strikes 
 up a chance acquaintance with a man he may 
 happen to meet in a railway carriage, while the 
 Englishman retains his reserve and is oblivious of 
 his fellow passengers, and the Englishman insists 
 that the American is obtrusive and has no concep 
 tion of dignity or reticence, forgetting that a social 
 and political system that recognizes caste has a 
 manner of expression entirely different from that in 
 which labor may occupy the throne; that, as was 
 
ENVIRONMENT 79 
 
 said of the Florentines, the consciousness of having 
 not simply the right to vote but the chance of being 
 voted for must make every man feel within himself 
 the power of sovereignty. A people cannot be de 
 liberately guilty of national hypocrisy and not de 
 generate. The American must either believe in his 
 articles of faith the universal equality of man - 
 or else go to destruction; for faith, a profound 
 conviction, a belief in something, whether in the 
 divine right of kings or the majesty of the will of 
 the people, is necessary to hold society together. 
 " Hypatia had taken aw^ay the living God and given 
 him instead the four elements." It does not com 
 pensate, for the elements are unstable and society 
 must anchor itself to a rock. The American no 
 more than the Englishman is a conscious national 
 hypocrite. Each recites his creed and believes it, 
 but in this as in other things a definition of terms is 
 necessary. 
 
 The struggle in which the founders of a new race 
 engaged developed them physically and materially, 
 but it dwarfed them spiritually. I do not use this 
 word in the sense it is commonly employed. It con 
 notes neither religion nor the spirit of religion, al 
 though the deep-seated devotion to religion, which 
 was the essence of the Puritan character, was later 
 bruised by the struggle. By spiritual I mean what 
 Carlyle terms "our thinking." "In our inward, as 
 in our outward world, what is mechanical lies open 
 to us; not what is dynamical and has vitality. Of 
 
80 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 our Thinking, we might say, it is the mere upper 
 surface that we shape into articulate though ts;- 
 underneath the region of argument and conscious 
 discourse, lies the region of meditation; here, in its 
 quiet mysterious depth, dwells what vital force is in 
 us; here, if ought is to be created and not merely 
 manufactured and communicated, must the work go 
 on. Manufacture is intelligible, but trivial; Crea 
 tion is great, and cannot be understood." 1 
 
 This vital force lying in its quiet mysterious 
 depths, latent but to be quickened into life by the 
 spark of genius, remained inarticulate. " Why did 
 poetry appear so brightly after the battle of Ther 
 mopylae and Salamis, and quite turn away her face 
 and wings from those of Lexington and Bunker s 
 Hill ?" Carlyle asks, and inadequately answers," The 
 Greeks were a poetical people, the Americans are 
 not; that is to say, it appeared because it did 
 appear!" 2 It would have been more scientific and 
 more in consonance with the truth of race develop 
 ment had Carlyle explained that the Greek, living 
 under soft skies and in the midst of color, which was 
 a background to his domestic life, in whom the 
 sense of the aesthetic had been highly cultivated, 
 was stimulated to write poetry ; he felt the imperious 
 demand of his nature, and knew that he could com 
 mand his audience ; while the American, pioneering 
 into the unbroken wilderness, wresting from the 
 
 1 Carlyle: Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, vol. xiv, p. 347. 
 
 2 Carlyle: op. cit., p. 255. 
 
ENVIRONMENT 81 
 
 soil his precarious existence, awed by the immensity 
 and savagery of creation, felt his own insignificance. 
 And all wares, even intellectual wares, are produced 
 in the hope of finding a market. After Thermopy 
 lae and Salamis there was an audience and a market 
 for poetry and there was a profit or money in pro 
 ducing it; but those embattled farmers who were 
 called from the plow to the battlefield, and from 
 the battlefield returned to the plow, whose shot 
 fired at Lexington was heard round the world, had 
 no time to write or think poetry. There were 
 sterner things to do, and they were done. Had 
 these people, as Campbell says of the Dutch, also 
 produced a Homer, a Dante, or a Shakespeare, they 
 would have been a miracle and not a growth; and 
 the American people, we cannot too often repeat, 
 are not a miracle but a natural growth. 
 
 It is a well-established fact that the more primi 
 tive a people the higher the birth rate, and New 
 England demonstrated the truth of this law. 
 Men and women married early and bred fast. Of 
 Mrs. Sarah Thayer, who died in 1751, a local bard 
 recorded : 
 
 * * Also she was a fruitful vine. 
 
 The truth I may relate, 
 
 Fourteen was of her body born 
 
 And lived to man s estate. 
 
 * * From these did spring a numerous race 
 
 One hundred thirty- two; 
 Sixty and six each sex alike, 
 As I declare to you. 
 
82 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 And one thing more remarkable, 
 
 Which here I shall record: 
 She d fourteen children with her 
 At the table of our Lord." l 
 
 But before Mrs. Thayer s time, in the previous 
 century, although the birth rate was very high, the 
 mortality, especially among children, was equally 
 great, and the population was at once abundantly 
 replenished and ruthlessly weeded. "Like a tribe of 
 savage men or wild beasts, it was exposed to a pitiless 
 process of selection. Such a process must conduce to 
 the physical vigor of a race ; it would develop those 
 qualities which accompany physical vigor and de 
 pend on it. But there are other qualities to which it 
 would prove fatal. That the spirit of a Shelley could 
 ever have shaped itself in the life of New England 
 was impossible. But the impossibility dated from 
 a stage earlier than that of training and culture. 
 The birth of a possible Shelley in a Puritan house 
 hold would have been a striking instance of what 
 physiologists call atavism. But even if the portent 
 had occurred, we may be pretty sure that died in 
 infancy would have been the only record of it in 
 the family register. Physical selection was part of 
 the process which was forcing the character of the 
 American Puritan into a narrow and rigid mould." 2 
 
 Wordsworth could sing of Nature and thrill to 
 the carol of feathered songsters where all around 
 him was orderly cultivation and birds nested in 
 
 1 Adams: Three Episodes of Massachusetts History, vol. ii, p. 610. 
 3 Doyle: English Colonies in America, vol. iii, p. 7. 
 
ENVIRONMENT 83 
 
 the eaves of barns, and church steeples softened 
 into the beauties of graceful age by time. The 
 pioneer and the whole people were pioneers 
 saw in the sunrise only the call to another day s 
 toil; there was to him no music in the joyous note 
 of the birds; it was simply a warning to protect his 
 crops from their ravages and to mark the chang 
 ing seasons. He looked on neither eaves nor 
 steeples. 
 
 I have been thinking all day," said gently the Puritan maiden, 
 * Dreaming all night, and thinking all day, of the hedge-rows of 
 
 England, 
 
 They are in blossom now, and the country is all like a garden; 
 Thinking of lanes and fields, and the song of the lark and the 
 
 linnet, 
 
 Seeing the village street, and familiar faces of neighbors. . . . 
 You will say it is wrong, but I cannot help it; I almost 
 Wish myself back in Old England, I feel so lonely and wretched." * 
 
 From Nature savage and spiteful as he knew it 
 the pioneer turned to Nature idealized as the litera 
 ture of his youth pictured it and found there his 
 solace, regretting what he had lost, perhaps, but 
 animated by that spirit of hope and determination 
 that had sent him forth fearlessly to find liberty; 
 resolute, courageous, unafraid, but with no desire 
 to sing the praises of the Great Mother, stern, 
 forbidding, revengeful. 
 
 1 Longfellow: The Courtship of Miles Siandish. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 NEW ENGLAND THE CRADLE OF RACE 
 
 THE history of the United States has been a defi 
 ance of precedent and the blazing of a new path in 
 the trackless wilds of social progress. The impulse 
 that led to the English colonization of America 
 was different from that which had controlled other 
 nations in their attempts to found colonies. "The 
 dawn of the seventeenth century rose on a some 
 what changed England. Englishmen filled with the 
 new wine of the Renaissance and united under a 
 queen whose rule, despite all its craft and mean 
 ness, appealed intensely to their imagination, had 
 dreamt dreams and seen visions. A generation suc 
 ceeded, not less enterprising, but more patient, more 
 self-denying, more sane. The conception of colo 
 nies as centres from which Christianity might be 
 spread through savage lands did not altogether dis 
 appear, nor did English emigrants at once give up 
 the idea of rivaling Spain in the race for gold. But 
 these ideas fell into the background. Colonization 
 designed to provide home for surplus population, 
 to expand alike the imports and exports of Eng 
 land, and thereby to develop her naval resources, 
 now became the dominant motive." 
 
 1 Cambridge Modern History, vol. vii, p. 4 
 
THE CRADLE OF RACE 85 
 
 Remembering this, bearing clearly in mind the 
 dominating motive that led to the English migration 
 to America in the seventeenth century, we shall be 
 able to understand why it was inevitable that these 
 pioneers of a new race should absorb the charac 
 teristics of their soil and the land which it was their 
 mission to subjugate. Whether they were divinely 
 inspired, as some writers would have us believe, 
 whether it was merely one of those accidents with 
 which the pages of history are crowded that brought 
 the storm-tossed Mayflower to her haven in Cape 
 Cod Bay instead of finding refuge in the Delaware 
 as had been planned, is of all things the least mate 
 rial. What is vital to grasp is that this little band 
 came to America as "adventurers," as the word was 
 then used, which corresponds to the sense in which 
 we use the word "exploiters" now; not as "pro 
 moters," not as mere transients, but as settlers. 
 England, France, Spain had hitherto sent their sons 
 to cross the sea with a twofold purpose in view: 
 God was to be glorified and the might of the nation 
 magnified by the cross of Christ upraised before 
 savages, who incidentally were to be spoiled of their 
 gold. Nothing is more delightful than the delicious 
 naivete of the early chroniclers, who in their uncon 
 scious simplicity give themselves away at every 
 opportunity and are as obvious as children. 
 
 "Then we demand farther what was the cause 
 of his being in this place [Dominica], and how 
 he came thither; he answered, That the King of 
 
86 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 Spain did every yeere, send out of every great 
 monastery certaine Friars into the remote parts of 
 the Indies, both to seeke to convert the Savages, 
 as also to seeke out what benefits or commodities 
 might be had in those parts." 1 
 
 But neither England, nor France, nor Spain 
 understood the philosophy of colonization as colo 
 nization, beginning with the settlement of America, 
 has expanded to the present day. Colonies sepa 
 rated from the mother country by oceans, where 
 the power of government quickly went into the 
 hands of the people instead of being autocratically 
 retained by civil or military governors, where from 
 the beginning the spirit of self-government, and self- 
 reliance, and independence was the spirit of insti 
 tutions, this conception of colonization, I repeat, 
 was unknown to political philosophy until the set 
 tlement of the New World by Englishmen. 
 
 In tracing the different methods by which nations 
 have been made, Fiske contrasts the Roman and 
 the English. The former, he says, may be briefly 
 described "as conquest with incorporation, but with 
 out representation/ the latter differing "in a fea 
 ture of most profound significance; it contains the 
 principle of representation." 2 Mr. Fiske with his 
 lucid insight has explained one of the reasons why 
 England succeeded where Rome failed, but I am in 
 clined to believe that even more important than the 
 
 1 Chatton s Voyage, 1606. 
 
 3 Fiske: The Beginnings of New England, p. 12 et seq. 
 
THE CRADLE OF RACE 87 
 
 principle of representation great as that principle 
 is, and I would by no means be understood as hold 
 ing it lightly or detracting from its true value in colo 
 nization is the spirit of the Englishman, whether 
 inborn or acquired no one can say, that leads him as 
 a colonizer to look upon his migration not merely as 
 a temporary sojourn, but as the beginning of a new 
 life and the founding of a home in a new land that 
 henceforth is to be his land. One reason offered for 
 the failure of the French as colonizers in our day is 
 the intense sentimental longing of the Frenchman 
 for his own country, which is so much a part of him 
 self that he cannot be content anywhere else. 1 The 
 English may be less sentimental than the French 
 - there is no scientific instrument yet devised for 
 the measurement of emotions or more easily 
 adaptable to new environment; whatever the rea 
 son, the colonizer in the early days went forth with 
 the firm purpose to bide in the land of his promise, 
 as his descendant of to-day, the emigrant, turns his 
 back on the land of his birth to find a new home 
 across the seas. To employ a modern simile, colo 
 nizers before that historic departure from Plymouth 
 in 1620 were always careful to provide themselves 
 with return tickets, while beginning with that day 
 men concerned themselves only with the means of 
 reaching their destination and gave no thought of 
 how they were to come back. 
 
 1 "A Briton, while he has an abstract reverence for the island of his 
 origin, has rarely the clinging attachment to its soil which a Frenchman has 
 to the land of France." Bodley: France, vol. i, p. 233. 
 
88 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 We are impressed by another extraordinary cir 
 cumstance in connection with this establishment of 
 the first colony founded under the new philosophy. 
 Hitherto England and France and Spain had sent 
 out expeditions whose members were either soldiers 
 or priests, frankly for conquest; and the sword and 
 the cross were so frequently found on the same hilt 
 that it was not always easy to determine whether its 
 owner was habited in coat of mail or cassock. The 
 passengers of the Mayflower were drawn from a 
 different class of society. They were neither sol 
 diers, buccaneers, freebooters, licensed pirates, nor 
 priests. On the roll we find the name of only one 
 man who had made arms his profession, that 
 doughty old captain, Miles Standish, whose mili 
 tary knowledge served the colonists in good stead 
 when they fought for their existence against the 
 Indians; but who is better known to fame as the 
 romantic hero of a mythical incident that Long 
 fellow created and the world generally has accepted 
 as history. Of priests there w r ere none. To minis 
 ter to their spiritual welfare they had only one "lay 
 reader." 
 
 They were neither soldiers nor priests, these 
 founders of a race ; what, then, were they ? They 
 can best be described, in terms that are easily intel 
 ligible to-day, as members of the middle and lower 
 middle classes; men from the shop and the farm; 
 men not without education and culture, but who 
 were not readily to be distinguished from the great 
 
THE CRADLE OF RACE 89 
 
 mass of their fellows, some of whom might perhaps 
 gain fame in the narrow field of established routine, 
 but who had not yet arrived. They were " used to 
 a plain country life and the innocent trade of hus 
 bandry," one of their admirers has written. 1 But 
 what was common to all of them, which was the 
 dower of inheritance and the unconscious influence 
 of their environment, was a sense of order and sys 
 tem, of thrift and prudent management, of that bent 
 of mind, in fact, that is commercial rather than 
 artistic. These men had in them the qualities that 
 everywhere, at all times, under all circumstances, 
 make good men of business, and this faculty was 
 given almost instant expression. The systematic 
 methods that were adopted in the establishment of 
 the settlements and their governments, that began 
 with the drawing up of the compact in the cabin of 
 the Mayflower, which in its phraseology and pur 
 poses suggests the scrivener rather than the soldier, 
 that later expanded into a more complex social and 
 political code as the needs of the colonists made 
 necessary, indicated that form of executive ability 
 which is the special attribute of a commercial 
 people. We find little evidence of military ability 
 or the influence of militarism in the first century of 
 the American colonies. There was a savage foe to 
 fight, and from the beginning measures had to be 
 concerted for defense and offense, but they were 
 incidental; they were necessary for the preservation 
 
 1 Byington: The Puritan in England and in New England, p. 53. 
 
90 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 and protection of society; they were part of the 
 day s work, but they were not undertaken for the 
 pure love of fighting. 
 
 Even less do we find any evidence of an artistic 
 spirit or a love of art pervading the people. Either 
 they were people to whom art in their former sur 
 roundings had made no appeal or in whom the 
 artistic feeling was checked and stifled by the in 
 tense concentration of all their faculties on the 
 problem how to solve the struggle for existence. It 
 is difficult, impossible in fact, to determine to which 
 cause we must look for the true explanation, and 
 while, of course, we must not forget the underlying 
 influences of the Puritan character and the founda 
 tion on which the Puritan state was laid, it seems 
 almost incredible that a body of English men and 
 English women of that day, of intelligence and not 
 without education, could be almost primitive in 
 having no appreciation of art or content not to 
 attempt to give it expression. The true explana 
 tion, I believe, is the one that has already been 
 advanced: the material struggle was too insistent 
 to afford opportunity for anything else. If this rea 
 soning is sound, it is psychologically of great im 
 portance, for it proves that the aesthetic civilization 
 of England, at that day highly developed, was not 
 transplanted and did not put forth new roots in the 
 new soil, but for a time withered and only came to 
 life again at a later period. And perhaps more im 
 portant than all, we see why the American comes 
 
THE CRADLE OF RACE 91 
 
 naturally by his love of and aptitude for business. 
 He is simply fulfilling the law of heredity. It is not 
 alone the sins of the father that are visited upon the 
 children of unborn generations, but also the bent of 
 the father s mind which is transmitted. The fathers 
 of the race were men of business, men who were 
 fond of trade and to whom commerce was a passion, 
 and their children have followed in their footsteps. 
 We shall have occasion later to examine into this 
 question more in detail. 
 
 It is proper here to call the attention of the 
 reader to what thus far may have appeared an 
 anachronism. In logically studying the develop 
 ment of the American character, I have begun 
 with the Pilgrim migration, ignoring, for the pre 
 sent, the earlier settlement of Virginia. Were this 
 a history of the American people instead of a study 
 of race growth, it would be proper to begin at the 
 beginning with the first settlement of the English 
 in America, at Jamestown, and, using that as the 
 foundation on which was reared the superstructure 
 of an enduring civilization, employ the chronolog 
 ical method to show how stone was laid on stone 
 until the completed edifice crowned the labors 
 of the master builders. But the coming of the Eng 
 lish to Virginia in the first decade of the seven 
 teenth century was a thing trivial compared with 
 the momentous consequences that followed from 
 the landing of that little band of pioneers on the 
 bleak shores of Massachusetts fourteen years later. 
 
92 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 Had the English occupation of America proceeded 
 along the lines that were first established, there 
 would have been indeed a Nova Albion to redound 
 to the glory of English conquest and fulfill the 
 dreams of Raleigh and Gilbert and those other 
 adventurers of undaunted courage and splendid 
 audacity and superb imagination who laid the 
 foundation for England s greatness, commercial 
 prosperity, and peculiar genius for the develop 
 ment and government of alien lands and peoples, 
 but the psychological results would have been dif 
 ferent. The English went to Jamestown as up to 
 that time they had gone elsewhere, with two dis 
 tinct objects in view. They went to find wealth, 
 the fabulous gold that they believed was to be 
 obtained without effort, and to provide an outlet 
 for a population that even then pressed upon the 
 limits of subsistence. 
 
 "Their principal reason for colonizing these 
 parts is to give an outlet to so many idle and 
 wretched people as they have in England, and 
 thus to prevent the dangers that may be feared 
 from them," Don Alonso de Velasco, the Spanish 
 Ambassador, wrote from London in March, 1611, 
 to His Catholic Majesty. Spanish testimony of that 
 day cannot be accepted without due allowance 
 being made for prejudice and jealousy, but no 
 such motives governed the English in their own 
 frank admissions. In "A Letter from the Council 
 and Company of the honourable Plantation of 
 
THE CRADLE OF RACE 93 
 
 Virginia to the Lord Mayor, Alderman and Com 
 panies of London" (probably written in 1608), we 
 find the first suggestion of that vicious scheme 
 of "assisted immigration" that so seriously em 
 barrassed the United States two centuries and a 
 half later. 
 
 "Whereas the Lords of his Majesties Council," 
 the Virginia Company writes, "Commissioners for 
 the Subsidy, desirous to ease the city and suburbs 
 of a swarme of unnecessary inmates, as a contyn- 
 ual cause of death and famine, and the very orig 
 inal cause of all the Plagues that happen in this 
 Kingdom, have advised your Lordship and your 
 Brethren in a case of state, to make some voluntary 
 contribucon for their remove into this plantation 
 of Virginia, which we understand you all seemeth 
 to like as an action pleasing to God and happy for 
 this Common Wealth." 
 
 The English in the beginning of their coloniza 
 tion had to serve both God and Mammon and 
 appeal to the spirit of the age by a judicious mix 
 ture of theology and greed. 
 
 "And thus, as an action concerning God, and 
 the advancement of religion, the present ease, 
 future honor and safety of the Kingdome, the 
 strength of our Navy, the visible hope of a great 
 and rich trade, and many secrett blessings not yett 
 discovered; wee wholly comend the cause to the 
 wisdome and zeal of your self and your Brethren, 
 
 1 Brown: The Genesis of the United States, vol. i, p. 252. 
 
94 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 and you and it, and us all to the holy proteccon of 
 the almightie." l 
 
 "The eyes of all Europe are looking upon our 
 endeavors to spread the Gospell among the Heathen 
 people of Virginia, to plant our English nation 
 there, and to settle in those parts which may be 
 peculiar to our nation, so that we may thereby be 
 secured from being beaten out of all profitts of 
 trade, by our more industrious neighbors." 2 
 
 This, then, was the controlling motive of the 
 men who established the first English colony in 
 Virginia the greed for gain and a convenient 
 way of disposing of "a swarme of unnecessary 
 inmates." But far different were the motives that 
 animated the Pilgrims. They embarked on the 
 unknown not in quest of gold, not for the glory of 
 God, not even "for the future honor and safety 
 of the Kingdome," but simply that they might 
 be permitted to live their own lives in their 
 own way unhampered by fanatical or tyrannical 
 rulers. 3 
 
 1 "A Letter from the Council and Company of the honourable Plantation 
 in Virginia to the Lord Mayor, Alderman and Companies of London," prob 
 ably written in 1608 or 1609. 
 
 2 Brown: The Genesis of the United States, vol. i, p. 463. 
 
 3 In accordance with the spirit of the age the propitiation of God must be 
 sought to bring success to a commercial venture, and the governor and coun 
 cil of the Massachusetts Company, writing to Endicott, tell him "that the 
 propagation of the Gospel is the thing we do profess above all to be our aim 
 in settling this Plantation"; and the pious hope is expressed that "the Indians 
 may, in God s appointed time, be reduced to the obedience of the Gospel of 
 Christ." The charter avers that "to win and invite the natives of the country 
 to the knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Saviour of Man- 
 
THE CRADLE OF RACE 95 
 
 It was the difference in character between the 
 adventurer, the rover, the soldier of fortune, the 
 man with the insatiable Wanderlust, who, with 
 childish credulity, despite his experience of the 
 world, always believes in the pot of gold at the 
 end of the rainbow, and the austere man of narrow 
 conscience, who is compensated for his lack of 
 imagination by the gift of steadfastness that pro 
 duces results because he cannot be swerved from 
 his purpose. It is often said that men are ruled by 
 their imagination ; but it would be truer to say that 
 they are governed by the weakness of their imagina 
 tions. 1 But, curiously enough, the foundation of the 
 American character the love of gain and the acqui 
 sition of wealth in commerce was laid by the men 
 whose outlook on life was narrow and dwarfed by 
 the barriers of over-refined intellectual development 
 rather than the wider imagination of the adven 
 turer whose one thought was the pursuit of fortune. 
 Later I shall subject these qualities to more 
 
 kind and the Christian faith, is our royal intention, and the principal end of 
 this plantation." 
 
 Always this extreme solicitude for the spiritual welfare of the Indian. It 
 is touching. "If we were once the masters of their Countrey and they stood 
 in fears of us (which might with few hands imployed about nothing else, be 
 in short time to passe) it were an easie matter to make them willingly to for 
 sake the divell, to embrace the faith of Jesus Christ, and to be baptized. 
 Besides, you cannot easilie judge how much they would be availeable to us in 
 our discoveries of the Countrey, in our buildings and plantings, and quiet 
 provisions for ourselves, when we may peaceably passe from place to place 
 without neede of arms or guarde." Whitaker, Good Newes from Virginia, 
 1613. Cf. Brown: Genesis of the United States, vol. ii, p. 585. 
 
 1 Bagehot: The English Constitution, p. 101. 
 
96 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 minute analysis and explain the reasons for this 
 seeming contradiction; for the present it is neces 
 sary only to state the fact and to ask the reader 
 to bear in mind that, from the very first, civiliza 
 tion in America was composed of two elements 
 almost antagonistic, which like two chemical ele 
 ments can only be fused in combination with a 
 third. That agent was found in the flux of common 
 resistance to oppression, and the States, which 
 Rufus Choate compared "to primordial particles 
 of matter, whose natural condition is to repel each 
 other, or, at least, to exist in their own independent 
 identity," became homogeneous. 
 
 These considerations, I hope, will make it suf 
 ficiently clear why the writer has found it necessary 
 to begin this investigation in New England rather 
 than in Virginia. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE PURITAN 
 
 IT is impossible to have a proper comprehension 
 of the character of the American people, or intel 
 ligently to examine into the causes that have pro 
 duced this race and made them what they are in 
 mind and spirit, unless at the outset we have a clear 
 conception of the men from whom the race sprang. 
 The psychological student of America must study 
 the Puritan and subject him to as minute ana 
 lysis as the student of anthropology gives to his 
 study of the caves of a prehistoric age, or the physi 
 ologist to learn the vital relation of the heart to the 
 body. The Puritan is the heart of American civil 
 ization. 
 
 In attempting to bring back to life the figures 
 of the dead, in revisualizing lineaments that are 
 shadowed by the haze of time, in putting a histori 
 cal character upon the modern scene, there is always 
 the danger of interpreting motives and the play of 
 forces by the light of the present instead of the 
 obscurity in which men then moved. 
 
 Excellent indeed is the perspective of history; it 
 has made many things clear that at the time they 
 happened were vague; but the farther we are re 
 moved from a great event the more it is softened 
 
98 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 and often distorted by distance ; just as the majestic 
 fane viewed by the traveler from afar impresses him 
 with its bulk; but to appreciate the soul of the 
 artist who created it, to be touched by that spirit 
 of religious devotion, it must be seen close at hand. 
 
 Correctly to understand the seventeenth century, 
 it must be read not through the eyes of the 
 twentieth century, but the focus must be readjusted ; 
 the mind must throw off all the progress and human 
 izing influences that are the gifts of each century 
 to the next and reincarnate itself. Unless that is 
 done, unless we approach the subject with that 
 intrinsic detachment, we bring on the stage not 
 men but puppets, lay figures properly proportioned, 
 perhaps, but clothed in anachronism. 
 
 In the first place we are to remember that in 
 the seventeenth century life and religion were one. 
 They were so inseparably interwoven that they 
 could not be dissociated. Religion was a part of 
 the conduct of life, of all life, of all society; the 
 respect and obedience that were given to consti 
 tuted authority were founded on the acceptance of 
 religious belief and practice. In the twentieth cen 
 tury life and religion are apart; powerful though 
 the influence of religion is to-day, it does not con 
 trol life or society. Unless we clearly bear this in 
 mind it will be impossible justly to estimate the 
 Puritan character or to find an adequate explana 
 tion for the many seemingly inexplicable things 
 done by the Puritan. 
 
THE PURITAN 99 
 
 The Puritan, idealized, sublimated, painted in 
 monochromes against a colorless background, em 
 blem of passionless existence and dead to human 
 emotions, his character distorted by injudicious and 
 over-zealous admirers and defenders, his motives 
 misunderstood, it is this figure that obscures the 
 founders of the race; and we have been made to 
 think of the Puritan as slow of speech, perpetually 
 sunk in the gloom of his own conscience, too solemn 
 to see that life is ever a farce even when tragedy, 
 lingering on earth but longing for heaven. Now as 
 a matter of fact these progenitors of a lion s breed, 
 these pioneers who fought for the right as they 
 fought against Nature, to whom life was something 
 more than the antechamber to hope, were a prac 
 tical people not without a sense of rational pleasure. 
 
 It is not necessary to trace the causes that pro 
 duced Puritanism in England; they are known to 
 every schoolboy who has studied in even an ele 
 mentary form the history of England or the United 
 States, but it is necessary for an intelligent compre 
 hension of one of the greatest social movements in 
 the world s history to clear away some of the mis 
 apprehensions, the false impressions, the romance 
 that in the course of three centuries have grown up 
 around the majestic figure of the Puritan, which, 
 like the weeds about a temple, dwarf its beauty and 
 distort its proportions. 
 
 To begin with, we must destroy the very common 
 idea that the Pilgrims and the Puritans were intel- 
 
100 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 lectually and spiritually blood of the same blood 
 and flesh of the same flesh. They were no such 
 thing. In everything that makes for character in 
 the concept of life, in the relation of man to man, in 
 the code that governed the family and the family 
 magnified, the state " the Puritan differs from the 
 Pilgrim as the Hebrew prophet from Saint John/ 
 the late Senator Hoar of Massachusetts, himself 
 a descendant in direct descent from three cen 
 turies of Puritan ancestors, said on one occasion. 1 
 And he elaborated his theme in this striking 
 passage : 
 
 "The Puritan differs from the Pilgrim as the 
 Hebrew prophet from Saint John. Abraham, ready 
 to sacrifice Isaac at the command of God ; Jeremiah, 
 uttering his terrible prophecy of the downfall of 
 Judea ; Brutus, condemning his son to death ; Brutus, 
 slaying his friend for the liberty of Rome ; Aristides, 
 going into exile, are his spiritual progenitors, as 
 Stonewall Jackson was of his spiritual kindred. 
 You will find him wherever men are sacrificing life 
 or the delights of life on the altar of Duty. 
 
 "But the Pilgrim is of a gentler and a lovelier 
 nature. He, too, if Duty or Honor call, is ready for 
 the sacrifice. But his weapon is love and not hate. 
 His spirit is the spirit of John, the beloved Disciple, 
 the spirit of Grace, Mercy, and Peace. His memory 
 is as sweet and fragrant as the perfume of the little 
 
 1 Speech at the banquet of the New England Society, Charleston, S. C., 
 December 22, 1898. 
 
THE PURITAN 101 
 
 flower which gave its name to the ship which 
 brought him over." 
 
 There are few more romantic episodes on the 
 great canvas of history than the sailing of the Pil 
 grims and their arrival in the land of promise and 
 hope. There are few that so vividly thrill the 
 imagination and appeal to all that is best in man 
 as the recollection of that day when the Pilgrims 
 set foot on the rock that Americans hold sacred. 
 There are few that have so admirably served as the 
 inspiration for painter and poet and story-teller. It 
 is background perfect in its composition and detail 
 to make that gentle figure of the Pilgrim stand 
 forth in all its majesty. Painter and poet and story 
 teller have labored with rare devotion to exalt his 
 virtues and with loving hands have hidden his vices. 
 He stands in imagination the progenitor of a race 
 and the founder of a new social system. And all the 
 labor has been in vain. 
 
 The Pilgrim made only the very slightest impress 
 upon the American character. He founded no social 
 institution. He gave birth to no political system. 
 So far as the America of to-day is concerned, it is as 
 if he had never existed. It is to the Puritan and not 
 to the Pilgrim that America owes what she is. 
 
 The Pilgrim stands in the same relation to pre 
 sent-day America as the Saxon Heptarchy does to 
 present-day England. What the Norman Conquest 
 wrought we all know; and it was the Puritan who 
 played the part of the Norman in American race 
 
102 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 development. The Pilgrim simply became merged 
 into the Puritan as all cities were absorbed into the 
 Roman state; and in a very short time the Pilgrim 
 no longer existed. But the Puritan lived; he lives 
 to-day. The difference between the Pilgrim and the 
 Puritan is not of the greatest importance histor 
 ically, but psychologically it is of the utmost im 
 portance that the distinction should be made. 
 
 The Pilgrims were not virile enough to found a 
 race ; the Puritans were. When the Plymouth Colony 
 was fifteen years old it numbered only five hun 
 dred people. Twelve years after the Puritans had 
 first settled in Massachusetts they counted twenty 
 thousand souls. They had founded Harvard Col 
 lege; with that insatiable land hunger that was in 
 the blood they had planted colonies in Connecticut 
 and Rhode Island and New Hampshire; they had 
 built churches and provided for their ministers; 
 they were even in that early day living in com 
 parative comfort. It staggers the imagination when 
 one recalls all that had been accomplished in so 
 short a time. The mother colony, its people in 
 fluenced by the easy-going characteristics of the 
 Dutch, which they had, perhaps, unconsciously 
 assimilated, slowly, very slowly, gained in strength, 
 but gave no promise of developing into a nation. 
 The younger colony, almost at a single bound, 
 displayed its potential power and showed that its 
 people had in them the spirit of the nation build 
 ers. One would like to let poetic fancy dwell on the 
 
THE PURITAN 103 
 
 Pilgrims, for there is no period in history more 
 alluring than this, and no people more entranc 
 ing to the lover of the poetic and the imaginative 
 than these simple but courageous folk who loved 
 God and their fellow men; who with such perfect 
 trust committed themselves to the benign protec 
 tion of their Ruler and Guardian; who under ad 
 versity were patient, and who in all things had 
 faith. Sublime qualities these, a much-needed in 
 spiration in a day of gross materialism and little 
 faith, but, alas, not the qualities that make a living 
 race. I must not be understood as implying that the 
 Pilgrim served no useful purpose. He did. He was 
 an instrument in the hands of fate, and fate has 
 never misused an instrument. He had a mission to 
 perform, and he performed it successfully within 
 the limits of his capacity. He moved across the 
 rough stage, but the great drama of life in the New 
 World, with all its pathos and struggle and triumph, 
 was played by men cast in a sterner mould and 
 with a grimmer appreciation of tragedy. That the 
 Pilgrim never had. 
 
 Mr. Hoar has poetically compared the memory 
 of the Pilgrim to the sweetness and fragrance of 
 the perfume of the little flower which gave its name 
 to the ship which brought him over. True, indeed, 
 is the characterization, which unintentionally re 
 veals the limitations of the Pilgrim and explains 
 why he made no mark on the continent that lay at 
 his feet. Before men can appreciate the delicate 
 
104 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 beauty of the coloring of the hidden flower and its 
 exquisite odor, they must go into the forest and fell 
 great oaks to shelter them. Men, men made reso 
 lute, obstinate, courageous by the fierce spirit of 
 persecution and the determination to meet oppres 
 sion with resistance, were required to bring forth 
 a new life, not the men "of a gentler and lovelier 
 nature" whose "weapon is love and not hate." 
 Hatred, the thirst for revenge, is a very detrimental 
 quality in the individual and, as a rule, does more 
 injury to him who nourishes it than to its victim, 
 but in a race or a people it has often had beneficial 
 results. It has hardened the mould of character, it 
 has made even the timid bold, it has made the 
 weak face peril and death. The great sweep of 
 history is the record of men who have had a griev 
 ance and dared to redress it, not the chronicle of 
 men whose weapon was love. In the ultimate the 
 tyrants have done more for mankind, by invol 
 untarily giving impetus to the qualities of self- 
 reliance and a love of liberty, than the beneficent 
 rulers whom their subjects called the just and the 
 merciful. 
 
 The Pilgrims, the men who left England and 
 found a temporary asylum in Holland before their 
 great hegira to the New World, were Church of 
 England men, who separated from the faith of their 
 fathers because they objected to the union of 
 Church and State; and the corruption into which 
 the Church had then fallen was to them abominable. 
 
THE PURITAN 105 
 
 Hence they were called Separatists or Brownists, 
 from the name of their founder, Robert Browne, a 
 man of gentle birth, a Cambridge graduate, and a 
 relative of Lord Burleigh, one of Queen Elizabeth s 
 great ministers of state. This is so well known that 
 it seems almost unnecessary again to restate it ; but 
 so many persons have such vague ideas about the 
 origin of the Pilgrim movement that the salient 
 facts must be emphasized for the better understand 
 ing of subsequent events. 
 
 The history of the Church, of all churches, until 
 humanity and religion became one (and they were 
 far apart in the early days of religion), has always 
 been the fierce persecution of those who questioned 
 its authority or would attempt to make its practices 
 more nearly conform to its spiritual teachings. 
 Itinerant preachers in the Church of England who 
 urged upon the simple country folk to live better 
 and purer lives fell under the persecution of the 
 Established Church, and to escape their enemies 
 fled to Holland, where men might without inter 
 ference worship their God in their own way. 
 Those who remained suffered for the sake of con 
 science. "For some were taken and clapt up in 
 prison, others had their houses besett and watcht 
 night and day, and hardly escaped their hands ; and 
 yet most were faine to flie and leave their houses 
 and habitations, and the means of their livelihood. 
 Yet these and many other sharper things which 
 afterward befell them, were no other than they 
 
106 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 looked for, and therefore were ye better prepared 
 to bear them by ye assistance of God s grace and 
 spirit." l 
 
 Nothing more concisely typifies the character of 
 the Pilgrim, his whole conception of life, his soft 
 ness, his almost passionate prayer to be let alone, 
 than his circumlocutory flight to America; and 
 nothing more vividly contrasts the character of the 
 Pilgrim and the Puritan than the reasons which 
 made the latter leave the land of his birth. 
 
 When the Pilgrim found that he was an object of 
 persecution because his worship of God was not that 
 of the great majority of the nation, he went to Hol 
 land and this is to be noted not as a rebel 
 against his sovereign or to be a thorn in the side of 
 the kingdom that had thrust him out; he went not 
 to found a new state or to lead in a reformation. 
 Peace and quietness he craved, and he believed he 
 would find them among those tolerant Dutch folk 
 to whom sects and formularies meant less than they 
 did to any other people of Europe at that time. He 
 prayed and he worked, for he was always indus 
 trious and work seemed the natural condition of 
 man, but he was a stranger apart from the people 
 among whom he tarried. And it was this feeling of 
 isolation and of being a stranger in a strange land 
 that led to the greater flight. 
 
 That insularity of the English that has made the 
 race what it is was in the blood of the Pilgrims. 
 
 1 Bradford s History of Plymouth Plantation, p. 14. 
 
THE PURITAN 107 
 
 The little children they had brought with them were 
 growing up and other children were born unto them, 
 and they wanted these children to be English-speak 
 ing and English-thinking and not half-English and 
 half-Dutch. The motives that inspired their flight, 
 as one of their historians tells us, were that they 
 might enjoy liberty of conscience, and keep their 
 own language and the name of Englishmen, and 
 train their children as they were trained, and en 
 large the Church of Christ. 1 Beyond the seas was a 
 country in which Englishmen were settling, a coun 
 try that promised rich rewards to the industrious 
 and God-fearing, in which God might be worshiped 
 without the fear of persecution of king or clergy. 
 There was to be found that freedom and liberty, 
 that perfect right to live according to the dictates 
 of their conscience, that was denied them in the Old 
 World. And they went. 
 
 Now see how differently the Puritan faced the 
 problem that so vexed the soul of the gentler Pil 
 grim. The Puritan was no separatist. He was a 
 Church of England man, but he was at one with the 
 Pilgrim in demanding reformation. Christ s vicar 
 on earth was no longer Christlike. The Church was 
 rotten with corruption ; its ministers, instead of set 
 ting the example of holy living and holy dying, were 
 a stench in the nostrils of men who lived decently 
 and died in the profound consolation of a just but 
 merciful Creator; the ceremonies of the Church, the 
 
 1 Young s Chronicles, p. 381. 
 
108 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 vestments of its priests, its prayers and forms, 
 savored of the mockery of Rome and were abhor 
 rent to men who had drawn a new inspiration from 
 the stern morality of Calvin. "Some men of the 
 greatest parts and most extensive knowledge that 
 the nation at this time produced, could not enjoy 
 any peace of mind, because obliged to hear prayers 
 offered up to the Divinity by a priest covered with 
 a white linen vestment." 1 Yet the Church was their 
 Church, not to be destroyed but to be brought back 
 to its old ways, to be reformed, but to be reformed 
 from within and not from without. The Puritans in 
 England stood up manfully to the fray. They had 
 no thought of going to Holland or elsewhere to 
 establish a Church more in consonance with their 
 idea. The Church they had to reform was in Eng 
 land, and it was there the battle was to be fought. 
 And fight they did with all the zeal and courageous 
 determination that men display only when they are 
 fighting for a principle ; how well they fought is told 
 in the story of Cromwell and his psalm-singing 
 Ironsides at Marston Moor and Naseby; and their 
 vengeance went unsatisfied until the king they 
 fought laid his head on the block and the great 
 principle of free speech and a free parliament was 
 forever established. These were the men who went 
 forth to found the Massachusetts colony. They 
 brought their religion with them, they brought the 
 same spirit of resistance to the evil practices that 
 
 1 Hume: History of England, p. 526. 
 
THE PURITAN 109 
 
 the Church sanctioned, and the same determination 
 to purify the Church. The Church was still to them 
 their spiritual mother whose blessing they invoked. 
 " We separate not from the Church of England, but 
 from its corruptions," they said. 
 
 A nation to endure must be animated by higher 
 and nobler reasons for its existence than the mere 
 material desires that have led to the propagation of 
 the animal species. Ease, mere wealth, the support 
 of life under the most favorable conditions are all 
 insufficient, and in the end they destroy. A race to 
 live, a nation to grow and become truly great, must 
 have implanted in its breast aspirations and ideals ; 
 it is of no consequence what form those aspirations 
 and ideals take, but they must be a beacon light 
 toward which the eyes of men forever turn. One 
 reason why savage races have become extinct is that 
 they were content with their material surroundings 
 and were not quickened by the prompting of the 
 higher things. They were deaf to the spiritual 
 voice. The great nations who have moulded civil 
 ization have felt the ennobling influence of the 
 infinite mystery; they have yearned for that some 
 thing that would lift them above their sordid 
 surroundings. It is immaterial whether the ideal 
 for which they strove was personal liberty or lib 
 erty of conscience; religion, which often assumed 
 a form material rather than ideal; the betterment 
 of mankind. Whatever form it assumed, it was for 
 the moment an idealistic conception, an effort to 
 
110 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 lift the race to a higher plane, mistaken as were 
 the methods so often employed. But the men who 
 fought for what they believed to be right were men 
 who were not afraid to shed their blood in defense 
 of the right. They fought because the path to the 
 ideal had to be hewed out with the sword, and in 
 its making many men must be overcome by the heat 
 and burden of the fray. They did not run away. 
 
 The Puritans were men with ideals and aspira 
 tions. Their ideal was a state in which the word of 
 God was the law of man, "a practical world 
 based on Belief in God," Carlyle says. Their 
 aspiration was to found a state with the Bible as 
 their constitution. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 PURITANISM GIVES BIRTH TO DEMOCRACY 
 
 AT the time when the great Puritan migration 
 took place from England to Massachusetts, be 
 tween the years 1620 and 1630, England was at 
 heart Puritan and the Puritans were in the ma 
 jority. Puritanism had its adherents and supporters 
 in all ranks of life. Great nobles, leading mem 
 bers of the House of Commons, city merchants who 
 with splendid audacity were financing ventures and 
 expeditions to all parts of the world and laying 
 the foundation for England s incomparable com 
 merce; landed squires, the men who have always 
 been the backbone of English solidity and con 
 servatism; country preachers, the common people, 
 the dwellers in villages as well as those in London 
 and the other large cities, were in favor of the 
 reformation of the Church and a wider political 
 liberty. 
 
 It is important that the position and strength of 
 the Puritan party in England should be clearly 
 understood; but it is perhaps even more important 
 to dwell with emphasis upon the truth that the 
 Puritan movement, born in the throes of religious 
 conviction, matured into a political party. It was 
 a protest against the existing order. 
 
112 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 The pictures and stories of the Pilgrims setting 
 sail in their frail bark, their landing amidst sur 
 roundings so strange and forbidding, their trials 
 and sufferings, their scanty supplies, convey to the 
 modern mind that the Puritans and this confu 
 sion of idea between the Pilgrim and the Puritan 
 seems almost impossible of rectification - - were the 
 prototypes of that stream of emigration that for 
 three quarters of a century has flowed through the 
 gates of America in ever-increasing volume, and 
 that, like the modern emigrant, the Puritan came to 
 his new home with a pack on his back, unkempt, 
 friendless, and poor. These hardy pioneers -- Pil 
 grims as well as Puritans had to bear the brunt 
 of discomfort as the vanguard of every army of 
 civilization always must; but it was not an army 
 of tatterdemalions without stores or provisions. The 
 Puritans were much better provided than the Pil 
 grims, but even they had some things that make for 
 comfort rather than solely for necessity. Mourt in 
 his Relation tells of "a green rug and three or four 
 cushions" that were used by the Pilgrims in the 
 ceremonies attending the state reception given to 
 Massasoit, which "were, of course, necessarily 
 brought in the M ay -Flower," Ames says. 1 In case the 
 reader may have overlooked it, I call his attention 
 to the fact that the rug was green, which is evidence 
 that the mythical belief in the Pilgrim and the 
 Puritan hatred of bright colors has no existence. 
 
 1 Ames: The May-Flower and her Log, p. 221. 
 
DEMOCRACY 113 
 
 From the beginning the Puritans were well pro 
 vided. They were backed by strong interests in 
 England, who had the money to charter ships and 
 furnish them with all that was needed to support 
 a colony until it could stand alone. In the twelve 
 years of Archbishop Laud s administration, Neal 
 tells us, about four thousand planters left England, 
 " who laid the foundation of several little towns and 
 villages up and down the country, carrying over 
 with them in materials, money and cattle, etc., not 
 less than to the value of one hundred and ninety 
 thousand pounds, besides the merchandise in 
 tended for traffick with the Indians. Upon the 
 whole, it has been computed, that the four settle 
 ments of New England, viz. Plimouth, the Massa 
 chusetts Bay, Connecticut and Newhaven, all of 
 which were accomplished before the beginning of 
 the civil wars, drained England of four or five 
 hundred thousand pounds, (a very great sum in 
 those days) and if the persecution of the Puritans 
 had continued twelve years longer, it is thought 
 that a fourth part of the riches of the kingdom 
 would have passed out of it through this channel." l 
 
 Not only were they well provided with the things 
 necessary to set a young colony on the road to 
 material success, but they were captained by men of 
 strength and ability and standing. They were not 
 men to whom life had been a failure and who, hav 
 ing nothing to lose, could afford to risk much for 
 
 1 Neal: History of the Puritan, vol. i, p. 546. 
 
114 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 great gain. In 1630, only ten years after the little 
 company of the Mayflower had for the first time 
 laid eyes on their new home, John Winthrop and 
 seven hundred companions set sail in eleven ships. 
 "It was more than a colony, it was the migration of 
 a people." The managers of the expedition were 
 Winthrop, a lawyer in the prime of life, of good 
 family and comfortable estate, and worthy; John 
 Humphrey and Isaac Johnson, sons-in-law of the 
 Earl of Lincoln; Thomas Dudley, manager of the 
 Earl s estates; Theophilus Eaton, a London mer 
 chant who had served the king as minister to 
 Denmark; William Vassall, an opulent West India 
 proprietor. "The principal planters of Massachu 
 setts," Chalmers says, "were English country 
 gentlemen of no inconsiderable fortunes; of en 
 larged understandings improved by liberal educa 
 tion; of extensive ambition concealed under the 
 appearance of religious humility." Their concealed 
 ambition was to lay the foundations of " a renovated 
 England, secure in freedom and pure in religion." 
 Before sailing, Winthrop issued an address " to 
 the rest of their Brethren, in and of the Church of 
 England." It gave assurance that "we desire you 
 would be pleased to take notice that the principals 
 and body of our company esteem it our honor to 
 call the Church of England from whence wee rise, 
 our deare mother, and cannot part from our na 
 tive countrie, where she specially resideth, without 
 much sadness of heart and many tears in our eyes, 
 
DEMOCRACY 115 
 
 ever acknowledging that such hopes and parts as 
 we have obtained in the common salvation, we 
 have received in her bosom and sucked it from her 
 breasts. We leave it not therefore as loathing that 
 milk wherein we were nourished there, but blessing 
 God for the parentage and education, as members 
 of the same body, while we have breath, we shall 
 syncerely indeavour the continuance and abund 
 ance of her welfare." 
 
 The rank and file in the earlier days of the 
 migration were men of sterling character and cor 
 rect morals, many of them of substance and well 
 educated, and all of them, rich and poor, animated 
 by a very high and noble purpose. They were un 
 like the earlier colonists who went to Virginia, who 
 were a mixed company of adventurers, bankrupts, 
 and criminals; they were of a different social class 
 from the Mayflower s Pilgrims. The leaders who 
 urged upon their followers to leave England and 
 begin life anew "were the puritan ministers, who 
 being hunted from one diocese to another, at last 
 chose this wilderness for their retreat," Neal records, 
 and he adds: "I have before me a list of seventy- 
 seven divines, who became pastors of sundry little 
 churches and congregations in that country be 
 fore the year 1640, all of whom were in orders in 
 the Church of England." He bears this tribute to 
 their worth: "Though they were not all of the first 
 rank for deep and extensive learning, yet they had 
 a better share of it than most of the neighboring 
 
116 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 clergy; and which is of more consequence, they 
 were men of strict sobriety and virtue; plain, seri 
 ous, affectionate preachers, exactly conformable in 
 sentiment to the doctrinal articles of the Church of 
 England, and took a great deal of pains to promote 
 Christian knowledge, and a reformation of manners 
 in their several parishes." 1 
 
 Later the tares were mixed with the wheat, but 
 Longfellow was not giving rein merely to the fancy 
 of his poetical imagination when he wrote : - 
 
 " God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting, 
 Then had sifted the wheat, as the living seed of a nation; 
 So say the chronicles old, and such is the faith of the people!" 
 
 The Puritans had a twofold purpose in coming 
 to America. One was purely commercial, the other 
 was religious. It was the religious element in the 
 Puritan that gave birth to American democracy 
 and American political institutions, that turned the 
 current of English civilization when the drift of 
 events carried it against the shores of the New 
 World. History affords no parallel instance of 
 a political system resulting from an attempt to 
 reform a church polity by men who were members 
 of that church and who believed in it as their 
 spiritual guide. In all the determining factors that 
 go to make a race, the influence of religion on 
 national character is one of the most important 
 and one of the most difficult scientifically to esti 
 mate. The religion of Rome and Greece, of Egypt 
 
 1 Neal: op. cit., vol. i, p. 546. 
 
DEMOCRACY 117 
 
 and Asia, of Protestant and Catholic Europe, of 
 tribes so barbarous that they had not the faintest 
 conception of civilization but to whom religion was 
 the essence of life, profoundly modified national 
 character and institutions. 
 
 Elizabeth came to the throne when the embers 
 of the fires of Smithfield were still smouldering. 
 Mary had sent to the stake more than three hun 
 dred martyrs who counted their lives as nothing 
 in defense of the faith. Hundreds fled to escape 
 imprisonment and death. The executioner and the 
 torturer reaped their rich harvest and spared 
 neither young nor old. Cranmer, the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, beloved of his people, venerated for 
 his saintly character, faced the fagot unflinchingly, 
 and his ashes were a greater inspiration to the cause 
 of Protestantism than his living voice. Latimer, 
 with prophetic vision, as the executioner applied 
 the torch, looked beyond the flames and saw an 
 even greater light, and delivered this last message of 
 cheer: "We shall this day light such a candle, by 
 God s grace, in England, as, I trust, shall never be 
 put out." It was a pillar of fire rather than a 
 candle, and it lighted the people of England to 
 their liberty. 
 
 A new life was beginning in England. It was a 
 day of great deeds. A new spirit entered into the 
 nation. The deathless voice of English literature 
 was born. The seas swarmed with English cap 
 tains, who knew no fear, who fought the elements as 
 
118 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 they fought their foes, who laid virgin continents 
 and the spoils of Spanish galleons at the feet of the 
 Virgin Queen. The world rang with the achieve 
 ments of the English, and the whole people felt the 
 thrill of power and rejoiced in the terror that the 
 name of England inspired. 
 
 The people were beginning to make themselves 
 heard ; in a dim way they were beginning to appre 
 ciate their own strength that ninety years later 
 manifested itself when they sent their sovereign to 
 the block. Protestantism had taken deep hold of 
 the English people, and it grew with Catholic oppo 
 sition that saw in a reformed England a menace to 
 the political supremacy of the Pope. Henry VIII 
 assumed the title of Defender of the Faith for polit 
 ical rather than religious reasons and for the in 
 crease of his authority with his own subjects; the 
 motive being not unlike that which influenced 
 Queen Victoria to add to her other titles that of 
 Empress of India. With Elizabeth it was differ 
 ent. No sooner had she taken her seat on the 
 throne than her right to it was challenged by the 
 Pope; when she declared herself a Protestant, to 
 satisfy the conscience of a majority of her subjects, 
 the Pope issued a bull of excommunication, de 
 clared the throne vacant, and released the people 
 of England from allegiance to their sovereign. It 
 was the one thing needed to make Protestantism a 
 political force. Catholic nobles raised the standard 
 of rebellion, plots to assassinate the queen were 
 
DEMOCRACY 119 
 
 traced to the Catholics, and it was the alleged com 
 plicity of Mary Queen of Scots in one of these plots 
 that finally gave Elizabeth the pretext to send her 
 rival to the scaffold. As the last desperate effort 
 of the Pope to make Elizabeth bend to his will and 
 restore the old faith in England, there occurred 
 that most picturesque and glorious sea fight to 
 prove the valor of Englishmen, 
 
 " When that great fleet invincible 
 
 Against her bore in vain 
 The richest spoils of Mexico, 
 The stoutest hearts of Spain." 
 
 The Invincible Armada was sent forth by Spain 
 in the hope not only that it would destroy England s 
 command of the seas, but with England s ships 
 flung to destruction and England crushed and 
 humiliated and her shores defenseless, the Catholics 
 would rise, Elizabeth would be deposed, and the 
 Holy Inquisition would engage in its pious work of 
 teaching the love of Christ with the rack and the 
 fagot. 
 
 Medina Sidonia s defeat was one of the turning- 
 points in history. It is a fascinating speculation 
 to theorize on what might have happened if at 
 one of those critical historical junctures defeat 
 had been turned into victory ; if a grain of sand had 
 fallen into the machinery of fate and brought des 
 tiny to a standstill. It is easy enough to grasp what 
 the consequences would have been had Howard and 
 Drake been defeated in the Channel, and if the 
 
120 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 Spaniards and not the English had made that day 
 their triumph. But in the English victory was 
 something more than a victorious battle; it had 
 deeper and far more enduring consequences. It 
 made Protestantism a living, vital force to safeguard 
 the liberties of England against the menace of 
 Romanism ; it caused Romanism to be looked upon 
 as a threatening foe always to be guarded against. 
 It is necessary to refer only incidentally to similar 
 causes on the Continent that deepened the convic 
 tion of English Protestants. The massacre of the 
 Protestants in France on Saint Bartholomew s Day 
 and the unspeakable cruelties practiced by the Duke 
 of Alva in the Spanish war against the Netherlands, 
 in which he boasted that exclusive of those who 
 fell in battle, siege, and massacre, he had executed 
 eighteen thousand six hundred heretics and traitors, 1 
 aroused the horror and pity of their English co 
 religionists and strengthened their resolve to yield 
 nothing to Rome and to die in defense of the faith 
 as Frenchmen and Dutchmen had done. Both from 
 France and the Netherlands came refugees seeking 
 an asylum in England, whose recital of the cruelties 
 they had suffered and the persecution they had en 
 dured for the sake of conscience made the character 
 of the English Protestant more militant and more 
 than ever determined to revenge himself on his 
 oppressors ; more convinced that death were sweeter 
 
 1 Campbell: The Puritan in Holland, England, and America, vol. i, 
 p. 212. 
 
DEMOCRACY 121 
 
 than life in the iron grip of Rome; better an end 
 with terror than terror without end. It is interesting 
 as noting that constant revolution of the wheel of 
 history and social progress to which I have referred 
 in a previous chapter, that these Dutch refugees, 
 driven by persecution from their native land, fled to 
 England, where they settled in the eastern coun 
 ties, and a few years later, when Englishmen, to 
 escape religious persecution, fled from England to 
 Holland, the migration began in the eastern coun 
 ties, and it was from these counties there went 
 forth the first settlers of New England. 
 
 And now the great power of the printed word 
 was exercising its influence. Few books have 
 so swayed a nation as Foxe s Book of Martyrs, 
 which told with all the direct force of Elizabethan 
 English how men had died under the hand of the 
 torturer rather than renounce their faith. By order 
 of Queen Elizabeth a copy was placed in every 
 parish church, and the people read it and were 
 moved by the pity and the horror of that grim tale 
 of religion run mad. It was a time when the 
 Bible was much read; it was a day when there 
 were no newspapers and no circulating libraries, 
 when books were rare and expensive, and when the 
 common people read the Bible because it was the 
 only literature of which they knew. One does not 
 have to be a great scholar to understand the simple 
 and short words in which the Bible is written, or to 
 be thrilled by the melodious beauty of its matchless 
 
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 diction ; and even the poorest intellect can grasp its 
 great lesson of love and sacrifice and duty. If there 
 is one lesson more than another that the Bible 
 teaches, it is the duty of man to resist oppression, to 
 count suffering as naught in defense of the right, 
 to cast down idols and drive forth those who bend 
 the knee to Baal. The Bible left its impress upon 
 the English. It moulded their thought as it influ 
 enced their actions, it colored the language and 
 found its expression in the common talk of the 
 people. In piecing together the causes that pro 
 duced Puritanism, much weight must be given to 
 the deep knowledge the English people had of their 
 Bible and the hold it exercised over them. 
 
 "The Bible was as yet," Green says in his pe 
 culiarly vivid style, "the one book which was 
 familiar to every Englishman; and everywhere its 
 words, as they fell on ears which custom had not 
 deadened to their force and beauty, kindled a 
 startling enthusiasm. The whole moral effect which 
 is produced nowadays by the religious newspaper, 
 the tract, the essay, the missionary report, the ser 
 mon, was then produced by the Bible alone; and 
 its effect in this way, however dispassionately we 
 examine rt, was simply amazing. The whole nation 
 became a church." l And in another striking pass 
 age he says, "the mighty strife of good and evil 
 within the soul itself which had overawed the im 
 agination of dramatist and poet became the one 
 
 1 Green: A History of the English People, vol. vi, pp. 190-191. 
 
DEMOCRACY 123 
 
 spiritual conception in the mind of the Puritan. 
 Religion had to do not with churches, but with the 
 individual soul. It was each Christian man who 
 held in his power the issues of life and death. It 
 was in each Christian conscience that the strife was 
 waged between heaven and hell. Not as one of a 
 body, but as a single soul, could each Christian 
 claim his part in the mystery of redemption." 
 
 While Calvinism led to democracy, which in its 
 spirit is the merging of the individual in the 
 mass, contradictorily it produced an intense in 
 dividualism, the like of which the world had 
 never before known. All other religions, the Cath 
 olic religion especially, either shifted the burden 
 from the individual to the mass, or else made it 
 possible for the individual to relieve himself of the 
 weight of sin by sharing it with the Church. Calvin 
 ism offered no such hope. The Calvinist himself 
 must make his peace with God and his own con 
 science without an intercessory mediary. He fought 
 alw r ays with the powers of darkness in single com 
 bat, and it requires more courage to fight alone 
 than with the exhilaration that comes from touching 
 shoulders in the ranks. Calvinism has had much 
 to do in producing the individualistic nature of the 
 American, even among Americans who subscribed 
 not to the doctrines of Calvin. It laid the founda 
 tion of American character in the first days of 
 America, and by a natural development the social 
 influence of Calvinism became part of the temper 
 
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 of the American people when the religious side of 
 Calvinism had expended its force. To Jefferson 
 and Franklin and Charles Carroll one mentions 
 at random merely a few of the signers of the Decla 
 ration of Independence Calvinism meant nothing, 
 but the spirit which it created, the passionate belief 
 in the individuality of man, was the legacy of the 
 Puritanism that had descended to them from the 
 settlers of Massachusetts Bay 
 
 " By making man sole sponsor of himself. * 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 PURITANISM BECOMES A POLITICAL FORCE 
 
 ALTHOUGH Elizabeth was a Protestant, the Church 
 was still filled with the practices of Rome, and as 
 the Pope regarded himself as the spiritual head of the 
 Catholic world, so Elizabeth constituted herself 
 the head of the Church and would permit no inter 
 ference in its direction by her subjects. Elizabeth 
 understood the temper of her people better than did 
 her successor, James I, and had more tact than to 
 put into words what he expressed, " as it is atheism 
 and blasphemy to dispute what God can do ; so it is 
 presumption and a high contempt in a subject to 
 dispute \vhat a king can do," - but she was fully 
 as strong in her faith in the divine right and om 
 nipotence of kings. This was abhorrent to the 
 reformers, who wished to see the Church entirely di 
 vorced from Rome. They objected to the use of the 
 sign of the cross in baptism, of the ring in marriage, 
 of bowing at the name of Jesus, of the use of certain 
 vestments; they demanded a more strict observ 
 ance of the Sabbath. The Church had fallen into 
 a low estate and many of its ministers were un 
 worthy to be its servants. In 1571 the reformers 
 presented a petition to the queen alleging these 
 grievances : 
 
126 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 " Great numbers are admitted ministers that are 
 infamous in their lives, and among those that 
 are of ability their gifts in many places are useless 
 by reason of pluralities and non-residency, whereby 
 infinite numbers of your majesty s subjects are 
 like to perish for lack of knowledge. By means of 
 this, together with the common blasphemy of the 
 Lord s name, the most wicked licentiousness of 
 life, the abuse of excommunication, the commu 
 tation of penance, the great number of atheists, 
 schismatics daily springing up, and the increase of 
 papists, the Protestant religion is in imminent 
 peril." 1 Another petition complained that the min 
 isters who were competent had been silenced for 
 non-conformity, and that such as were left were 
 unfit for the office, "having been either popish 
 priests, or shiftless men thrust in upon the ministry 
 when they knew not how to live, serving men, 
 and the basest of all sorts, men of no gifts. So they 
 are of no common honesty, rioters, dicers, drunk 
 ards, and such like, of offensive lives." 2 
 
 But Elizabeth, as Campbell points out, was 
 unmoved. She did not believe in freedom of speech 
 on any subject. She was the head of the Church, 
 and it was her province alone to decide such ques 
 tions and not to have them decided for her by Par 
 liament. As the law prohibited a Catholic from 
 sitting in the House of Commons, the Puritans were 
 
 1 Campbell : The Puritan in England, Holland, and America, vol. i, p. 466. 
 3 Byington : The Puritan in England and New England, p. 53. 
 
PURITANISM A POLITICAL FORCE 127 
 
 in a majority in that body during the reign of 
 Elizabeth, but the power of the Crown was greater 
 even than that of the Commons. The independence 
 of members was stifled by bribe and imprisonment, 
 and legislation was throttled by the lords spiritual 
 and temporal. Reforms which the people demanded, 
 the queen, by the exercise of her great power, was 
 able to prevent. 
 
 Unconsciously a religious movement was now 
 about to become a great popular movement in 
 protest against the arbitrary exercise of power by 
 the sovereign. The word "unconsciously" is used 
 with deliberation, for the great historical move 
 ments in the life of a nation take hold of a people 
 long before they are discerned; they exercise their 
 influence imperceptibly and without any external 
 indication of the change of character that has 
 taken place. Sometimes a people flash into revolt or 
 rebellion with as little warning as a volcano throws 
 out its molten lava, and in the one case as in the 
 other the damage may be swift and terrible; but 
 seldom is the damage so great that it cannot be 
 repaired by time. The agencies that change the 
 character of a race are as gradual and as unper- 
 ceived as the conversion of wood and swamp land 
 into coal, hidden for centuries and then changing 
 the destinies of mankind. 
 
 The Church, not any particular sect, but the 
 Church as an institution, has always been an aris 
 tocratic fellowship. Professing the principles of 
 
128 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 equality, recognizing the universality of man, it 
 has depended for its existence upon caste. Popes 
 and sovereigns, cardinals and bishops, priests and 
 pastors, constitute the hierarchy of the Church, ele 
 vated according to their degree over the heads of 
 the masses to whom they minister. In this is to be 
 found one of the secrets of the perpetuation of the 
 Church and its power, for man needs a master, and 
 men are willing to obey those set over them until 
 the pressure from above becomes too severe. 
 
 The English, Campbell says, are little influenced 
 by theories; they respect hard facts and not ideas; 
 and Boutmy s deduction is that the Englishman 
 "has no time to follow vain phantoms; they are too 
 far removed from earth, too alien to life here below, 
 to its conditions and necessities." In other words, 
 the Englishman is not metaphysical like the Ger 
 man, nor imaginative like the Latin, and what is 
 known as the deep-rooted conservatism of the Eng 
 lish character is simply an acceptance of the es 
 tablished order the facts of society and a 
 reluctance to indulge in experiments that may 
 overturn the established order; and it is only when 
 that order is threatened, when liberty is in danger 
 or the freedom of conscience is denied, that he can 
 be induced to offer resistance. Compare, for in 
 stance, the English and French revolutions. The 
 English had a definite purpose to accomplish. The 
 rights of the people, rights which had been theirs 
 from time immemorial and had become indefeasi- 
 
PURITANISM A POLITICAL FORCE 129 
 
 ble and constituted the basis on which society was 
 organized, were menaced by Charles I, who at 
 tempted to subvert the Commons and magnify the 
 power of the Crown. There was only one thing 
 to do, and that was to resist encroachment, then to 
 fight against it, finally to remove the sovereign 
 whose existence threatened the destruction of 
 society. It was all done in a grim, stolid, rather 
 matter-of-fact way, with as little noise and dis 
 turbance as possible. It was reform from within 
 and not from without; it was not necessary to over 
 throw the social order to correct abuses ; it was folly 
 to burn down the mansion to purify a single room. 
 In England the revolution was not accompanied by 
 a reign of terror, and an incautious word did not 
 sign a death warrant. Now, the French are differ 
 ently constituted, and they resisted oppression and 
 brought their king to the guillotine in quite another 
 fashion. They must needs do their killing to the 
 accompaniment of the sham philosophy of the 
 encyclopaedists, to "deluges of frantic Sansculot- 
 ism," as Carlyle says; they prate much of liberty 
 and equality, and they wear the bonnet rouge as 
 symbolic of that liberty upon which they trampled. 
 In the reign of Elizabeth those Englishmen who 
 had broken away from the Church of Rome were 
 Calvinistic in their theology and Calvin has been 
 described as "Half Old Testament prophet, half 
 Republican demagogue " - but still aristocratic in 
 their church system. The bench of bishops, created 
 
130 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 by the king, naturally believed in the divine right 
 of kings and preached obedience and submission 
 to the spiritual and temporal head of the Church. 
 The Reformation had wrought many changes in the 
 outward observance of religion and religious forms, 
 but it had left untouched the great system of caste 
 in the Church. No stronger incentive than that 
 was needed to make men imbued with the tenets of 
 Calvinism unconsciously drift toward democracy. 
 Calvinism was in essence democracy. In the 
 Parliamentary party there were men who were in 
 religion Independents, who were, "to use the kin 
 dred phrase of our own time, radicals," as Macaulay 
 says. 1 " Great as were the faults of Puritanism, it 
 may fairly claim to be the first political system 
 which recognized the grandeur of the people as a 
 whole." 2 Green dwells on " the new conception of 
 social equality" that was the product of Puritanism 
 and shows how it led to democracy. "Their com 
 mon call, their common brotherhood in Christ, 
 annihilated in the minds of the Puritans that over 
 powering sense of social distinction which charac 
 terized the age of Elizabeth. The meanest peasant 
 felt himself ennobled as a child of God. The 
 proudest noble recognized a spiritual equality in 
 the poorest saint. " 3 Thus it will be seen that 
 democracy did not spring from the virgin soil of 
 
 1 Macaulay: History of England, vol. i, p. 58. 
 
 2 Green: History of the English People, vol. vii, p. 150. 
 
 3 Green: A Short History of the English People, p. 451. 
 
PURITANISM A POLITICAL FORCE 131 
 
 Massachusetts ; the seed had been sown on English 
 ground, and it brought forth its harvest long before 
 that great hegira which gave a new impulse to 
 individualism. 
 
 The growth of Protestantism, of Calvinism es 
 pecially, made the masses appreciate their power. 
 "For the first time in British history, the common 
 people had become a power in the land. They 
 cared nothing for their leaders and little for their 
 king. They worshiped a heavenly monarch, so 
 far above all earthly rulers that to them terrestrial 
 potentates seemed puppets. Narrow-minded these 
 men were, of course, ignorant, and like their 
 preachers, superstitious, rude in manner, often bru 
 tal in action." 1 But they were no more sensible of 
 their power at first than the growing, healthy child 
 knows his strength, the full realization of which 
 comes to him only when in a moment of resistance 
 against the authorities of the home he rebels and 
 finds he has that within him that makes him feared. 
 Under the influence of religion the people of Eng 
 land had been slowly acquiring moral strength, 
 courage, purpose, the importance of which the world 
 was first to see on a new continent where there 
 was space to build new political institutions, where 
 the ground was unencumbered with the debris of 
 institutions become obsolete, and where the founda 
 tions could be laid so deep that neither the storm 
 of passion nor the folly of man could destroy them. 
 
 ; Campbell: op. cit., vol. ii, p. 12. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE AMERICAN HAS ALWAYS BEEN A REBEL 
 
 IN previous chapters I have shown how the charac 
 ter of the English people had been slowly chang 
 ing, developing, and broadening from the time of 
 the Reformation until the Commonwealth. The 
 transition was logical. Serfdom had given way 
 to freedom, the power of the barons had been cur 
 tailed until at last the feudal system was broken 
 down; as the power of the nobles declined that of 
 the people rose, and with every fresh extension of 
 their liberties they demanded still more. Long had 
 they lain under the thrall of the Church, and long 
 had they felt an insistent desire to escape from it 
 and to come into their spiritual and moral freedom, 
 which at last they won because they had the courage 
 to fight for it. 
 
 In an age that has long ceased to believe in 
 miracles one miracle has still survived, and with 
 an industry worthy to be devoted to better things 
 teachers have endeavored to impress on their stu 
 dents a belief in the miraculous. A very simple 
 explanation has been offered for the genesis of Amer 
 ican institutions, those institutions that Campbell, 
 in his intense desire to trace back to Rome and to 
 Holland, to Scotland and to Spain, to anywhere, in 
 
THE AMERICAN A REBEL 133 
 
 fact, except to England, so curiously terms " un-Eng 
 lish." In some mysterious way those seers of New 
 England drew their inspiration from the air, and 
 like Jonah s gourd their civilization sprang up over 
 night. Never has the world witnessed a miracle 
 more wonderful than this. The carpenters and the 
 coopers, the fustian-workers and the hatters, the 
 smiths and the wool-carders, 1 these plain and simple 
 folk w r ho were the passengers on the Mayflower, 
 who in England were content to pursue their humble 
 callings and had given no evidence that they were 
 superior in intellect to their fellow workers, in their 
 passage across the ocean had been transformed and 
 become endowed with the gift of genius. If so, the 
 voyage of Jason and his fellow Argonauts was no 
 more marvelous than this. 
 
 But alluring as it would be to the imagination to 
 think that at the moment when the sails of the 
 Mayflower were furled the law of causation ceased 
 and like the magnetic needle at the North Pole no 
 longer pointed to the true north, there is neither 
 justification nor reason for dismissing the truth to 
 seek an explanation in the fantastic. The causes 
 are quite simple and perfectly rational. They are 
 to be found close at hand if the trouble is taken 
 
 1 Ames : The May-Flower and her Log, p. 194. Ames gives this list of the 
 vocations of adults so far as known (except wives, who are presumed house 
 keepers for their husbands): Carpenters, 2; Cooper, 1; Fustian-worker and 
 silk-dyer, 1 ; Hatter, 1 ; Lay Reader, 1 ; Lady s-maid, 1 ; Merchant, 1 ; Physi 
 cian, 1; Printers and publishers, 2; Seamen, 4; Servants (adults), 10; Smith, 
 1; Soldier, 1; Tailor, 1; Tradesmen, 2; Wool-carder, 1. 
 
134 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 to search for them. Nor do we have to go back to 
 Rome, which has been the fad of some writers, to 
 find there the inspiration for American institutions, 
 except as Rome colored English civilization. And 
 it is equally absurd to think that the short time 
 spent by the Separatists in Holland so altered their 
 whole concept of life that they cast off the influences 
 of English descent and training and traditions and 
 became Dutch in spirit and in everything else except 
 in language. That were a miracle second only to 
 the first and greater phenomenon. "The whole 
 world was their quarry, and all the past their 
 architects." Most accounts of the origin of Ameri 
 can institutions have been so colored by the preju 
 dices of their writers that although they conscien 
 tiously endeavored to write history they succeeded 
 in producing hagiology, which may be entertaining 
 reading, but is never accurate. 
 
 It is worth noting here that although the Dutch 
 planted New York, and the Swedes Delaware, and 
 the Spanish Florida, and the French Louisiana; " the 
 Dutch, the French, and the English made a simul 
 taneous sowing of the great struggle for commercial 
 and political supremacy in North America"; and 
 since that day the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, 
 the Jews, the Scandinavians have flowed in never- 
 ending stream to swell the flood of the American 
 race, they have all been absorbed into and have 
 not absorbed the English. The law, the speech, the 
 institutions of America are English, and modified 
 
THE AMERICAN A REBEL 135 
 
 only by conditions peculiarly American. Neither 
 the Dutch nor the French nor the Spanish left 
 a single enduring law nor a single institution that 
 has survived. 1 The immigrant since their time has 
 brought with him his own customs, and he has 
 cast them off as he discarded the garments of the 
 Fatherland when with American money he purchased 
 American clothes. Whence came this extraordinary 
 power of assimilation ? We cannot answer that 
 question now; it will answer itself in the succeed 
 ing pages as we trace the growth of American 
 nationality. 
 
 No, the Puritan for the Pilgrim need be only 
 incidentally considered in the course of this investi 
 gation came to Massachusetts an Englishman, 
 a rebel at heart, a protagonist to be given for the 
 first time full scope for the display of his powers, and 
 a man of profound religious conviction who was to 
 set up the theocracy in which he believed and which 
 had been denied him in England. The Massachu 
 setts man was not an American, for America in the 
 early part of the seventeenth century was a geo 
 graphical expression and not a political entity. 
 
 A race is not the product of to-day or yesterday ; 
 it is the result of all the influences that have made 
 it. In England those influences had been at work 
 for a hundred years before the Puritan set foot 
 on American soil. The Puritan left England with 
 
 1 That in Louisiana the code is based upon the Spanish law and the 
 Code Napoleon does not contradict the general assertion. 
 
136 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 bitterness in his heart not un tinged with regret; the 
 voyage across the Atlantic changed him not in 
 the slightest, and he came to his new home full of 
 courage but also full of determination, still ready 
 to rebel against authority that should attempt to 
 throttle his liberty. The American has always been 
 a rebel. He is a living protest. His existence is a 
 protest against usurped authority. To a rebel 
 fighting is second nature. The American has al 
 ways fought, against nature, against man, against 
 government when that government sought to op 
 press him. That was the moral attitude of the 
 Puritan. It displayed itself as early as 1635, when 
 Massachusetts contained a mere handful of strug 
 gling colonists. The fear that Charles I would seek 
 to exercise arbitrary power led them to prepare to 
 resist the Crown. They fortified Boston Harbor, 
 and the militia was placed on a war footing. The 
 spirit of 1776 did not suddenly flash into life. It 
 was born nearly a century and a half before. 
 
 A digression for a moment is necessary. In read 
 ing history backward the mind overleaps the ages. 
 Certain great events in the life of races or nations 
 stand out so prominently that they cannot be 
 overlooked, but the causes that produced them 
 are often obscure and their significance is hidden. 
 Many writers have found it convenient to ascribe 
 the beginning of Americanism to the Declaration 
 of Independence, as if that had made articulate an 
 invertebrate people. Now that were absurd. The 
 
THE AMERICAN A REBEL 137 
 
 Declaration of Independence was not cause but 
 effect. " It was only the first unanswerable asser 
 tion that this new people had come into existence." l 
 The defiance of England by Jefferson and Hancock 
 and Franklin and the other men who appended 
 their signatures to the great charter gained no 
 strength from their written declaration. This defi 
 ance had for years been slowly growing. It fol 
 lowed, it did not precede, the liberty that Patrick 
 Henry so passionately invoked. Long before the 
 parchment was made on which the Declaration of 
 Independence was written, long years before that 
 shot was fired which echoed in the heart of freedom, 
 long before the guns of Lexington and Concord 
 spoke, men had heard the voice that called them to 
 resist. Lexington and Concord were the outward 
 and visible signs of the spiritual teachings that 
 began in England two hundred and fifty years ear 
 lier, that buried their roots deep in the soil of New 
 England, and were fed by the immanent conviction 
 in the divine inspiration, and a profound belief that 
 there was only one law the law of God and 
 that as God had taught His people to resist oppres 
 sion, so it was the duty of those who would walk 
 in the light of His countenance to hearken to the 
 voice of Sinai. 
 
 The beginning of America we may really date to 
 1604. In that year met the first Parliament of 
 James I, in which the Puritans had a majority; 
 
 1 Wendell: Liberty, Union, and Democracy, p. 81. 
 
138 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 and one of the first acts of the House of Com 
 mons was to enact measures to redress certain 
 ecclesiastical grievances, which the Lords, backed 
 by James, rejected. This put the Commons on 
 their mettle, and they boldly told the king that he 
 had no more power to change religion than he had 
 to alter any laws without the consent of Parliament. 
 James, with all the obstinacy and short-sight 
 edness of the Stuarts, would listen to no advice; 
 reformers were declared guilty of sedition and 
 rebellion and punished; the Church enunciated 
 anew the doctrine of the divine right of kings and 
 the duty of obedience to those placed in authority. 
 And observe again how the great wheel of life for 
 ever revolves and the seeming impossibility of men 
 to profit by the experience of the past. The contest 
 between James I and his people ought to have been 
 a warning to Charles I, but it went unheeded, and 
 Charles lost his head, just as George III, for the 
 same reason, lost his American colonies. Had the 
 grievances of which the Puritans complained been 
 redressed by James, there would, in all probability, 
 have been no civil war, no flight to Holland 
 and thence to America, no tragedy at Whitehall; 
 America would have been settled by Englishmen, 
 but they would, one is inclined to believe, have 
 remained Englishmen. It was the stupidity and 
 vanity of an obstinate and narrow man that created 
 a race. 
 
 The purpose of the Puritan in leaving England 
 
THE AMERICAN A REBEL 139 
 
 and coming to Massachusetts was to create a theo 
 cratic state which, as Fiske says, should be, under 
 the New Testament dispensation, all that the theo 
 cracy of Moses and Joshua and Samuel had been 
 to the Jews in Old Testament days. 1 "It was one 
 great design of the first planters of the Massachu 
 setts colony to obtain for themselves and their pos 
 terity the liberty of worshiping God in such manner 
 as appeared to them to be most agreeable to the 
 sacred scriptures." 2 They came with that distinct 
 purpose, and it was one of the causes that made 
 them rebel at heart from the beginning. They were 
 prepared to render allegiance to their Heavenly 
 King, but they were in no mood tamely to submit 
 to the tyranny of Stuart monarchs. They had no 
 use for man-made constitutions, or for experiments 
 in government ; to those speculations that later were 
 so dear to the French philosophers they gave no 
 countenance. Their way lay straight before them. 
 The small book that has influenced the thought 
 of mankind more than all the ponderous tomes of 
 philosopher and reformer was their sole guide. If 
 they were in doubt, they had only to look into the 
 Bible and find all doubts removed. If there was 
 any question beyond the finite capacity of man to 
 solve, they had only to search and find the answer 
 in the Word. 
 
 They were not tolerant men, they were not 
 
 1 Fiske: The Beginnings of New England, p. 146. 
 3 Hutchinson: History of New England, vol. i, p. 417. 
 
140 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 liberal, as we understand the meaning of the term 
 in this day of enlightened liberality. They pur 
 posed no asylum for the persecuted of other sects. 
 They had not made themselves exiles, that they 
 might prepare an arena where all kinds of beliefs 
 might disport themselves. They had come three 
 thousand miles, at a great cost of money and of 
 feeling, that they might here make a better Eng 
 land according to their own convictions of that 
 which was true and right. 1 They were fanatics, 
 if you please, at a time when the world was either 
 fanatical or full of scoffing doubt, and it was a 
 time when the fanatic was more useful and played 
 a greater part than the Laodicean. They stand 
 accused of becoming more royalist than the king 
 in their religious bigotry, and after having escaped 
 from persecution they persecuted with even greater 
 ferocity those who had the courage to disagree 
 with their theology. Those historians who have 
 built on this false premise must naturally reach 
 an erroneous conclusion in their attempts to judge 
 the character of the Puritans, but this error is 
 to be attributed largely to the confusion of Pil 
 grim and Puritan. The former separated from 
 the Established Church because their consciences 
 led them to a form of worship that seemed more 
 in keeping with divine commandments, and they 
 could not, unless they were hypocrites, claim liberty 
 
 1 McKenzie: Introduction to Byington: The Puritan in England and 
 New England. 
 
THE AMERICAN A REBEL 141 
 
 for themselves and deny it to all others. They 
 asked religious liberty, and in equal measure they 
 were prepared to grant it. The vagaries of the 
 Quakers were to be sorrowed over rather than to 
 be corrected in anger. Although the Quakers fell 
 under the Pilgrim lash just as later they did under 
 the Puritan, and although it was applied in a spirit 
 of charity rather than vengeance, it scarred naked 
 backs as much in the one case as in the other. The 
 belief in witchcraft was universal, and the Pilgrims 
 were no more superior to the teachings of their 
 day than were the Puritans, but their natural 
 benevolence stayed the hand of the executioner. 
 With the Puritan it was different. He who was not 
 of their faith was an evil-disposed person who was 
 an enemy to the theocratic state, and there was no 
 place for such in the community. There was no 
 more room for heretics in Massachusetts than there 
 was in Rome or Madrid, Fiske says. It was a 
 day of swift trial and stern punishment. The here 
 tic must recant or die for his heresy. Heresy was 
 treason, and treason was death. 
 
 Bear in mind another fact. The Pilgrim had 
 separated from the Church of England; the Puritan, 
 at the time of his migration, when he laid the foun 
 dation of empire, was a member of the Church, and 
 he resented the imputation that he was a schismatic. 
 As the shores of England were fast receding, Hig- 
 ginson called his little band about him and thus 
 addressed them : 
 
142 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 " We will not say as the Separatists were wont to 
 say at their leaving of England, Farewell Babylon! 
 Farewell Rome! but we will say, Farewell, dear 
 England, farewell, the Church of God in England 
 and all the Christian friends there. We do not go 
 to New England as Separatists from the Church of 
 England, though we cannot but separate from the 
 corruptions of it; but we go to practice the positive 
 part of church reformation, and propagate the 
 Gospel in America." 1 
 
 Typical of this same feeling, which finds its ex 
 pression in numerous addresses and records, is the 
 letter from Dudley, the deputy governor of Massa 
 chusetts, to the Countess of Lincoln; he writes in 
 February, 1631:- 
 
 "Also, to increase the heap of our sorrows, we 
 received advisement by letters from our friends in 
 England, and by the reports of those who came 
 hither in this ship to abide with us, (who were about 
 twenty-six) that they who went discontentedly from 
 us the last year, out of their evil affections towards 
 us, have raised many false and scandalous reports 
 against us, affirming us to be Brownists in religion, 
 and ill affected to our State at home, and that those 
 vile reports have won credit with some who for 
 merly wished us well. But we desire, and cannot 
 but hope, that wise and impartial men will at 
 length consider that such malcontents have ever 
 pursued this manner of casting dirt, to make 
 
 1 Bacon: Genesis of the New England Churches, p. 467. 
 
THE AMERICAN A REBEL 143 
 
 others seem as foul as themselves, and that our 
 goodly friends, to whom we are known, will not 
 easily believe that we are so soon turned from the 
 profession we so long have made in our native 
 country. . . . We are not like those which have 
 dispensation to lie; but as we were free enough 
 in Old England to turn our insides outward, 
 sometimes to our disadvantage, very unlikely is it 
 that now, being procul a fulmine, we should be so 
 unlike ourselves. Let therefore this be sufficient 
 for us to say, and others to hear in this matter." * 
 The Puritan has been called a fanatic, and fanatic 
 he undoubtedly was, and yet his was a fanaticism 
 unlike that the world had ever before known, and 
 therefore it produced results different from other 
 religious persecution. In an attempt to make men 
 conform to a particular creed or form of worship, 
 pope and king had claimed divine authority which 
 men might not challenge, and so long as the creed 
 they preached was accepted they cared little for 
 the sincerity of professed belief. With the Puritan 
 it was different. He would tolerate no mere lip 
 service. Puritanism, as I shall show in the next 
 chapter, was a polity as well as a religion ; it was not 
 only the life of the people but it was also the life 
 of the state; it was a new trinity the guide to 
 morality, the guide to temporal obedience, the guide 
 to the achievement of material welfare. Until the 
 time when the Puritans settled in Massachusetts 
 
 1 Force, vol. ii, 4. 16. 
 
144 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 creeds were to be savagely defended and fought for, 
 but they were always exotic; they were always 
 something outside of men themselves, the meaning 
 of which men only dimly comprehended. 
 
 "The passionately precise idealism" of Calvin 
 ism was the basis of the Puritan character. His 
 theodicy was to him real. Forever tortured by 
 doubt, forever striving to reach a higher spiritual 
 plane, he must forever be vainly searching, strug 
 gling, asking; engaged in a perpetual conflict with 
 himself; endeavoring with all his strength to over 
 throw the enemy and rise triumphant over sin. 
 He was always questioning. The Puritan has been 
 represented as a man of little and narrow imagin 
 ation, but this misreads him. No man is unimag 
 inative whose whole life is a spiritual conflict such 
 as the Puritan w r as always engaged in ; the struggle 
 for freedom vividly awakens the imagination. The 
 man who accepts everything as fait accompli, to 
 whom the things of heaven and earth are a finality, 
 who has never been moved to question the meaning 
 of life or the mystery of death, who accepts what 
 ever is, moves with narrowed vision and is deaf to 
 the power of impression. The Puritan s whole 
 training, his intense idealism, quickened the imag 
 ination, for had he not been gifted with the divine 
 power of imagination, life would have lost many of 
 its terrors and death promised fewer rewards. 1 
 
 1 " Those people believed. They never for one instant questioned"; 
 thus Charles Francis Adams in Massachusetts, its Historians and its History 
 (p. 36). They believed, yes; it was inseparable from their lives; but they 
 
THE AMERICAN A REBEL 145 
 
 Puritanism was not a garment to be hastily 
 slipped into on Sunday and to be forgotten for the 
 other six days of the week. The Puritan wore his 
 religion at all times as he wore his leather-lined 
 doublet, for without it he would have stood ashamed 
 in his own nakedness; and one was as necessary 
 to him as the other. Whether he worked or played, 
 whether he sat in meeting-house or in the general 
 court, whether he tilled his fields or snatched up his 
 musket at the sound of an Indian alarm, wherever 
 he went or whatever he did, he took his creed with 
 him, for it was the criterion of right living, the 
 benison of divine grace. 
 
 never ceased to question. The difference between Puritan and Catholic was 
 that while both believed, the Catholic never questioned, and the Puritan was 
 always tortured by doubt. The Catholic believed with faith sublime, which 
 brought peace; the Puritan believed, but was never at peace with himself. 
 "I cannot imagine why the Holy Ghost should give Timothy the solemnest 
 charge, was ever given Mortal man, to observe the rules he had given, till the 
 coming of Christ; if new things must be expected." The Simple Cobler 
 of Aggawam (Force, vol. iii, 8). And Mather and Johnson and other 
 Puritan theologues show how this fear, this doubt, this longing to believe, 
 and yet always this eternal questioning, had possession of the Puritan mind; 
 which was at once its weakness no less than its strength. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE BIBLE THE PURITAN CONSTITUTION 
 
 To the Puritan the ideal concept of society was 
 a form of government in which the Word of God, 
 as exemplified in the Bible, was the law of man. 
 Grasping this basic truth, we see at once where it 
 led him. 
 
 The Bible was the Constitution of the Puritan 
 State. 
 
 All society, civilized or uncivilized, rests upon 
 a body of laws. Among an uncivilized people, in a 
 primitive or rudimentary state, those laws are the 
 customs of the tribe or the traditions of the clan. As 
 society escapes from barbarism and its intellectual 
 faculties develop, customs and traditions are codi 
 fied into fundamental constitutions and statutes, 
 which are either precisely defined or, by the sanc 
 tion of usage, become the unwritten law. In the 
 New World, in his new environment, the Puritan 
 began his social and political existence with a writ 
 ten constitution the Bible. I make no apologies 
 for reiteration. It is necessary that this should be 
 emphasized if its significance is to be appreciated 
 and its consequences understood. 1 
 
 1 " It was then requested of Mr. Cotton, that he would, from the laws 
 wherewith God governed his ancient people, form an abstract of such as were 
 
THE PURITAN CONSTITUTION 147 
 
 Every nomadic tribe, every clan, every people 
 from whom has sprung a race, is not less influenced 
 by its laws or customs than those laws or customs 
 reflect the physical and mental state of their crea 
 tors; and it is impossible to comprehend their view 
 of life unless we have knowledge of the code to 
 which they rendered obedience. The laws of Draco 
 and the laws of Solon typify two stages in the life of 
 Athens. You cannot enter into the Athenian mind 
 if you are unable to see why those codes were en 
 acted; with that understanding the Athenian social 
 and moral philosophy is its own interpretation. 
 
 No writer with whom I am familiar has brought 
 the Bible in this exact relation to the Puritan. And 
 yet it is fundamental. It is because of his Biblical 
 constitution that the Puritan was what he was. It is 
 one of the chief explanations of the difference in 
 character between the Pilgrim and the Puritan. It 
 is the reason why the Puritan made America and 
 the Pilgrim was merely an episode in historical evo 
 lution. 1 
 
 of a moral and a lasting equity: which he performed as acceptably as judi 
 ciously. . . . Mr. Cotton effectually recommended it unto them, that none 
 should be electors, nor elected therein, except such as were visible subjects of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ, personally confederated in our churches. In these, 
 and many other ways, he propounded unto them, an endeavour after a theo 
 cracy, as near as might be, to that which was the glory of Israel, the peculiar 
 people." Magnolia, rol. i, p. 243. 
 
 1 An Abstract of the Lawes of New England as they are now Established 
 (Force, vol. iii, 9), chapter i. Of Magistrates. First, All Magistrates are to 
 be chosen, First, By the free Burgesses (Deut. i, 13). Secondly, Out of the 
 free Burgesses (Deut. xvii, 15), and so on throughout, the warrant for the law 
 being found in Scripture. 
 
148 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 A writer usually so careful as Pierre Leroy- 
 Beaulieu falls into the common error of regarding 
 Pilgrim and Puritan as synonymous and inter 
 changeable terms. "From the days of the Pilgrim 
 fathers," he says, "who expatriated themselves in 
 order that they might establish on the rude shores 
 of Massachusetts a government resting on the prin 
 ciples derived from the Bible." l But this the Pil 
 grim did not do. He had no purpose to found a 
 theocratic state. That was the self-appointed mis 
 sion of the Puritan. 
 
 "And the elder Saints and Sages laid their pious framework right 
 By a theocratic instinct covered from the people s sight." 
 
 Agreed as men may be on principles, on details 
 there will always be a wide divergence of opinion, 
 and the greater their intellection the greater that 
 divergence will be. Nothing is more enticing to 
 flexible and subtle minds than to discuss the mean 
 ing of words capable of more than one construction 
 by ingenious argument or adroit sophistication, and 
 to convince themselves by their arguments of the 
 correctness of their position and the weakness of 
 that of their opponents. The Constitution of the 
 United States has been in existence for one hundred 
 and twenty-five years, and in that time it has been 
 passed upon and interpreted by some of the clearest 
 and most acute minds the world has known ; it has 
 been written on and expounded and discussed by 
 men of great learning, great honesty, and great abil- 
 
 1 Leroy-Beaulieu: The United States in the Twentieth Century, p. xvii. 
 
THE PURITAN CONSTITUTION 149 
 
 ity at perhaps greater length than any other man- 
 made code, and yet to-day we are as far from the 
 last word having been said as we were almost at 
 the beginning. What do a few simple words mean 
 that are in every-day use, words so simple that the 
 ordinary public-school boy in the lower grades has 
 no difficulty in understanding them ? But great 
 lawyers, great jurists, great statesmen, great writers 
 spend long hours in patient research endeavoring 
 to give these simple words an interpretation that 
 shall square with their own views, or what they be 
 lieve to be the intent of their writers, or the purpose 
 for which they were designed ; which by that con 
 struction shall be for the good of the state or the 
 benefit of the people. In the forum, in the courts, in 
 the press, there is constant discussion of the Con 
 stitution of the United States. That is not merely 
 an intellectual diversion, the luxury of idle minds, 
 to whom academic, hair-splitting argument is an 
 amusement as keen as it was to the Greeks and 
 Romans, who, at the height of their intellectual de 
 velopment, sat enraptured under the spell of their 
 great orators; nor does it bear any resemblance 
 to " the sub tili ties and quiddities of mediaeval theo 
 logians, who seriously discussed such silly questions 
 as the digestibility of the consecrated elements in 
 the eucharist." This discussion of the American 
 Constitution has a deeper and more ennobling pur 
 pose. The Constitution of the United States is to 
 the American people a code political as well as a 
 
150 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 code moral. It is the ark of the covenant. No im 
 pious hands may be laid upon it, for that were sac 
 rilege; it would, if it were falsely construed, destroy 
 political liberty and a moral standard that men 
 regard as vital for their spiritual growth. 
 
 The Constitution of the United States is a com 
 paratively short document and not more difficult 
 to memorize than many other pages of prose that 
 students have committed to heart. If, then, there 
 is this wide difference of opinion as to the meaning 
 of the words and purposes of the American Con 
 stitution, how inevitable that there should be even 
 greater differences of opinion as to the meaning 
 of that much larger and more complicated constitu 
 tion of the Puritan, the Bible ? 
 
 The Puritans had their constitution made for 
 them not by man but by the inspired Word of God ; 
 but because they were men and not divinely in 
 spired, it was necessary that they should seek its 
 interpretation according to their own human limita 
 tions and the finite capacity of their understand 
 ing. That could not be done in a day or a month 
 or a year. It was a matter that required the earnest 
 devotion of serious and zealous men, who ap 
 proached the study of their subject in a proper 
 frame of mind, who must look upon it as the great 
 est of all duties, who, convinced of the correctness 
 of their judgment, were like the champions of old, 
 ready to enter the lists against all comers to defend 
 their cause. 
 
THE PURITAN CONSTITUTION 151 
 
 An effective but cumbersome weapon was the 
 lance; much more convenient and deadly is the 
 magazine rifle. The expounders of the Puritan 
 constitution must needs use the means at hand. It 
 was not a day of steam printing-presses that turned 
 out their millions of printed words by the hour; the 
 machinery of distribution was wanting. No man 
 was driven by the spur of haste; society was not 
 revolutionized between breakfast and dinner; repu 
 tations were not made or destroyed between dinner 
 and bedtime by the facile pen of the morning news 
 paper leader writer. The controversialists of the 
 Puritan constitution, the strict constructionists and 
 the liberal expounders as we should term them to 
 day, relied on the tract and the spoken word to con 
 vince. Their tracts like their discourses were heavy, 
 rambling, discursive, frequently involved. Nothing 
 more strikingly marks the difference between the 
 old and the new than our brevity, our conciseness, 
 our horror of circumlocution or the unnecessary 
 use of mere words. We have simplified the ex 
 pression as well as the method of expression; we 
 have substituted the typewriter for the quill pen, 
 and thrown into the limbo of forgotten things 
 the grandiloquent and meaningless phrases that 
 require too much time to form into thought and 
 too much space to shape into words. 
 
 It was a day of controversy, a day when men 
 delighted in argument, for controversy and argu 
 ment were the means by which the people were 
 
152 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 educated, but it was not a day of little things. 
 Men of mature years did not, like Didymus, waste 
 their time in inquiries as to the relative ages of 
 Hecuba and Helen, or the name of the mother of 
 ^Eneas, or the character of Anacreon or Sappho. 1 
 Argument brought home to the people in the quick 
 est and most direct way the truths that it was 
 essential for them to know. For knowledge they 
 were eager. They avidly read what was written, they 
 listened with absorbent minds to what they heard. 
 To them that was a pleasure no less than a duty. 
 
 Much has been written of the gloom of the 
 Puritan Sunday, of the long sermons and services 
 at the meeting-houses, of the peculiar institution 
 that was native to the soil of New England. Now 
 in the first place the Puritan Sabbath was not 
 indigenous to the soil of Massachusetts, but was 
 one of the things that Englishmen brought with 
 them. "And to the end the Sabbath may be cele 
 brated in a religious manner, we appoint that all 
 that inhabit the Plantation, both for the general 
 and particular employment, may surcease their 
 labor every Saturday throughout the year at three 
 of the clock in the afternoon; and that they spend 
 the rest of that day in catechising and preparation 
 for the Sabbath, as the ministers shall direct," were 
 the instructions given to Endicott and his council in 
 1629 by the New England Company in London. 2 
 
 1 Dill : Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, p. 300. 
 
 2 Young: Chronicles of the First Planters of the Colony of Massachusetts 
 Bay, p. 163. 
 
THE PURITAN CONSTITUTION 153 
 
 It is easy enough to understand how the custom 
 originated. Warrant for it was found in the Puritan 
 constitution, where precise injunctions w r ere laid 
 down for the observance of the Sabbath. Thus 
 in Leviticus xxiii, 32, the Jews are commanded, 
 "from even unto even, shall ye celebrate your Sab 
 bath." Mather says that John Cotton began the 
 Sabbath the evening before; "for which keeping of 
 the Sabbath from evening to evening, he wrote 
 argument before his coming to New England: and 
 I suppose, twas from his reason and practice, that 
 the Christians of New-England have generally done 
 so too." l Hutchinson says it was some time before 
 this custom was settled. Hooker, in a letter written 
 about the year 1640, says, "The question touching 
 the beginning of the Sabbath is now on foot among 
 us, hath once been spoken to, and we are to give in 
 our arguments each to the other, so that we may 
 ripen our thoughts concerning that truth, and if the 
 Lord will, it may more fully appear"; and in 
 another letter, March, 1640, "Mr. Huit hath not 
 answered our arguments against the beginning the 
 Sabbath at Morning." 2 
 
 Through the mist of long years we look back on 
 the Puritan Sabbath and we see nothing but dark 
 ness and gloom, a day hi which the austere soul of 
 the fanatical Puritan could sink itself in the dread 
 of eternal punishment and rejoice in the thought 
 
 1 Mather: Magnolia, vol. i, p. 253. 
 
 1 Hutchinson: History of Massachusetts, vol. i, p. 428. 
 
154 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 of everlasting damnation. Malice aided by ingenu 
 ity has heightened this mirage. Not content with 
 imposing an all-day religious observance on these 
 unfortunate progenitors of a race, natural emotions 
 and sympathies were crushed out as abominable in 
 the sight of the Lord. We know of course now 
 that the celebrated Blue Laws had no existence in 
 fact and were the creation of malicious imagination, 
 but generations have believed in all sincerity that 
 the code of the Puritans forbade a husband to 
 kiss his wife on Sunday, that Sunday was to little 
 children a day of torture and torment, and that 
 the Puritan father found pleasure in making them 
 suffer. 
 
 "Home, as we conceive it now," Green says, 
 "was the creation of the Puritan. Wife and child 
 rose from mere dependents on the will of husband 
 or father, as husband and father saw in them saints 
 like himself, souls hallowed by the touch of a divine 
 spirit and called with a divine calling like his own. 
 The sense of spiritual fellowship gave a new ten 
 derness and refinement to the common family 
 affections." l Instead of Sunday being to the Puritan 
 a day to be dreaded and to be approached with a 
 feeling of repugnance, it was a day to be looked 
 forward to with delight. Campbell has well said 
 that "the Puritan took as keen a pleasure in his 
 four hours sermon from a moving preacher as 
 ever did the most ardent admirer of the drama 
 
 1 Green: A History of the English People, vol. vi, p. 199. 
 
THE PURITAN CONSTITUTION 155 
 
 at the first night of a great play," * It was a day of 
 quiet and rational enjoyment according to the Puri 
 tan idea of what was rational and meet to be enjoyed 
 by the godly. 
 
 Puritanism, it cannot be too often repeated, was 
 a political-social movement as much as it ever was 
 a religious; it was the sowing of the great seed of 
 democracy that has overrun the earth. The life of 
 the common people of England, of the common 
 people everywhere, was hard enough, and there was 
 little consideration shown for their comfort or 
 amusement, for the limitation of their hours of labor, 
 or their protection against the oppression of their 
 employers, against that most iniquitous form of 
 sweating that even to-day is the disgrace of civil 
 ization. The England of Elizabeth was "Merrie 
 England," but it was a merriment more on the 
 surface than in the hearts of the beast of burden 
 the common people who bore England on its 
 back. Elizabethan statutes made it legal for men 
 to work on Sunday; more than that, "if, for any 
 scrupulosity or grudge of conscience, men should 
 superstitiously abstain from working on those days, 
 that then they should grievously offend and dis 
 please God." 2 Gradually there came to be no 
 distinction between Sunday and the secular days of 
 the week, until with the death of Elizabeth Parlia 
 ment refused to sit on Sunday, servile labor was 
 
 1 Campbell: The Puritan in Holland, England, and America, vol. ii, 
 p. 162. 
 
 3 Campbell: op. cit., vol. ii, p. 161. 
 
156 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 abolished on that day, and the so-called "Puritan 
 Sunday," in contradistinction to the "Continental 
 Sunday," was established both in England and the 
 United States. 
 
 The Puritans have been accused of taking their 
 pleasures sadly, which is the same accusation that 
 has been brought by the French 1 against the 
 English and the English against the Americans in 
 our day, and much fun has been made of the 
 Thursday lecture, the Puritan s one idea of enjoy 
 ment, which naturally took a theological form. 
 As a matter of historical accuracy, again, the 
 Thursday lecture was not a Puritan institution, but 
 was borrowed from England. Hume tells of the 
 intention in 1637 "to suppress all the Wednesdays 
 lectures in London,"and he adds: "It is observable, 
 that the church of Rome and that of London, being 
 both of them lovers of form and ceremony and 
 order, are more friends to prayer than preaching; 
 while the puritanical sectaries, who find that the 
 latter method of address, being directed to a numer 
 ous audience present and visible, is more inflaming 
 and animating, have always regarded it as the 
 chief part of divine service." He concludes with 
 this philosophical observation, which is as pertinent 
 to-day as it was when written : " Such circumstances, 
 though minute, it may not be improper to transmit 
 to posterity ; that those, who are curious of tracing 
 
 1 "II m a semble qu une sorte de nuage couvrait habituellement leurs 
 traits; ils m ont paru graves et presque tristes jusquedans leurs plaisirs. " 
 de Tocqueville, vol. iii, p. 274. 
 
THE PURITAN CONSTITUTION 157 
 
 the history of the human mind, may remark how 
 far its several singularities coincide in different 
 ages." * In other words, the eternal revolution of 
 the wheel. 
 
 The Thursday lecture of the Puritan became the 
 Puritan dissipation. Many people went to the lec 
 tures because they found it more comfortable to 
 listen to an exhortation than to bend their backs in 
 field or household labor; the young people across 
 the meeting-house could at least see one another. 
 So seriously did the lectures interfere with orderly 
 arrangement that the magistrates made repeated 
 attempts to restrict them. 
 
 Admirers of the Puritans have found evidence 
 that they were men of extraordinary logical minds, 
 and to this quality has been ascribed so many of 
 their actions and the results they accomplished. 
 This is again to invest them with attributes little 
 short of the miraculous and to set aside perfectly 
 natural causes. They were not more logical than 
 the rest of their race Bacons and Lockes are the 
 human veins of gold in a dull mass of quartz - 
 although they were hard-headed and had much com 
 mon sense; despite their fanaticism in religion, 
 which was their concept of life, there was another 
 side of their character, which appears contradic 
 tory and was, in fact, contradictory; but all men 
 worth the study are bilateral. Fanatics they were, 
 and yet in all things affecting civil government and 
 
 1 Hume: History of England, p. 549. 
 
158 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 the development of society and the state they 
 showed splendid sanity and an equable poise, two 
 most admirable qualities, without which a sustained 
 course leading to definite results is impossible. 
 While they were in many things narrow and obsti 
 nate, judging as they asked to be judged, paltering 
 neither with the truth nor the right, firm in their 
 convictions, steadfast in their faith, not so much be 
 cause it was a duty, which is the most contemptible 
 code of virtue man can adopt, but because it brought 
 its own reward in the satisfaction of well doing, they 
 yielded to outside influences; they were as malle 
 able as the finely tempered steel that bends but will 
 not break; and they were possessed of an extraordi 
 nary power of assimilating all that was best in the 
 civilization and institutions of the rest of the world. 
 It made them always mindful of the thing re 
 quired. Typical of this was the response of a mem 
 ber of the Legislature at the time of the historic 
 "Dark Day," when the Day of Judgment was sup 
 posed to be at hand. He opposed adjournment, 
 saying: "Either the Day of Judgment has come, or 
 it has not ; if the Day has come, I choose to be found 
 at the post of duty; and if it has not come, there is 
 no reason for an adjournment." 1 
 
 There is one great quality about the reformer that 
 has ever been noted. Whether he is narrow, stern, 
 and harsh as Calvin, or more pleasure-loving and 
 human as Luther, whether he is obsessed with but a 
 
 1 Byington: The Puritan in England and New England, p. 120. 
 
THE PURITAN CONSTITUTION 159 
 
 single idea or touches life at many points, the re 
 former not the mere mouthing demagogue who 
 uses his cunning to advantage himself but the man 
 of strong and deep-rooted convictions, willing to die 
 if necessary in the defense of what he knows to be 
 right has in him always something of the imagina 
 tion and imagery of the poet, the vision of the seer, 
 the wisdom of the prophet, the common sense of the 
 statesman ; and he sees farther and deeper into the 
 great heart of humanity than even he is consciously 
 aware. Every great reform, those great reforms 
 that have swept society from its old moorings and 
 driven it with irresistible force into new channels, 
 has had small beginnings and has gained mo 
 mentum because its end lay far beyond the hori 
 zon of the mind of the reformer when he began 
 his self-imposed task. He has grown on what 
 he created, and a part at least of his own person 
 ality, his own courage and self-denial and righteous 
 ness he has put in the hearts and minds of his 
 followers. 
 
 In making Sunday a day devoted to religious 
 observance and prohibiting secular employment, 
 the Puritan simply struck a blow in defense of the 
 common people and anticipated by three hundred 
 years a great economic truth. It was long after the 
 factory system had been established in England 
 at the close of the Napoleonic wars that English 
 statesmen and legislators had the knowledge forced 
 upon them that men and women engaged in manual 
 
160 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 labor, like the machines to which they were yoked, 
 could not be driven beyond their capacity, and that 
 when they were overtaxed they broke down under 
 the strain. So densely ignorant were men of 
 economic laws that at first they believed that 
 human life had no economic value, and while 
 machinery represented capital, and therefore must 
 be conserved, humanity was the inexhaustible sup 
 ply of raw material always pressing on the market 
 and always to be purchased at a trifling cost, and, 
 like all raw material, of no value until it had been 
 converted into the finished product. Men and 
 women were fed to machines as human lives were 
 laid in the arms of Moloch. When it was discov 
 ered that labor was not raw material but an asset, 
 that the vigor of its workers measured the commer 
 cial strength of the state, only then was the workman 
 accorded some of the consideration shown to the 
 machine; then began that great mass of statutes 
 whose purpose it is to protect men and women 
 against the rapacity and ignorance of their employ 
 ers; to make employment less hazardous; to keep 
 children of tender years out of the factory and the 
 mine, and to give them a brief respite before they 
 are chained to their never-ending drudgery. 
 
 The Puritan Sunday was threefold in purpose. 
 First: It was economic, as I have already pointed out, 
 because it brought to rest for one day in seven all 
 the machinery of society, human as well as material. 
 It was as sound in theory and principle then as it is 
 
THE PURITAN CONSTITUTION 161 
 
 to-day. The necessity for this cessation from toil 
 having been recognized, it could only be enforced by 
 the concrete expression of the community voiced in 
 legislation. Second: It was political, because it was 
 the assertion of the rights of the people to control at 
 least a part of their time and to assert their inde 
 pendence. Puritanism sowed the seed of demo 
 cracy. Third: It was religious, because it was or 
 dained that "six days thou shalt labour, and do all 
 thy work : but the seventh day is the sabbath of the 
 Lord thy God : in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, 
 nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, 
 nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, 
 nor any of thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within 
 thy gates ; that thy manservant and thy maidservant 
 may rest as well as thou." 1 
 
 Much as the Puritan might discuss the interpre 
 tation of his constitution, he did not dare to arrogate 
 to himself the right to discuss its fundamental pro 
 visions nor to disregard them. His attitude was 
 perfectly consistent. 2 There was no distinction to 
 be made between the major and minor clauses of 
 his code. The command not to commit adultery 
 was no higher than the injunction to keep holy the 
 Lord s day. He read in his Bible that while the 
 children of Israel were in the wilderness they 
 
 1 Deuteronomy v, 13, 14. 
 
 2 "Cartwright, who had a chief hand in reducing puritanism to a system, 
 held that the magistrate was bound to adhere to the judicial laws of Moses 
 and might not punish nor pardon otherwise than they prescribed, and him 
 the Massachusetts people followed." Hutchinson, vol. ii, p. 463. 
 
162 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 found a man who gathered sticks on the sabbath 
 day, who was brought before Moses to be judged, 
 who sought the counsel of the Lord and was told 
 that the man must be stoned to death, "and he 
 died, as the Lord commanded Moses." l 
 
 The religious side of the Puritan Sunday we can 
 of course easily comprehend, and because the formal 
 religious observance was on the surface to be seen 
 by the dullest intellect, while the political and 
 economic effects were more subtle and lay buried 
 deep in the brains of a few men of far vision, Sunday 
 as a day of austere religious ceremony has alone 
 been remembered. I have said that Sunday was a 
 day of keen enjoyment to those men who found 
 pleasure in intellectual discussion, and Sunday 
 was the day on which a moving preacher gave to 
 his audience enough material to fill their minds 
 and hearts for the following six days. Fiske has 
 pointed out that "it was absolutely essential that 
 every one should be taught from early childhood 
 how to read and understand the Bible. So much 
 instruction as this was assumed to be a sacred duty 
 which the community owed to every child born 
 within its jurisdiction." 2 Just as to-day American 
 boys and girls are expected to acquire at least a 
 rudimentary knowledge of the American Constitu 
 tion, so in those days the children of the Puritans 
 were taught the code of their state. 
 
 1 Numbers xv, 32-36. 
 
 3 Fiske: The Beginnings of New England, p. 151. 
 
THE PURITAN CONSTITUTION 163 
 
 As men advance in years and understanding their 
 point of view shifts with the ever shifting attitude 
 of society ; but children have always been the same, 
 because they are born without prejudice and with 
 out restraint, and it is only as hereditary influences 
 develop and education makes itself felt that they 
 cease to act by natural impulse and become con 
 ventionalized. We have abundant evidence that 
 the children of the Puritans no more relished the 
 preaching of their ministers or the enforced atten 
 tion they were compelled to give to long and tedious 
 sermons that were over their heads, that either set 
 their little heads nodding in sheer weariness or held 
 their eyes wide open in terror as they listened to the 
 threats of eternal damnation, than children of to 
 day really enjoy the hours spent at school or the 
 routine of Sunday clothes and Sunday church, 
 where they fidget and grow hot and long for their 
 release. Puritan children were either normal, 
 healthy children with all the undisciplined spirits 
 of the virile young animal, or else fear and a vivid 
 imagination that they were too young to control 
 made them intensely morbid and introspective; 
 they would have become neurotic had they lived 
 in a more genial clime; in an older and more 
 luxurious civilization passion would have been 
 aroused by an appeal to the senses. Nothing is 
 more pathetic than to read of the mental tortures 
 through which some of these little children passed, 
 and the few words set down in diaries and letters, 
 
164 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 incidentally and almost casually, reveal the over 
 wrought state in which so many of these unhappy 
 boys and girls lived. 
 
 Betty, the young daughter of an eloquent 
 preacher, once heard her father deliver a sermon 
 that greatly stirred his congregation, so much so 
 "that they all cried out," and this is the effect the 
 discourse had on her: 
 
 " A little while after dinner she burst out into an 
 amazing cry, which caused all the family to cry too. 
 Her mother asked her the reason ; she gave none. 
 At last she said she was afraid she would go to 
 Hell; her sins were not pardoned. She was first 
 wounded by my reading a sermon of Mr. Norton s, 
 text, ye shall seek me and shall not find me. And 
 those words in the sermon, ye shall seek me and 
 die in your sins ran in her mind and terrified her 
 greatly . . . told me she was afraid she should go 
 to Hell, was like Spira, not elected." 1 
 
 A boy wrote in his diary: "Of the manifold sins 
 of which then I was guilty of none so sticks upon 
 me as that being very young I was whittling on the 
 Sabbath day; and for fear of being seen I did it 
 behind the door. A great reproach of God." This 
 youth died at nineteen. 2 
 
 But we get glimpses of the other side of child 
 hood, the irrepressible spirit of fun and pleasure, 
 that broke the law of the family for the mere pleas- 
 
 1 Fisher: Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial Times, vol. i, p. 141. 
 
 2 Fisher, op. cit., p. 142. 
 
THE PURITAN CONSTITUTION 165 
 
 ure of defiance and because youth must have its 
 fling. As early as 1657 it was found necessary to 
 pass this law in Boston : 
 
 "Forasmuch as sundry complaints are made that 
 several persons have received hurt by boys and 
 young men playing at football in the streets, these 
 therefore are to enjoin that none be found at that 
 game in any of the streets, lanes or enclosures of 
 this town under the penalty of twenty shillings for 
 every such offence." 1 Really that law does not 
 differ much, except in the severity of its penalty, 
 from the municipal ordinances and regulations of 
 to-day, and it shows that the Puritan boy could at 
 times make himself just as much of a nuisance to 
 his elders as the twentieth-century youngster. 
 
 The stern control the Puritan had over himself 
 is typically illustrated in two matter-of-fact entries 
 in Samuel Sewall s diary, Sewall "the Puritan 
 Pepys": 
 
 " October 29, 1698. Thomas Savage junr, shop 
 keeper, and Sarah Threeneedles were brought face 
 to face in a very great Audience: She vehemently 
 accused him, and he asserted his innocency with 
 vehement Asseverations. She said he had ruin d 
 her ; if he would have promis d her any thing, it had 
 not come to this. Said she forgave him, Judgment 
 of God hung over him if did not repent. 
 
 "Fifth-day, Novr 17th. Very fair serene wether ; 
 Mr. Cotton Mather preaches at the South-Meeting- 
 
 1 Earle: Customs and Fashions in Old New England, p. 20. 
 
166 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 house; Sarah Threeneedles is an auditor; is a 
 very vast Assembly, and the street full of such as 
 could not get in; 51. Psalm 2d verse sung, 9-15 
 verses. Mr. Willard read the whole, and I set the 
 tune. After Lecture Sarah Threeneedles is executed . 
 Mr. Woodbridge went to the place of execution and 
 pray d with her there." 1 
 
 Not a word as to the unfortunate Sarah Three- 
 needles; not a superfluous adjective. What in the 
 hands of Hawthorne became a classic, is to Sewall 
 a bare record of fact. 
 
 While the Puritan fathers carefully regulated 
 marriage because marriage was an economic 
 necessity and both spinsterhood and bachelorhood 
 were frowned upon, as the unmarried of suitable 
 age were a drag upon the proper development of 
 the colony even Puritanism could not crush out 
 the romance of love. An English traveler gives this 
 glimpse of Boston in 1663: 
 
 " On the south there is a small but pleasant Com 
 mon, where the Gallants, a little before sunset, walk 
 with their Marmalet-Madams till the nine o clock 
 bell rings them home to their respective habita 
 tions." 2 This picture of gallants and marmalet- 
 madams try sting in the soft twilight and losing 
 themselves in the mazes of an undiscovered country 
 rather upsets the preconceived idea of Puritan 
 austerity and their horror of even an approach to 
 
 1 Sewall: Diary, Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. v, p. 486. 
 
 2 Earle: op. dt., p. 40. 
 
THE PURITAN CONSTITUTION 167 
 
 sentiment. Sacred ground that small but pleasant 
 common to Priscilla and her sisters, who, Puritans 
 though they were, had all of woman s infinite capa 
 city for love and passion. 
 
 Just as the Puritans discovered a great economic 
 truth that only received the world s indorsement 
 three centuries later, so a great social law was 
 revealed to them, the importance of which philoso 
 phers did not grasp until the nineteenth century 
 was waning. Until the dominant force of Puri 
 tanism made itself felt and changed the whole social 
 system of England, education was a thing distinctly 
 the prerogative of the classes and denied the 
 masses. There was reason for this. It was not 
 advisable that the people should know too much, 
 that they should be able to read and think for 
 themselves. The strength of feudalism, and later 
 the divine right of kings and the autocracy of scep 
 tre and mitre, was buttressed in the ignorance of the 
 great mass to whom majesty temporal and spiritual 
 could not be questioned because men were denied 
 the capacity of voicing what they dumbly felt. 
 
 The Puritan struck a blow at ignorance and in 
 doing so fought for liberty. So long as the people 
 were unlettered, so long would they believe in super 
 stition and meekly submit to political despotism. 
 The surest way to raise the social level was to raise 
 the general level of intelligence and to teach men 
 the habit of thinking for themselves. The Puritans 
 were the originators of the "campaign of educa- 
 
168 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 tion." Curious indeed that what the Puritans did 
 in their meeting-houses and at their hearthstones 
 the modern state has simply done more elaborately 
 with the complicated machinery of board schools 
 and compulsory school attendance, factory laws and 
 other statutes that prohibit the employment of 
 children unless they can give evidence of having 
 received at least the rudiments of education; that 
 when a democracy must convert men from the here 
 sies of false economic beliefs it adopts the methods 
 of the Puritan theocracy. It is axiomatic that the 
 civilization of a state is in inverse ratio to the 
 illiteracy of its people. 
 
 Because the Puritans saw the necessity of over 
 throwing superstitions and encouraging resistance 
 to political despotism it is not to be assumed that 
 they emancipated themselves from superstition or 
 despotism. The candid historian has little to choose 
 between Popish and Protestant superstition ; theo 
 cratic despotism was as harsh as monarchical. That 
 has ever been the case; and if the Puritans had 
 simply exchanged one fetich for another, things alike 
 would simply have been called by different names 
 and the world would have advanced not one step. 
 But in their passion for knowledge the founders of 
 the Puritan state put into the hands of the people a 
 weapon that was to prove their undoing and should 
 destroy theocracy and set up in its place a broader, 
 a more tolerant, a more humanizing code. 
 
 The more educated men became, the more 
 
THE PURITAN CONSTITUTION 169 
 
 clearly they saw that a theocratic state, theoretically 
 ideal, was practically impossible; and the force of 
 circumstances and the broadening of intellect and 
 the humanizing effect that education has on the 
 whole concept of life compelled them to question 
 the right of man to regulate all human affairs by 
 the teaching of the Bible. In the very nature of 
 things it was inevitable. Modern society has been 
 able to accept the spiritual teachings of the Bible, 
 but has dissociated it from the temporal. That the 
 Puritan, at first, could not do, for the essence of the 
 Puritan character was consistency, and consist 
 ency when pushed to the extreme leads to narrow 
 ness, stubbornness, rigidity. It hardens character, 
 and with that hardening is lost a certain amount of 
 intellectual pliability, the power to see both sides 
 of a controversial question, or to admit that there 
 may be some merit in your adversary s morals or 
 manners. The Puritan stands on the page of his 
 tory as an extremely narrow and self-centred man, 
 but it was his consistency, his steadfast adherence 
 to the code that he had created for himself, that 
 made him so, and not because he was racially 
 different from the men who were not of his faith. 
 It was demanded of these early settlers that they 
 should be orthodox, that they should accept the 
 Word as it was delivered to them, and neither 
 question its authority nor seek to give it an inter 
 pretation that might be more comfortable. But a 
 people must either accept orthodoxy and remain 
 
170 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 under the thrall of its superstition, or with their 
 intellectual growth, in their ardent desire to solve 
 the great mystery of the universal scheme, first have 
 their doubts aroused, and then begin to question, 
 and then finally boldly deny, or at least challenge 
 their opponents to bring proof in support of the 
 faith that is in them. The very methods adopted 
 by the Puritan fathers to inculcate obedience and 
 to maintain the supremacy of the theocratic state 
 were the methods that were most conducive to 
 quicken intellectual agnosticism, and whatever 
 divergent views we may entertain of the Puritan, 
 there can be no question as to the force of his 
 intellect and his power as a controversialist. The 
 perpetual discussion of the Biblical constitution, 
 the polemical warfare carried on through the print 
 ing-press, the one great thing which occupied men s 
 thoughts almost to the exclusion of everything else, 
 that unconsciously colored their lives and moulded 
 their conduct as soil and sunshine give to a flower 
 its fragrance and delicate texture, were, as Fiske 
 says, no mean school of intellectual training. In 
 addition there was the basic Puritan theory that 
 ignorance lay at the root of all civil and religious 
 despotism and kept men in a state of moral and 
 intellectual slavery. In putting this theory into 
 practical effect we see again that the Puritans were 
 less logical than some of their admirers have as 
 sumed. Logically they should have realized the 
 danger of education, and had they retained know- 
 
THE PURITAN CONSTITUTION 171 
 
 ledge in the hands of the Puritan hierarchy the 
 Puritan theocracy would have lived longer. "In 
 this energetic diffusion of knowledge they were 
 unwittingly preparing the complete and irreparable 
 destruction of the theocratic ideal of society which 
 they had sought to realize by crossing the ocean 
 and settling in New England. This universal edu 
 cation and this perpetual discussion of theological 
 questions were no more compatible with rigid 
 adherence to the Calvinistic system than with 
 submission to the absolute rule of Rome. The 
 inevitable result was the liberal and enlightened 
 Protestanism which is characteristic of the best 
 American society at the present day, and which 
 is continually growing more liberal as it grows 
 enlightened." 1 
 
 But a long period elapsed before this era of "lib 
 eral and enlightened Protestantism" was reached, 
 and in that interval Puritan theocracy was marked 
 by all the bigotry, superstition, and cruelty that 
 in that day were inseparable from religion and 
 which to-day seem to reflect upon the Puritan char 
 acter. While the Puritan did not rise above the 
 spirit of his age, he did not sink below it. 
 
 The Puritans began by denying citizenship to 
 those who were not members of the church, which 
 was quite natural from their standpoint, but soon 
 opposition arose to a religious test. Thomas 
 Hooker, a Cambridge graduate and an ordained 
 
 1 Fiske: The Beginnings of New England, p. 151. 
 
172 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 clergyman of the Church of England, may not 
 inappropriately be called the father of American 
 democracy. "Government rests on the free con 
 sent of the governed" and "government of the 
 people, by the people, for the people," are simply 
 paraphrases of his declaration that "the founda 
 tion of authority is laid in the free consent of the 
 people," which with the further declaration, "they 
 who have the power to appoint officers and magis 
 trates, have the right to set the bounds and limita 
 tions of the power and place of those who are 
 called," are the foundation on which, a century and 
 a half later, the American Constitution was reared. 
 Hooker, a rebel among rebels, led a band to Con 
 necticut, where he founded a colony and a written 
 constitution was adopted, 1 which, like the American 
 Constitution, prescribes no religious test. This 
 movement had great influence on the older colony 
 of Massachusetts, which modified the religious qual 
 ification for the right of suffrage, and eventually 
 abolished it. 
 
 But before that golden day dawned bigotry was 
 long to remain enthroned. 
 
 Historians have delighted to heap obloquy upon 
 the Puritans for their persecution of the Quakers, 
 just as they gleefully relate the whipping of Obadiah 
 Holmes, the Baptist, who had the temerity to go to 
 Lynn to give a dying brother consolation, as evi 
 dence of Puritan intolerance. 
 
 1 See p. 340. 
 
THE PURITAN CONSTITUTION 173 
 
 That persecution requires no apology from the 
 impartial historian, for men are to be judged not 
 by the moral statutes of the present, but their 
 actions are to be weighed in the scales of the time 
 in which they lived and the then existing state of 
 morals. It is as great an anachronism to apply 
 the twentieth-century test of morals to the seven 
 teenth as it would be absurd to blame the Puritans 
 for being content with the discomforts of the pine 
 torch instead of using the electric light. That they 
 would have used the electric light if it had been 
 known to them we may feel sure, and we may with 
 equal certainty convince ourselves that their moral 
 attitude would have been that of to-day had the 
 morality of the twentieth century been invented in 
 the seventeenth. That time had not yet come. 
 
 The Puritans persecuted the Quakers and drove 
 forth Roger Williams, who had already been driven 
 out of England by Laud, for the very simple reason 
 that all society was founded on persecution, and he 
 who differed from the majority and was courageous 
 enough or foolish enough to challenge the estab- 
 blished order, whether in church or state, was to be 
 tortured or put to death. In that tremendous con 
 flict which made Europe for centuries one vast 
 house of mourning in the name of religion, its 
 champions sincerely and honestly believed with all 
 the intensity of besotted ignorance that their faith 
 was alone the true faith, and that those who would 
 not accept conversion and who remained stubborn 
 
174 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 in their obstinacy after the persuasion of the torture 
 chamber were better dead. Between Philip II of 
 Spain and Luther and Calvin and Paul IV there is 
 nothing in common except the common belief in 
 the punishment of the heretic. " Each side," as Lea 
 so forcibly puts it, "was equally sure that it alone 
 possessed the true faith, w T hich was to be vindicated 
 with fire and sword. If the canon law required 
 sovereigns to put heretics to death, Luther, in 1528, 
 subscribed to a declaration of the Wittenberg theo 
 logians prescribing the same fate for those whom 
 they classed as such. If Paul IV, in 1555, declared 
 that all who denied the Trinity should be pitilessly 
 burned, he but followed the example that Calvin 
 had set two years before. If France had her feast 
 of Saint Bartholomew, Germany had led the way 
 in the slaughter of the Anabaptists. If Spain had 
 her inquisition, England, in 1550, under the re 
 forming Edward VI, created a similar organization 
 with Cranmer at its head." In all that long struggle 
 for what has with unconscious and grim irony been 
 called freedom of conscience, men only asked for 
 freedom to enslave the consciences of others, in 
 spired often by what they believed to be the highest 
 and purest motives, but blind to their own tyranny. 
 Because of our inability to absorb the spirit of a 
 bygone age, we are too apt to regard the persecu 
 tion of Protestant and Catholic and the savage 
 crimes committed in the name of religion as proof 
 that cruelty was practiced for the sole delight that 
 
THE PURITAN CONSTITUTION 175 
 
 man perverted derived from witnessing suffering, 
 and that the agony of the victims of the rack and 
 the thumbscrew was music to brutal and bestial 
 natures; just as the North American Indian often 
 tortured his white captives for the mere pleasure 
 of gloating over their pain. In this we do fanatics 
 and zealots an injustice. There were of course 
 many violent and passionate men who took as keen 
 delight in inflicting torture as the average man, 
 humanized and softened by contact with his fellow- 
 men and the refining influences that come from an 
 orderly and well-regulated system of society, now 
 takes in relieving suffering and endeavoring to pre 
 vent it; but the great majority who maimed and 
 slew for the glory of religion believed in their mis 
 sion, and were sustained by the thought that they 
 were carrying on the work for which they were 
 anointed. 
 
 Had the Puritans of New England treated the 
 Quakers otherwise than in the way they did, we 
 might well believe in the theory of "miracle" set 
 up by their over-zealous but injudicious defenders 
 and find proof that they were touched by the divine 
 spark; but the fact that the Puritans went about 
 their congenial work of hanging and flogging and 
 imprisoning is evidence enough to the impartial 
 investigator that the Englishman in Massachusetts 
 was no different from the Englishman in London 
 or Lincolnshire. Quakers were put to death on 
 Boston Common for the same reason that the fires 
 
176 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 had been lighted under the bodies of Protestants 
 in Smithfield Market. Salvation was free, it was 
 offered with outstretched hands to whoever would 
 embrace it, but it must be salvation of the approved 
 brand. Whoever was presumptuous enough to 
 crave a different brand of salvation from that which 
 the ruling powers regarded as their own monopoly 
 was a traitor to God and man. And God was 
 always invoked to justify every vile impulse. What 
 abominable hypocrisy it seems to praise God for 
 an epidemic of smallpox which swept away the 
 Indians, but to the conscience of the seventeenth 
 century it was a mark of divine favor. In 1633 the 
 Aberginians near Charles town were sorely stricken, 
 and thus piously writes a Puritan who saw in 
 everything the hand of God: 
 
 "By which awful and admirable dispensation it 
 pleased God to make room for his people of the 
 English nation; who, after this, in the immediate 
 years following, came from England by many hun 
 dreds every year to us, who, without this remark 
 able and terrible stroke of God upon the natives, 
 would with much more difficulty have found room, 
 and at far greater charge have obtained and pur 
 chased land." 
 
 Excuses have been found for the Puritan persecu 
 tion of the Quakers. We have been told that they 
 offended the sober taste of the Puritans by their 
 extravagance and indecency in dress; that their 
 manners and speech were offensive; that they made 
 
THE PURITAN CONSTITUTION 177 
 
 sport of religion and sought to overthrow civil 
 institutions; that women shocked public morality 
 by appearing in public places clothed in the gar 
 ments of original sin. Stern as the Puritans were 
 in their morality, it was no shock to their moral 
 nature to look upon women naked in the hands of 
 the executioners. Women bared to the waist had 
 been flogged through the streets, other women had 
 been stripped naked for examination. It was not a 
 day when the offender was treated with considera 
 tion or pains were taken not to wound his feelings. 
 The Puritan treatment of the Quakers was brutal 
 in the extreme, unthinkable in this day, but exactly 
 in keeping with the day in which it happened. 1 
 
 In 1656 Anne Austin and Mary Fisher came to 
 Boston from the Barbadoes, and Richard Belling- 
 ham, the deputy governor, arrested them and kept 
 them in prison for five weeks until a ship was 
 ready to return them whence they came. Soon after 
 their departure, the stern and fanatical Endicott 
 returned home. He found fault with Bellingham s 
 conduct as too gentle; "if he had been there he 
 would have had the hussies flogged. Five years 
 afterwards Mary Fisher went to Adrianople and 
 
 1 I have not considered it necessary to cite specific instances of Quaker 
 persecution or the numerous statutes directed against these pestiferous ene 
 mies of the theocratic state, as the general fact is too well known to the student 
 of early American history ; but the curious reader who seeks more light on the 
 subject may read with interest Elliott s New England History, Sewell s His 
 tory of the Quakers, Hallowell s Quaker Invasion of Massachusetts, Bishop s 
 New England Judged by the Spirit of the Lord, Besse s Sufferings of the 
 Quakers. 
 
178 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 tried to convert the Grand Turk, who treated her 
 with grave courtesy and allowed her to prophesy 
 unmolested. This is one of the numerous incidents 
 that on a superficial view of history might be cited 
 in support of the opinion that there has been on the 
 whole more tolerance in the Mussulman than in 
 the Christian world. Rightly interpreted, however, 
 the fact has no such implication. In Massachusetts 
 the preaching of Quaker doctrines might (and did) 
 lead to a revolution; in Turkey it was as harmless 
 as the barking of dogs. Governor Endicott was 
 afraid of Mary Fisher; Mahomet IV was not." 1 
 
 On all fours with the persecution of the Quakers 
 the Puritan treatment of witches and witchcraft, 
 and the happenings that have made Salem world- 
 famous when much more important places are 
 unknown, is a stone always cast by the ignorant 
 defamers of Puritanism. "Writers who dislike 
 Puritanism have rubbed the sad old story into the 
 sore place unmercifully, as if the colonists at Salem 
 ought to have been superior to the ideas of their 
 age." 2 Professor Kittredge, in his "Notes on 
 Witchcraft," 3 holds a brief for the men of Salem and 
 by a plea of confession and avoidance argues that 
 instead of being worse than their kinsmen at home 
 they were really better. Here again it is not neces 
 sary to seek excuses. Belief in evil spirits, in the 
 league between the devil and his agents in human 
 
 1 Fiske: The Beginnings of New England, p. 183. 
 
 3 Lang: Salem Vindicated, London Morning Post, October 18, 1907. 
 
 * American Antiquarian Society, new series, vol. xviii, p. 148. 
 
THE PURITAN CONSTITUTION 179 
 
 form, in necromancy, witchcraft, and black magic 
 existed from the dawn of creation until long after 
 the Puritans set foot on New England soil. It was 
 a belief confined not alone to the ignorant or the 
 superstitious; it was shared by some of the most 
 learned and subtle minds of the day. The Puritan 
 had only to turn to his constitution to read there the 
 punishment to be meted out to witches and those 
 who practiced witchcraft. "Thou shalt not suffer 
 a witch to live," was one of the divine command 
 ments; 1 and again the Puritan read that "there 
 shall not be found among you any one that maketh 
 his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or 
 that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an 
 enchanter, or a witch." 2 Of Manasseh the Puritan 
 read that "he caused his children to pass through 
 the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom : also he 
 observed times, and used enchantments, and used 
 witchcraft, and dealt with a familiar spirit, and 
 with wizards : he wrought much evil in the sight of 
 the Lord, to provoke him to anger." 3 
 
 The belief in witchcraft was not confined to any 
 one people or to any particular religion; it was as 
 profoundly a conviction among the poor and un 
 lettered as it was among the rich and learned. In 
 the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Elizabeth, 
 and James I statutes against witches were enacted 
 in England ; on the continent witches were tortured 
 
 1 Exodus xxii, 18. 3 Deuteronomy xviii, 10. 
 
 3 2 Chronicles xxxiii, 6. 
 
180 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 and burned. One has only to recall the fate of the 
 Maid of Orleans, who "heard voices" and was sup 
 posed to be in communion with the spirits of dark 
 ness. Men of such profound minds as Sir Matthew 
 Hale and Sir Thomas Browne and that great legal 
 writer, Blackstone, believed in witchcraft, and so 
 did the gentle John Wesley and Martin Luther. 
 Mather, as might have been expected, was con 
 vinced that the devil assumed human form. 1 
 "Flashy people," he says with scorn, "may bur 
 lesque these things, but when hundreds of the most 
 sober people in a country, where they have as much 
 mother-wit certainly as the rest of mankind, know 
 them to be true, nothing but the absurd and fro- 
 ward spirit of Sadducism can question them." 2 We 
 have no exact statistics, but probably not more than 
 a dozen people were put to death in New England 
 on the charge of witchcraft (some writers, however, 
 estimate the number as high as thirty), while Fisher, 3 
 in his History of the Christian Church, says that 
 prior to the witchcraft epidemic in Massachusetts 
 30,000 persons were put to death in England, 
 75,000 in France, and 100,000 in Germany. In 
 credible almost as these figures appear, there is 
 reason to believe they are not exaggerated. Between 
 1580 and 1680 there are said to have been 3400 
 executions in Scotland, and in a single year, 1645- 
 
 1 Magnolia, vol. i, p. 186 et seq., and vol. ii, p. 388 et seq. 
 
 2 Magnolia, vol. i, p. 187. 
 
 8 Fisher: History of the Christian Church, pp. 479-483. 
 
THE PURITAN CONSTITUTION 181 
 
 1646, in one of the eastern counties of England, 
 200 persons were put to death because they were 
 accused of practicing the black art. It was often a 
 convenient way of disposing of an obnoxious person. 
 It was easy enough to find evidence to support a 
 prima-facie case, and the burden of proof was not 
 on the prosecutor, but it was the accused witch who 
 had to bring evidence in the vain hope of being able 
 to prove a negative. Before a packed court and a 
 prejudiced jury the instances of the acquittal of 
 witches are so rare as scarcely to be noted. When a 
 case could be proved by the admission of "spectral 
 evidence," conviction was always certain. 
 
 A distinguished American writer, Brooks Adams, 
 has reflected more harshly on Massachusetts than 
 even the most biased foreign critic. Writing of the 
 court created to try the witches, which was pre 
 sided over by William Stoughton, he says: "Even 
 now it is impossible to read the proceedings of this 
 sanguinary tribunal without a shudder, and it has 
 left a stain upon the judiciary of Massachusetts 
 that can never be effaced " ; * and again he says : 
 "Stoughton was already at work, and certain 
 death awaited all who were dragged before that 
 cruel and bloodthirsty bigot; even when the jury 
 acquitted, the court refused to receive the verdict. 
 The accounts given of the legal proceedings seem 
 monstrous." 2 Later, somewhat grudgingly, it would 
 
 1 Adams: The Emancipation of Massachusetts, p. 225. 
 3 Op. cU. t p. 266. 
 
182 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 seem, he finds excuse for these monstrous pro 
 ceedings, for in a brief note 1 he retracts much that 
 he has previously written and is able to extenuate 
 what Massachusetts did. "In England," he says, 
 "throughout the eighteenth century, counsel were 
 allowed to speak in criminal trials, in cases of trea 
 son and misdemeanor only. Nor is the conduct of 
 Massachusetts in regard to witches peculiar. Paral 
 lel atrocities might probably be adduced from the 
 history of every European nation, even though the 
 procedure of the courts were more regular than was 
 that of the Commission of Phips. The relation of 
 the priest to the sorcerer is a most interesting phe 
 nomenon of social development; but it would re 
 quire a treatise by itself." 
 
 Another count in the indictment brought against 
 the Puritan is the ferocity with which he warred 
 against the Indians and the "Cromwellian thorough 
 ness" with which he used the sword and the torch. 
 It is only necessary to admit the truth, but no ex 
 cuses are needed. It was a day of stern reprisals, 
 when lex talionis was the code observed by men in 
 Old England as well as in New England, in all 
 parts of the world wherever the sword was drawn 
 and the fiery cross was raised. When white men 
 warred against men of their race they found it 
 more convenient to put their captives to death 
 than to make them prisoners, and as a military and 
 economic measure it was often impossible for the 
 1 Op. tit., p. 310. 
 
THE PURITAN CONSTITUTION 183 
 
 victor to burden himself with a defeated army. In 
 making war against savages extermination was the 
 object sought to be attained, and no consideration 
 of humanity softened the unloosed wrath. To have 
 been merciful would have been regarded as a sign of 
 weakness. The Indians were killed to strike terror 
 in the hearts of other tribes, exactly as sepoys were 
 blown from the muzzles of cannon after the Indian 
 Mutiny. It was punishment swift and horrible, but 
 all punishment, to be effective, must act as a deter 
 rent to the living. It was effective. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE PURITAN HATRED OF COLOR A MYTH 
 
 IN continuation of the purpose of previous chap 
 ters to clear away the fiction that has grown up 
 about the character of the Puritan and present him 
 as he really was, because, as I have already pointed 
 out, of the importance of a proper interpretation 
 of the Puritan if the character of the present-day 
 American is to be correctly understood, it becomes 
 necessary briefly to consider the Puritan in his home. 
 Fiction has given us the sombre-clad man and 
 woman, to whom color was hateful, enjoyment of 
 recreation an abomination in the sight of the Lord, 
 and discomfort and voluntary hardship evidence 
 of a saintly nature, who by his transplanting to 
 America lost his sense of innocent pleasure and be 
 came a different being from what he had been in 
 England. A careful reading of the chronicles of 
 those days fails to reveal any evidence of this trans 
 formation. That the Puritan both in England and 
 America was austere and looked with disgust upon 
 the licentiousness that prevailed both in the church 
 and society we know and has already been referred 
 to, but the Puritan by his passage across the At 
 lantic did not become a man of gloom or frown 
 upon the things that constituted the pleasures of 
 
HATRED OF COLOR A MYTH 185 
 
 those days. He did not deliberately mortify the 
 flesh. We can find no testimony that he wore a 
 hair shirt or found delight in self-inflicted pain. 
 Austere he was, and yet he loved his wife and was 
 affectionate to his children, although his affection 
 did not find expression in exuberant demonstration. 
 This is interesting in contrast with the modern 
 American, who has little restraint, and whose emo 
 tions are vivid and quickly reached. It is another 
 of those cumulative proofs to the student of Ameri 
 can character that the American is not a hybrid 
 Englishman but is the product of a new race, a 
 race that has been produced by the forces of nature 
 and the social and political institutions which he 
 has created to satisfy the demands of his own nature 
 instead of accepting those that belonged to another 
 race in different environments. 
 
 Those famous Blue Laws of Connecticut, which 
 all the world long believed in, never existed except 
 in the luxuriant imagination of Rev. Samuel Peters, 
 who had been driven out of America during the 
 Revolution and took this ingenious means of grati 
 fying his revenge. Women were not forbidden to 
 kiss their children on the Sabbath; they were not 
 prohibited from making "minced pies"; it was fic 
 tion and not truth that "no one should play on any 
 instrument of music except the drum, trumpet, or 
 jew s-harp." * A somewhat malevolent person this 
 
 1 Peters: A General History of Connecticut, p. 71. Cf. Palfrey, vol. ii, 
 p. 32, n.; p. 375; Trumbull: Blue Laws, True and False. 
 
186 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 clergyman, who was denied the pleasure of knowing 
 how much mischief he caused. 
 
 The modern idea of the Puritan is that he was 
 the barbarian of his times, rude in his manner of 
 living and uncultured. But this we know to be 
 incorrect. The Puritanism of the first forty years 
 of the seventeenth century, Palfrey says, was not 
 tainted with degrading or ungraceful associations 
 of any sort. " The rank, the wealth, the chivalry, 
 the genius, the learning, the accomplishments, the 
 social refinements and elegance of the time were 
 largely represented in its ranks. Not to speak of 
 Scotland, where soon Puritanism had few oppo 
 nents in the class of the high-born and the educated, 
 the severity of Elizabeth scarcely restrained, in her 
 latter days, its predominance among the most ex 
 alted orders of her subjects. The Earls of Leicester, 
 Bedford, Huntington, and Warwick, Sir Nicholas 
 Bacon, his greater son, Walsingham, Burleigh, 
 Mildmay, Sadler, Knollys, were specimens of a host 
 of eminent men more or less friendly to or toler 
 ant of it. Throughout the reign of James the First 
 it controlled the House of Commons, composed 
 chiefly of the landed gentry of the kingdom; and, 
 if it had less sway among the peers, this was partly 
 because the number of lay nobles did not largely 
 exceed that of the Bishops, who were mostly 
 creatures of the Crown. The aggregate property of 
 the Puritan House of Commons of 1692 was com 
 puted to be three times as great as that of the Lords, 
 
HATRED OF COLOR A MYTH 187 
 
 according to Hume. The statesmen of the first 
 period of that Parliament which by and by de 
 throned Charles the First had been bred in the 
 luxury of the landed aristocracy of the realm; 
 while of the nobility, Manchester, Essex, Warwick, 
 Brooke, Fairfax, and others, and of the gentry a 
 long roll of men of the scarcely inferior position of 
 Hampden and Waller, commanded and officered its 
 armies and fleets. A Puritan was the first Protes 
 tant founder of a college at an English university. 
 " It may be easily believed that none of the guests 
 whom the Earl of Leicester placed at his table by 
 the side of his nephew, Sir Philip Sidney, were 
 clowns. But the supposition of any necessary con 
 nection between Puritanism and what is harsh and 
 rude in taste and manners will not stand the test 
 of even an observation of the character of the men 
 who figured in its ranks, when the lines came to be 
 most distinctly drawn. The Parliamentary general, 
 Devereux, Earl of Essex, was no strait-laced gos- 
 peler, but a man formed with every grace of per 
 son, mind, and culture to be the ornament of a 
 splendid court, the model knight, the idol, as 
 long as he was the comrade, of the royal soldiery, 
 the Bayard of the time. The position of Manches 
 ter and Fairfax, of Hollis, Fiennes, and Pierrepont, 
 was by birthright in the most polished circles of 
 English society. In the memoirs of the young regi 
 cide, Colonel Hutchinson, recorded by his beautiful 
 and high-souled wife, we may look at the interior 
 
188 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 of a Puritan household, and see its graces, divine 
 and human, as they shone with a naturally blended 
 lustre in the most strenuous and most afflicted 
 times. The renown of English learning owes some 
 thing to the sect which enrolled the names of Sel- 
 don, Lightfoot, Gale, and Owen. Its seriousness 
 and depth of thought had lent their inspiration to 
 the delicate muse of Spenser. Judging between 
 their colleague preachers, Traver and Hooker, the 
 critical Templars awarded the palm of scholarly 
 eloquence to the Puritan. When the Puritan lawyer 
 Whitelock was ambassador to Queen Christina, he 
 kept a magnificent state, which was the admiration 
 of her court, perplexed as they were by his per 
 sistent Puritanical testimony against the practice of 
 drinking healths. For his Latin secretary, the Puri 
 tan Protector employed a man at once equal to the 
 foremost of mankind in genius and learning, and 
 skilled in all manly exercises, proficient in the 
 lighter accomplishments beyond any other English 
 man of his day, and caressed in his youth, in France 
 and Italy, for eminence in the studies of their fas 
 tidious scholars and artists. The king s camp and 
 court at Oxford had not a better swordsman or ama 
 teur musician than John Milton, and his portraits 
 exhibit him with locks as flowing as Prince Rupert s. 
 In such trifles as the fashion of apparel, the usage 
 of the best modern society vindicates, in character 
 istic particulars, the Roundhead judgment and the 
 taste of the century before the last. The English 
 
HATRED OF COLOR A MYTH 189 
 
 gentleman now, as the Puritan gentleman then, 
 dresses plainly in sad colors, and puts his lace 
 and embroidery on his servants." l 
 
 The Puritan was terrifically in earnest; he be 
 came self-centred, and was more influenced by that 
 which he had within him than he was by the sense 
 of exterior impression, but just a little more of that 
 gracious spark of humanity and he would have 
 given birth to a race of poets instead of a race of 
 business men. And some were. There was Milton, 
 the great poet of the Puritans and one of the great 
 est names in English literature ; and the prose writ 
 ings of the leaders of Puritan thought are full of 
 poetic expression and the flash of imagination. 
 The clearest insight into a man s character is to be 
 gained from his letters to his wife, for the intimacy, 
 the unrestraint of conventional expression, the 
 revelation of aspirations, the word of affection, that 
 mean so much to two persons in perfect sympathy, 
 reveal the natural man, the man as he was and not 
 as his biographer would make him. The reader 
 who doubts the human quality in the Puritan may 
 study with profit, and with even greater pleasure, 
 the letters of John Winthrop to his wife. 
 
 They are admirable letters, full of sentiment and 
 graceful allusion, with constant reference to the 
 goodness of God and much practical advice to his 
 son. But what particularly appeals to me, because 
 it so conspicuously disproves the popular belief 
 
 1 Palfrey: History of New England, vol. i, pp. 278-282. 
 
190 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 that natural affection was crushed out of the Puri 
 tan, are the lover-like expressions used by this man 
 who had long passed his first youth. "It grieves 
 me," he writes, "that I have not liberty to make 
 better expression of my love to thee, who art more 
 dear to me than all earthly things." He closes a 
 letter, as many a modern lover has written to his 
 beloved, "so I kisse my sweet wife, and thinke 
 longe till I see thee." Puritan though he was, 
 there was enough of the pagan in him to know the 
 universal language of love ; for in a postscript writ 
 ten on February 14, 1629, he says, "thou must be 
 my valentine, for none hath challenged me." His 
 common salutation to his wife was "mine own 
 sweet Self," or "mine own dear Heart"; and there 
 are letters beginning with such extravagance of 
 affection as "Mine owne, mine onely, my best Be 
 loved," and " My Love, my Joy, my Faithful One." 1 
 
 To understand the family and home life of the 
 Puritan, the biography of Colonel Hutchinson, one 
 of the regicides, who "could dance admirably well" 
 and " had a great love of music," as his widow 
 records, may be read with satisfaction. 
 
 "We are wont to think of our Puritan forbears," 
 an American writer says, "indeed we are deter 
 mined to think of them, garbed in sombre-colored 
 garments, in a life devoid of color, warmth, or 
 fragrance. But sad color was not dismal and dull 
 save in name; it was brown in tone, and brown is 
 
 1 Winthrop: Life and Letters of John Winthrop. 
 
HATRED OF COLOR A MYTH 191 
 
 warm, and being a primitive color is, like many 
 primitive things, cheerful. Old England was garbed 
 in hearty honest russet, even in the days of our 
 colonization. Read the list of the garments of any 
 master of the manor, of the English yeoman, of our 
 own sturdy English emigrants from manor and farm 
 in Suffolk and Essex. What did they wear across 
 seas? What did they wear in the New World? 
 What they wore in England." * 
 
 They wore doublets and breeches of brown 
 leather (brown, not gray), buff coats, russet hose. 
 These people had an eye for color and did not 
 despise it. We read of " Wastecoats of greene cot 
 ton bound about with red tape," of waistcoats dyed 
 red with stammel, and of the colonists writing to 
 England for " stammel dyes." In England, in 1586, 
 Philip Stubbes published " an Anatomic of Abuses." 
 He was the typical Puritan of imagination austere, 
 severe, a hater of the follies and wickedness of his 
 times. He thundered against extravagance in dress, 
 but it was the extravagance of those persons who 
 dressed beyond their means, and not the condem 
 nation of the rich who could properly gratify their 
 tastes. Just as to-day our social reformers preach 
 a crusade against the men who go into debt to 
 maintain their pretensions, so Stubbes censured 
 "Excesse in apparell" where it was not justified. 
 "I would not be so understood," he quaintly writes, 
 
 1 Earle: Two Centuries of Costume in America, vol. i, p. 4; cf. Palfrey: 
 History of New England, ii, p. 63 et seq. 
 
192 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 "as though my speeches extended to any either 
 noble honourable or worshipful; for I am farre 
 from once thinking that any kind of sumptuous 
 or Gorgeous Attire is not to be worn of them; 
 as I suppose them rather Ornaments in them 
 than otherwise. And therefore when I speak 
 of excess of Apparel my meaning is of the in- 
 feriour sorte only who for the most parte do farre 
 surpasse either noble honourable or worshipful, 
 ruffling in silks, Velvets, Satins, Damaske, Taf- 
 feties, Gold, Silver and what not; these bee the 
 Abuses I speake of, these bee the Evils that I 
 lament, and these bee the persons my words doe 
 concern." 
 
 In the day of the Puritan, and long before he 
 came to America, and long after America had 
 ceased to be Puritan and become American, dress 
 betokened rank. It had a significance then which 
 it has long since lost. Social station and official 
 position were marked by the clothes that men wore. 
 It was contrary to the spirit of the age and class 
 distinction that master and servant should sar- 
 torially find the same common expression, for if the 
 master were not distinguished from the servant by 
 the richness of his apparel, it might well be that a 
 stranger should address the servant thinking he was 
 holding speech with the master, and that would 
 be to make the master ridiculous and destroy disci 
 pline. The Puritan was in essence a Democrat, but 
 democracy did not mean to him the destruction of 
 
HATRED OF COLOR A MYTH 193 
 
 class distinction that tended to the destruction of 
 society. 
 
 Early in the history of the Massachusetts Colony 
 sumptuary laws were enacted, \vhich were in keep 
 ing with the general concept of the Puritan theory 
 of government that the lives and morals and man 
 ners of the people were not subject to the whim 
 of the individual, but were to be regulated by the 
 combined wisdom and experience of society. As 
 it was in religion so it was in dress. The Puritans 
 welcomed no creed save their own and took stern 
 measures to repress schismatics, as we have seen 
 in their persecution of the Quakers. They would 
 tolerate no defiance of authority in a matter that 
 appears to us so unimportant as dress, but which 
 then had a significance that can be understood only 
 by properly balancing it in its relation with life as 
 a whole. And these struggling colonists were con 
 stantly being watched and nagged by their pro 
 prietors and guardians in England, who naturally 
 delighted in the opportunity of being super-virtu 
 ous at the expense of their proteges, for nothing 
 produces a greater glow of contentment in even 
 the most lofty nature than vicarious virtues that 
 cost nothing and cause no personal inconvenience. 
 Governor Winthrop was reminded from London in 
 1636 that "many of your plantacions discover too 
 much pride," and it was grievous sin in the eyes of 
 the virtuous in London that some of the colonists 
 wrote for "cut work coifes" to be sent to them. 
 
194 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 Puritan or Parisian, seventeenth or twentieth 
 centuries, has the feminine world ever ceased to 
 think of the latest fashion or to long to look 
 attractive ? 
 
 Sumptuary laws were passed, and the magistrates 
 of Massachusetts were evidently of the belief of 
 Stubbes that there must be a sharp dividing line 
 between the "noble and the worshipful" and they 
 that "be base by byrth, meane by estate and servyle 
 by calling." In 1651 the Massachusetts General 
 Court expressed its "utter detestation that men and 
 women of mean condition, and calling, should take 
 vppon them the garbe of gentlemen by wearing of 
 gold or silver lace, or buttons or poynts at their 
 knees, or walke in great boots, or women of the 
 same ranke wear silke or tiffany hoods or scarfs." 
 It will be seen that there was no "utter detestation" 
 of men and women wearing the clothes that were 
 proper to their station in life; it was only against 
 the lower orders aping the fashions of their betters 
 that censure was directed. In Newbury, two years 
 after the passage of this law, two women were 
 "presented" for wearing silk hoods and scarfs, but 
 they were discharged on proof that their husbands 
 were worth .200 each. A few years later in North 
 ampton, thirty-eight women were presented for 
 wearing silk because they were below the degree 
 permitted for that feminine luxury. Sixteen-year- 
 old Hannah Lyman, a rebel at heart if there ever 
 was one, was presented for "wearing silk in a 
 
HATRED OF COLOR A MYTH 195 
 
 flaunting manner, in an offensive way and garb, not 
 only before but when she stood presented." * One 
 would like to have a picture of Hannah, who, know 
 ing the power of silk on the obtuse masculine intel 
 lect, boldly flaunted her flounces before that grave 
 and dignified bench as if defying man ever to make 
 woman change her fashions because of the law s 
 decree. 
 
 Many curious mistakes have been made in the 
 name of philology, and nothing is more interesting 
 than to note how through the perversion of words 
 a meaning entirely different to that which they origi 
 nally possessed has been given to them. In the 
 chronicles of the early Puritans the term "sad 
 color" as applied to dress is frequently used, from 
 which the modern writer has naturally but erro 
 neously gathered the impression that "sad color" 
 meant sombre hues, the colors that we should to 
 day wear to express spiritual dejection; in other 
 words, black or dark shades. Now to the Puritans 
 the term connoted an entirely different meaning. 
 No further evidence is needed than a letter written 
 by Winthrop to his wife in which he tells her that 
 he has ordered for her a "grave gown," "not black, 
 but sad colour." "Sad colors" in those days were 
 the quiet tints, the same shades that the well-dressed 
 woman of to-day, who does not want to be con 
 spicuous, selects for her walking suit; the quiet 
 colors as opposed to the more brilliant hues, but not 
 
 1 Earle: Home Life in Colonial Days, pp. 283-284. 
 
196 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 necessarily gray or "a dingy grayish brown nor 
 even a dark brown." We read distinctly in an 
 English list of dyes of the year 1638 of these tints 
 in these words: " Sadd-colours the following; liver 
 colour, De Boys, tawney, russet, purple, French 
 green, ginger-lyne, deere colour, orange colour." l 
 De Boys, tawney, russet, ginger-lyne, and deere 
 colour were various shades of brown, and brown 
 is not now regarded as an emblem of mourning 
 or sorrow; and there w T ere also among the "sad 
 colors" liver gray, which was gray with a tinge of 
 purple; purple, green, and orange; surely variety 
 enough to suit all tastes and complexions, and to 
 prove that the Puritans did not restrict themselves 
 to the use of only one shade. In those days men 
 and women disposed of their clothing by will. A 
 Dorchester woman who died in 1688 enumerated 
 among other articles "best red kersey petticoate," 
 "sad grey kersey wascote," "a blew apron," "red 
 serge petticoat," "green searge wascotte," "green 
 linsey woolsey petticoate," "a greene under coat," 
 "my murry wascote," "six yards of redd cloth," 
 "my coate and my blew wascote," "my green 
 apron," a combination of hues diverse enough to 
 destroy the fiction that these people loved monotony 
 and hated color. 
 
 It would not have been surprising if the Puritan 
 had dressed in one shade, and that dark, for the 
 Puritan was a pioneer, and the pioneer, controlled 
 
 1 Earle: op. cit., p. 27. 
 
HATRED OF COLOR A MYTH 197 
 
 by utilitarian motives and not swayed by religious 
 or other impulses, has always selected the garb 
 that would be most serviceable and would with 
 stand the hardest usage and show the fewest marks 
 of wear. The pioneers of a later day, the men 
 who settled the West, the men of a still later day 
 who followed the overland trail, used leather and 
 homespun, not because they disliked color or other 
 fabrics, but because these were most suited for their 
 purpose. Modern military experience has taught 
 that attractive as scarlet may be in times of peaceful 
 parade, on active service the monotone of khaki, 
 less pleasing to the eye, serves a much more use 
 ful purpose. The war offices of the world have 
 simply learned the lesson that the pioneer of more 
 than a century ago acquired by intuition and 
 experience. 
 
 The Puritans were comfortably clothed and 
 housed, comfortably, that is, for their time and 
 surroundings and always remembering they were 
 settlers in a new country, where everything to sup 
 port life had to be raised by their own hands or was 
 brought across the seas in slow-moving vessels that 
 came at irregular intervals. As Massachusetts be 
 came systematically colonized by the London pro 
 prietors the emigrants were outfitted in no scrimping 
 fashion. The following is an inventory of the 
 "apparrell for 100 men," furnished to each member 
 of Higginson s company in 1628: 
 
 "4 peares of shoes, 4 peares of stockins, 1 peare 
 
198 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 Norwich gaiters, 4 shirts, 2 suits dublets and hose 
 of leather lyn d with oyld skin leather, ye hose & 
 doublett with hooks & eyes, 1 suit of Norden dus- 
 sens or Hampshire kersies lynd the hose with skins, 
 doublets with lynen of gilford or gedlyman kerseys, 
 4 bands, 2 handkerchiefs, 1 wastecoat of greene 
 cotton bound about with red tape, 1 leather girdle, 
 1 Monmouth cap, 1 black hatt lyned in the brows 
 with lether, 5 Red knitt capps milPd, about 5d 
 apiece, 2 peares of gloves, 1 Mandillion [mantle or 
 great coat] lyned with cotton, 1 peare of breeches 
 and waistcoat." 1 A larger wardrobe this than many 
 of the descendants of these pioneers both in Old 
 and New England now possess; and green waist 
 coats bound with red tape and red knit caps cer 
 tainly betoken no dislike for color or a preference 
 for "Puritan gray." 
 
 While the dress of the common people among the 
 Puritans was simple and in keeping with their life 
 and their surroundings, it is a mistake to suppose 
 that men and women of station did not indulge 
 their love of finery. That saintly and well-beloved 
 man, Elder Brewster, boasted among his other 
 worldly possessions a blue cloth coat, a violet- 
 colored cloth coat, and a green waistcoat. Governor 
 Winthrop delighted in gold lace. So eager were the 
 women to be in fashion that the pseudo-humble 
 follower of Saint Crispin, the Simple Cobler of 
 Aggawam, who seems to have concerned himself 
 
 1 Ames: The May-Flower and Her Log, p. 212. 
 
HATRED OF COLOR A MYTH 199 
 
 more with women s souls than men s soles, vented 
 his scorn on the "nugiperous gentledames " of the 
 Colony who were so frivolous as to ask "what 
 dresse the Queen is in this week," and who instead 
 of listening to pious exhortations must needs fill 
 their minds with the "very newest fashion of the 
 Court"; and he poured forth all the vials of his 
 wrath on the "woman who lives but to ape the 
 newest court fashion" by pronouncing her "the 
 very gizzard of a trifle, the product of a quarter of 
 a cypher the epitome of nothing, fitter to be 
 kickt, if she were of a kickable substance, than 
 either honour d or humour *d." l Only a few years 
 after the establishment of the Colony it was found 
 necessary to enact ordinances prohibiting the wear 
 ing of short sleeves by women so as to reveal their 
 arms; nor must women appear with "naked breasts 
 and arms; or as it were pinioned with superstitious 
 ribbons on hair and apparel," that is, women of 
 mean estate. The rich have always been a law 
 unto themselves, even in Puritan America. Pretty 
 women might display their natural charms without 
 fear of the law, and apparently in the sight of the 
 favor of the Lord. We have numerous portraits of 
 ladies in velvets and satins and laces, with bared 
 necks and sleeves ending at the elbow. One author 
 calls attention to the fact that a French portrait 
 of Madame Maintenon shows precisely the same 
 "whisk" [lace collar] as is represented in the por- 
 
 1 The Simple Cobler of Aggawam, p. 20. 
 
200 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 trait of a young, pretty, and extravagant Plymouth 
 woman of the name of Padishal. 
 
 Sumptuary laws, it may not be amiss to point 
 out, were not an English invention discovered in 
 America or a peculiar institution of the Puritans, 
 but were part of the economic and class legislation 
 of England that the Puritans brought with them as 
 they brought other social customs. It is partly in- 
 conscient cant and partly ignorance that make so 
 many writers and social reformers bewail the "good 
 old times" and deplore class distinctions and long 
 for a return to that Arcadian age when all men were 
 equal and there was no dividing line between rich 
 and poor, the high and the low. Yet in the good old 
 times, which being dead must only be mentioned in 
 terms of eulogy, class distinctions were greater than 
 they are to-day and social divisions were more 
 sharply defined. To-day the beggar may wear silk 
 if his trade is lucrative enough, and the millionaire 
 may wear fustian if his taste runs in that direction, 
 and society treats both with cynical indifference as 
 the law is occupied with things more important 
 than the regulation of dress. With all their humil 
 ity and intense love of democracy the Puritans 
 never subscribed to the doctrine of the equality of 
 birth or intellect, but always recognized the differ 
 ence existing between men as the result of birth 
 and education and natural abilities. 
 
 Social lines were distinctly marked in the seven 
 teenth century. Winthrop, in his state papers, writ- 
 
HATRED OF COLOR A MYTH 201 
 
 ing as governor, talked of "the common people." 
 The " common people " were whipped and set in the 
 stocks when they misbehaved themselves ; the gentry 
 were fined and admonished. 1 
 
 "Mayflower furniture" has become a standing 
 joke among collectors since Americans set up gene 
 alogical trees and proved their descent from the 
 passenger list of the Mayflower by the possession of 
 heirlooms. If all the furniture and other belongings 
 now proudly exhibited as the heritage of colonial 
 ancestry had been brought over in the hold of that 
 historic ship, she must have had the capacity of a 
 modern transatlantic cargo vessel, and the four- 
 posters and the highboys, the warming-pans and 
 the candlesticks, must have overflowed from hold 
 to cabin, and from cabin to deck, greatly to the 
 inconvenience of the Pilgrims. Mayflower fur 
 niture, properly pedigreed, made in the vicinity of 
 New York and some other large cities, is a lucra 
 tive trade, and by the employment of the proper 
 agent one can find "genuine" colonial furniture as 
 easily as your Belgian guide will produce bullets 
 dug up that morning on the field of Waterloo. 
 
 Yet while the Colonists lived in log houses with 
 thatched roofs, their houses sheltered them from 
 the extremes of both heat and cold, and without 
 
 1 Adams: Three Episodes of Massachusetts History, vol. i, p. 335. 
 
 "43. No man shall be beaten with above forty stripes, nor shall any true 
 gentleman, nor any man equal to a gentleman, be punished with whipping, 
 unless his crime be very shameful, and his course of life vicious and profli 
 gate." Body of Liberties, 1641, iii. Massachusetts Hist.CoU., vol.viii, p. 224. 
 
202 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 being luxurious, as we should consider luxury in 
 these days, they were comfortable and served their 
 purpose admirably. Less than a quarter of a 
 century had passed since the first migration when 
 one of their chroniclers wrote: "The Lord hath 
 been pleased to turn all the wigwams, huts, and 
 hovels the English dwelt in at first coming, into 
 orderly, fair, well built houses, well furnished, 
 many of them, together with orchards filled with 
 goodly fruit trees, and gardens with variety of 
 flowers." 1 Not a picture this of squalid poverty; 
 and another writer says that the settlers were better 
 housed and better fed than they had been accus 
 tomed to in England. 
 
 Johnson tells of the houses "well furnished," 
 which they were not in the modern sense, although 
 there were furniture and household equipments 
 enough for necessity and comfort, as comfort was 
 understood in that day. It is probable that very 
 little furniture, that is chairs or tables or bedsteads, 
 was brought over on the first voyage of the May 
 flower, and I am inclined to this opinion because 
 while there is frequent mention of the cargo in 
 authentic records, no reference is made to furniture; 
 but I admit this is not conclusive, as furniture may 
 simply have been regarded as household belong 
 ings and therefore not important enough to be 
 separately listed. But later furniture was undoubt 
 edly sent over from England, and it is undisputed 
 
 1 Johnson: The Wonder Working Providence of Sion s Saviour, p. 174. 
 
HATRED OF COLOR A MYTH 203 
 
 that many of the well-to-do colonists brought with 
 them some of those pieces of mahogany that 
 Americans now prize so dearly. Forks in that day 
 were practically unknown and silver was to be 
 found only on the tables of the rich, but there were 
 spoons and dishes of pewter, candlesticks of brass 
 and iron, coarse sheets and blankets, and with 
 greater social requirements came the luxury of 
 tablecloths. 
 
 At first there was often great scarcity of food, 
 as is natural among a new people in a strange land 
 unfamiliar with the soil and climatic conditions 
 and ill provided with proper implements of hus 
 bandry. In 1622 Bradford, in that history of which 
 Senator Hoar has said "there is nothing like it in 
 human annals since the story of Bethlehem," 1 wrote 
 "famine begane now to pinch them sore," 2 but they 
 were saved from starvation by the unexpected 
 arrival of a ship, whose captain was able to spare 
 them a small supply of provisions, so scant, however, 
 that " it arose to but a quarter of a pound of bread a 
 day to each person ; and ye Govr caused it to be daily 
 given them, otherwise had it been in their own 
 custody, they would have eate it & then starved. 
 But thus, with what els they could get, they made 
 pretie shift till corne was ripe." 3 On more than one 
 occasion they were driven to "pretie shifts" to 
 fend off starvation, there were times when starva- 
 
 1 Address before the Massachusetts Legislature, May 26, 1897. 
 3 Bradford: History of Plimouth Plantation, p. 150. 
 8 Bradford, op. cit., p. 151. 
 
204 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 tion and disease made sad inroads into their ranks, 
 but in a comparatively few years after their landing 
 the question of food no longer troubled them. They 
 came to no sterile land. America is peculiarly a 
 land of Nature s bounty, where the earth and the 
 waters yield to man their riches. A year before the 
 time when Bradford wrote of the pinch of famine, 
 he notes the great store they took of "codd, & bass 
 & other fish," and as winter approached " began to 
 come in store of foule." "Beside water foule, ther 
 was great store of wild Turkies, of which they took 
 many, besides venison &c. Besids they had aboute 
 a peck of meale a week to a person, or now since 
 harvest, Indean corne to yt proportion. Which 
 made many afterwards write so largely of their 
 plenty hear to their friends in England, which were 
 not fained, but true reports." * 
 
 I would not be understood as implying that life 
 was soft and easy for these people, that they were 
 surrounded with great luxury and comfort, or that 
 they were required to put forth little exertion to 
 support themselves. Life was hard and a constant 
 struggle, they were in perpetual danger from their 
 enemies, they were very often at first, as we have 
 seen, menaced by starvation, while disease and sick 
 ness must yield to empirical methods or claim them. 
 But it was no hopeless or despairing struggle in 
 which they engaged, it was no barren or fever- 
 stricken land which they planted. Even in that 
 
 1 Bradford, op. cit., p. 127. 
 
HATRED OF COLOR A MYTH 205 
 
 early day it was a land of hope and promise, de 
 manding incessant toil and the qualities of industry 
 and fortitude that so conspicuously distinguished 
 these settlers, but holding the reward of rich return 
 for labor intelligently directed and inspired by the 
 determination to succeed. 
 
 In the air of traditional gloom that surrounds the 
 Puritan we see him sourly condemning all innocent 
 amusements and acting as a killjoy, rather than 
 fostering those normal pleasures of the people that 
 were supposed to mark the light-hearted joyousness 
 of the masses of Merry England. But the sports of 
 the English people were not so innocent as they 
 appear now, filtered through the pages of writers, 
 colored by their surroundings ; and in an age when 
 life was held less sacred and passion was unre 
 strained by convention, brutality was mated with 
 pleasure. It is an idyllic picture we have of the 
 Maypole set up on the village green, innocent young 
 girls dancing about it garlanded with flowers, the 
 men with rough good humor finding pleasure in 
 cracking each other over the heads with quarter 
 staves or bending their sinews in wrestling bouts. 
 This is the stage-setting familiar to every student 
 of English literature who plaintively but sincerely 
 regrets that the good old times with their simple 
 amusements have passed away; but few know that 
 before the Maypole was set up rural England imi 
 tated the practices of Rome and spent a night of 
 saturnalia in the woods. The Puritans frowned, 
 
206 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 not on the innocent pleasures of the Maypole, but 
 on the immorality that had been sanctioned by 
 custom to be part of its observances. For the same 
 reason, the worrying to death by dogs of a chained 
 bull or bear was as repugnant to men of a finer 
 nature as the slaughter of rats by a terrier is to 
 the great majority of decent men to-day. But the 
 gentle Puritan might still take part in a sporting 
 event. Bull-baiting and cockfighting he banned, 
 but the wolf, who was his natural enemy, might be 
 harried and hunted, and wolf-baiting was as popu 
 lar in New England as bull-baiting was in Old 
 England. 
 
 Many of the customs of Old England the Puri 
 tans brought with them, but some of them were 
 wisely left behind, and the saturnalian observance 
 of the first of May was not to their liking. When 
 Morton set up his Maypole at Merry Mount, 
 "drinking and dancing aboute it many days to 
 gether, inviting the Indean women, for their con 
 sorts, dancing and frisking together, (like so many 
 fairies, or furies rather,) and worse practices. As 
 if they had anew revived & celebrated the feasts 
 of ye Roman Goddes Flora, or ye beastly practices 
 of ye madd Bacchinalians," as Bradford tells us, 
 the Puritans were naturally shocked, and saw the 
 necessity, for moral no less than social reasons, for 
 the maintenance of discipline as well as to prevent 
 the corruption of the Indians, of promptly sup 
 pressing such improper arid dangerous proceed- 
 
HATRED OF COLOR A MYTH 207 
 
 ings. The Maypole was cut down and Governor 
 Endicott "rebuked them for their profannes, and 
 admonished them to look ther should be better 
 walking." The Puritans frowned on the theatre, be 
 cause the drama of that age was an appeal to lust 
 and passion; it was profane and gross; it empha 
 sized the worst side of man and woman ; the vice of 
 the English people was gambling, and gaming was 
 sternly prohibited ; dancing was also under the ban 
 because it was associated in the Puritan mind with 
 "worse practices." 
 
 But in their own way the Puritans found means 
 of amusement. Many writers have attempted to 
 demonstrate that in every observance of every 
 relation of life the Puritan gave to it a religious 
 symbolism, and in support of that they point to 
 an institution peculiarly American, Thanksgiving. 
 Now here again we see how institutions lose their 
 original meaning, precisely as certain words are 
 given a modern interpretation quite foreign to their 
 significance a century or so ago. The raison d etre 
 for the modern Thanksgiving is to give praise for 
 Divine blessings, and many persons in obedience 
 to the suggestion of the President and Governors 
 go to church, but the majority regard the day as a 
 secular holiday and treat it as a pause in their 
 daily toil instead of to be set apart for the searching 
 of hearts. And in this they simply follow the 
 example set by the Pilgrims (again there is that 
 confusion of associating events with the Puritan 
 
208 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 that belonged to the Pilgrims) when they celebrated 
 their first Thanksgiving. Mourt in his Relation 
 shows that it was a holiday and not a holy day, 
 and there is not the slightest hint that it was given 
 a religious observance. " Our harvest being gotten 
 in," the chronicler writes, "our Governor sent 
 foure men on fowling, that w r e might after a more 
 special manner rejoice together, after we had 
 gathered the fruits of our labors. They foure in 
 one day killed as much fowle, as, with a little help 
 beside, served the Company almost a weeke, at 
 which time, amongst other Recreations, we ex 
 ercised our Arms, many of the Indians coming 
 amongst us, and amongst the rest, their greatest 
 King, Massasoyt, with some ninety men, whom for 
 three days we entertained and feasted, and they 
 went out and killed five Deere, which they brought 
 to the Plantation, and bestowed on our Governor, 
 and vpon the Captaine, and others." 1 Entertain 
 ment and feasting for three days and the exercise 
 of arms, which the modern writer would express as 
 a military parade, do not convey the impression of 
 a day of gloom, which began with church services 
 and ended with the whole community painfully 
 reading the Bible as a matter of duty and longing for 
 the day to close and bring with it relief from this 
 oppressive method of thanking the Lord for His 
 manifold blessings. The periodical fast days and 
 feast days, sanctified by the ancient reverence of the 
 
 1 Mourt s Relation, p. 133. 
 
HATRED OF COLOR A MYTH 209 
 
 Church, were scrupulously disregarded and dis 
 countenanced in New England. But, for special 
 occasions, fasts and thanksgivings were frequently 
 observed by the whole community, or by single 
 churches; and after a time, in the place of Good 
 Friday and of Christmas, a Fast Day was regularly 
 kept at the season of annual planting, and a feast 
 day (Thanksgiving) at the time of the ingathering 
 of the harvest. 1 
 
 The hard-faced, atrabilious, earnest-eyed race, 
 stiff from long wrestling with the Lord in Prayer, 
 and who had taught Satan to dread the new Puri 
 tan hug 2 is a familiar figure, but Puritan humor is 
 less often remembered. To pun may be the lowest 
 form of humor and indicative of only a rudimentary 
 perception of wit, but it at least shows that there 
 is an appreciation of the lighter side of life. The 
 writings of the Puritan reveal this tendency, and a 
 vein of dry, sarcastic, ironic humor is to be found 
 in their sermons and religious discourses. It was 
 humor not without its sting, but it evidenced that 
 they had a lively sense of the ridiculous and were 
 not averse to malevolent pleasantry. Yankee wit 
 has become proverbial, and it survives in the litera 
 ture that is typical of Massachusetts, in the writings 
 of Lowell and Holmes; in a lesser degree it may be 
 found in the works of Emerson and Hawthorne, 
 and it occasionally flashes out in Whittier. 
 
 1 Palfrey: History of New England, vol. ii, p. 44; cf. W. DeLoss Love, 
 Jr. : The Fast and Thanksgiving Days of New England. 
 3 Lowell: Biglow Papers. 
 
210 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 Was the Puritan really as austere as he has been 
 represented, or does he merely appear so when seen 
 through the softened light of to-day ? In compari 
 son with the men of his own time he was an un 
 comfortable person with a fixed idea, and all men 
 of fixed ideas are uncomfortable to the great mass, 
 which never rises above mediocrity because of its 
 constitutional inability to concentrate; because it 
 scatters what few thoughts it has and dissipates its 
 energies instead of bringing all its force to bear on 
 the particular work in hand. Ability is pertinacity. 
 
 In England, after the Restoration, there was a very 
 natural tendency not only to reverse everything 
 that Puritanism had accomplished politically, but 
 socially to seek revenge for the rigid morality 
 that Puritanism had imposed ; to do everything that 
 Puritanism frowned on was to show the contempt 
 in which Puritanism was held. It was this reaction 
 that, to a large extent, was responsible for the vice 
 and profligacy of the court and the low moral tone 
 of politics for the next hundred and fifty years suc 
 ceeding the death of the Protector. In America 
 the same causes operated. With the downfall of 
 the theocratic state, with the beginning of the end 
 of colonial isolation and the bringing of the colonies 
 into a quasi-political entity which sowed the seminal 
 principle of political union, with the great impetus 
 given to expansion, there was a rebound from the 
 weight which Puritanism had laid on men and a 
 temptation to scoff at the things which had been 
 
HATRED OF COLOR A MYTH 
 
 held sacred. It is a singular fact that most of the 
 American historians have been anti-Puritan, and 
 even those historical writers who are descended 
 from the Puritans have been influenced by the pre 
 vailing popular opinion and, as if to show their 
 superiority to their ancestors and make parade of 
 their "liberality," either sneer at those qualities 
 of the Puritan that made them a race apart or 
 else seek to extenuate the virtues of an age that 
 are vices when seen through the eyes of a more 
 advanced and refined civilization. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE FOUNDATION ON WHICH THE AMERICAN 
 CHARACTER RESTS 
 
 THIS is a convenient point to recapitulate briefly 
 what has been said in the last six chapters. My aim 
 has been to show the solid foundation on which the 
 American character has been slowly built. These 
 things are to be remembered: 
 
 First. That it was the Puritan and not the Pil 
 grim who founded American institutions. 
 
 Second. That Pilgrim and Puritan are not synony 
 mous terms, and that Pilgrim and Puritan had little 
 if anything in common. 
 
 Third. That while the Pilgrim was a separatist 
 from the Church of England and conceded the right 
 of every man to worship God in his own way, the 
 Puritan was a Church of England man and tolerated 
 no other form of worship. 
 
 Fourth. That the Puritan was in all things an 
 Englishman. He brought with him to America 
 English institutions, English morals, the English 
 mental attitude. He was an Englishman in 
 America as he had always been an Englishman 
 in England. 
 
 Fifth. That the Bible was the Constitution of the 
 
FOUNDATION OF CHARACTER 213 
 
 Puritan state. It was a civil no less than a religious 
 and a moral code. 
 
 Sixth. That Puritanism, beginning as a religious 
 movement, soon became political, and was the force 
 that made the English people assert their rights 
 against the oppression of the Crown and those set in 
 authority over them, both spiritual and temporal. 
 It made the Puritan always ready to resist consti 
 tuted authority when his conscience demanded it. 
 It sowed the seeds of democracy. It was not only 
 religious and political, but it was also economic. 
 It was, summing up everything in one word, one of 
 the greatest Social movements the world has ever 
 known. 
 
 Seventh. That the Puritan, while austere and 
 fanatical and much given to morbid introspection, 
 was neither without natural human affections, nor 
 a sense of humor, nor averse to rational amuse 
 ment. 
 
 Eighth. That the Puritan lived neither in squalor 
 nor in abject poverty. For his day and generation 
 he was well found; in many respects better clothed 
 and fed and housed than the mass of the English 
 people living in England. 
 
 Ninth. That the English Puritan who emigrated 
 to America, by the force of circumstances, by his 
 environment and climatic influences, by his social, 
 moral and political code, diverged from the parent 
 stock, and in less than a century after his migration 
 produced a new race. 
 
214 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 And tenth, and finally. The Puritan was a 
 human Englishman and not a miraculous or a 
 mythical creation. 
 
 With these facts established it becomes easier to 
 understand how it came about that in the fullness of 
 time there was to be born a new race in America. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 TOBACCO AND SLAVERY 
 
 WE turn now to the South and retrace our steps 
 a few years. The psychology of the men who first 
 settled Virginia does not require the detailed study 
 given to the Puritans. Social conditions in Massa 
 chusetts were different from Virginia, which more 
 nearly reproduced those of England on a smaller 
 scale. The theocracy which was set up in Massachu 
 setts found no lodgment in Virginia. Each commu 
 nity followed its natural impulse, and each developed 
 along certain lines that were to mark the distinction 
 between the North and South. The character of 
 Massachusetts was laid in its theocratic system, that 
 of Virginia in its system of slavery and the produc 
 tion of tobacco; and the effect of those influences, 
 tobacco and slavery, we are now to see. The 
 American character was formed no less by Virginia 
 than it was by Massachusetts, and each contributed 
 its own share to that composite and complex nature. 
 
 In 1607, thirteen years before the little band of 
 Pilgrims found meagre shelter on the inhospitable 
 coast of Massachusetts, a company of Englishmen 
 laid the foundation for a Greater England at James 
 town in Virginia, " I shall yet live to see Virginia 
 
216 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 an English nation," Raleigh with inspired vision 
 wrote to Sir Robert Cecil shortly before the acces 
 sion of James I, and the prophecy was fulfilled. It 
 was the Puritan who was the heart of the new 
 civilization, who brought to the New World a new 
 concept of life and who gave birth to a new system 
 of political philosophy, but it was the Virginian who 
 gave to the heart its life s blood and supplied an 
 element that saved a theocracy from subordinating 
 the liberties of a people to the narrow and iron 
 bound rule of the church. Had the original design 
 of the first settlers of Massachusetts succeeded, had 
 this New England across the sea been merely the old 
 morality amidst new surroundings, had the church 
 grasped the power which for long centuries it 
 fought to retain and made America church-governed 
 and priest-ridden, the story which has been written 
 in the last three centuries would have a different 
 meaning. 
 
 It has been the fashion to talk of Puritan New 
 England and Cavalier Virginia, and inexact his 
 torians and careless writers have created the mis 
 leading impression that the men who first settled 
 Virginia were drawn from a higher social scale than 
 the Puritans, and that morally and intellectually 
 they were their superiors. The legend of the South 
 is no less fantastic than that of the North. What 
 ever the vices or the faults of these founders of a 
 nation they were first of all men, and the majority of 
 them, those who survived and from whose loins the 
 
TOBACCO AND SLAVERY 217 
 
 nation sprung, were strong, courageous men who 
 would have laughed at attempts of dilettante 
 admirers to effeminize them. 
 
 That the Virginians at the beginning were 
 "aristocrats," to distinguish them from the "plain 
 people" who planted Massachusetts, is as mythical 
 as the common belief that Puritanism stamped out 
 all natural affection and sunk its believers in per 
 petual gloom. Between the Englishman who in 
 the early days of the seventeenth century went to 
 Virginia and the Englishman who later followed 
 him to Massachusetts there is little difference, and 
 that difference is in favor of the men who estab 
 lished themselves in the north. More than a half of 
 these first planters of Virginia " were poor gentlemen 
 who were unaccustomed to manual labor and de 
 spised it; many were small tradesmen or servants; 
 some are described as jewelers, gold refiners, and 
 a perfumer"; not the stuff out of which empires 
 are fashioned, and yet they were the beginnings 
 of Virginia. The Puritan of the early days was 
 animated by a very high and noble purpose, mis 
 taken as we now see his views and aspirations often 
 were, but every man who clings steadfastly to an 
 ideal is the better for it. The Virginian was under 
 no such influence. Religious persecution, sublime 
 devotion to a higher cause, a passionate craving for 
 the spiritual, did not drive him forth. He went to 
 Virginia as an adventurer, with the spirit of the 
 gambler and the speculator in him, to find there the 
 
218 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 fortune which had eluded him at home. And in the 
 early days many of them went there because they had 
 no option, because they were criminals and paupers; 
 they were transported by the Government, as in later 
 days English criminals were sent to Botany Bay. 
 
 An Englishman whose book on Slavery appeared 
 shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War and was 
 much quoted at the time, has with diligent dullness 
 packed a surprising amount of misinformation into 
 a couple of pages. "Massachusetts and the other 
 New England States," he tells us, "were colonized 
 principally from the elite of the middle and lower 
 classes by people who, being accustomed to 
 labour with their hands, would feel less need of 
 slaves; and who, moreover, owing to their political 
 views, having little to hope for in the way of assist 
 ance from the country they had quitted, would 
 have little choice but to trust to their own personal 
 exertions. On the other hand, the early emigration 
 to Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas was for 
 the most part composed of the sons of gentry, whose 
 ideas and habits but ill fitted them for the struggle 
 with nature in the wilderness. Such emigrants had 
 little disposition to engage personally in the work 
 of clearance and production, nor were they under 
 the same necessity for this as their brethren in the 
 north; for, being composed in great part of cava 
 liers and loyalists, they were, for many years after 
 the first establishment of the settlements, sustained 
 and petted by the home government; being fur- 
 
TOBACCO AND SLAVERY 219 
 
 nished not merely with capital in the shape of con 
 stant supplies of provisions and clothing, but with 
 laborers in the shape of convicts, indented servants, 
 and slaves. In this way the colonists of the Virginia 
 group were relieved of the necessity of personal toil, 
 and in this way, it is said, slavery, which found little 
 footing in the North, and never took firm root there, 
 became established in the Southern States." l 
 
 As a matter of fact, Virginia instead of being 
 petted was exploited for British profit, as was cus 
 tomary in a day when a colony was simply regarded 
 as valuable according to the revenue it put into the 
 pockets of its proprietors. :< We find one governor 
 recommending that an act of Parliament should be 
 passed forbidding the Virginians to make their own 
 clothes. If the British merchants complained of one 
 of the colony s laws it was promptly suspended." 
 Charles I " petted " his royal colony by trying to 
 obtain a monopoly of its tobacco crop. Nor does the 
 careful historian forget that Navigation Act passed 
 in the interest of English merchants and shipowners 
 and aimed at the growing competition of Virginia 
 and the other American colonies, which led to the 
 first defiance of English authority when Nathaniel 
 Bacon indicted Sir William Berkeley for abusing 
 his Majesty s prerogative. 
 
 From such statements as this and those of other 
 writers it has come to be commonly believed that 
 while there was a fashionable, highly cultivated and 
 
 1 Cairaes: The Slave Power, pp. 34-35. 
 
220 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 amusement-loving society in Virginia, in New Eng 
 land society was rough and uncultured and dull; 
 that the gay young blades who made things lively 
 went to Virginia, and the good young men of sancti 
 monious mien were sent to New England to add 
 to the general gloom. The golden age of the colo 
 nies was from the end of the seventeenth century 
 to the middle of the next, and it was during that 
 time that Virginia became a land of large estates, 
 around which cluster so many historical memories 
 and romantic associations. George Washington 
 came into possession of Mount Vernon and its 
 2500 acres in 1755; across the river at Belvoir 
 was the Fairfax estate; it was from the "White 
 House" in New Kent County that Washington 
 took the young and comely widow of Daniel Parke 
 Custis and made her his wife. To mention any 
 of those estates is to recall the history of the colonial 
 era and to see again these pleasure-loving English 
 men, but who were men of affairs as well as of 
 pleasure. The life of the Virginian was lived in the 
 country, that of the New Englander in the city or 
 settlement, and allowing for the difference between 
 rural and urban life, men of the same class found 
 their pleasures in much the same way. If sprigs 
 of nobility went to Virginia and brought with them 
 the fashions and manners of the court, New Eng 
 land did not suffer because of the absence of men 
 tors. Around the governors of the various New 
 England provinces, we are told, there was in each 
 
TOBACCO AND SLAVERY 
 
 capital "a little circle of card-playing, horse-racing, 
 fox-hunting court attendants, who naturally wore 
 the best dress in the province; English younger 
 sons sent to America to sober down, where they 
 proceeded to liven America up. The constant cor 
 respondence of the governor and his officials with 
 England kept this circle fully informed upon all 
 the changes in dress; and many of these letters, 
 both private and official, have been preserved. 
 From them we gain an excellent notion of the im 
 portance of good dress, and the prevalence of good 
 dress in the colonies, and of good living in every 
 respect furniture, carriages, wine, food. There 
 were proportionately more carriages in Boston than 
 in Lincoln. Many had coaches." 1 
 
 In Boston the influence of the royal governor and 
 his staff established a miniature court, which 
 closely imitated English dress and manners, and 
 rivalled English luxury. An English traveller, Ben 
 nett, wrote of Boston in 1740, "Both the ladies and 
 gentlemen dress and appear as gay in common as 
 courtiers in England on a coronation or birthday." 
 Whitefield complained bitterly of the "foolish vir 
 gins of New England covered all over with the 
 pride of life"; of the jewels, patches, and gay 
 apparel commonly worn. 2 
 
 But in Virginia, at the beginning, it was different. 
 If the colony were to live, it was necessary to have 
 
 1 Earle: Two Centuries of Costume in America, vol. ii, p. 339. 
 3 Earle: op. cit. 
 
222 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 labor, and Virginia at that time offering no great 
 inducement to the thrifty or capable Englishman 
 to begin a new life, recourse was had to involuntary 
 servitude. Sir Thomas Dale, one of the early 
 governors, a man of force and character, thus 
 bitterly writes to the Earl of Salisbury on August 
 17, 1611:- 
 
 "Nor can I conceive how sutch people as we are 
 inforced to bring over hither by peradventure, and 
 gathering them up in sutch riotous, lasie and in 
 fected places can intertaine themselves with other 
 thoughts or put on other behaviour than what ac 
 companies sutch disordered persons, so prophane, 
 so riotous, so full of Mutenie and treasonable 
 Intendments, as I am well to witness in a parcell 
 of 300 which I brought with me, of which well 
 may I say not many give testimonie besides their 
 names that they are Christians, besides of sutch 
 diseased and erased bodies as the Sea hither and 
 this Clime but a little searching them, render them 
 so unhable, fainte, and desperate of recoverie as 
 of 300 not three score may be called forth or 
 imploied upon any labour or service." * 
 
 A year before, the "Council of Virginea" in 
 London had found it necessary to exercise more 
 care in the selection of immigrants, and in "a 
 publication touching the Plantation there" it gave 
 public notice "that former experience hath too 
 dearly taught, how much and manie waies it 
 
 1 Brown: The Genesis of the United States, vol. i, p. 506. 
 
TOBACCO AND SLAVERY 
 
 hurteth to suffer Parents to disburden themselves 
 of lascivious sonnes, masters of bad servants and 
 wives of ill husbands, and so clogge the business 
 with such an idle crue, as did thrust themselves in 
 the last voiage, that will rather starve for hunger, 
 than lay their hands to labor." 1 
 
 But even before Dale, that romantic figure John 
 Smith, who was none too fastidious in his tastes, 
 complained of the quality of the material out of 
 which he was to fashion an English nation. Ger 
 mans and Poles were sent over to make pitch, tar, 
 soap, ashes, and glass, when the colony could not yet 
 raise provisions enough for its support. " When you 
 send again," Smith was obliged to reply, "I entreat 
 you rather send but thirty carpenters, husbandmen, 
 fishermen, than a thousand of such as we have." 2 
 
 The only drawback to the prosperity of the col 
 ony, Doyle tells us, was the abject character of the 
 settlers. But so insistent was the demand for labor 
 that Dale recommended that England follow the 
 example of Spain and "banish hither all offenders 
 condemned to die out of common gaols." As late 
 as 1670 a Virginian statute prohibited the further 
 importation of criminals because of " the great num 
 ber of felons and other desperate villains sent 
 hither from the several prisons of England," show 
 ing that long after the Cavalier migration the prac 
 tice of disposing of undesirables by shipping them 
 
 1 Brown: op. cit., vol. i, p. 355. 
 
 1 Bancroft: History of the United States of America, vol. i, p. 95. 
 
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 to Virginia continued. "There has been a natural 
 tendency among Americans," an American histo 
 rian observes, "to insist that the offenses of which 
 the transported malefactors had been convicted 
 were chiefly political," 1 and some American writers 
 have made what they consider a strong case in being 
 able to cite that after the battle of Worcester 1610 
 prisoners were sent to Virginia ; and two years later 
 a license was granted to one Richard Nethersole to 
 transport a hundred Irish Tories to Virginia; but 
 these exceptions are rare, and the number of politi 
 cal prisoners of whom we have knowledge is small 
 compared with the large number of criminals and 
 malefactors; and it is a matter of record that the 
 death sentence was often commuted to banishment 
 to Virginia. 2 There was also another class from 
 which the colony was recruited, men who were not 
 criminals but whose lot was unbearable, or ne er- 
 do-wells who welcomed any change for the better. 
 These men, and later women of the same class, sold 
 themselves into a form of limited slavery by becom 
 ing "indentured servants." For the price of trans 
 portation and subsistence they bound themselves 
 to work for masters for a term of years, and at the 
 expiration of their service they were released from 
 bondage and had to shift for themselves. "Cheap 
 labour is supplied by white servants, bound to their 
 
 1 Avery: A History of the United States and its People, vol. ii, p. 58. 
 
 3 After the restoration, in 1662, thirty-four members of the Privy Council 
 were constituted a Council for Foreign Plantations, who were instructed to 
 consider the supply of servile labor to the colonies. 
 
TOBACCO AND SLAVERY 
 
 masters by indentures for some such term as six or 
 seven years ; they are to some extent a shiftless and 
 degraded set of creatures from the slums and jails 
 of English seaport towns, but many of them are of 
 a better sort." 1 
 
 Much has been written about these indentured 
 servants, a few of whom entered into bondage of 
 their own volition ; while others, paupers and crimi 
 nals, were sold into limited slavery without their 
 consent. Some of them at the end of their period 
 of service became men of substance and founded 
 families and fortunes, but they were the exception. 
 But although these serfs became free, they did not 
 become independent; there were causes, as we shall 
 see later, that made them dependent on their for 
 mer masters. 
 
 Prejudice and ignorance have gone to the other 
 extreme, and attempts have been made to prove 
 that the founders of what for convenience may be 
 called the aristocracy of Virginia and the South 
 were these paupers and criminals, and Defoe and 
 other seventeenth century English writers sedu 
 lously cultivate that impression. While the South 
 erner as a rule is very proud of his Cavalier descent 
 and glories in it as much as the Northerner does in 
 being able to trace his blood through the veins of 
 the men who founded Massachusetts, there have 
 been Southern writers who hold the Cavaliers in 
 light esteem, just as there have been men of Puri- 
 
 1 Fiske: Old Virginia and Her Neighbours, vol. i, p. 217. 
 
226 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 tan stock who were the severest critics of Puri 
 tanism. The remark of Robert Toombs in 1860, 
 "We are the gentlemen of this country," was 
 characteristic of the passion of the time and the 
 contempt the South had for the North; but a well- 
 known Virginian writer, Huge Blair Grigsby, had 
 no high regard for the Cavalier, whom he describes 
 as "essentially a slave, a compound slave, a slave 
 to the king and a slave to the Church. I look with 
 contempt on the miserable figment which seeks to 
 trace the distinguishing points of the Virginian 
 character to the influence of those butterflies of the 
 British aristocracy." Mr. Grigsby was not happy 
 in his simile. Pleasure loving these Cavaliers were, 
 men who loved the light and sun and color, but 
 that stout old Cavalier Governor with a temper 
 "peevish and brittle," Sir William Berkeley, was 
 no butterfly, and Strafford and Laud beat their 
 wings with some purpose. 
 
 Instead of arbitrarily and empirically attributing 
 the difference between Massachusetts and Virginia 
 to the temperamental difference that marks Round 
 head and Cavalier, it would be more correct to 
 ascribe it to physical and economic conditions. 
 The Massachusetts man grew corn. The Virginian 
 planted tobacco. It was the difference between 
 life in a village and life on a feudal estate. The 
 world s greatest luxury, which has become one of 
 the world s greatest necessities, worked a social and 
 political revolution that was to have lasting and 
 
TOBACCO AND SLAVERY 227 
 
 far-reaching consequences. "A true history of to 
 bacco would be the history of English and Ameri 
 can liberty," Moncure Conway aptly remarks, 
 but it would be more than that, it would be the 
 history of the times from Jamestown to the civil 
 war. When in 1612 John Rolfe, that "honest and 
 discreet young Englishman," began the systematic 
 cultivation of Virginia tobacco little could he fore 
 see that as the unconscious instrument of fate he 
 had become the American Cadmus, and that his 
 tiny Indian weed should bring forth a crop of armed 
 men who would build a greater and more enduring 
 Thebes. 
 
 Virginia is a land of rivers, "a kind of sylvan 
 Venice," as Fiske poetically describes it. The men 
 of Massachusetts had to hew their way through 
 the unbroken forest, and before their settlements 
 could expand they must clear the wilderness and 
 engage in the laborious task of road-making, and 
 the path of English civilization is marked by good 
 roads, a legacy inherited from Roman ancestors. 
 The Virginian found his roads already built in the 
 navigable rivers, which gave him cheap and con 
 venient transportation for his products to the sea 
 board and thence to his great market in England; 
 but this very facility of transport destroyed the 
 sense of community and made less necessary the 
 small and compact settlements, where every one 
 must do his share in the common work. The Lon 
 don Company that planted Virginia gave to the 
 
228 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 world the first striking illustration of the fallacy of 
 communism. The early settlers were members of 
 an industrial army, whose labor was for the com 
 munity, and who shared equally in what it pro 
 duced, but that was no incentive to work, and, as 
 usual, the idle fattened off the industrious. Dale, 
 displaying that rare common sense that ever marked 
 him, changed the system and gave to every man the 
 proper incentive by being able to profit from his 
 own endeavors. Instead of being a communist the 
 colonist became a small land proprietor, and the 
 change had marked effect. Idleness and wretched 
 ness gave way to industry and reasonable plenty, 
 and the later settler knew none of the horrors of 
 famine that had made the early days of the colony 
 such a grim story. 
 
 When the first Englishmen came to Virginia they 
 found the Indians cultivating tobacco on a small 
 scale. It was John Rolfe, the first Englishman in 
 the New World to marry a "foreigner" by taking 
 to wife Pocahontas, the daughter of Powhatan, who 
 began to experiment with tobacco, and a few years 
 later its cultivation, "by far the most momentous 
 fact in the history of Virginia in the seventeenth 
 century," 1 had become firmly established. Very 
 quickly the Virginians saw they had in tobacco a 
 commodity which could always find its market, 
 and from this time on it changed the whole course 
 of events. It not only modified social conditions, 
 
 1 Bruce: Economic History of Virginia, vol. ii, p. 566. 
 
TOBACCO AND SLAVERY 
 
 but it produced a new economic r gime. A clear 
 and positive inducement was now offered for emi 
 gration such as had not existed since the first 
 dreams of gold and silver were dispelled. After 
 the first disillusionment it became difficult to per 
 suade men of hard sense to go to Virginia, and we 
 have seen what a wretched set of people were 
 drawn together by the Company s communistic 
 schemes. But those who came to acquire wealth 
 by raising tobacco were of a better sort, men of 
 businesslike ideas, who knew what they wanted and 
 how to devote themselves to the task of getting it. 
 With the establishment of tobacco culture there 
 began a steady improvement in the character and 
 fortunes of the colonists, and the demand for their 
 staple in Europe soon became so great as forever 
 to end the possibility of perishing from want. 
 Henceforth whatever a Virginian needed he could 
 buy with tobacco. 1 
 
 To raise tobacco profitably it must be grown on 
 a large scale, and the little garden patch of the first 
 cultivators soon gave way to the plantation of many 
 acres; and properly to care for the growing plants, 
 to harvest the crop, to cure and prepare the weed 
 for market, required a large increase of agricultural 
 labor. Conditions in England were peculiarly pro 
 pitious to stimulate emigration, just as two centu 
 ries later they were the exciting cause to turn that 
 human stream from Ireland to the land of hope and 
 
 1 Fiske: Old Virginia and Her Neighbours, vol. i, p. 170. 
 
230 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 promise. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
 witnessed the splendid growth of England s great 
 ness and rang with the deeds of her great captains 
 and adventurers who laid the foundation for her 
 commercial supremacy and that vast over-sea 
 empire, but the condition of the mass of the peas 
 antry and there existed at that time a peasantry in 
 the true sense of the word was deplorable. In re 
 viewing an age when sociological investigation was 
 unknown and the science of statistics had not yet 
 been discovered, we are hampered by the absence 
 of exact knowledge, but there is enough infor 
 mation obtainable to show that much discontent 
 existed, and the constantly increasing poverty and 
 degradation of the peasantry occupied the serious 
 attention of thinking men. There had been an 
 enormous rise in prices, but no corresponding in 
 crease in wages. The farmer was in every way 
 better off and living i,n more comfort and luxury 
 than he had before known, but the class on whose 
 labor the farmer depended for his prosperity, the 
 agricultural laborer, was sinking lower and lower. 
 It was natural that this state of affairs should 
 swell the ranks of the vagrants and the criminals, 
 that to the idle and the worthless as well as the 
 industrious and worthy the opportunity of begin 
 ning a new life under more favorable circumstances 
 should be regarded with sullen resignation or keen 
 enthusiasm. The emigrant has always been drawn 
 from the two extremes of the moral and tempera- 
 
TOBACCO AND SLAVERY 231 
 
 mental scale; he has either been devil-loving or 
 God-fearing; the failure, the unstable man, who 
 having tried everything has made a success of 
 nothing because he has neither industry nor appli 
 cation, and who turns to emigration as he has 
 played with everything else; the resolute, courageous 
 man, practical but imaginative, who sees the future 
 and has the pluck to grapple with it ; the weak, who 
 is alone responsible for his own misfortune; the 
 strong, who having succeeded is self-reliant enough 
 to know that with larger opportunity there will 
 come to him a greater measure of success. 
 
 Times were ripe for recruiting Virginia from the 
 slums of London and the rural villages of England, 
 and an inducement was offered by the London 
 proprietors to their grantees to engage in this 
 traffic. The men who subscribed to the company, 
 its financiers and original promoters, were given 
 vast tracts of land and became really feudal lords; 
 others of smaller means could obtain a grant by 
 paying their own passage, and for every "servant" 
 they brought with them a further allotment of land 
 was made. A rare combination of circumstances 
 made the scheme dovetail to a nicety. In tobacco 
 lay the wealth of the Virginian, to raise tobacco he 
 must have a large plantation, to take care of his 
 plantation he must have a large body of laborers; 
 the larger the number of laborers the greater the 
 number of his acres, and England was the breeding- 
 ground to supply his manual labor. 
 
232 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 It may be convenient to bear in mind a few 
 dates. It was in 1612 that John Rolfe began the 
 cultivation of tobacco, and in 1616 his example had 
 been generally followed, and tobacco became the 
 life of the colony. Charles I was sentenced in 1649, 
 forty-two years after the first settlers landed in 
 Jamestown, and the great Cavalier exodus from 
 England did not begin until the rigors of the Com 
 monwealth drove these broken followers of a lost 
 cause into exile. When they came they found no 
 handful of shivering, ill-housed adventurers, gaunt 
 with famine and dying from disease, as Lord Dela 
 ware had found forty years earlier. They came 
 to no "starving time." These Cavaliers, driven 
 forth from England by political persecution as the 
 Puritans had been driven forth by religious perse 
 cution more than a quarter of a century before, 
 came to a land that smiled on them and invited 
 them to remain, a land that welcomed them with the 
 caressing softness of a woman s wiles; a land where 
 the skies were bright and the air balmy, where there 
 were streams to be fished and game to be hunted, 
 where there was good cheer in abundance. It was 
 a prosperous and, for that time, large community 
 to which they came. There were no signs of pov 
 erty or distress. The wooden houses were roomy 
 and well aired, "and the settlers already point to 
 them with some degree of pride as more comfortable 
 than the houses of laboring men in England." 
 This was in 1624, and the succeeding quarter of a 
 
TOBACCO AND SLAVERY 233 
 
 century had still further improved their material 
 conditions. They found there, also, many Puritans, 
 most of whom had come from the bleak north, but 
 many had emigrated from England. It detracts 
 nothing from the greatness of the Cavaliers and 
 their descendants, those really great men who did 
 so much to make the greatness of America and to 
 give birth to a nation, to the memory of Washington 
 and the fame of Madison and Monroe, Lee and 
 Jefferson and Jackson, the descendants of Cavaliers, 
 to state the facts of history. 
 
 In a previous chapter I have dwelt at some 
 length on the effect of climatic conditions and phys 
 ical environment on race development, and it is a 
 subject of such vast importance and so little has its 
 significance been understood and appreciated, that 
 I feel compelled again to refer to it, because of the 
 bearing it has on the study of the American people 
 as we trace their origin through Virginia and Massa 
 chusetts. The American to-day does not under 
 stand why the men of his own race living in the East 
 are different from those of the West, although he 
 recognizes and admits this difference, but with a 
 hasty generalization, conveniently and quickly to 
 dispose of a too complex problem that has no imme 
 diate bearing on the things of the hour, attributes 
 it to the fact that the West is "new" and the East 
 is "old." But age, that is a relative term only. Far 
 deeper than mere years in forming character and 
 habits of thought are those towering mountains, 
 
234 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 those arid plains, those long, burning summers, 
 those winters of Arctic-like severity, that feeling of 
 boundless space and unlimited opportunity, that is 
 the inheritance of every Westerner. One must be 
 of the West to know and share this feeling. The 
 Westerner may live in a city, a great city that is 
 a part of the complex scheme of civilization, a 
 city whose sudden extinction would for so long as it 
 takes men to recover from their astonishment 
 disarrange the complex scheme, and yet it is not 
 the city that makes him what he is, but it is the 
 unconscious influence of environment. The city is 
 to him what the port is to the sailor; but it is the 
 ocean that the sailor loves, not the port; it is the 
 battle with, and the mastery over the ocean that 
 make the sailor what he is; it is the struggle and 
 the victory, the risk and the toil, the constant 
 vigilance, the hope, the despair, the final triumph; 
 the self-reliance wrought out of danger, the majesty 
 and scorn and treachery of the implacable foe that 
 have bred a race of conquerors. And all that the 
 sea is to the sailor to an adventurous people is a 
 great and only partially developed country, where 
 mountains must be tunnelled, and rivers spanned, 
 and plains brought under cultivation ; where space, 
 illimitable space, makes men breathe deep, where 
 mountains and plains speak of the infinite and are 
 a perpetual challenge to the daring to conquer or 
 to be crushed. 
 
 The Appalachian Mountains, which stretch from 
 
TOBACCO AND SLAVERY 235 
 
 New England to the South, are in New England 
 only from fifty to eighty miles from the coast, while 
 in the south they are two hundred and fifty miles 
 from the ocean. Physical conditions, therefore, 
 made the Englishman who settled in Massachu 
 setts cling close to the coast and did not affect his 
 territorial ideas. The Englishman who went to 
 Virginia had a much larger area in which to work, 
 and soon acquired that desire for expansion which 
 later became a part of the early American character. 
 In New England, which had long lain under a 
 heavy glacial deposit, much and arduous work was 
 required before the land could be broken with the 
 plough; in Virginia the land " produce th, with very 
 great increase, whatsoever is committed into the 
 Bowells of it," writes an enthusiastic anonymous 
 pamphleteer, in 1649, 1 and he regrets that those 
 industrious New Englanders had not planted them 
 selves in Virginia, for in New England so sterile 
 was the soil that "except a herring be put into the 
 hole that you set the corn or maize in, it will not 
 come up"; while in Virginia is "a fat rich soile 
 everywhere watered with many fine springs, small 
 rivulets, and wholesome waters." It was a very 
 delightful land to which these people had been led. 
 The winters were keen, but the summers were long 
 and warm, which invited the free, outdoor life so 
 dear to the heart of the Englishman, who thinks 
 in brick and mortar, but loves nature. The great 
 
 1 " A Perfect Description of Virginia," Force, vol. ii, p. 8. 
 
236 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 woods, the long stretches of greensward, the rivers 
 teeming with life, the abundance of game, the fer 
 tility of the soil, made a strong appeal to him, 
 and induced him soon to expand beyond the limits 
 of the original settlement, and inclination had a 
 powerful stimulus in necessity. 
 
 The cultivation of tobacco requires a virgin soil. 
 As soon as the land was cleared it was planted in 
 tobacco, and as artificial fertilization was then un 
 known and the scientific rotation of crops had not 
 been learned, in from three to eight years the land 
 was exhausted and worthless for tobacco planting. 
 When the plantations could no longer be worked 
 with profit they were abandoned, the forest was 
 again invaded and the frontier of the settlement 
 still further pushed into the wilderness. In 1685, 
 "although the population of Virginia did not ex 
 ceed the number of inhabitants in the single parish 
 of Stepney, London, nevertheless they had acquired 
 ownership in plantations that spread over the same 
 area as England itself." 1 Under this state of affairs 
 there naturally grew up a class of great landed pro 
 prietors. Conditions, it would seem, should have 
 created a class of metayer tenants, or peasant pro 
 prietors, from whom would have sprung the yeo 
 manry of America as their forbears had been the 
 yeomanry of England. The causes that arrested 
 this social condition are obscure, and there is little 
 in contemporary writings or in the researches of 
 
 1 Semple: American History and its Geographic Conditions, p. 44. 
 
TOBACCO AND SLAVERY 237 
 
 later investigators to throw much light on the sub 
 ject. It is possible that in the early days of the 
 colony there was no intermediate class between the 
 landowners, the proprietors or the representatives 
 of the proprietors of the London Company, and 
 the sweepings of the jail and the slums, the inden 
 tured servants or the victims of the kidnappers who 
 in effect had been sold into slavery. Between the 
 servants of the company and their masters there 
 existed a wide gulf not lightly to be bridged in a day 
 when class distinctions were so firmly established, 
 and there was nothing in the political or social 
 organization of the colony that would bring men 
 together or make them forget class in the perils of 
 a common danger. "In none of the other colonies 
 were class distinctions so clearly marked and so 
 thoroughly believed in. After the negroes came the 
 indented servants and poor whites, with a distinct 
 position from which few of them arose; then the 
 middle class of small proprietors, who were distinct 
 but constantly rising into the class of the great 
 landlords who were the rulers of the province, the 
 creators of opinion, and always the most typical 
 and representative men of Virginia. There was a 
 constant effort to maintain position or to acquire 
 it." 1 
 
 In New England the life was that of a community 
 bound together by every consideration of necessity 
 and always fearing a relentless and treacherous foe, 
 
 1 Fisher: Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial Times, vol. i, p. 70. 
 
238 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 but in Virginia this ever-present menace of an 
 Indian massacre did not exist. Many of the inden 
 tured servants eventually worked out their period of 
 bondage and as free men, "redemptioners," as they 
 then were, ought to have become peasantry to feed 
 the yeomanry, as the yeomanry has always fed and 
 revitalized the aristocracy. But when that time 
 came it was too late, for Virginia was then a colony 
 of great landed proprietors, and there was no place 
 for the yeoman with his small holdings. Doyle s 
 conclusion, I think, is correct that "just as in earlier 
 English history the free socage tenant often sur 
 rendered that position and voluntarily took a 
 dependent place in the feudal chain, so we may 
 believe that in Virginia the small holder would find 
 his position untenable, and seek security and 
 society where it alone could be had, on the planta 
 tion of his richer neighbor." * With the continued 
 increase in the growth and wealth of the colony 
 and an insistent demand for cheap agricultural 
 labor, which placed no premium on intelligence 
 but was only valued according to its strength and 
 docility, the opportunity to create a white peasantry 
 had been lost and slavery, later to become the great 
 est social and political issue in America, was an 
 economic fact. 
 
 The year 1619 is memorable to the student of 
 American development. It forged the shackles of 
 American slavery and broke the first link that 
 
 1 Doyle: English Colonies in America, vol. i, p. 188. 
 
TOBACCO AND SLAVERY 239 
 
 bound these feeble colonists to the mother country. 
 It sowed slavery and reaped freedom. It deprived 
 men of their liberty and made them creatures at 
 the whim of their masters, and it taught men that 
 to be masters of themselves they must be their own 
 rulers. Had the Puritan been able to stand outside 
 himself and see life as from a high mountain, he 
 might well have believed that he was witnessing in 
 the flesh that eternal conflict between the forces of 
 good and evil which was a fundamental article 
 of his creed. 
 
 In that year, on the thirteenth of July, the first 
 assembly of Burgesses met in Jamestown, the first 
 experiment of constitutional government in the New 
 World. Heretofore Virginia had been "little better 
 than a penal settlement, ruled by martial law," now 
 it was given some of the rights of self-government; 
 rights which Englishmen have never surrendered 
 once they have been granted or won. These Vir 
 ginians, but Englishmen first, were not to prove 
 recreant to their traditions. And in this same year 
 slavery was introduced into Virginia, when a Dutch 
 vessel dropped anchor in the James and its master 
 sold his cargo of twenty blacks. From that time 
 there were always enslaved negroes in Virginia, but 
 it was not until the last quarter of the seventeenth 
 century that there was a heavy accession of the 
 slave population. In 1670 the colony comprised, 
 according to Governor Berkeley s estimate, 40,000 
 people, of whom 32,000 were free whites, 6000 were 
 
240 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 indentured white servants, and 2000 were negroes. 
 In that year a statute of Virginia enacted that "all 
 servants, not being Christians, imported into this 
 country by shipping shall be slaves," and as there 
 were some pious masters who attempted to convert 
 their slaves, it was later enacted that "conversion 
 to the Christian faith doth not make free." For an 
 owner to kill his slave "from extremity of correc 
 tion," was not a felony, "since it cannot be pre 
 sumed that prepensed malice, which alone makes 
 murther felony, should induce any man to destroy 
 his own estate." In 1700 there were probably 
 6000 negroes and 60,000 whites, but it was not 
 until after the Asiento article of the Treaty of 
 Utrecht of 1713 gave to England a monopoly of 
 the African slave trade that the kidnapping of black 
 men became a recognized and respectable business ; 
 and so profitable had the trade become and so great 
 was the demand for servile labor, that in 1750 there 
 were believed to be 250,000 negro slaves in Virginia, 
 and an equal number of whites. 
 
 It is not necessary at this time to deal further with 
 the subject of slavery or the political, social and 
 moral effect of the institution and the psychological 
 influence which it exercised, as in the logical de 
 velopment of the theme we shall see how powerful 
 that influence became and how momentous its 
 consequences. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 VIRGINIA AN ARISTOCRATIC OLIGARCHY 
 
 WE have already shown that the men who first 
 settled Virginia were not substantially different 
 from those who exiled themselves to Massachusetts, 
 and Virginia, like the northern colony, built a social 
 system on the feeble foundation laid by men who 
 were deficient in those qualities that are necessary 
 for nation building. The strength of Massachusetts 
 was the Puritan, not the Pilgrim. The character of 
 Virginia was made by the Cavalier, not by the men 
 who followed John Smith, but here the parallel 
 ends. The Pilgrims, too gentle and unresisting to 
 oppose the force of stronger wills, were merged in 
 the Puritans, to the advantage of the latter. The 
 Pilgrim strain in the Puritan blood was a refining 
 and softening influence that did not destroy the 
 Puritan qualities, but brought a ray of sunshine 
 into the darkened recesses of minds abnormally 
 self-centred. In Virginia it was otherwise. The de 
 scendants of the first settlers did not cease to exist 
 after the coming of the Cavaliers, they were not 
 absorbed by a stronger or coarser mentality, they 
 did not intermarry, but both lived side by side, 
 and each influenced the other to the injury of both. 
 As the Cavaliers rose they pressed down the class 
 
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 below them and more sharply emphasized the 
 distinction of class. In any state of civilization 
 where there is a wide gulf between classes the con 
 sequences are always detrimental. The possession 
 of power, the knowledge that the people may be 
 exploited with impunity and cannot successfully 
 resist, makes the upper and ruling class selfish, 
 arrogant and unrestrained; but there is also devel 
 oped a high level of social refinement; there is as 
 much luxury as is compatible with the means to 
 gratify it, and among a few an extraordinary men 
 tal culture that amazes the world by its boldness 
 and philosophic insight. The lower class becomes 
 resigned to its subordinate position; it is deprived 
 of the great incentive, ambition ; and the mass con 
 stantly sinks lower. 
 
 Virginia strikingly exhibits the working of this 
 social law. It developed a race of arrogant, quick 
 tempered aristocrats, and a large number of men 
 extraordinarily endowed mentally, whose philo 
 sophic grasp is still the admiration of the world ; and 
 simultaneously it gave birth to "the mean whites," 
 a degraded, shiftless, mentally deficient class, whose 
 maleficent influence made the South for many 
 generations far behind the North in culture and 
 civilization and lowered the general level of intelli 
 gence. A single drop of poison corrupts the whole 
 blood. Against the corrupting influence of "the 
 mean whites" all the genius and wisdom of philo 
 sophers and humanitarians and statesmen were 
 
AN ARISTOCRATIC OLIGARCHY 243 
 
 powerless. The men who have made some parts 
 of the South "a dark and bloody ground," where to 
 this day the only law known is the law of the rifle 
 and the knife, w r here dense ignorance prevails and 
 superstition holds sway, are the legacy of this 
 colonial era and its social system. 
 
 Just as the dominant and lasting impression was 
 made on New England when the religious persecu 
 tion of Charles I drove the Puritans to build new 
 temples in the wilderness of the New World, so the 
 character of Virginia was laid when the political 
 persecution of the successor to Charles I drove the 
 Cavaliers to find an asylum on the banks of the 
 rivers and streams of Virginia. The great Puritan 
 hegira covered about thirteen years. The Cavalier 
 migration to Virginia began seven years after 
 Charles s power for evil had ceased to exist, and 
 lasted eleven years. There is here a remarkable 
 correspondence of time and cause, and the coin 
 cidence is still further emphasized by the almost 
 identical increase in the population of the two 
 colonies. The heavy hand of the Church forced 
 20,000 Puritans into exile. Cromwell s root and 
 branch policy swelled the white population of 
 Virginia from 15,000 in 1649 to 38,000 in 1670. 
 
 Nothing has become more firmly fixed in the 
 minds of perhaps a majority of Americans than 
 the belief that the Cavaliers were nearly all men of 
 title and long descent, and the Puritans or Round 
 heads were drawn from the people or lower classes. 
 
244 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 Many great noblemen and landed squires without 
 title, it is true, supported Charles I and were thus 
 enrolled in the Cavalier party, but in the parlia 
 mentary ranks are to be found the names of the 
 holders of some of the most historical peerages in 
 the kingdom; and the great leader in the cause of 
 parliamentary government, John Hampden, whose 
 refusal to pay ship money lit the torch that flamed 
 into rebellion, was entitled to the designation of 
 " gentleman"; and so were Pym and Vane and 
 Cromwell and many others, all men of gentle blood. 
 The distinction between Cavalier and Roundhead 
 was no more a difference in respect to lineage or 
 social rank than the analogous distinction between 
 Tory and Whig; no more distinction than to-day 
 Liberal or Conservative in England or Republican 
 or Democrat in the United States connotes wealth 
 or station. There are great territorial magnates 
 who can trace their descent back to the mists of 
 antiquity who train with the Conservative party 
 just as men of equal birth and rank and wealth 
 are Liberals; in America, it is impossible to tell a 
 man s wealth or intellectual attainments or social 
 status by his political affiliations. It is important 
 to correct a historical fable that has become ac 
 cepted as a historical truth. 
 
 American writers have made much use of the 
 term "English aristocracy," with the implication 
 that in England there exists a caste or class of 
 special privilege apart from the people, who are 
 
AN ARISTOCRATIC OLIGARCHY 245 
 
 necessarily excluded from it. In that sense of the 
 term there is no aristocracy in England, and never 
 has been. Macaulay points out the peculiar "rela 
 tion in which the nobility stood here to the com 
 monalty. There was a strong aristocracy; but it 
 was of all hereditary aristocracies the least insolent 
 and exclusive. It had none of the invidious char 
 acter of a caste. It was constantly receiving mem 
 bers from the people, and constantly sending down 
 members to mingle with the people. Any gentleman 
 might become a peer, the younger son of a peer was 
 but a gentleman. Grandsons of peers yielded pre 
 cedence to newly made knights." The dignity of 
 knighthood, he tells us, was not beyond the reach 
 of any man who was worthy of it; it was no disgrace 
 for the daughter of a duke, a royal duke even, to 
 espouse a commoner; "pedigrees as long, and 
 scutcheons as old, were to be found out of the 
 House of Lords as in it." The constitution of the 
 House of Commons promoted the intermixture of 
 classes. Side by side with the goldsmiths, the 
 drapers and the grocers who represented the com 
 mercial towns, were men who in any other country 
 would have been called noblemen. The heirs of 
 great peers who sat in the House of Commons as 
 representatives of the people, and not because of 
 their prospective enjoyment of a title, "naturally 
 became as zealous for its privileges as any of the 
 humble burgesses with whom they were mingled. 
 Thus our democracy was, from an early period, 
 
246 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most 
 democratic in the world; a peculiarity which has 
 lasted down to the present day, and which has pro 
 duced many important moral and political effects." l 
 It has been a subject of much speculation what 
 peculiar influence made it possible for the men of 
 the South to join the men of the North in resisting 
 common oppression, inasmuch as they were drawn 
 from different classes and their outlook of life was 
 so unlike. But there is no mystery about it. They 
 were men of the same stock, with the same ideas 
 and the same ideals. They reached the same ends 
 through different ways. Religious persecution made 
 the Puritan no more resolute for liberty than politi 
 cal persecution made the Cavalier. Both had been 
 defiant in England : the one had proved it by refus 
 ing submission to things spiritual, the other had 
 risen in opposition to the temporal power, and they 
 brought the same spirit of defiance with them across 
 the sea. When Charles I threatened to chastise the 
 rebellious colony of Massachusetts, those born 
 rebels, with no thought of surrender, threw up a 
 fort and mounted their pop-guns to defy the might 
 of England. When Cromwell sent an expedition 
 to make Virginia understand that he was master, 
 those haughty Virginians drew up a treaty of peace 
 that reads more like the terms dictated by a 
 sovereign nation than a weak colony. They were 
 always the same, those quiet Puritans and those 
 
 1 Macaulay: History of England, vol. i, pp. 19-20. 
 
AN ARISTOCRATIC OLIGARCHY 247 
 
 laughter-loving Virginians; it is only the historian 
 who has made them different. 
 
 To us it is of less importance whether Virginia 
 was founded by Cavalier or Roundhead, it is the 
 consequences that compel our study. It was the 
 accident of the tobacco plant and climate that made 
 it possible for an aristocracy to thrive in Virginia, 
 and an aristocracy it was in every sense of the word. 
 It absorbed into its order all political and social 
 power. It was an oligarchy as well as an aristocracy. 
 It held with firm grip military as well as civil au 
 thority. To it the Church was subservient. It did 
 not receive members from the people, nor was it 
 "constantly sending down members to mingle with 
 the people." Its power, its arrogance and its pride 
 made it a more haughty and exclusive aristo 
 cracy than any then existing in Europe. And all 
 this interesting enough though it is to the stu 
 dent of social institutions would be of little mo 
 ment if we were not able to trace back to this 
 aristocracy certain American characteristics and 
 institutions that have become part of the American 
 race and American civilization. The American is a 
 blend of the Puritan and the Cavalier, to accept an 
 inexact terminology so rich in contrast; a mixture 
 of Massachusetts and Virginia; a product of the 
 corn that ripened slowly under northern skies and 
 the tobacco that sprung into life in the soil of the 
 south. The influence of Massachusetts is there, but 
 so also is that of Virginia ; and great as the influence 
 
248 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 of Massachusetts, that of Virginia is no less. It 
 was tobacco that made Virginia so different from 
 Massachusetts ; it was Virginia that made the Ameri 
 can so different from what he would have been 
 had another Massachusetts taken root in the South. 
 When the Cavaliers came to Virginia they found 
 a thriving community in the enjoyment of a profit 
 able monopoly. Many of the newcomers had been 
 badly crippled in estate by devotion to a cause that 
 was fated to be lost curious the eternal weaving of 
 the same pattern in the great fabric of history ; two 
 hundred years later the descendants of these same 
 Cavaliers championed a cause, and again they lost 
 and suffered but many of them were still suffi 
 ciently endowed to be able to resume life under cir 
 cumstances very similar to those they had known 
 in England. For them there was only one thing to 
 do, and that was to plant tobacco and enjoy its 
 profits. They acquired large grants of land, they 
 worked their plantations with white servants and 
 slaves; the great house reproduced as nearly as 
 possible the castle or the manor house of England; 
 its master looked after his lands and servants 
 and slaves as in the old days he had directed 
 the harvesting of his crops and taken a paternal 
 interest in the welfare of his tenantry. In England 
 property passed from father to the first-born son 
 and was entailed. Being Englishmen and having 
 property to devise, they established the custom of 
 primogeniture and the law of entail. 
 
AN ARISTOCRATIC OLIGARCHY 249 
 
 There was no such law in Massachusetts, and the 
 accident of birth counted for little in favor of one 
 son over another. In grafting an "aristocratic " cus 
 tom on the new civilization of Virginia proof has 
 been found of the aristocracy of Virginia contrasted 
 with the democracy of Massachusetts, which is 
 further strengthened by the difference between the 
 political system of the two colonies. But economic 
 rather than social causes developed those distinc 
 tions. Tobacco could not be profitably cultivated 
 except on a large scale, and to divide up an estate 
 among many children would be to benefit none 
 and impoverish all. The English law and custom, 
 despite its manifest injustice and often injurious 
 results, worked reasonably well, and the Englishmen 
 saw no reason to make a change. In Massachusetts 
 conditions were different. There were no large 
 estates to be protected from loss by division ; wealth 
 was commercial rather than landed. A system 
 that seemed to be peculiarly adapted to the needs 
 of Virginia would have been out of place in Massa 
 chusetts. 
 
 Considerations equally cogent resulted in local 
 institutions dissimilar in the two colonies. In 
 Massachusetts the people lived in small congrega 
 tions or communities clustered around the meeting 
 house, each intended to be a petty, self-governing 
 republic and reproducing in a way the Roman city 
 state; whose people could rally for support and 
 mutual defense; where the sense of fellowship was 
 
250 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 very strong, and where inclination and self-interest 
 fostered the spirit of close companionship. In a 
 community thus organized the natural system of 
 government was the mass meeting, where all the 
 males took part in the proceedings and shared in 
 the advantages and responsibilities of citizenship. 
 This logically developed into that peculiarly New 
 England institution the town meeting, the local par 
 liament, where its affairs are discussed in public and 
 every person may have a voice in his own government. 
 The town meeting was impossible in Virginia, 
 because in place of the settlement and town of 
 Massachusetts there were those plantations of many 
 thousand acres, which were so widely separated 
 " that no man could have seen his neighbor without 
 looking through a telescope, or to be heard by him 
 without firing off a gun." There was no sense of 
 community, of touching elbows with one s neigh 
 bors, of being dependent upon them and creating the 
 spirit of helpful and free assistance, which develops 
 one type of local civilization. The Virginian was 
 developed by his isolation. The English system of 
 the parish and the vestry was transported to Vir 
 ginia, and the vestrymen, at first elected by the 
 parish, were soon given power to fill vacancies, 
 which made the vestry a close corporation and 
 centred local authority in a few hands. It was 
 foreign to the English spirit of genuine representa 
 tive government, and gave great dissatisfaction, and 
 could not last. 
 
AN ARISTOCRATIC OLIGARCHY 251 
 
 It has been said with equal inexactness that 
 Massachusetts was Nonconformist and Virginia 
 Church of England, and that the religion of the two 
 colonies was a factor as important in differentiating 
 them as the social status of the founders of the two 
 colonies, but this like all generalizations, is true only 
 so far as it goes. In 1638, which was eleven years 
 before the beginning of the great Cavalier exodus, 
 there were believed to be a thousand Puritans in 
 Virginia, or seven per cent of the total population, 
 but the time was soon to come when Virginia 
 should almost equal Massachusetts in theological 
 bigotry. In 1642 Sir William Berkeley came to 
 Virginia as its governor, and to him Puritanism was 
 a heresy that merited only sharp treatment. The 
 year after his arrival the Assembly passed an act 
 "for the preservation of the purity of doctrine and 
 unity of the Church," which enacted "that all 
 ministers whatsoever, who shall reside in the 
 colony, are to be conformed to the orders and con 
 stitution of the Church of England, and not other 
 wise to be admitted to teach or preach publicly or 
 privately, and that the Governor and Council do 
 take care that all nonconformists, upon notice of 
 them, shall be compelled to depart the colony with 
 all convenience." 
 
 In 1662, under a codification of the statutes of 
 the colony, conformity was required and a tax was 
 laid for the support of the Established Church; 
 Quakers were persecuted even as they were in 
 
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 Massachusetts. If no Quakers were hanged in Vir 
 ginia as they were in New England, Jefferson says, 
 "it was not owing to the moderation of the Church, 
 or spirit of the legislature, as may be inferred from 
 the law itself; but to historical circumstances which 
 have not been handed down to us." l Puritans were 
 required to take the oath of obedience and su 
 premacy; a penalty of two thousand pounds of 
 tobacco was imposed upon " schismatical persons" 
 who refused to baptize their children. 
 
 The Puritan s passionate love for education, 
 which was part of his creed, finds no response in 
 Virginia, and Berkeley s oft quoted Dei gratia, "I 
 thank God, there are no free schools nor printing; 
 for learning has brought disobedience and heresy 
 and sects into the world and printing has divulged 
 them, and libels against the best government. 
 God save us from both," has been cited to prove 
 that the narrow Puritan was in truth more liberal 
 than the so-called liberal Virginian. But Berkeley s 
 attitude was logical and is easily understood. In 
 New England servile labor was almost unknown, 
 while in Virginia it was growing larger every year 
 and the Virginians believed that servants and slaves 
 were necessary for the prosperity of the colony; 
 and the fewer free schools the less the output of 
 the printing-press, to that extent the less danger 
 that servants would be encouraged to become 
 masters or slaves would aspire to their freedom. 
 
 1 Jefferson: Notes on Virginia, p. 233. 
 
AN ARISTOCRATIC OLIGARCHY 253 
 
 We must remember, however, that the govern 
 ing class of Virginia was not deficient in culture or 
 a knowledge of the classics. After the Restoration 
 the corresponding class in England had distinctly 
 retrograded, and the character of the squirearchy 
 may be read in the pages of the prose Homer 
 of human nature, as Byron termed Fielding; but 
 the Virginians had become stronger and intellectu 
 ally better men. Every great Virginian family had 
 its tutor, usually an Episcopal clergyman, who 
 directed the education of the sons of the house, and 
 when they outgrew their master they were sent to 
 New or Old England to complete their studies. 
 
 There was no town life in Virginia, and its ab 
 sence was felt to be a serious menace to the pros 
 perity and future growth of the colony, and its 
 rulers attempted to correct this weakness. With the 
 exception of Williamsburg, the seat of government, 
 there was even as late as the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century "hardly so much as a village 
 in Virginia." By the middle of the century Wil 
 liamsburg could boast only two hundred wooden 
 houses, and its streets were unpaved. Richmond, 
 founded in 1737, had a population of less than four 
 thousand in 1790. Norfolk, a port of very con 
 siderable pretensions, which did a large trade with 
 the other southern colonies and the West Indies, 
 had in 1776 only six thousand inhabitants, while 
 Philadelphia numbered thirty-five thousand and 
 New York twenty-five thousand, though the popu- 
 
254 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 lation of the two Northern states did not equal that of 
 Virginia. To create towns, various expedients were 
 resorted to. By statute, tobacco grown in certain 
 counties had to be sent to Jamestown to be stored 
 there for shipment. But the planter refused to add 
 to the cost of his crop by submitting to arbitrary 
 and hampering ordinances. Every planter had his 
 wharf, which was to him what the siding is to the 
 great manufacturer to-day. It was foolish to break 
 bulk when a vessel could be loaded at his door and 
 sent direct to its destination. "When Thomas 
 Jefferson entered William and Mary College in 
 1670, a lad of seventeen years, he had never seen 
 so many as a dozen houses grouped together." 
 
 Despite their extensive coast line, the Virginians 
 were not a sea-faring people and had no love for the 
 sea, like the men of the North or the Carolinas to 
 the south of them. They owned no shipping except 
 small coasting vessels. Although engaged in trade, 
 they were not merchants and had no genius for 
 manufacturing. Everything they needed they im 
 ported, nearly every man for himself, and paid for 
 it in the great staple of the colony, tobacco. 
 
 The Tobacco Aristocracy of Virginia, which 
 flourished for two centuries, roughly from the 
 middle of the seventeeth century until it fell under 
 the shock of battle at about the same period of 
 the nineteenth, was one of the most remarkable 
 phases of social development the world has known. 
 Perhaps its nearest parallel was Rome when the 
 
AN ARISTOCRATIC OLIGARCHY 255 
 
 patricians were in their glory, whose wealth was 
 in land, and who, surrounded by their slaves and 
 dependents, lived, for their age, much the same life 
 that these Virginians did. In the society of Rome of 
 that day, as in the social system of Virginia of the 
 era of which we are treating, pride of class was its 
 distinguishing feature, and this sharp distinction 
 in social conditions was emphasized by the institu 
 tion of slavery, which discredited manual labor and 
 destroyed industry. "For in a warm climate no 
 man will labor for himself who can make another 
 labor for him. This is so true that of the proprietors 
 of slaves a very small proportion, indeed, are ever 
 seen to labor." 1 
 
 The chasm between master and servants was so 
 deep that it was impossible almost for the latter to 
 hope to rise into the class above him. Black slavery, 
 in that period of the world s history when the 
 dominance of centuries had made the white race 
 regard itself as superior to all others, was more 
 destructive, morally and economically, than any 
 other form of slavery that has ever existed since 
 the strong enslaved the weak. In the time of 
 Greece and Rome, after that in those long years 
 when slavery was accepted as a matter of course, 
 there was always a possibility that the slave, by 
 extraordinary ability or unusual circumstance, 
 might rise, and with his freedom find his place 
 among men. There was no such hope for the son of 
 
 1 Jefferson: Notes on Virginia, p. 241. 
 
256 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 a black mother. The taint of color set him outside 
 the pale, it was always a stigma and condemned 
 him to a life of servility. For him Pandora s box 
 was sealed. 
 
 The history of civilization is the history of slavery 
 and its final overthrow, and it was overthrown not 
 alone because it was repugnant to the moral sense 
 of an enlightened civilization for morals are 
 merely convention and change with the varying 
 needs of society but because it was an economic 
 untruth and cost more than it produced. Its 
 destruction in the United States, after having 
 existed for more than two hundred years, was pre 
 cipitated by causes that at the time seemed to be 
 far removed from economic and were purely moral 
 and political, and yet we shall see later how much 
 economic causes had to do with ending slavery. 
 It was bound to come. The war accelerated it and 
 hastened the march of events, but slavery could 
 not have endured because it was an economic 
 fallacy. 
 
 We have accepted the doctrine of the survival of 
 the fittest, but in accepting the result we too often 
 overlook the intermediary stages and their conse 
 quences. It is true that the fit alone survive, that 
 the plant or bird or animal or race that can adapt 
 itself to circumstances and the conditions of its 
 environment can alone live and propagate its 
 species, but that is a long process of slow and 
 gradual transformation in structure and function, 
 
AN ARISTOCRATIC OLIGARCHY 257 
 
 in the case of the plant or the animal ; in structure 
 and mental equipment in the case of man. Before 
 that end is reached the unfit have left their impress 
 upon their race and surroundings, they have trans 
 mitted their characteristics to their descendants, 
 they have affected the civilization of their time, they 
 have planted evils which can only be extirpated by 
 that gradual progress by which the unfit, marked 
 for extinction, are merged in the fit,* who are fore 
 ordained to live. A race dies because it cannot 
 reproduce itself, because it propagates the seed of 
 its own destruction, but there is no catastrophic 
 climax. There is no period on which we can put 
 our finger and say, "here the unfit ceased to exist 
 and the fit came on the scene." Side by side the 
 fit and the unfit lived, the unfit exercising their 
 destructive influence until the time when evolution 
 had accomplished its predestined task. 
 
 The men who survived and made Virginia were 
 a virile and intellectually powerful race, but the 
 men who disappeared during the course of the 
 struggle influenced many generations, and that 
 " white trash" of the South to which I have already 
 referred, those idle, dissolute, shiftless creatures 
 who looked with contempt on the negro and for 
 whom the negro had even greater contempt, no 
 less powerfully affected Southern civilization, and 
 through it the entire country, than the men who 
 were in every sense leaders and raised up to estab 
 lish a nation. Extraordinary as this assertion may 
 
258 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 appear, we shall see later that it is sustained by the 
 facts. 
 
 It was a very remarkable civilization that was 
 built on tobacco. It produced great wealth, it gave 
 birth to great intelligence and independence; it was 
 the acid to correct the alkali of New England. To 
 Virginia the American people owe as much as to 
 Massachusetts, but their sense of obligation must 
 take another form. It was the difference between 
 Cromwell and Marlborough, and it would be 
 another English history if neither, or perhaps only 
 one, had lived. It was a civilization reared not on a 
 necessity, not on something without which the world 
 could not live, but on a luxury. That in itself is 
 remarkable. It could exist only so long as it was 
 fed by the lifeblood of negro slavery, which in the 
 eyes of the world was a crime long before the world 
 was no longer content to close its eyes and dull its 
 ears to that which offended its finer impulses. And 
 finally, this pure luxury was the most wasteful of 
 all crops. From the earth it took everything, but it 
 gave nothing. It was the agricultural Minotaur 
 that devastated a virgin soil. 
 
 Yet with all this Virginia grew and prospered 
 and raised a great race of great men, who like 
 other races of great men were devoid of the 
 commercial sense and with the indifference of the 
 spendthrift lived on capital. With the exhaustion 
 of the soil, with the competition of other countries 
 that practiced a more scientific culture of tobacco, 
 
AN ARISTOCRATIC OLIGARCHY 259 
 
 the Virginians found themselves at the end of their 
 resources, for their principal was gone and there 
 were no means to replace it. But while it lasted, 
 while money was made quickly and those virgin 
 lands yielded their fullness, it was a day of great 
 plenty and a free, generous life that developed the 
 minds and bodies of men and dwarfed them 
 spiritually. It left a legacy that future generations 
 have still to pay. 
 
 Here is a picture of the Golden Era of the planta 
 tion age by a writer whose sympathies are frankly 
 Southern. It is not historically accurate, and the 
 author s sense of proportion is distorted, but it 
 conveys a fair impression of the plantation life 
 when Virginia enjoyed a monopoly of tobacco : 
 
 " There was a blacksmith shop, woodburners to 
 keep the house supplied with charcoal, brick- 
 makers, masons, carpenters, a mill which ground 
 flour for sale as well as for the family s use, coopers 
 to make barrels for it, and a schooner to carry all 
 products to market. Besides these there were a 
 shoemaker, and weavers who in the year 1758 pro 
 duced eight hundred and fifteen yards of linen, 
 three hundred and sixty five yards of woolen, one 
 hundred and forty yards of linsey, and forty yards 
 of cotton goods. There was an important fishery on 
 the shore, and large herds of cattle, horses, and 
 sheep, not to mention the great waving fields of 
 grain, for Washington planted little or no tobacco. 
 
 "It was a large enterprise, somewhat resembling, 
 
260 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 in the ability required, our modern manufacturing 
 industries, but more varied. In fact, in colonial 
 times the Southern plantations were the great busi 
 ness undertakings of the country, and more broad 
 ening in their effect on character than the petty 
 trades and small farming that were followed in the 
 North. 
 
 "The man who successfully ruled this property 
 and its retainers and at the same time led the life of 
 a sportsman and a gentleman, mingled with military 
 service on the frontier in the French and Indian 
 wars, was receiving an education which cannot be 
 given in modern times by any university, city, or 
 community in the United States. No amount of 
 book learning, no college curriculum imitated from 
 plodding, mystical Germans, no cramming or 
 examinations, and no system of gymnastic exercises 
 can be even a substitute for that Virginian life 
 which inspired with vigor, freshness, and creative 
 power the great men who formed the Union and 
 the Constitution." * 
 
 Another American writer gives us a somewhat 
 different picture of the Tobacco Aristocracy. The 
 isolation of these semi-feudal plantations created 
 "two great classes, a class of vast landowners, 
 haughty, hospitable, indolent, passionate, given to 
 field sports and politics, and a class of impover 
 ished white plebeians and black serfs." As was 
 inevitable in a dominion where lands and laborers 
 
 1 Fisher: Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial Times, vol. i, pp. 83-85. 
 
AN ARISTOCRATIC OLIGARCHY 261 
 
 were the chief constituents of wealth, where slaves, 
 black and white, were counted by the thousand, 
 and into which the Cavaliers had brought the 
 English system of primogeniture and entail, a 
 favored class held all military, judicial, legislative, 
 and executive power. This aristocracy had not 
 hitherto acted as a political party, but the English 
 restoration was a Virginian revolution. It took the 
 power from the people, who did not regain it for 
 more than half a century. 1 
 
 But this takes us somewhat ahead of the time 
 with which we are dealing. Before the Golden Age 
 the colony had to pass through the usual vicissi 
 tudes of political turmoil and become schooled in 
 that political training which made it possible for the 
 new American political philosophy to be accepted. 
 
 Had England deliberately set to work to train 
 up these expatriated sons of hers so as to make 
 them rebel against the home government and its 
 attempts to keep them in perpetual tutelage, she 
 could not have gone about it with greater skill or 
 adopted methods more certain to be successful. 
 It was a day when the people were more fully con 
 scious than ever before of the immense power that 
 resided in them. The seed of democracy had been 
 planted, although it must take another century and 
 more before its fruits were visible, but in the mean 
 time the souls and minds of men were stirred in a 
 way new to them and vague longings possessed 
 
 1 Aveiy: A History of the United States, vol. ii, p. 187. 
 
262 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 them. When in 1619 the first House of Burgesses 
 was created in Virginia, an eminent historian 
 quaintly speaks of it as having "broken out," and 
 a later and equally eminent historian comments on 
 this expression, "as if there were an incurable virus 
 of liberty in the English blood, as it were some 
 thing that must come out as inevitably as original 
 sin." 1 It was that "incurable virus" that, like the 
 sap in the tree rising in springtime, was now infus 
 ing the blood of Englishmen. 
 
 The struggle between King and Parliament was 
 an effort on the part of Charles arbitrarily to con 
 trol the purse. His successor, James II, no less 
 arbitrary and with an even greater dislike of the 
 interference of Parliament, still had wisdom enough 
 to reaffirm the principle that Cromwell s commis 
 sioners had recognized and George III was to 
 ignore, that taxation implied representation. Thus 
 twice in a little more than three decades had these 
 Englishmen in Virginia won without bloodshed and 
 almost without effort what at home had been 
 gained only at the point of the sword. When Lord 
 Howard of Effingham was sent to Virginia as Gov 
 ernor his instructions from the King authorized him 
 that in all matters relating to taxation he was to 
 "recommend" measures to the Assembly. It was 
 the recognition that the sole power to impose taxes 
 was inherent in the Assembly as the representatives 
 of the people. 
 
 1 Fiske: Old Virginia and Her Neighbours, vol. i, p. 240. 
 
AN ARISTOCRATIC OLIGARCHY 263 
 
 But before that Cromwell had acknowledged the 
 right of the Virginians to tax themselves. Following 
 the execution of Charles the Assembly passed an 
 act declaring that commissions of the Crown were 
 still valid and refused to recognize the authority of 
 the Commonwealth. Two ships were sent from 
 England to bring the rebellious colonials to terms, 
 who yielded without striking a blow. The incident 
 is not important except for the recognition by the 
 Parliamentary Commissioners "that Virginia shall 
 be free from all taxes, customes and impositions 
 whatsoever, and none to be imposed on them with 
 out the consent of the Grand Assembly, And soe 
 that neither ffortes nor castles bee erected or garri 
 soned without their consent." 1 In many ways the 
 Virginians had been taught the wisdom of loudly 
 demanding what they wanted, and in case of 
 refusal to offer a bold front; and they knew very 
 well that so long as they controlled their own taxa 
 tion they had little to fear from royal governors. 
 
 The life led by the Virginians made them tre 
 mendously self reliant and showed them what an 
 artificial creation society is. In their own England 
 customs had become stereotyped, there was ma 
 chinery of government and law of whose work 
 ings they knew little, but which they accepted as a 
 matter of course; it had become as mechanical and 
 as much a matter of routine as the rising of the sun 
 or the succession of days through the calendar of 
 
 1 Hening s Statutes, vol. i, p. 364. 
 
264 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 the month. In Virginia society was stripped of its 
 coverings. What had before seemed mysterious, 
 nebulous, too complicated to be grasped by little 
 minds, was found to be on near approach extraor 
 dinarily simple and easily comprehended. There 
 was no remote system of poor law rising in some 
 distant fountain head and filtering its way to the 
 object of its relief. If one man starved, all starved. 
 There were, at first, no judges and courts and terrify 
 ing machinery of justice, that was the more terrifying 
 because it was so impersonal. Justice was quick 
 and direct. There were no involved processes of 
 trade by which a dozen barriers must be broken 
 down before consumer and producer are brought 
 together. Commerce was direct barter. All the 
 dead fustian with which civilization delights to 
 clothe itself, and which is inseparable from civiliza 
 tion, was swept away and men stood face to face. 
 Had these Englishmen not been the product of a 
 civilization highly developed, they would have acted 
 from instinct and in their ignorance believed that 
 their own was the only practical way. But they 
 had the advantage of comparison, and were able 
 to see that to lay the foundation for their own 
 social order was a task not so difficult. 
 
 They were, however, left largely to shift for them 
 selves. It is true they were given assistance from 
 England and except for that help they would have 
 perished in the early days, but it was chiefly on 
 their own reliance they depended. When they real- 
 
AN ARISTOCRATIC OLIGARCHY 265 
 
 ized how well they were able to take care of them 
 selves, they quickly resented the efforts of the home 
 government to treat them politically as children 
 and constantly to remind them of their dependence. 
 They were feeling their own strength and were 
 conscious of what they had done. 
 
 Everything tended to stimulate resistance. The 
 mental attitude of the Englishman of the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries, in one respect at least, was 
 not unlike that of the Englishman of the nineteenth 
 century in his insular contempt for foreigners and 
 the tactlessness he displayed in dealing with his 
 children who had become colonists. He seems to 
 have forgotten that the men who were building a 
 new empire across the Atlantic were men of his own 
 blood, often men of his own family; and " colonist " 
 was almost a term of reproach, if not of disdain. 
 It was characteristic of this attitude that when Dr. 
 Blair went to England to try to obtain money to 
 establish a college in Virginia and approached Sir 
 Edward Seymour for a grant from the treasury, he 
 met with a curt refusal. "You must not forget," 
 Blair mildly told him, " that people in Virginia have 
 souls to save as well as people in England." 
 "Souls," Seymour echoed in derision, "damn your 
 souls! Grow tobacco!" And the character of the 
 governors that administered the colony was a direct 
 invitation to defy authority. Many of them were 
 men of ability who had the interests of the colony 
 at heart, but more of them were men of little capa- 
 
266 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 city, court favorites who were pitchforked into office 
 as an easy means of finding them a profitable job, 
 and to whom Virginia meant nothing except a place 
 of exile and the means of replenishing a depleted 
 purse. A little more tact in dealing with a proud 
 and self-reliant people, a little more sympathy with 
 their aims and aspirations, a little better under 
 standing of their character, and the friction of the 
 first hundred and fifty years would have been 
 avoided and the great drama of 1776 need not 
 have been staged. They were a people easily led 
 but difficult to drive. And few Englishmen, from 
 Argall to George III, ever understood that simple 
 truth. 
 
 In Virginia as in Massachusetts, from the time 
 when the colonists first obtained a measure of self- 
 government until they threw off their allegiance to 
 the mother country, there was constant agitation to 
 check the encroachment of the governors, which 
 sometimes existed only in the imagination of the 
 colonists; and to increase the measure of popular 
 liberty, or to oppose legislation that was enacted 
 solely in the interest of British merchants and 
 destroyed or hampered colonial commerce and 
 enterprise. Usually this discontent voiced itself 
 in discussion and protest, to which we may trace 
 the extraordinary power of political oratory which 
 distinguishes the American, and it was an excellent 
 school of political training; but from time to time 
 there was open and armed resistance to royal 
 
AN ARISTOCRATIC OLIGARCHY 267 
 
 authority, which should have been a warning to 
 men less blinded by their own conceit. Every 
 American schoolboy is familiar with Nathaniel 
 Bacon s attempt to overthrow Sir William Berke 
 ley s rule and his indictment of that stout old 
 Cavalier, which foreshadowed by a hundred years 
 the indictment of George III, there being in both 
 instruments a curious similarity of language and 
 thought, which proves conclusively, I think, that 
 long before the American nation was born the seed 
 had been sown in the spirit of resistance and oppo 
 sition and a determination to submit to no form of 
 government that did not first consider the rights 
 and welfare of the people. 1 But Virginia was not 
 alone in having to put down rebellion in the early 
 history of the colonies. In Maryland, in Massachu 
 setts, in New York, there was resistance to authority ; 
 
 1 Bacon s Indictment of Sir William Berkeley, the original of which is in 
 the British State Paper Office, contains many counts, of which the following 
 are the most important and characteristic: 
 
 "For having upon specious pretence of public works raised unjust taxes 
 upon the commonalty for the advancement of private favourites and other 
 sinister ends, but no visible effects in any measure adequate. 
 
 " For not having, during the long time of his government, in any measure 
 advanced this hopeful colony either by fortifications, towns, or trade. 
 
 " For having abused and rendered contemptible the majesty of justice, of 
 advancing to places of judicature scandalous and ignorant favourites. 
 
 "For having wronged his Majesty s prerogative and interest by assuming 
 the monopoly of the beaver trade. 
 
 "For having in that unjust gain bartered and sold his Majesty s country 
 and the lives of his loyal subjects to the barbarous heathen. 
 
 "For having protected, favoured, and emboldened the Indians against his 
 Majesty s most loyal subjects, never contriving, requiring or appointing any 
 due or proper means of satisfaction for their many invasions, murders, and 
 robberies committed upon us." 
 
268 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 there was always the latent spirit of rebellion swift 
 to flame into open defiance. 
 
 A strong race, similar to a man of strong char 
 acter, is never content, but always finds present 
 conditions capable of improvement and endeavors 
 to better them. A race that is satisfied is like the 
 man whose ambition is gratified, and then quickly 
 follow stagnation and decay. It is this wholesome 
 discontent, this unrest, this longing for something 
 finer, this ever striving for excellence, this criticism, 
 that make the man stronger and better and the race 
 more resolute and capable of accomplishing great 
 things. That these Englishmen were to found a 
 great and vigorous race was indicated by their 
 never being quite satisfied, even when life ran 
 easily and smoothly for them, and they never sank 
 into that destructive state of smug complacency 
 which is the beginning of the end of all progress; 
 the corollary of a fatuous optimism that accepts 
 whatever is as the best of all possible things in 
 the best of all possible worlds. Their descend 
 ants, strong men sprung from a strong stock, have 
 the same spirit. The American of to-day is properly 
 dissatisfied, always wan ting some thing better, always 
 trying to reform, ever seeking to improve himself 
 and his conditions, which is the long struggle that 
 leads to perfection. 
 
 Tolerance, a courteous yielding of individual 
 opinion to that of an adversary and a recognition 
 that although men may differ there is some merit 
 
AN ARISTOCRATIC OLIGARCHY 
 
 in the argument of an opponent, was not a virtue 
 of the seventeenth century; but religious intoler 
 ance has always been much harsher than political, 
 unless the latter, under the guise of a civil polity, 
 involved the supremacy of the Church. Virginia 
 was not free from the prevailing harshness of the 
 age, but it was a more tolerant community than 
 Massachusetts, and by contrast it seemed to be 
 more liberal, as if its morals were looser and the 
 state of society generally more lax. And yet in 
 that early day, about the time that Puritanism was 
 seeking a foothold in Massachusetts, Virginia en 
 acted a code of blue laws that should have com 
 pelled the admiration of the most rigid Puritan. 
 Drunkenness was a crime to be severely punished. 
 Men must dress according to their station in life, 
 and every married man had a direct interest in pre 
 venting the undue extravagance of his wife, as they 
 were assessed "according to his own and his wife s 
 apparel." Maidens who flirted and men who en 
 gaged themselves to more than one woman at the 
 same time were liable to be whipped or fined. The 
 crime of bringing the governor into contempt or 
 ridicule was punished by the pillory, and to dis 
 parage a minister was to risk the censure of the 
 governor and council. "Profane swearing" could 
 be indulged in only at the risk of a shilling an oath. 
 To make a journey upon the Sabbath, "except in 
 case of emergent necessitie, " was punishable by a 
 fine of one hundred pounds of tobacco. The code 
 
270 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 sanctioned by the London Company was Draconian 
 in its severity. Blasphemy, denying "the known 
 articles of the Christian faith," speaking against 
 the King, or vilifying the London Company, were 
 crimes punishable with death. 
 
 But these laws were not considered unduly harsh 
 for their day, and they did not sorely oppress the 
 colonists. Men were whipped and fined and pillo 
 ried and a few were hanged, but Virginia had 
 slight cause to complain of tyrants who punished 
 for the mere delight of inflicting suffering and grati 
 fying a love for cruelty. It was this moderation that 
 left Virginia almost indifferent to the great struggle 
 in England and made no unclosable breach between 
 the Virginians and the New Englanders. In Vir 
 ginia there were no wrongs to be avenged, no bitter 
 memories of persecution, no fortunes wrecked or 
 estates confiscated because Commonwealth had 
 succeeded King and King had replaced Protector. 
 Individual preference of course the colonists had, 
 but they accepted the change almost with uncon 
 cern. It is true that in 1661 the Virginia Assembly 
 passed an act making the thirteenth of January, 
 the anniversary of the execution of Charles I, a day 
 to be solemnized with fasting and prayer, "that 
 our sorrows may expiate our crime, and our tears 
 wash away our guilt," but that was partly sentiment 
 and affection for the memory of the "murdered" 
 sovereign, and partly expediency. The successor of 
 Charles was firmly seated on the throne, Puritanism 
 
AN ARISTOCRATIC OLIGARCHY 271 
 
 was another lost cause, politically speaking, and the 
 colonists knew the advantage of having the favor of 
 the King and the Court. But whether King reigned 
 or Protector governed was of less consequence to 
 these fiery colonists than the enjoyment of their 
 rights that had so early "broken out" in the history 
 of the colony. They were quick enough to resist 
 encroachment, they were prompt in defying the 
 Company or the Court when their liberties were 
 threatened, but English politics never raised up 
 among the colonists two formidable parties always 
 waiting to fly at each other s throats. In England 
 the hope was cherished that the King s party 
 would be built up in Virginia and that when the 
 time was ripe Virginia could be relied on to con 
 tribute men and money for the restoration of the 
 monarchy. But it was empty hope. There was 
 party neither of the Crown nor of Parliament, and 
 the Virginians cared more to save the colony from 
 spoliation and bloodshed than they did to become 
 involved in English politics. 
 
 The whole course of American history, even in 
 the colonial era, when American history was being 
 written, although no one was wise enough to read 
 it, shows that the Englishman in America cast off 
 some of the political traditions that had governed 
 him in England and adopted new principles that 
 were the necessity of his new environment and his 
 new conditions. And, curiously enough, broadly 
 and fundamentally, from these principles there 
 
272 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 has been no deviation. The cardinal principle of 
 American polity from the time of Washington to 
 the present day has been no "entangling alliances," 
 and in keeping aloof from the struggle of Round 
 head and Cavalier, and in refusing to be made a 
 pawn in the great game of English politics, the 
 Virginians unconsciously adopted a policy that later 
 was to have the sanction of the American people 
 and become incorporated into the unwritten con 
 stitution. We shall see how an unbroken thread 
 runs through the complicated arabesque of Ameri 
 can history, and how it appears and reappears at 
 every stage of American development and with 
 what fidelity it has been adhered to. 
 
 After the Virginians brought the wilderness under 
 subjection and the peril of Indian massacre was no 
 longer to be feared, it was natural that they should 
 settle down to the enjoyment of the good fortune 
 that was theirs. In all the accounts of contemporary 
 Virginia we are impressed by the spirit of content, 
 by the emphasis laid on pleasant surroundings 
 and the life of ease and pleasure, which is in such 
 marked contrast to life in the northern colonies, 
 where hearts were still being searched in the vain 
 endeavor to solve the unfathomable mystery of sin 
 and suffering. The Virginian was no metaphysician 
 or hair-splitting theologian ; polemical discussion did 
 not appeal to him; whether a soul could dance on 
 the point of a needle was a foolish speculation when 
 the hounds were straining to raise the fox, and the 
 
AN ARISTOCRATIC OLIGARCHY 273 
 
 skies were blue and cloudless, and the air was balmy 
 and perfume laden, and after the chase there was 
 tobacco and toddy to bring enjoyment and defy 
 sour-faced preachers. 
 
 This contentment resulted in another significant 
 mental change. From mere adventurers and trans 
 ients the Virginian had been transformed into a 
 people with a country. The spirit of patriotism, 
 which makes nations, was springing into life. The 
 discovery that Virginia was not a land of fabled 
 wealth and mythological miracle, that the ground 
 was not encumbered with gold and rivers did not 
 run contrary to the laws of Nature, was a great blow 
 to the first settlers, who in many things were as 
 simple as children and as easily imposed upon by 
 fairy tales. But back of their ingenuousness was 
 the substratum of English solidity and obstinacy. 
 The gold existed only in imagination, but the wealth 
 was there to be won by effort. Virginia was no 
 longer a place of exile, but a country in which men 
 were to live and prosper; a country not only to be 
 endured but to be liked, for the Virginians soon came 
 to have an affection for this wondrous land that was 
 so rich and rewarded them so lavishly. They were 
 not only content to remain, but few had any desire 
 to leave. 1 " The romantic era of colonization, with 
 its wild hopes and ambitions, is over." It was no 
 longer necessary to hold out alluring but impossible 
 
 1 "Leah and Rachel; or The Two Fruitful Sisters, Virginia and Mary 
 land," Force, vol. iii, p. 12. 
 
274 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 promises. God need not be propitiated by the 
 sanctimonious lie of the conversion of the heathen, 
 nor greed excited by illusory tales of gold. Even 
 the importance of Virginia to England as a com 
 mercial and military outpost was less dwelt upon. 
 Virginia was appreciated for herself, and the once 
 stony-hearted stepmother had become a sweetheart 
 to be wooed and a wife to be cherished. 
 
 And climate worked its end. "The cloudless 
 skies and genial air had changed the heavy, sombre 
 Englishman into the spirited, keen, vivacious beings 
 who produced the Jeffersons, Madisons, Randolphs 
 and Lees." They were a united people, those 
 Virginians, and believed in themselves. Perhaps 
 this this intense confidence in themselves was 
 the great reason why they achieved and became 
 great. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE FIRST CATHOLIC COLONY 
 
 IT has been well said by Bancroft that "the 
 United States were severally colonized by men, in 
 origin, religious faith, and purposes, as varied as 
 their climes " ; and by another American writer that 
 "in travelling from Massachusetts to the Carolinas 
 one passed through communities of such distinct 
 individuality that they were almost like different 
 nations. Each had been founded for a reason and 
 purpose of its own, each had a set of opinions and 
 laws peculiar to itself, and it was not uncommon 
 to find the laws and opinions of one a contra 
 diction to those of another"; and we have only to 
 turn to the early history of Maryland to recognize 
 the truth of these observations. Thrust like a wedge 
 between the older colony of Virginia and the 
 younger of Massachusetts Bay, the one in every 
 thing so unlike the other, Maryland, in that early 
 day, was the connecting link between North and 
 South; southern, because of its geographical posi 
 tion and climate and soil ; northern, because by one 
 of those whims of fate it practiced tolerance and 
 gave asylum to the intolerance of Puritanism and 
 the narrowness no less of those Virginia "butter 
 flies" who, lightly as they regarded theological dis- 
 
276 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 pute, had all the stubbornness of ignorance in 
 defending the faith. 
 
 Maryland interests us as being the first and only 
 American colony established to afford a refuge 
 to Roman Catholics. To escape persecution, to be 
 permitted to lead their lives in their own way un 
 hindered by civil or ecclesiastical law, the Puritans 
 went to Massachusetts. It was with the same pur 
 pose that George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, 
 led his company of adventurers first to Newfound 
 land and then to Virginia, which would have none of 
 him because of his religion ; and later found shelter 
 in Maryland. We are interested in Maryland, 
 in tracing American development, because of the 
 influence exercised on the American character by 
 the religious faith of its first settlers, which made 
 Maryland so different from both Massachusetts and 
 Virginia. "The darkened and gloomy mind of the 
 Puritan" gave to the American the strength and 
 moral purpose that made Ethan Allen demand the 
 surrender of Fort Ticonderoga " in the name of the 
 Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress"; the 
 Virginian gave him imagination and the love of 
 reckless adventure that drove the frontier ever for 
 ward and spread a handful of men to fill a vast con 
 tinent; the Marylander sowed the seeds of a church 
 with its discipline and traditions that were the 
 needed counterpoise. A plant is nurtured no more 
 by its sun than by its snow. Virginia and Massa 
 chusetts and Maryland take away any one of 
 
FIRST CATHOLIC COLONY 277 
 
 those elements and you subtract from American 
 psychology. 
 
 With the political history of Maryland we need 
 not concern ourselves, deeply interesting as it is to 
 the historical student because of the extraordinary 
 powers it vested in its proprietor. Baltimore died 
 a month after he had received his grant, and the 
 work of colonization was carried on by his son 
 Cecilius, a remarkable man in an age of remarkable 
 men, to whom may be accorded the honor of having 
 been one of the first English colonial administrators 
 worthy of the name ; who during the forty years that 
 he governed the province had its welfare always 
 at heart and displayed much wisdom, tact and 
 liberality. 
 
 Among other things, Baltimore s charter con 
 ferred upon him the patronage and advowsons of 
 all churches, " together with license and faculty of 
 erecting and founding churches, chapels and places 
 of worship," and "of causing the same to be dedi 
 cated and consecrated according to the ecclesiastical 
 laws of our kingdom of England." 1 Doyle, whose 
 painstaking research and sound judgment have 
 made his work so invaluable to students of colonial 
 history, finds in Baltimore s acceptance of this 
 clause in the charter that "it quite dispels the idea 
 that he intended his colony as a special refuge for 
 his own sect, a stronghold for persecuted Roman 
 ism"; and other writers, American as well as Eng- 
 
 1 Scharf : History of Maryland, vol. i, p. 54. 
 
278 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 lish, have asserted that Baltimore could not estab 
 lish Catholicism in his province as he was pledged 
 to maintain the established Church of England. 
 But it was a casuistical age, and kingly consciences 
 were not overburdened with scruples when favor 
 ites were to be rewarded. The first Lord Balti 
 more was well known to be a Catholic and so was 
 his son, and in granting the charter to them Charles 
 had inserted no prohibition against freedom of 
 religion. A Protestant king ruling a Protestant 
 people would find it necessary to insist in the terms 
 of the charter that Protestantism should be the 
 religion of the colony, but having nominated the 
 bond he need not be over-particular as to its obser 
 vance. At any rate, in November, 1663, Baltimore 
 equipped two ships, the Ark and the Dove, for 
 Maryland, which carried twenty gentlemen adven 
 turers and some three hundred servants and two 
 Catholic priests ; the first time we find mention made 
 of Catholic priests in an English colonizing expedi 
 tion to America. What proportion of Baltimore s 
 gentlemen adventurers and servants were Protes 
 tants has never been authentically stated, but in his 
 first advertisement for settlers he significantly 
 announced that he would accept people of all relig 
 ious faiths, and with that wisdom that always dis 
 tinguished him, forbade "all unreasonable disputes 
 on points of religion tending to disturbance of the 
 public peace and quiet and to the opening of faction 
 in religion." On arriving at their destination one 
 
FIRST CATHOLIC COLONY 279 
 
 of the priests records that "on the day of the Annun 
 ciation of the most Holy Virgin Mary in the year 
 1634 we celebrated the mass for the first time, on 
 this island. This had never been done before in 
 this part of the world. After we had completed the 
 sacrifice, we took upon our shoulders a great cross, 
 which we had hewn out of a tree, and advancing in 
 order to the appointed place, with the assistance of 
 the Governor and his associates and the other 
 Catholics, we erected a trophy to Christ the Savior, 
 humbly reciting, on our bended knees, the Litanies 
 of the Sacred Cross, with great emotion." 1 
 
 To speak of religious freedom in the seventeenth 
 century is to link antipodal forces. There was no 
 religious liberty in the modern sense. The Puritan 
 was no more narrow than the Catholic, and neither 
 was exceeded in liberality by the Episcopalian, but 
 all were anxious to have their own creed established 
 by law and certified to as the only certain way by 
 which salvation could be found. Sons of the Church 
 might occasionally disgrace their mother, but the 
 worst churchman, whether Puritan, Episcopalian, 
 or Catholic, was better than the best heretic ; for the 
 good heretic was a perversion of nature on which 
 the Church had never laid eyes. "For howsoever 
 bitterly Catholic and Protestant divines have hated 
 and persecuted each other, they have united like 
 true brethren in their hatred and their persecution 
 of heretics; for such was their inexorable destiny." 
 
 1 Scharf : op. cit., vol. i, p. 75. 
 
280 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 The religious liberty that distinguished Baltimore s 
 Maryland palatinate, which has been belittled by 
 some American writers as having existed in imagi 
 nation rather than in fact, was wide enough to give 
 the colony a character different from the older ones. 
 It is probable that had an avowed Catholic king 
 sat on the throne of England, and had the majority 
 of Englishmen been spiritual subjects of the Pope, 
 Cecil Calvert would have been no more liberal in 
 his views or religion than the Puritans; but cir 
 cumstances compelled another course. Much as the 
 Catholics might have desired to establish their 
 religion to the exclusion of all others, much as they 
 may have hated or sorrowed over the heretic and 
 have regretted that he was doomed to everlasting 
 damnation, it was impossible to exclude Protestant 
 ism from the palatinate, where it had been enjoined 
 by the charter. What they could do was to recog 
 nize liberty of worship, and they could not sanction 
 Catholicism and exclude Puritanism, which would 
 not only have been inconsistent but inexpedient and 
 impolitic. Cecil Calvert may not have been in 
 advance of his age and at heart no more liberal 
 than Laud, he may have regretted that he could not 
 complete his machinery of government by the 
 establishment of the inquisition and the star 
 chamber, but the fact remains that Maryland, in 
 the seventeenth century, was the only place on the 
 American continent under English rule in which 
 religious sects were unmolested. 
 
FIRST CATHOLIC COLONY 281 
 
 It is not easy at the present day, Lea says, for 
 those accustomed to universal toleration to realize 
 the importance attached by statesmen in the past 
 to unity of belief, or the popular abhorrence of any 
 deviation from the standard of dogma. These 
 convictions were part of the mental and moral 
 fibre of the community and were the outcome of 
 the assiduous teachings of the church for centuries, 
 until it was classed with the primal truths that it 
 was the highest duty of the sovereign to crush out 
 dissidence at whatever cost, and that hatred of the 
 heretic was enjoined on every Christian by both 
 divine and human law. The heretic was a venom 
 ous reptile, spreading contagion with his breath, 
 and the safety of the land required his extermina 
 tion as a source of pestilence. 1 
 
 At a time when Catholics and Episcopalians were 
 disfranchised in Massachusetts and Quakers were 
 scourged at the cart tail until their bodies ran with 
 blood, and Roger Williams was driven forth, and 
 John Cotton boldly proclaimed that "the Church 
 never took hurt from the punishment of heretics "; 
 when Virginia compelled nonconformists to depart 
 the colony and prevented "popish recusants" from 
 holding office, and Quakers were persecuted as 
 felons, Maryland neither flogged nor maimed, and 
 instead of driving out heretics opened her arms to 
 them. 
 
 In 1649 the Assembly passed "An Act concern 
 ing Religion," the first American toleration act 
 
 1 Lea: History of the Inquisition of Spain, vol. ii, p. 1. 
 
282 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 that shows the liberality of the lord proprietor 
 and his legislature. Any person " who denominated 
 any other person a heretic, schismatick, idolater, 
 puritan, presbyterean, independent, popish priest, 
 Jesuit, jesuited papist, lutheran, calvinist, anabap 
 tist, brownist, antinomian, barrowist, roundhead, 
 separatist, or other name or term in a reproachful 
 manner, relating to matter or religion," was subject 
 to a fine of ten shillings, one half to the lord pro 
 prietor and the other to the person "of whom 
 such reproachful words are or shall be uttered 
 or spoken"; and in case of not being able to 
 satisfy the fine, "the person so offending shall 
 be publicly whipt and shall suffer imprisonment 
 without bayle or mainprise, until he, she, or they 
 respectively shall satisfy the party offended or 
 grieved by such reproachful language, by asking 
 him or her respectively forgiveness publicly for 
 such his offence before the magistrate or chief 
 officer or officers of the towne or place where 
 such offence shall be given." A further section 
 recognized that the "inforcing of the conscience 
 in matters of religion hath frequently fallen out 
 to bee of dangerous consequences in those com 
 monwealths," therefore, "for the more quiet and 
 peaceable government of this province, and the 
 better to preserve mutual love and unity amongst 
 the inhabitants here," it was provided that no 
 person " professing to believe in Jesus Christ shall 
 henceforth be any waies troubled, molested, or 
 
FIRST CATHOLIC COLONY 283 
 
 discountenanced, for or in respect to his or her 
 religion, nor in the exercise thereof . . . nor in 
 any way compelled to the belief or exercise of 
 any other religion against his or her consent." 
 
 All through the colonial period Catholics were 
 looked upon with suspicion, which long afterwards 
 colored the New England view, but was less notice 
 able in the South, possibly because of the early 
 influence of Maryland. We have only to examine 
 the various commissions and charters to see that 
 Catholics were always discriminated against. In 
 the commission for New Hampshire of 1680 liberty 
 of conscience was granted to all Protestants, but 
 not to other sects. In the Massachusetts charter 
 of 1691 William III allowed liberty of conscience 
 "in the worship of God to all Christians (except 
 papists)." Rhode Island, defaming the memory of 
 Roger Williams, enacted a statute depriving Catho 
 lics of the franchise; Oglethorpe s charter for 
 Georgia permitted "free exercise of religion" to all 
 persons "except papists." Even in Pennsylvania, 
 the most liberal of all colonies, the Catholics were 
 compelled to walk with great circumspection and 
 permitted to make little public announcement of 
 their faith. Penn, in 1708, rebukes his secretary of 
 the colony for having suffered "public mass in a 
 scandalous manner," and the Philadelphians op 
 posed the erection of a Catholic chapel because it 
 was "in too public a place." 
 
 If Baltimore had done nothing else than make it 
 
284 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 possible for Catholics to be placed on an equality 
 with other Englishmen and to bring under the pro 
 tection of the organized machinery of government 
 the Catholic Church among English-speaking colo 
 nists, he would have won his place in history. His 
 motives, I repeat, may have been selfish and un 
 worthy, he may have been as illiberal as his con 
 temporaries, policy may have cloaked his hopes, 
 and under the guise of tolerance he may have 
 patiently waited for the day when the Church was to 
 become supreme and the temporal power bow to 
 the spiritual. With hidden motives we have nothing 
 to do. He was as much a pioneer and did as great 
 a work in his own way as John Smith did in the 
 South or Bradford in the North. I have always 
 regretted that Cecil Calvert was no diarist and had 
 none of the love of introspection that so marked the 
 Puritans, who had a perfect passion for self-analysis 
 and the vivisection of their emotions. It would be 
 supremely interesting if we knew what was in the 
 back of this man s head, whether he was simply, as 
 his life and public acts would seem to indicate, a 
 person of moderation, shrewdness and generous 
 instincts, or whether he was a cunning visionary 
 who toiled patiently to accomplish an end that was 
 never realized. It is a fascinating speculation, but 
 profitless, as it leads nowhere. 
 
 The circumstances that gave a Catholic proprietor 
 a Protestant charter, that made him realize that he 
 was always under suspicion and was narrowly 
 
FIRST CATHOLIC COLONY 285 
 
 watched by his enemies in England, who, controlled 
 by bigotry no less than covetousness, were alert to 
 find an opportunity to oust him so as to profit by 
 his misfortune, made the Maryland Catholics more 
 moderate and tolerant than their age, and those 
 qualities have always characterized the Church in 
 America. There has never been any clash of au 
 thority between the Catholic hierarchy in the United 
 States and the temporal power; no American Catho 
 lic has served Church and State with a divided 
 allegiance; the Catholic Church, while teaching its 
 own creed, has ever taught the higher creed of 
 obedience to the State and respect for civil authority. 
 Catholicism in America has not destroyed or weak 
 ened the fibre of American Republicanism; from a 
 small beginning the Church has grown and become 
 a mighty instrument in the development of Ameri 
 can character, but it has been accomplished without 
 the direct participation of the Church in politics. 
 In other countries the Catholic Church found it 
 necessary, or at least believed it to be advisable, to 
 become an active political factor and to endeavor 
 to influence the action of parties, but it has never 
 done so in America. Baltimore s first settlers were 
 moderates, and their descendants were equally 
 moderate. Ultramontanism was unknown, and it 
 was only later, after the Revolution, in the first 
 decade of the nineteenth century, that the heavy 
 immigration of Irish Catholics, to be later strength 
 ened by the immigration from other Catholic coun- 
 
286 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 tries of Europe, profoundly affected and modified 
 the character of American Catholicism, aroused the 
 last vestige of Puritan intolerance, and led to 
 Know-Nothingism and the abortive attempt to 
 inject religion into politics by the creation of the 
 A. P. A. 1 
 
 But in Baltimore s day Catholics and Protestants 
 lived on neighborly terms. At one time the domi- 
 
 1 The American Protective Association, or A. P. A. as it was generally 
 called, was founded in 1887 as a secret political association, nominally to em 
 brace " all who will be true Americans, irrespective of race, color, creed, origi 
 nal nationality, or previous conditions of life," but actually to curb the power 
 of the Catholic Church in America. In its high-sounding declaration of 
 principles the animus of the association is revealed in holding "that support 
 of any ecclesiastical power of non-American character which claims higher 
 sovereignty than that of the United States, is irreconcilable with American 
 citizenship"; and in its protest "against the employment of the subjects of 
 any un-American ecclesiastical power as officers or teachers of our public 
 schools." Bowers, who founded the Association, explained its purpose in 
 these words: "The chief idea we had in view in the constitution was this: 
 that we had no right under the Constitution of this country to oppose any 
 religious body on account of its dogmatic views, faith, etc., but we did be 
 lieve we had a right to oppose it when it became a great political factor. We 
 believed then and we believe now that every man in this country has a right 
 to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience, but we did not 
 believe that the Constitution intended to convey the right to any set of men 
 to control and manipulate the political affairs of this country to the aggran 
 dizement of any ecclesiastical power." Malcolm Townsend: Handbook of 
 United States Political History, pp. 152-153. 
 
 The A. P. A. rapidly gained a large membership and for a brief time was 
 a terrifying bogey to timorous politicians, but it never exerted any political 
 power and soon collapsed, an exotic that could find no nourishment in the 
 soil of America, which nurtures every liberal idea, no matter how prepos 
 terous, but breeds no bigotry. 
 
 The Know-Nothing Party, formed in 1852, was avowedly opposed to 
 Romanism and in favor of the election to public office of none but native- 
 bora Americans. It existed for four years, and during that time exerted 
 considerable political influence. 
 
FIRST CATHOLIC COLONY 287 
 
 nant religion, later Catholics were sorely persecuted ; 
 the Church of England, that afterwards was to be 
 more powerful than any other creed, was, in the 
 first years, surpassed in wealth and the number of 
 its communicants by noncomformism, and as late 
 as 1677 there were only three Anglican clergymen 
 in the colony, and the few churches were without 
 endowment and had to rely on the uncertain gener 
 osity of their congregations for the support of their 
 ministers. In the House of Burgesses a few years 
 before three quarters of the members were Puritans. 
 They had come from Massachusetts as well as 
 Virginia, and were in numbers sufficient to estab 
 lish a community of their own at Ann Arundel. 1 
 Maryland, it is true, was a Catholic colony, but the 
 influence of the Puritans was strong, and it was this 
 coexistence of sects and creeds that differentiated 
 Maryland from Virginia and Massachusetts and 
 brought a new element to form the American 
 character. 
 
 The men who first planted Maryland were made 
 of better stuff than the neighboring Virginians, 
 and in this as in so many other things Baltimore 
 showed his sound sense and his wide vision, and 
 probably he was able to profit by the experience of 
 the Virginia Company. The scum of the jails and 
 the slums was not gathered up to be thrown down 
 in Maryland, and inducements were offered to 
 sound energetic men to start a new life. But Mary- 
 
 1 Bozman: History of Maryland, vol. ii, p. 398. 
 
288 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 land, to speak quite frankly, similar to all the other 
 English possessions of that day, was regarded as a 
 convenient place for the disposal of criminals, and 
 to it convicts were sent in large numbers. "The 
 number of convicts imported into Maryland before 
 the revolution of 1776," Scharf tell us, " must have 
 amounted to at least twenty thousand. From the 
 year 1750 to 1770 not less than four to five hundred 
 were annually brought into the province." l This 
 estimate is confirmed by other writers. The colonists 
 bitterly resented that Maryland should be made a 
 penal colony, and protests proving vain, acts were 
 passed by the legislature prohibiting the importa 
 tion of criminals, but these acts were declared void 
 by the Crown. The legislature then resorted to the 
 expedient of taxing criminals, under the clause of 
 the charter which gave the colony the power to 
 levy duties on imported merchandise, on the ground 
 that as convicts were sold for service on their arrival 
 in the colony, they were merchandise and not men, 
 and subject to duty. But this construction of the 
 charter the Crown overruled, and the practice of 
 exporting criminals to Maryland as well as to other 
 American colonies continued until the Revolution 
 broke the power of England to make the New 
 World a dumping-ground for its criminals and pau 
 pers. It is only proper to add, that while many of 
 the criminals were felons, many were unfortunate 
 rather than vicious ; many had committed no greater 
 
 1 Scharf: op. cit., vol. i, p. 371. 
 
FIRST CATHOLIC COLONY 289 
 
 offense than to fail in business ; some were political 
 prisoners who had plotted against the Crown or had 
 been taken with arms in their hands. They were a 
 mixed lot, not all bad, but few of them better than 
 indifferent. 
 
 Climatically very similar to Virginia, and like 
 Virginia with convenient water transportation mak 
 ing the laborious work of road-building unnecessary, 
 the culture of tobacco was carried on in Maryland 
 and was a source of great wealth, which required 
 the use of African slaves and white indented ser 
 vants. In Maryland as in Virginia, everywhere, in 
 fact, where slavery became an institution, it put a 
 stigma upon free labor and caused the free white 
 man to lose his self-respect by being compelled to 
 do work that was regarded as fit only for bonds 
 men belonging to an inferior race, or criminals who 
 were made to labor in the fields as a punishment. 
 With the growth of the colonies Maryland became 
 a wheat-raising as well as a tobacco-growing pro 
 vince, and some of the largest landowners found it 
 more profitable to turn their tobacco lands into 
 wheat. Virginia always clung to tobacco and slav 
 ery; Maryland, as her wheat-fields multiplied and 
 the export of flour became a profitable trade and 
 Baltimore a port of first importance, was less 
 dependent upon servile labor for her prosperity, 
 which in time modified political views. Virginia 
 after wavering threw in her lot with the other slave- 
 holding states and joined the Confederacy; Mary- 
 
290 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 land remained loyal to the Union that she had 
 helped to create. 
 
 Baltimore laid the foundation of his local govern 
 ment in the manorial system of England, and every 
 grant of 2,000 acres or more was created a manor 
 with court baron and court leet, the master of the 
 manor exercising feudal rights, and around him 
 grew up a tenantry. The cultivation of tobacco had 
 the same political and social effects in Maryland 
 as in Virginia; the proprietor found it more profit 
 able to cultivate the Indian weed himself on a large 
 scale than to split up his holding among tenants 
 and be paid in kind, "and the feudal society of the 
 manor" was transformed into "the patriarchal 
 society of the plantation." As in Virginia so in 
 Maryland, tobacco "afforded an instance of how 
 much a staple may not only regulate a people s 
 conduct and habits, but become part of their 
 thoughts and even enter into their dreams." From 
 the lord proprietor down every one was paid in 
 tobacco, tobacco meant wealth, wealth was reck 
 oned in hogsheads of tobacco. All law, all society 
 revolved around this little brown plant ; society was 
 organized to protect it and to make it more valuable ; 
 like gold it was the yardstick of value because to it 
 the mints were always open. "Its purity was more 
 fiercely defended than the chastity of woman, and 
 the forger of an inspector s note was to be whipped 
 and pilloried. Debts in tobacco were protected over 
 debts in coin, and judgment, bonds and mortages 
 
FIRST CATHOLIC COLONY 291 
 
 might be both given and paid in tobacco." The 
 mint for the free and unlimited conversion of 
 tobacco into money was found in the official ware 
 house of the province, where tobacco was stored 
 and inspected and a receipt given by a sworn inspec 
 tor, which could always be negotiated for a bill of 
 exchange on London. 
 
 Both the feudal and patriarchal states of society 
 created a class of large landowners, who lived a 
 free, hospitable and generous life, which later be 
 came reckless and impoverished their descendants ; 
 but in the Golden Age of Tobacco it was very 
 delightful and fascinating ; the men were developing 
 the wealth of the colony and taking an active share 
 in its political affairs, and were being strengthened 
 to fit themselves for the part they were to play in 
 that great political drama which was to make the 
 last quarter of the eighteenth century so memorable ; 
 the women with all their dainty prettiness bred 
 strong men. Scharf paints none too flattering a 
 picture of the men whose history he has chronicled 
 and of the state he proudly claims as his own. 
 "The Maryland colonists," he says, "were not a 
 well educated people, and it must be confessed 
 that they thought more of horse-racing and cock- 
 fighting than they did of books." After Baltimore 
 and his first settlers came the generations who had 
 too much forest to cut down to be able to spare 
 much time for the schoolmaster. The people of 
 means with a desire for education went to England 
 
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 to acquire it, "but the greater part of the young 
 Marylanders were more like Harry Warrington 
 than like his brother George. Fox-hunting in the 
 morning, and cards and dancing at night, left them 
 little time for books." l Towards the end of the 
 eighteenth century, in 1770, Scharf notes that there 
 was socially a distinct aristocratic class in Mary 
 land, a class comparatively large, most of whose 
 members were wealthy and some of whom were 
 well educated. As in Virginia, their fortunes rested 
 on lands and slaves. They communicated with one 
 another, but did not associate with the other classes. 
 The province, taking more after Virginia in that 
 respect than Massachusetts, had no general system 
 of schools and no large class of tractarians and dis 
 putants whose arguments affected the people as a 
 whole. It was no part of a "gentleman s" require 
 ments of that time to be over particular about his 
 syntax or spelling, and gentlemen could find better 
 and more amusing things to do than to write 
 pamphlets or discuss public affairs through the 
 newspapers, of which there were only two in Mary 
 land in 1775 and the same number in Virginia, 
 while in Massachusetts there were seven; but it is 
 to be remembered that the press exercised far less 
 influence than it does to-day, and it was in the 
 Assembly and the town and other meetings that 
 the real work of government was carried on and 
 public opinion formed. 
 
 1 Scharf: op. cit., vol. ii, p. 18. 
 
FIRST CATHOLIC COLONY 293 
 
 The social life of the colony centred in Annapolis, 
 which was a very gay and fashionable little city, 
 where there was much wealth and extravagance, 
 and people were as keen to be amused as high 
 society is to-day in London or Newport or New 
 York. One writer says that no city of the same size 
 in England could boast so many handsome and 
 fashionable women. They danced and went to the 
 theatre and horse races, for the Marylanders have 
 always been passionately fond of horse-racing; the 
 men wagered their money on horses and cards and 
 cockfights, and every one from the highest to the 
 lowest regarded cockfighting as the greatest of all 
 sports ; and Puritans, who denounced the theatre as 
 the devil s own device, saw no sin in watching two 
 birds tear each other to pieces. 
 
 I pass over the quarrels between Virginia and 
 Maryland, Leah and Rachel, the Two Fruitful 
 Sisters, as a seventeenth century pamphleteer calls 
 them, as merely an incident in the life of a nation 
 and having no lasting influence on the development 
 of character; nor need much more time be given 
 to considering the manifestation of that new spirit 
 that made the Englishman in America always a 
 rebel and always quick to resist the encroachment 
 of his governors. We have seen how these hot- 
 tempered Virginians held on to the purse-strings 
 and clung to the control of taxation as the great safe 
 guard of their liberties, and how Nathaniel Bacon 
 led an armed force against Sir William Berkeley. 
 
294 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 Bacon s example was followed in the palatinate. 
 Cecilius died in 1675 and was succeeded by his son 
 Charles, an arbitrary and narrow-minded man, who 
 had none of his father s tact and breadth of vision 
 or that genius for colonial administration that 
 makes the founder of Maryland so respected. Dis 
 content, which had long been smouldering, broke 
 into open fire when Bacon raised the standard of 
 revolt, and a paper was circulated alleging the 
 grievances of the Maryland colonists. Davis and 
 Pate, men of substance, gathered an armed force 
 to intimidate the governor and compel him to 
 grant the concessions they demanded, but the 
 collapse of Bacon s rebellion in Virginia put a 
 speedy end to sedition in Maryland. Davis and 
 Pate were hanged, the people deprived of their 
 leaders had no heart for resistance, and there was 
 no further attempt to overthrow the authority of 
 the lord proprietor. Briefly to be considered as 
 part of the political education of the English colo 
 nists in America, which logically led up to their 
 separation from the mother country and resulted 
 in the birth of a new nation, was the development 
 of parliamentary government, which in England 
 manifested itself in the assertion of the rights of the 
 Commons against the assumed prerogatives of the 
 King, and was intensified by being transplanted to 
 a new soil. After the Restoration Englishmen in 
 England were at times careless about the usurped 
 power of the Crown, although they never surren- 
 
FIRST CATHOLIC COLONY 295 
 
 dered the principle of the power of the people 
 to govern, but in America they watched with 
 jealousy every attempt on the part of the proprietors 
 or royal governors to extend their authority at the 
 expense of the popular assembly, and were ever 
 ready to resist it. 
 
 There existed in England at that time, and even 
 before the first Englishman set foot on the New 
 World, two schools of political thought, as there 
 have from the day when men first realized that the 
 greatest enemy of progress is that peculiar mental 
 condition which regards with aversion whatever is 
 new or is different from what has long been known. 
 In a word, the forces of progress have always had 
 to contend with the forces of reaction. The political 
 teachings of More and Hobbes and Locke, the 
 entrancing vista of physical research opened up by 
 Bacon and Newton, the religious speculations of 
 Jeremy Taylor and Tillotson and Butler, had with 
 dynamic force driven Englishmen forward on the 
 road to individualism and given them a new concep 
 tion of the relation between man and the state. 
 They were further fortified by the spirit of adven 
 ture and daring that filled them as with new wine 
 and stirred the imagination and taught them the 
 great lesson of self-reliance and determination. 
 These were the Englishmen who were no longer 
 content to believe in the inerrancy of the doctrine 
 of the divine right of kings, and who, while accept 
 ing royalty and a class system as a natural social 
 
296 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 arrangement, still claimed the right to be masters 
 of themselves. The Englishmen who settled Amer 
 ica were in the very nature of things individu 
 alists. If they developed political methods and 
 political ideals different from the mother country, 
 as some writers contend, it was the result of cir 
 cumstances and conditions that influenced them 
 mentally as they influenced them physically. Every 
 thing tended to the development of individualism, 
 which is one of the marked characteristics of the 
 modern American. 
 
 I note here briefly, to be referred to more at 
 length later, that there was another cause to develop 
 this marked sense of political idealism in the Eng 
 lishman in America. The Englishman in England 
 was never insular, in the larger political sense, but 
 was always continental and international; he was 
 part of the great dynastic and military forces that 
 were never still, whose shock was felt in every hamlet 
 throughout the land. The Englishman in America, 
 in those days, was politically isolated. The Eng 
 lishman at home was often confused and distracted 
 by many things ; war, rebellion, reasons of state made 
 him repeatedly submit to evils that he knew of but 
 which were his sacrifice to patriotism. The Eng 
 lishman in America had no such demands made 
 upon him. There were no cross currents to vex him 
 and make his course uncertain. He need devote 
 his energies to two things, and two things only: to 
 improve his material condition and to develop the 
 
FIRST CATHOLIC COLONY 297 
 
 political system which he had founded; and as he 
 was removed from the politics of Europe, so his own 
 politics become to him not only the most important 
 that he knew, but they were the only road that led 
 to fame. In England men could win distinction in 
 the military service, in the church, at the bar, as well 
 as in politics; but in America, in early colonial 
 days, the one reward for ability was political. We 
 overlook one of the fundamental causes that pro 
 duced the American character if we do not grasp the 
 salient difference between the Englishman at home 
 and the Englishman in America, and fail to give 
 proper weight to the influence of political isolation. 
 The parliament of Maryland consisted of an 
 upper house or council, whose members were 
 appointed by the lord proprietor and were largely 
 kinsmen or men on whom he could rely to execute 
 his wishes, and the House of Burgesses, whose mem 
 bers were elected; in a word, a miniature repro 
 duction of the Lords and Commons of England. 
 Baltimore intended to deprive the lower house of 
 the power to initiate legislation, and give it merely 
 the form of authority without the substance, by 
 graciously permitting it to comment on acts laid 
 before it by the proprietor or his representative, the 
 governor. To Englishmen, who were full of the 
 spirit of self-government, such an invitation to a 
 Barmecide feast was to be spurned as an insult. 
 They would be no mere slaves to clank their chains 
 in submission at the command of a master. They 
 
298 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 were freemen with rights and privileges, which were 
 theirs as much in America as in England. Balti 
 more, tactful and liberal, yielded and gave to the 
 Assembly the right to initiate legislation, but he 
 retained the veto power, which by his own con 
 struction permitted him to repeal an act even 
 after it had gone into force. It was one of the great 
 grievances of the colonists, the proprietor s veto 
 power, which they always resented. For many 
 years there were stormy times between the upper 
 and lower houses. The Council insisted that the 
 right to tax was not inherent in the House of Bur 
 gesses, the latter asserted that it possessed the 
 functions of the Commons of England and con 
 trolled the purse. In all those years nothing very 
 vital happened, but character was being formed, 
 men were learning the great art of self-government, 
 and were preparing themselves to assert their 
 political freedom. 
 
 But more important than the petty quarrels 
 between neighboring colonies or incipient rebellion 
 was the persecution of the Catholics. It is one of 
 the delightful ironies of history and history is so 
 largely a record of sardonic humor that Mary 
 land, founded by a Catholic, offering asylum to 
 Catholics, and setting an example of tolerance to 
 all sects, should, in a little more than half a century 
 after the first cross was erected at St. Mary s, pro 
 scribe and persecute Roman Catholics. 
 
 I have pointed out in a previous chapter that the 
 
FIRST CATHOLIC COLONY 299 
 
 difference between Protestants and Catholics was 
 political rather than religious, and that English 
 Protestants looked upon English Catholics as 
 enemies of the state and traitors to the cause of 
 civil liberty. It was the Catholics, Protestants 
 believed, who were continually plotting with foreign 
 Catholic sovereigns to overthrow the established 
 order in England and bring it under Catholic 
 dominion and politically enslave the nation. It was 
 not alone the form of worship that was so repellant 
 to English Protestants, it was something more than 
 that, which struck at the Englishman s whole con 
 cept of political and civil life. He was free, and to 
 him freedom and Catholicism were incompatible. 
 He had fought to preserve that freedom, and he 
 believed that he should lose his precious heritage 
 if England acknowledged the spiritual supremacy 
 of the Supreme Pontiff. 
 
 When James II fled and William of Orange was 
 called to the throne of England, panic seized the 
 Protestants of America, who feared that America 
 was to be made the battle-ground of religions, and 
 that in the coming struggle between the deposed 
 Stuart, backed by the troops of the French Papist, 
 and the Protestant Prince of Orange the Catholics 
 in America would side with their coreligionists in 
 England and celebrate religious freedom in the new 
 world by another Huguenot massacre. It was a 
 senseless panic that possessed these hard-headed, 
 clear-thinking Englishmen, but to them the danger 
 
300 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 seemed very real. The Protestants in Maryland 
 waited to see what would happen, whether Balti 
 more would acknowledge William or remain loyal 
 to the deposed King, and the council was eagerly 
 watching for the first sign of official action. Balti 
 more had promptly dispatched a messenger with 
 instructions to the Council to proclaim William 
 and Mary, but the messenger died on the way and 
 there was a long delay before a second messenger 
 could arrive with his instructions. Meanwhile an 
 "association in arms" had been formed "for the 
 defence of the Protestant Religion, and for asserting 
 the right of King William and Queen Mary to the 
 Province of Maryland and all the English Domin 
 ions," and seven hundred men in arms under the 
 leadership of John Goode marched on St. Mary s, 
 the provincial capital. The Council fled without 
 offering resistance, King William brought action 
 to annul Baltimore s charter, and in 1691 sent out 
 Sir Lionel Copley as royal governor of Maryland. 
 In this way Baltimore lost his province, and the 
 palatinate of Maryland no longer existed. 
 
 In Virginia the change from Commonwealth 
 to Monarchy had been brought about without 
 bitterness because there were no politico-religious 
 consequences to be feared and liberty was not 
 threatened, but in Maryland the accession of 
 William and Mary gave the Protestants the oppor 
 tunity they had long sought. They had accepted 
 without enthusiasm a Catholic proprietor, and had 
 
FIRST CATHOLIC COLONY 301 
 
 always been jealous of the dominant part played by 
 Catholics in the government of the colony ; they had 
 feared it would become catholicized, which would 
 put an end to their hard- won civil and political 
 liberties. So long as Baltimore kept his own relig 
 ious views in the background they gave him loyal 
 support, but they were ever watchful. 
 
 And now the time had come when the Protestants 
 could strike down their enemy, and they struck 
 swiftly and brutally. With that charity and liberal 
 ity that made churchmen at one time regard creed 
 as more important than the moral observance of the 
 teachings of religion, the Protestants proceeded to 
 show how they despised God when he was not 
 worshipped according to their own narrow little 
 formula. Taxes were levied for the support of the 
 Church of England, persons professing the Catholic 
 religion were prohibited from entering the colony, 
 the public celebration of the mass was forbidden. 
 As the Protestant element came to have a firmer 
 grip upon the government, so they persecuted more 
 shamelessly the Catholics. Two Catholic priests, 
 William Hunter and Robert Brooker, were sum 
 moned before the Governor and Council, the one for 
 having consecrated a chapel, the other for having 
 said mass in it; and as this was their first offense 
 they were let off with a reprimand, "which his 
 Excellency was pleased to give," in the following 
 gentle language : 
 
 "It is the unhappy temper of you and all your 
 
302 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 tribe to grow insolent upon civility and never to 
 know how to use it, and yet of all people you have 
 the least reason for considering that if the necessary 
 laws that are made were let loose, they are sufficient 
 to crush you, and which (if your arrogant principles 
 have not blinded you) you must need to dread. 
 
 You might, methinks, be contented to live 
 quietly as you may, and let the exercise of your 
 superstitious vanities be confined to yourselves with 
 out proclaiming them at public times and in public 
 places, unless you expect, by your gaudy shows and 
 serpentine policy, to amuse the multitude and be 
 guile the unthinking, weakest part of them, an act of 
 deceit well known to be among you." Having warned 
 them that there were means to curb their insolence, 
 this mild-spoken governor continued his admonition : 
 "In plain and few words, gentlemen, if you intend 
 to live here, let me hear no more of these things ; for 
 if I do, and they are made good against you, be 
 assured I 11 chastise you ; and lest you should 
 flatter yourselves that the severity of the laws will 
 be a means to move the pity of your judges, I assure 
 you I do not intend to deal with you so. I ll re 
 move the evil by sending you where you may be 
 dealt with as you deserve. Pray take notice that 
 I am an English Protestantgentleman, and can never 
 equivocate." Whereupon the unfortunate priests 
 were dismissed and the sheriff was ordered to lock up 
 the chapel and keep the key. 1 
 
 1 Scharf : op. cit., vol. i, p. 368. 
 
FIRST CATHOLIC COLONY 303 
 
 The Governor, like many another servant of the 
 people, understood the art of popularity by voicing 
 the sentiment of the majority. So pleased was the 
 House of Burgesses with his reprimand that it 
 adopted an address thanking him for having "gen 
 erously bent to protect her majesty s Protestant 
 subjects here against insolence and growth of 
 Popery, and we feel cheerfully thankful to you for 
 it." In view of the attitude of Governor and legis 
 lature it was not surprising that they should go to 
 still further lengths in their zeal to stamp out Cathol 
 icism. In 1704, the year after the reprimand, an 
 act was passed imposing a fine of 50 and imprison 
 ment for six months upon any popish bishop, priest 
 or Jesuit who "should endeavor to persuade any of 
 his majesty s liege people of this province to embrace 
 and be reconciled to the Church of Rome" ; and any 
 person who said mass, or who being a Catholic, 
 should keep school, or take upon himself the educa 
 tion, government or boarding of youth at any place 
 in the province, upon conviction, was to be trans 
 ported to England to be dealt with there under the 
 statutes for further preventing the growth of popery. 
 And still the work went on. Catholics were dis 
 franchised unless they took the test oath. When 
 Charles Calvert, the fifth Lord Baltimore, was 
 restored to the proprietorship by George I, Calvert 
 having adjured Catholicism and become a Protes 
 tant, even more rigorous laws were enacted, which 
 effectually excluded Catholics from all participation 
 
304 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 in the government. They were required to take the 
 oath of allegiance, abhorrency and abjuration, to 
 which no devout Catholic could subscribe; and 
 while they were excluded from any share in the 
 government they were taxed for its support. But 
 although the Catholics were oppressed and sub 
 jected to much petty annoyance and vindictive per 
 secution they were preeminently the picked men of 
 the colony, Fiske points out, an opinion which 
 every historian of Maryland must share. They were 
 the backbone of the colony and gave it a character 
 of its own as the Puritan did in Massachusetts and 
 the Cavaliers in Virginia ; and the influence of these 
 early Catholic settlers is seen in the Revolution, in 
 the Civil War, and on the Maryland as we know it 
 to-day. The long religious struggle had sown the 
 seeds of discontent, and curiously enough Maryland 
 was ripe for rebellion before Massachusetts or Vir 
 ginia. Maryland had felt, as no other colony then 
 had, the injustice of being ruled from across the sea, 
 and while the connection with England was advan 
 tageous, it was also oppressive. The time had not 
 yet come for any Englishman seriously to propose 
 to sever the tie, but the folly of rulers had prepared 
 men s minds for it; and when they were faced with 
 the alternative of submitting further to injustice or 
 resisting it in arms, the shock was less violent than 
 it would have been had not the quarrels of church 
 men paved the way. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 RICE PRODUCES NEW SOCIAL CONDITIONS 
 
 IT is in the blood of the Englishman never to be 
 still. Accounted the most phlegmatic of races, the 
 English are consumed with a resistless desire for 
 discovery and adventure. Popularly supposed to 
 have less imagination than the Latin and Celt, and 
 deficient in that quality of poetic and speculative 
 dreaming that is characteristic of the Teuton, 
 nevertheless their imagination has always been pro 
 foundly stirred by the mystery of the unknown 
 continent, by the knowledge that seas were to be 
 charted and lands to be mapped ; to find out where 
 rivers led or what existed behind a range of moun 
 tains has ever been with them a passion. And per 
 haps more than any other race they have been 
 possessed with an insatiable land hunger. It is 
 this that has made them colonizers and conquerors, 
 that has planted the flag of England deep in the 
 snows of the north and far under the burning skies 
 of the tropics. Love of commerce and love of gain 
 animated them, but these would have been insuffi 
 cient to make them brave danger and hardship if 
 they had not been possessed of that resistless love 
 of adventure. 
 
306 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 That insatiable land hunger was not appeased 
 by transplanting the Englishman from England to 
 America. Love of adventure and the commercial 
 advantages that were to accrue from the planting 
 of the new world were the motives that spurred 
 Raleigh ; the desire to expand and to own still more 
 territory made Massachusetts colonize the north 
 and explore the south. The Virginians, with a vir 
 gin territory to develop, cast curious and covetous 
 eyes on the terra incognita to the south of them; 
 those sturdy Puritans found their energies not 
 satisfied in building up their own colony, but must 
 ever extend their frontiers and carve new settle 
 ments out of the wilderness; and "New England 
 enterprise explored the American coast from one 
 end to the other, in search of lucrative trade and 
 new resting places." In the course of their wan 
 derings these men from the north came to the North 
 Carolina coast, and near the mouth of the Cape 
 Fear River settled on land bought from the Indians. 
 But the climate was unsuited to them and the 
 surroundings displeased them, and after a short 
 sojourn they went away; first, however, leaving in 
 writing and affixed to a post for the benefit of pos 
 terity their opinion of the country in characteris 
 tically blunt New England manner. Here it was 
 found some years later by immigrants from the 
 Barbadoes. But before that a few scattered settlers 
 had drifted in from Virginia, "with here a solitary 
 plantation, and there a little group of farms, and 
 
NEW SOCIAL CONDITIONS 307 
 
 always a restless van of adventurers working their 
 way down the coast and into the interior." * This 
 was the beginning of what at that time, 1663, was 
 known as Carolina, but which later was split 
 into the two provinces of North and South Carolina 
 and under those names became states of the 
 Union. 
 
 This region, in that day, was a sort of No Man s 
 Land. It was vaguely included in the Virginia 
 grant, it was claimed by the Spaniards as a part 
 of Florida. A hundred years before, in 1562, Jean 
 Ribaut had planted a colony of Huguenots at Port 
 Royal, where he built a fort, and had been treacher 
 ously murdered by the Adelantado Menendez, who, 
 in a pious frame of mind, told the French that he 
 was there "to plant the Holy Gospel, that the 
 Indians may be enlightened and come to the know 
 ledge of the Holy Catholic faith of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, as the Roman Church teaches it." And so 
 when Ribaut fell into his hands after promise of 
 safe conduct, "I," Menendez writes, "caused Juan 
 Ribao with all the rest to be put to the knife, judging 
 this to be necessary for the service of God our 
 Lord and of your Majesty." 2 And for a hundred 
 years the Spanish asserted their claim and nothing 
 was done to dispute it until Charles II granted the 
 territory to eight proprietors, for whom John Locke 
 drew up "the Grand Model," a remarkable and 
 
 1 Lodge: Short History of the English Colonies, p. 134. 
 
 3 Parkman: Pioneers of France in the New World, pp. 136, 144. 
 
308 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 fantastic constitution that was unworkable and was 
 never put into effect. 
 
 The territory granted to the Duke of Albemarle 
 and his associates occupied a position of peculiar 
 importance as the frontier of the English colonies 
 in America. It lay between Virginia, then the most 
 advanced southerly British outpost on the American 
 continent, and the Spanish settlements. It was not 
 only the international frontier but it served also, 
 as Fiske points out, "for some time as a kind of 
 backwoods for Virginia"; and he adds that "until 
 recently one of the most important factors in Amer 
 ican history has been the existence of a perpetually 
 advancing frontier, where new territory has often 
 to be won by hard fighting against its barbarian 
 occupants, where the life has been at once more 
 romantic and more sordid than on the civilized 
 seaboard, and where democracy has assumed its 
 most distinctly American features." How great 
 this influence of the land beyond has exercised 
 upon the development of the American character 
 and American institutions, we shall see more clearly 
 when we come to study the great migration that 
 swept from the East to the West to populate the 
 plains and build great cities, and the flood that 
 rolled up from the South and fructified that vast 
 region over which the Indian roamed and the 
 buffalo grazed, but for the present we merely men 
 tion it as one of the factors in race development; 
 for in almost three centuries of American existence 
 
NEW SOCIAL CONDITIONS 309 
 
 there was never a time that a frontier was not to 
 be conquered, and virgin soil to be broken, and 
 civilization to be planted. 
 
 With the early efforts at settlement and the his 
 tory of Carolina until it was divided into two pro 
 vinces, there is little need to concern ourselves. To 
 attract settlers to North Carolina a law was passed 
 exempting them from the payment of taxes for one 
 year, all debts contracted outside the province ipso 
 facto outlawed, and no person could be sued for 
 five years for any cause of action that might have 
 arisen outside of the colony. North Carolina, or 
 Albemarle, as it was then known, under these bene 
 ficent laws attracted the worthless, the improvident 
 and the dishonest, and Virginia, resenting an Alsatia 
 planted at its doors, contemptuously termed the 
 new settlement "Rogue s Harbor." Naturally the 
 worst element in all the colonies found shelter here. 
 The men, we are told, were lazy and made their 
 wives work for them. If the weather was cold, 
 "they lie and snore till the sun had run one third 
 of its course and dispersed all the unwholesome 
 damps," and the low, alluvial land was the breeding 
 ground for malaria. In mild weather "they stand 
 leaning with both their arms upon the cornfield 
 fence, and gravely consider whether they had best 
 go and take a little heat at the hoe, but generally 
 find reasons to put it off until another time." * 
 
 In 1677, only thirteen years after the first gov- 
 
 1 Byrd MSS., pp. 75-76. 
 
310 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 ernor of Albemarle had been appointed by Sir 
 William Berkeley, the governor of Virginia, and one 
 of the eight lords proprietors of the new province, 
 as usual in an English colony in America, trouble 
 broke out between the colonists and their govern 
 ment. That mischievous Navigation Act, which had 
 been the exciting cause of Bacon s rebellion in Vir 
 ginia, and Bacon at that time had looked to Albe 
 marle to furnish him assistance to defy the power 
 of the Crown, was to drive the Carolinians to open 
 rebellion. A lucrative trade was carried on between 
 the settlers on Albemarle Sound and the New 
 Englanders, and their vessels were constantly cross 
 ing the short stretch of blue water to the West 
 Indies, where they exchanged Virginia tobacco and 
 cattle and lumber for rum and molasses and sugar, 
 which could be sold in Europe for a round profit. 
 It was profitable for every one concerned except the 
 lords proprietors, who gained nothing by it, and as 
 the colony existed for the enrichment of the men 
 who owned it, according to the economic philosophy 
 of the day, attempts were made to break up what 
 was regarded as an illicit trade and divert it into 
 its legitimate channels. At the end of the year 1677, 
 a vessel arrived from the North with a cargo of rum 
 and molasses, but as soon as her skipper landed he 
 was arrested by the governor and held in 1,000 
 bail for a violation of the Navigation Act. Cul- 
 peper, a turbulent spirit, incited the mob to resist 
 the governor, who, together with the council, were 
 
NEW SOCIAL CONDITIONS 311 
 
 seized and locked up, and Culpeper proclaimed 
 governor, new justices appointed, and a de facto 
 government set up, which existed for two years. 
 
 There was constant turmoil for many years. 
 Attempts on the part of governors to establish the 
 Church of England were stoutly resisted by the 
 Dissenters; but Englishmen of all creeds made 
 common cause in attempting to exclude the Hugue 
 nots from the franchise. The Indians, a treacher 
 ous and vindictive foe, were encouraged by the 
 Spaniards to regard the English as their natural 
 enemies. North Carolina marks the beginning of 
 that important Scotch immigration which has left 
 such a marked impress upon America; and there 
 came also Germans from the Rhine provinces. 
 The older colonies were colonized by Englishmen, 
 and the first work of settlement was done and the 
 government established without the assistance of 
 men alien to their race. The younger colonies gave 
 welcome to Germans and French and Scotch and 
 Irish, and from that time the foreign element has 
 never ceased to flow in a steady stream across the 
 Atlantic. 
 
 North Carolina demands very little more atten 
 tion at our hands. During the proprietary period 
 the people clung to the coast and were behind the 
 other colonies in their civilization. "Of all the 
 thirteen colonies North Carolina was the least 
 commercial, the most provincial, the farthest re 
 moved from European influences, and its wild 
 
312 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 forest life the most unrestrained. Every colony had 
 its frontier, its borderland between civilization and 
 savagery; but North Carolina was composed en 
 tirely of frontier. The people were impatient of 
 legal restraints and averse to paying taxes; but 
 their moral and religious standard was not below 
 that of the other colonies. The freedom was the 
 freedom of the Indians, or the wild animal, not that 
 of the criminal and the outlaw. Here truly was life 
 in the primeval forest, at the core of nature s heart. 
 There were no cities, scarcely villages. The people 
 were farmers or woodsmen, they lived apart, 
 scattered through the wilderness; their highways 
 were the rivers and bays, and their homes were con 
 nected by narrow trails winding among the trees. 
 Yet the people were happy in their freedom and 
 contented with their lonely isolation." * We may 
 question the assertion that their moral and religious 
 standard was not below that of other colonies, and 
 regard the conclusion of another writer as more 
 nearly describing their condition : " North Carolina, 
 the poorest, most backward, and ignorant of all the 
 colonies, was virtually a community of small pro 
 prietors living squalidly on the products of their 
 own farms, and occasionally exporting their surplus 
 products, pork, cattle, and tar." 2 
 
 It was characteristic of these turbulent, lawless 
 people that they should not only have taken a 
 
 1 Elson: History of the United States, p. 87. 
 3 Cambridge Modem History, vol. vii, p. 56. 
 
NEW SOCIAL CONDITIONS 313 
 
 leading part in the Revolution but have anticipated 
 it. On May 31, 1775, more than a year before the 
 adoption of the Declaration of Independence, the 
 people of Mecklenburg County adopted a resolution 
 declaring that British authority had ceased, and 
 officers were chosen to act independently of the 
 Crown and Parliament. An attempt has been made 
 by some writers to prove that the language of the 
 Declaration of Independence adopted at Philadel 
 phia was virtually a paraphrase of the Mecklenburg 
 resolution, but the weight of evidence does not sus 
 tain this ingenious theory. The action of these fiery 
 Mecklenburgers is an interesting side light, but 
 without significance. They obtained no support 
 from the rest of North Carolina, and events were 
 neither hastened nor retarded by their defiance of 
 English authority. 
 
 South Carolina demands closer study because of 
 the great part it played in all that has gone to pro 
 duce American development and the influence it 
 has exercised on political and social institutions. 
 About the time that "Rogue s Harbor" was giving 
 haven to its derelicts the proprietors of the Carolinas 
 established a settlement at Cape Fear, a hundred 
 and sixty miles south of Albemarle. We need not 
 again refer to it. The settlement disappeared and 
 became merged into Charleston, from which sprung 
 South Carolina. With the purpose of building up 
 a community that should be self-sustaining, a grant 
 of one hundred and fifty acres was given to every 
 
314 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 freeman who went out at his own cost, with a like 
 amount for every man servant, and one hundred 
 acres for every woman servant he brought with him, 
 and at the expiration of their terms of service each 
 servant was to be given a hundred acres. Able- 
 bodied men willing to work, but without money, 
 were supplied with food, clothes, and tools. Realiz 
 ing the sturdy character of the New Englander and 
 noting how he had prospered, the proprietors at 
 tempted to induce immigration from the North and 
 reproduce the social conditions existing there rather 
 than those of Virginia and Maryland. Impressed 
 with the economic importance of a colony of towns, 
 they did everything to encourage urban life and 
 check the acquisition of great estates. Some immi 
 grants were attracted from New England, but they 
 left little mark on the province, and recruiting went 
 on actively everywhere, producing a very mixed 
 population in the early days. Englishmen came 
 from England and the Bahamas and the Barbadoes, 
 Dutchmen from New York, Huguenots from 
 France, Scotch and Irish from their own countries, 
 Virginians and North Carolinians drifted in. In 
 nationality they were no less different than they 
 were in temperament and condition, but America 
 has ever been the crucible to fuse the elements of 
 race and amalgamate them into nationality, and 
 what took place in South Carolina at the end of 
 the seventeenth century foreshadowed on a grander 
 scale a more important movement a century later. 
 
NEW SOCIAL CONDITIONS 315 
 
 The history of the United States is a study of a 
 people always in flux. In the early days there was 
 never a time when they were not "emigrants." 
 They "emigrated" from Massachusetts to the other 
 New England colonies, and then spread to New 
 York; from Virginia they went to the Carolinas and 
 further south; from New England they stretched to 
 the middle West; from the South they bridged the 
 Mississippi. In the first century of their existence 
 there was a reservoir from which to draw the supply 
 to nourish a soil barren of people and only needing 
 men to make it fruitful; later when the drain was 
 too heavy, Europe filled up the reservoir with the 
 stream of its population. Cavaliers and Puritans, 
 Protestants and Catholics, sturdy adventurers and 
 shiftless incompetents, the idle and the industrious, 
 the sober and the dissolute, were the beginnings of 
 North Carolina who came across land and sea, 
 attracted by the promise of gain or the hope of 
 escape from undesirable conditions. 
 
 This filling up of North Carolina was typical of 
 those great migratory movements that have always 
 been such a striking and interesting phenomenon of 
 American development. It was the same impulse 
 that turned the tide of immigration to the West at 
 the time of the great gold discoveries, that in the 
 West drove men ever a little nearer to the setting sun, 
 because there was still an undiscovered country; 
 that to-day is the lure of the city to the young man 
 on the farm, and with siren call makes men abandon 
 
316 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 life in older communities, and begin life anew in 
 mining camps and settlements, whose future is 
 promise and where chances are more equal. The 
 nomadic spirit is in the blood of Americans. As yet 
 they have developed no passionate attachment to 
 the soil or the birthplace of their fathers. To them, 
 to the majority, no sacred associations cling to the 
 roof tree, for to the American home is wherever he 
 makes it, and he feels that the time has not yet 
 come when he can plant his roots deep in the soil, 
 and see a sturdy forest spring from his own seed and 
 grow up around him. There is too much inter 
 communication between all parts of the United 
 States for any one section to live apart from the 
 other. This freedom of intercourse leads to the 
 daughters marrying and going to the homes of their 
 husbands, five hundred miles, a thousand miles or 
 more away; and the wide scattering of members f 
 a family is regarded as a matter of course. No man 
 will admit failure, it is only the absence of oppor 
 tunity that prevents his rising, and if opportunity is 
 not at hand it can be found elsewhere. The New 
 York man goes to California and the Californian 
 goes to New York, and they both prosper, which is 
 one of the marvels of a country whose social institu 
 tions are unlike those of any other and where con 
 ditions are different from those elsewhere. 1 
 
 1 "We are apt to consider New England as preeminently the region that 
 people go from, and some of these New England states at times have ap 
 peared to be scarcely more than breeding-grounds for stalwart men and 
 women to inhabit and build up other parts of the land. Old home week in 
 
NEW SOCIAL CONDITIONS 317 
 
 Slavery always had a deeper hold and exercised 
 a more baneful influence in South Carolina than in 
 any other colony or state, and to obtain cheap servile 
 labor the South Carolinians enslaved the native 
 Indians. This brought on hostilities between the 
 Indians and the whites that lasted for many years, 
 and the Spaniards of St. Augustine, but two days 
 sail from the English frontier, watched the growing 
 spread of the English colonists with fear and jeal 
 ousy. Menendez, who preached Christianity at the 
 point of the knife, had gone, but his methods sur 
 vived, and in 1680 a Scotch colony that had been 
 planted at Port Royal by Lord Cardross was wiped 
 out of existence. The colonists, who were not of 
 the kind to turn the other cheek and take punish 
 ment without retaliating, were anxious to teach the 
 Spaniards a lesson, but they were prevented by the 
 proprietors, who refused to sanction the dangerous 
 doctrine that a colony could make war on a sovereign 
 power without the consent of the home government. 
 Soon they were to have their fill of fighting, and the 
 time was fast approaching "when the battles of the 
 great European powers were fought out on the banks 
 of the Ohio and Lake Erie, and when the war-cry 
 
 Kentucky reminds one how true it is that an intense migratory movement has 
 steadily gone on in the middle West for several generations. . . . The first 
 settlers of the West and Southwest, or their children, were ever on the move, 
 pushing onward to new and, if possible, more fertile lands. In later times 
 there has been the same fluidity of population, so that to-day, it is said, 
 Kentucky has 600,000 of her children dwelling outside of her borders. And 
 among them scores of men who have distinguished themselves in public life 
 of sister states." Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, June 14, 1906. 
 
318 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 was raised, and the tomahawk wielded amid peace 
 ful American settlements at the bidding of a diplo 
 mat in London or Madrid." 
 
 It would be wearisome and profitless minutely 
 to trace the constant bickering and quarrels between 
 the colonists and their governors until the rule of 
 the proprietors ceased and the Crown assumed con 
 trol, and to us they are merely interesting as showing 
 that in South Carolina, as everywhere else in English 
 America, there was displayed that same spirit of 
 independence, that same determination to resist 
 oppression, that same resolution to uphold rights 
 and liberties that the Englishman regarded as his 
 inherently and not vouchsafed to him as an act of 
 grace by proprietor or king. It was in the blood of 
 these Englishmen to be defiant, and by this time we 
 have become so accustomed to their defiance taking 
 the usual form of resistance to the governor, that we 
 should be surprised if South Carolina did not pre 
 serve the tradition. It was the customary dispute 
 over taxation, the colonists proposing to raise money 
 to resist Spanish invasion by taxing British imports ; 
 and when the governor gave orders to call out the 
 militia to do in Charleston what Cromwell had done 
 in Westminster, the Assembly threw off their alle 
 giance to the proprietors and declared themselves 
 subject only to the authority of the Crown. Johnson, 
 the proprietary governor, was deposed and Moore 
 elected in his place as the king s representative, with 
 out shedding blood. When two British men-of-war 
 
NEW SOCIAL CONDITIONS 319 
 
 came into the harbor of Charleston, their captains, 
 yielding to Johnson s request for assistance, sent 
 their crews to quarters and trained their guns on 
 the city, but the rebels had possession of the forts 
 guarding the harbor, and threatened shot for shot. 
 The time had not come for Englishmen to engage 
 in fratricidal strife, there was no firing from the 
 ships, and the proprietary charter was soon after 
 wards forfeited. This happened in 1719. Fifty- 
 seven years later there was another revolution, but 
 on a larger scale, which was also brought about by 
 differences regarding taxation and in which South 
 Carolina took a prominent part. Another fifty-six 
 years elapse and South Carolina maintains the 
 doctrine of nullification the right of a state to 
 resist the payment of tariff duties because they are 
 considered unjust and burdensome and threatens 
 secession; and in another thirty years she puts the 
 threat into execution and leads the procession of the 
 seceding Southern States. The effect of early influ 
 ences on the character of a people is nowhere more 
 typically exemplified than in the political and social 
 history of South Carolina. 
 
 To us, now, these years of friction between the 
 people and the government, like the angry disputes 
 over church matters, seem petty and almost mean 
 ingless and unworthy of men who were engaged in 
 that stupendous task of solidly laying the foundation 
 of an imperial empire and giving birth to a nation; 
 whose lives were a constant struggle against savage 
 
320 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 foes, who had to tame the wilderness and bring 
 barren places under cultivation and build cities; 
 but they were not without results. They made for 
 character, not the finest or highest type, it is true, 
 but a certain strength was necessary at a time 
 when rude strength was essential to future devel 
 opment. These quarrels taught the great truth that 
 constitutions are made for men and not men for 
 constitutions, and that when men have outgrown 
 their constitutions, there is a way to discard that 
 which is no longer useful and still retain the essence 
 and spirit of that which is vital. 
 
 In everything that happened in America from the 
 time when the first settlers landed in Jamestown 
 until the warning cry rang out in the stillness of 
 that April night and the belfry s beacon light called 
 a nation into arms, there is nakedly revealed the one 
 great weakness of English rule. No English states 
 man was able to grasp the obvious truth that the 
 colonies had outgrown their institutions and were 
 simply keeping pace with their development. Pro 
 prietors in the beginning, and the Crown and its 
 ministers later, gave to these men a set of rules under 
 the name of charters and constitutions that were 
 supposed to be sufficient and needed neither en 
 largement nor modification. They made no pro 
 vision for expansion, they made no allowance for 
 that physical and spiritual growth that was inevit 
 able if the colonies were to live, and could only fail 
 to reveal itself if the colonists remained mere bands 
 
NEW SOCIAL CONDITIONS 321 
 
 of struggling settlers unable to stand on their own 
 feet and always looking to the mother country for 
 support. But they became quickly self-sustaining, 
 and developed that peculiarly self-reliant temper 
 which is a part of the American inheritance; the 
 indifference and carelessness of proprietors and 
 ministers allowed them little by little to claim a still 
 greater control of their own affairs, which stimulated 
 them to demand even more, and finally welded the 
 colonists into a cohesive mass whose aims and pur 
 poses were antagonistic to those of their rulers. Such 
 a training can have only one ending. The strain 
 becomes greater year by year, but goes on until the 
 tension becomes too great and the system breaks 
 down. 1 
 
 Virginia was influenced politically and materially 
 and the material conditions of a country are 
 always reflected in the moral and psychological 
 attitude of its people by tobacco ; South Carolina 
 was influenced in the same way by its two great 
 staples, indigo and rice; the former, however, having 
 only a brief life and giving place to cotton, which 
 has had the widest effect on the lives and character 
 
 1 Since the above was written, the second volume of Channing s History 
 of the United States has appeared, and the view so freely expressed by this 
 writer that the revolution of 1776 had long been smouldering is sustained by 
 that eminent American authority. "In recent years," he says, "English 
 writers have united in objurgating George III and the stupid, ignorant poli 
 ticians who guided England s affairs in the fifteen years before 1775 ; on their 
 shoulders have been laid the faults which brought about the American revo 
 lution; but the causes of that cataclysm lie further back and maybe largely 
 found in the settlement of the imperial constitution in the years immediately 
 following William s accession to power." Vol. ii, p. 219. 
 
322 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 of its cultivators. Rice, in a wild state, has always 
 been found in South Carolina, but cultivated rice was 
 introduced into the colony by accident, when a ship 
 from Madagascar brought a bag of rice to Charles 
 ton in 1693 and it was planted experimentally. It 
 was found that the swamps of the colony were pecul 
 iarly suitable for its propagation, and it was soon 
 cultivated on a large and profitable scale and gave 
 to the South Carolinians the same solid foundation 
 for wealth that tobacco had given to the Virginians, 
 but with far more disastrous physical and moral 
 results. The cultivation of tobacco is not more phys 
 ically exhausting than any other kind of farming in 
 healthy surroundings, but rice must be grown in 
 swamps and marshy lands under tropical heat, 
 which is fatal to the white man ; and the same condi 
 tions govern the growing of indigo. In those days 
 rice culture was to other agriculture what the 
 sweated industries of to-day are to manufacturing 
 carried on more scientifically ; but the toll in human 
 life that the sweatshop pays does not stand in the 
 way of its existence, and as misery and want drive 
 workers into the sweatshop and society connives at 
 the sacrifice, so force and cunning found labor for 
 the deadly rice-fields. White men were unable to 
 work there, but the negro and Indian could, and 
 were regarded by the proprietor simply as so much 
 machinery, which, having converted a certain 
 amount of raw material into the finished product, 
 is worn out in the operation and must be replaced. 
 
NEW SOCIAL CONDITIONS 323 
 
 Negroes were imported in such large quantities that 
 every year each man could raise enough indigo or 
 rice more than to repay the cost of his purchase; 
 so that it was cheaper for the South Carolina pro 
 prietor to work his slaves to death than to take care 
 of them or to replenish the stock by breeding. 
 "Assuming, then, that human nature in South 
 Carolina was neither better nor worse than in other 
 parts of the civilized world, we need not be sur 
 prised when told that the relations between master 
 and slave were noticeably different from what they 
 were in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina. 
 The negroes of the southern colony were reputed to 
 be more brutal and unmanageable than those to 
 the northward." l In the northern colonies slaves 
 had been softened by contact with civilization and 
 were, as a rule, properly fed and housed and treated 
 without undue harshness; it was as much to the 
 advantage of the slaveholder, whose wealth was in 
 slaves, to keep them in condition so as to get the 
 greatest profit from their labor and their breeding, 
 as it was properly to care for his stock. But in 
 South Carolina no such considerations prevailed, 
 and the slaves were usually brought direct from the 
 savage wilds of Africa to fall under the lash of the 
 overseer in the rice-fields. 
 
 The effect of slavery was more demoralizing in 
 South Carolina than in any other colony. In Vir- 
 
 1 Fiske: Old Virginia and Her Neighbours, vol. ii, p. 327. Cf. Bruce: 
 Economic History of Virginia, vol. ii, p. 108. 
 
324 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 ginia and Maryland, great as the evils of slavery 
 were in degrading free white labor, there was still 
 room for the white indented servant and the free 
 man, but in South Carolina that was impossible, 
 and it was a colony not of white men using the 
 labor of slaves, but a colony of slaves with a few 
 white masters. In 1760, of the total population of 
 150,000 three quarters were said to be slaves, while 
 in the adjoining colony of North Carolina there were 
 only 50,000 slaves in a population of 200,000. In 
 Virginia and Maryland the proprietors lived on 
 their plantations surrounded by their slaves, and 
 the life was both patriarchal and feudal; in South 
 Carolina it was seldom that a rice planter lived on 
 his estate, and he gravitated naturally to Charleston, 
 which occupied the same relation to the colony as 
 London did to the rest of England. In Virginia 
 and Maryland the planter had little fear from his 
 slaves, but in South Carolina that dread was never 
 absent; the planter always went armed (to that we 
 can doubtless trace the demoralizing modern cus 
 tom of the Southern man carrying a pistol and the 
 freedom with which he uses it on the slightest 
 provocation); and the slave insurrection of South 
 Carolina of 1740 is a part of its early history. 
 
 Because most of the landed proprietors of South 
 Carolina lived in Charleston, that city naturally be 
 came the centre of the life of the colony and ab 
 sorbed not only its wealth and fashion, but also its 
 commercial activity. Virginia, as we have seen, was 
 
NEW SOCIAL CONDITIONS 325 
 
 a colony of estates and not of cities or towns ; Mary 
 land life at first centred in Annapolis, and Balti 
 more became the commercial metropolis; but in 
 South Carolina Charleston combined the two. This 
 circumstance made life there more cosmopolitan 
 than in any other city in any of the southern col 
 onies of the day, and as South Carolina had a large 
 seaborne trade there was frequent and close com 
 munication with Europe. The isolation of North 
 Carolina, a backwoods settlement, was very marked, 
 and the freedom of intercourse of South Carolina 
 appears all the more striking because of the con 
 trast with its nearest neighbor. 
 
 From the point of view of English colonial policy 
 of that time, which regarded a colony as simply a 
 producer of raw material and a consumer of Eng 
 lish finished product, which was for the advantage 
 of English merchants and manufacturers, South 
 Carolina was an ideal possession. There were no 
 manufactures, her people were satisfied with the 
 cultivation of the soil, and it brought them wealth 
 and contentment. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 AN EXPERIMENT THAT FAILED 
 
 IN the history of the United States there is no chap 
 ter invested with such romantic interest as that 
 of the founding of Georgia, the last of the English 
 Colonies. Neither Massachusetts and its Puritan 
 theocracy; nor Rhode Island, a monument to the 
 liberality of Roger Williams; nor Maryland, where 
 Catholics practiced tolerance and were persecuted; 
 nor Pennsylvania, where Quakers found a home, 
 is comparable to Georgia, established to afford a 
 refuge for unfortunates, with aims so lofty and pur 
 poses so ideal that it is a remarkable and unique 
 episode in the march of civilization; and it was 
 typical of that idealistic spirit in the Americans that 
 made them for so many years, and until self-pre 
 servation caused more prudent considerations to 
 prevail, to regard America as a haven for the dis 
 tressed. It failed to accomplish the hopes of its pro 
 moters, but the experiment was worth making. Few 
 people remember this early phase of Georgia; the 
 strife of religions, the ambitions of politicians, the 
 folly of rulers, are all too well remembered; but 
 the efforts made in behalf of humanity, on a scale 
 never before or since equaled, have been forgotten. 
 A lad of good family, James Oglethorpe had been 
 
AN EXPERIMENT THAT FAILED 327 
 
 one of Marl borough s subalterns in his campaigns 
 in the Low Countries; he had fought under Peter 
 borough in Italy and with Prince Eugene against 
 the Turk. Handsome, dashing, with a manner that 
 made him popular with men, and women found 
 captivating; full of courage and high spirits but 
 with excellent control of himself, he was a romantic 
 and fascinating figure. Boswell tells a pretty story 
 showing his spirit and quick wit. When he was only 
 nineteen years old he dined one day with the Prince 
 of Wurtemberg, who insolently flipped a few drops 
 of wine in his face. Oglethorpe dare not submit to 
 the insult without protest, for that would have 
 betokened him a coward; and to have hotly re 
 sented it might have given him a reputation of 
 turning a pleasantry into a quarrel. Looking the 
 prince squarely in the face, and with the easy man 
 ner of a man amused, he said : " That s a good joke, 
 but we do it much better in England," and he flung 
 a full glass of wine in the astonished prince s face. 
 There was consternation for a moment, but an old 
 general who was one of the guests at the table said, 
 "II a bien fait, mon prince, vous I avez commence"; 
 and " thus all ended in good humor," Boswell com 
 ments in relating the incident. 
 
 In 1717 Sir Robert Montgomery attempted to 
 establish a colony in what is now known as Georgia, 
 which lay between the English colony of North 
 Carolina and the Spanish possessions of Florida. 
 Sir Robert was a man of luxuriant imagination. 
 
328 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 In his advertisement for settlers he described in 
 glowing terms this wonderful country. "Nature 
 has not blessed the world with any tract which can 
 be preferable to it. Paradise with all her virgin 
 beauties may be modestly supposed, at most, but 
 equal to its native excellencies." But even an 
 earthly paradise could not attract immigrants, and 
 three years later the attempt was abandoned. 
 
 Oglethorpe was now in England, a familiar figure 
 at court and at Westminster, where he had been 
 elected to Parliament. He became interested in 
 that barbarous system by which imprisonment for 
 debt was sanctioned, and he was made a member 
 of a parliamentary commission to investigate the 
 debtor prisons. Profoundly moved by the horror 
 of imprisonment for debt and a legal system which 
 made misfortune a crime, he petitioned the privy 
 council for a grant of land lying between the 
 Savannah and Altamaha rivers, on which he pro 
 posed to establish a colony for the indigent 
 and insolvent who were willing to make a new start 
 in life. 
 
 The scheme was hailed with extraordinary en 
 thusiasm. Oglethorpe was inspired by his love of 
 humanity and his desire to extend a helping hand 
 to his fellowmen who had stumbled; but his asso 
 ciates in the enterprise saw an opportunity to 
 capitalize charity and make it yield handsome 
 dividends. The same spirit that had moved the 
 early Spanish discoverers, that had animated the 
 
AN EXPERIMENT THAT FAILED 329 
 
 first English adventurers, was now again to mani 
 fest itself, and the copartnership of God and Mam 
 mon was once more entered into. The indigent and 
 the insolvent were to be placed on their feet, which 
 was a pious work; but the colonization of Georgia 
 by Englishmen would create a strong military out 
 post between the English and Spanish possessions, 
 and it was obvious to English statesmen that Spain 
 was a menace to the English colonies in the South 
 and must be kept in check. And in addition, the 
 new colony could be made profitable and swell 
 the commerce of England, which was the ambition 
 of every Englishman. Montgomery s alluring pic 
 ture of Georgia (so named after George II, who 
 granted the charter) was accepted as truthful by 
 Englishmen, to whom New England was a place of 
 snow and ice and the South a land of perpetual sun 
 shine. Georgia was to be the great storehouse from 
 which England drew her raw supplies. Instead of 
 spending five hundred thousand pounds a year for 
 silk woven in Italy and France, Georgia was to 
 raise raw silk to be woven by English weavers in 
 England, thus giving employment to twenty thou 
 sand people in Georgia and forty thousand in 
 England. Wine, oil, dyes, drugs, flax, hemp, and 
 other commodities that England was forced to pur 
 chase abroad were to be raised in the English 
 colony of Georgia. Foreign nations were no longer 
 to grow prosperous at the expense of Englishmen, 
 but English money was to remain in England, and 
 
330 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 English workmen were not to be reduced to starva 
 tion by foreign competition. It was all so simple. 
 The prisons and poorhouses of England were filled 
 with debtors and paupers; it was only necessary 
 to transport them a few thousand miles across the 
 sea and poverty would be replaced by riches and 
 the despondent would become strong men of whom 
 England could feel proud. 
 
 The charter was granted in 1732. Money was 
 liberally supplied, the scheme having the powerful 
 patronage of the Church as well as society. To 
 those self-sacrificing clergymen who labored without 
 reward in noisome prisons and among the poor 
 whose condition was so deplorable, this seemed at 
 last a practical way to relieve suffering, and society 
 was dazzled by Oglethorpe s enthusiasm and devo 
 tion. He was already distinguished as a soldier, 
 he had mounted the first rounds of a parliamentary 
 career; in every drawing-room there were women 
 whose eyes took on a new light when he approached ; 
 life lay before him and offered whatever honors or 
 pleasures he cared to take. And on everything he 
 deliberately turned his back and gave up that which 
 men most covet to suffer the hardships of an 
 emigrant ship of those days and lead his little band 
 of broken-down men to a new life in the wilderness 
 where the Spaniard threatened and the Indian 
 lurked ever alert and treacherous. 
 
 The charter granted to Oglethorpe and his asso 
 ciates was unlike that of any other colony. Instead 
 
AN EXPERIMENT THAT FAILED 331 
 
 of the government, to which by that time the people 
 had become accustomed, of a governor and council 
 or the representative of the proprietors and a legisla 
 ture representing the people, a body of twenty-one 
 trustees was created whose corporate existence was 
 limited to twenty-one years, after which the Crown 
 would determine the form of government best 
 suited for the needs of the colony. The trustees 
 were the government of the colony and were given 
 despotic control, but the charter provided that the 
 settlers should enjoy the liberties of free-born British 
 subjects. Slave labor was prohibited, as was also 
 the importation of rum. As Georgia was intended 
 to be a military outpost against the Spaniards, the 
 presence of a large mass of slaves, as in South Caro 
 lina, was considered dangerous to the military 
 security of the province. 
 
 Early in 1733, Oglethorpe reached Charleston 
 where he was well received, for the South Caro 
 linians were only too glad to have a buffer erected 
 between themselves and the Spaniards. On the 
 site of what is now Savannah the first settlement was 
 laid. The little colony at once went to work, and 
 Oglethorpe took his share of the labor, assisting in 
 putting up the houses and doing his turn at guard 
 duty. Fresh settlers arrived. Parliament made a 
 grant of c10,000; botanists were sent by private 
 subscription to the West Indies and South America 
 to find plants that would grow in the fertile soil of 
 Georgia. If ever there was a petted colony it was 
 
332 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 this refuge for the unfortunate. Highlanders were 
 brought from Scotland, and they were of better 
 texture and more fitted to cope with the hardships 
 of the wilderness than the spawn of the jails and the 
 poorhouses. There came also Protestants from the 
 archbishopric of Bavaria to escape the persecutions 
 of its primate, who attempted to convert them to 
 the Catholic faith. But in a year or two Oglethorpe 
 and the trustees discovered what since then philan 
 thropists have repeatedly found to their sorrow, 
 that men who have made a failure of life seldom, if 
 ever, reassert qualities of success after they have 
 reached a certain age. There is always a chance for 
 the young man to make a new start under more 
 favorable circumstances, but the man of middle age 
 has lost his power of initiative, his character is no 
 longer plastic, and the pleasing fiction of turning 
 over a new leaf exists in imagination only. The 
 debtors and paupers were not regenerated by their 
 passage across the Atlantic, and they were as 
 worthless in Georgia as they had been in England. 
 But a danger even greater than the worthlessness 
 of his colonists now threatened Oglethorpe. The 
 relations between England and Spain were daily 
 becoming more strained, and the activity of the 
 Spanish guardacostas in enforcing the laws against 
 smuggling, and the contemptuous fashion in which 
 they overhauled and searched British trading vessels, 
 excited so much indignation that it only needed a 
 swashbuckling mariner with an eye to dramatic 
 
AN EXPERIMENT THAT FAILED 333 
 
 effect to fan popular fury into a demand for re 
 prisals. Fate is always ready to find its agents, 
 whether for good or evil, and when the valorous 
 Captain Jenkins brought home his carefully pre 
 served dissevered ear and joyfully exhibited it to 
 his countrymen, daily becoming more angry, as 
 proof of Spanish brutality and the indignities to 
 which freeborn Englishmen were subjected, it was 
 enough, and the war of Jenkins s ear resulted. 
 
 Georgia was in the track of the storm. The 
 Spaniards were in a position of strong defense at 
 St. Augustine, and from Havana they could easily 
 summon reinforcements and supplies. Oglethorpe 
 acted with his usual decision and perspicacity. As 
 soon as war was declared he called on the neigh 
 boring colonies for assistance, to which South 
 Carolina responded with money and North Caro 
 lina and Virginia with men and arms, and he 
 attacked and captured the fort at Picolata on the 
 St. John s River and then moved in force to attack 
 St. Augustine, but the place was too heavily fortified 
 and he was obliged to abandon the siege, having 
 suffered considerable loss but having inflicted a 
 still heavier loss upon the enemy. For the next two 
 years military operations on land practically ceased, 
 then the Spaniards attempted to inflict a crushing 
 blow. A great fleet was fitted out at Havana and an 
 assault made on the forts at Frederica, which Ogle 
 thorpe repulsed with such heavy loss that the enemy 
 abandoned the attack. The following year the 
 
334 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 Spaniards made another attempt, but Oglethorpe 
 forced their hand by taking the offensive, which had 
 no result except to disconcert them. This ended the 
 war, and it left England in secure possession of 
 Georgia and South Carolina. 
 
 While Oglethorpe was repelling the Spaniards 
 his colony was not prospering. It has already been 
 said that the trustees prohibited slavery, although 
 Oglethorpe himself owned a plantation worked by 
 enslaved negroes in South Carolina; but the pro 
 hibition was based on economic and military rea 
 sons, rather than on the ground of humanity. Black 
 labor was considered unsuited for the products that 
 Georgia was to raise, and as one of the main reasons 
 for creating Georgia was to throw up a barrier 
 between South Carolina and the Spanish posses 
 sions, the presence of a large slave population easily 
 to be corrupted by Spanish emissaries would doubly 
 have endangered the security of the colony. In 
 less than ten years after the first settlers landed 
 they began to clamor for the right to bring slaves 
 into the colony, and, jealous of the great prosperity 
 of South Carolina and their own seemingly hopeless 
 struggle, they contended that without negroes it 
 would be impossible for the colony to thrive. The 
 trustees attempted to remain true to themselves and 
 firmly resisted the introduction of slavery, but at 
 last they were compelled to give way, and fifteen 
 years after Oglethorpe had led his first band of 
 settlers to Georgia, ships were discharging their 
 
AN EXPERIMENT THAT FAILED 335 
 
 cargoes of black chattels, and even before that 
 slaves had been smuggled into the colony from 
 South Carolina. 
 
 Although the charter of the trustees was to run 
 for twenty-one years, they surrendered it shortly 
 before it expired by limitation. The great scheme 
 had proved a failure. Once more it had been demon 
 strated that men are not made by coddling, and that 
 states as well as character are only wrought out by 
 the exercise of individual expression and the strug 
 gle that brings out the best of which men are pos 
 sessed. The silk and the wine and the olives that 
 were to make Georgia prosperous and England 
 rich had not been grown, nor were any attempts 
 made to raise them. The Georgians looked over to 
 South Carolina and saw slaves toiling in the swamp 
 lands and raising indigo and rice, which made their 
 neighbors rich, while they were struggling with 
 poverty; and they wanted slaves so that they might 
 also grow rice and indigo and be surrounded by 
 the same comfort. The alluring vision of a peaceful, 
 happy, contented community was a dream that 
 had never been realized. Of all the English colo 
 nies Georgia was the most discontented and the 
 most backward, exceeding even North Carolina 
 in this respect. In Georgia, as in all the Southern 
 colonies afflicted with the curse of slavery, there was 
 the element of " mean whites " (the Georgia " crack 
 ers" of to-day can trace their descent through 
 an unbroken line to ancestors who were among 
 
336 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 Oglethorpe s first settlers), and slavery there as 
 everywhere else degraded free labor and encouraged 
 thriftlessness and slack habits. There was much 
 crime and lawlessness, there were neither schools 
 nor literature, the people were rude and uncouth, 
 communication was difficult because the roads were 
 mere trails. 
 
 When the Crown took over the charter a royal 
 governor was appointed and a form of government 
 established similar to those in the other provinces. 
 Rice and indigo worked by slaves were the principal 
 products of the colony, but lumber and turpentine 
 were also important articles of commerce. Down 
 to the Revolution, when the other colonies were 
 highly developed and had given birth to men of 
 the widest mental attainments, Georgia was still a 
 struggling, backward, illiterate community. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE FIRST WRITTEN CONSTITUTION 
 
 WHILE a civilization was being developed in the 
 South, the northern colonies, laid on the Pilgrim and 
 Puritan foundation, were growing apace and mak 
 ing progress along their own lines. We have already 
 seen how New England came into being, and it is not 
 necessary for the purpose the writer has in view to 
 trace minutely the growth of Massachusetts during 
 the years immediately following, but some attention 
 must be paid to the origin of the other New England 
 colonies, to complete the historical perspective. 
 
 The rigid theocracy established by the Puritan 
 founders of Massachusetts invited to resistance men 
 less inclined to subordinate earthly rule to divine 
 interpretation or who were more liberal in their 
 concept of life; and the foundation of what is now 
 the state of Connecticut has a twofold interest to 
 the student of early American development. Con 
 necticut, or as it first appeared in American history, 
 the settlement of Hartford, was the protest of 
 dissidents against the iron-clad rule of the theo 
 cracy, wiio found that it was easier to abandon 
 Massachusetts and carve out for themselves a 
 new home in the wilderness than to remain and 
 perpetually be at war. Connecticut is further 
 
338 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 interesting to us because it was the beginning of 
 that great and world-influencing movement, by 
 which the parent colony casts forth a shoot which 
 takes root and flourishes in new soil. Before this 
 time colonies had been formed by conquest or 
 migration from the mother country, but now we 
 are to see the colony sending forth her own pioneers 
 to extend the frontier and increase her strength. 
 
 Theocratic tyranny soon bred its discontent. As 
 early as 1633 Thomas Hooker, a clergyman in 
 charge of a congregation at Newton, a man of learn 
 ing and eloquence, much more tolerant than the 
 majority of the Puritan ministers, with far less 
 pugnacity and hair-splitting narrowness, and a 
 belief in democracy rather than the autocratic rule 
 of the church, to whom the divine right of self- 
 ordained governors was no less repugnant than that 
 of kings, began to agitate resistance to the ecclesi 
 astical oligarchy then in control in Massachusetts; 
 and he found zealous supporters not only in his 
 own congregation, but also in the neighboring towns 
 of Watertown and Dorchester. 
 
 The idea of democracy at that time, as a philo 
 sophic principle, was very foreign to the ideas of 
 the men whose descendants were to establish it as 
 an enduring form of government; Winthrop had 
 such a poor opinion of power entrusted to the people 
 that to him democracy was "amongst most civil 
 nations accounted the meanest and worst of all 
 forms of government," and he found historical 
 
FIRST WRITTEN CONSTITUTION 339 
 
 warrant for believing "that it hath always been of 
 least continuance and fullest of trouble"; John 
 Cotton, that "thundering preacher," voiced what 
 was generally believed when he said, "Democracy 
 I do not conceive that God did ordain as a fit 
 government either for church or commonwealth." 
 The theocracy had a quick and ready means for 
 overcoming resistance to authority and banished 
 those who challenged its rule. It is probable that 
 would have been the fate of Hooker and his asso 
 ciates had they not forestalled action by voluntarily 
 emigrating. Accordingly, the people of the three 
 towTis, the able-bodied, the old, and the little chil 
 dren, with their cattle and their household goods, 
 left Massachusetts and turned their faces to the 
 south, where on the banks of the Connecticut River 
 they founded the three towns of Hartford, Windsor, 
 and Wethersfield, Hartford being the most impor 
 tant and occupying in a sense the relation of the 
 seat of the central government to the allied towns. 
 At first these towns, which Massachusetts regarded 
 as one of her outposts, were governed by Massachu 
 setts through a board of commissioners, but that 
 extraordinary craving for self-government, which is 
 written on every page of American history from the 
 landing at Jamestown to the present day, made 
 these Massachusetts emigrants determined to be 
 their own rulers, and the towns elected representa 
 tives to a General Court at Hartford, which became 
 the mother town of the new colony and was the 
 
340 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 beginning of Connecticut as separate and apart 
 from Massachusetts. 
 
 On May 31, 1638, Hooker preached a sermon of 
 great eloquence and power, that age has not dimmed 
 nor time robbed of its remarkable conception of the 
 philosophy of democracy; which foreshadowed by 
 138 years the great basic truths of the Declaration 
 of Independence. :< The foundation of authority," 
 Hooker declared, "is laid in the free consent of the 
 people." " Governments are instituted among men 
 deriving their powers from the consent of the gov 
 erned," the authors of the Declaration of Indepen 
 dence wrote. "The choice of public magistrates 
 belongs unto the people, by God s own allowance," 
 Hooker said, and " they who have power to appoint 
 officers and magistrates, it is in their power, also, to 
 set the bounds and limitations of the power and 
 place unto which they call them." The Declaration 
 of Independence indicted the king for having 
 "obstructed the Administration of Justice, by 
 refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judi 
 ciary Powers. He has made Judges depend upon 
 his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the 
 amount and payment of their salaries." 
 
 In the following January a written constitution 
 was adopted, which too many American writers 
 have treated as an incident instead of recognizing 
 that it was an epochal event momentous in the 
 progress of mankind. It was the first civil code 
 reduced to writing adopted on American soil; it 
 
FIRST WRITTEN CONSTITUTION 341 
 
 was the only written constitution then in existence 
 that organized a form of civil government. Magna 
 Charta was a compact between sovereign and 
 people guaranteeing them certain liberties, but 
 the constitution adopted in that little frame house 
 on the banks of the Connecticut went much further 
 than the compact that the barons wrested from 
 John at Runnymede. Just as Hooker s sermon 
 foreshadowed the Declaration of Independence, so 
 his charter, for he was undoubtedly the moving 
 spirit in its formation and phraseology, was the 
 prototype of the Constitution of the United States. 
 
 The Connecticut constitution created, by the fed 
 eration of the independent towns, an independent 
 republic that contained no reference to any existing 
 sovereign and recognized no government except 
 that which these wanderers from Massachusetts 
 had made for themselves. In that again it served as 
 the model on which in the following century the 
 American constitution was founded, which recog 
 nizes neither temporal nor spiritual ruler and ac 
 knowledges only the sovereign rule of the people. 
 "It is on the banks of the Connecticut, under the 
 mighty preaching of Thomas Hooker and in the 
 Constitution to which he gave life, if not form, that 
 we draw the first breath of that atmosphere which 
 is now so familiar to us. The birthplace of Ameri 
 can democracy is Hartford." * 
 
 Just as the American Constitution puts in the 
 
 1 Johnston: Connecticut, p. 73. 
 
342 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 hands of Congress certain enumerated powers and 
 reserves to the states and the people those powers 
 on which silence is maintained, so the Constitution 
 of Connecticut reserved to the towns all power and 
 authority save that vested in the General Court. The 
 President of the American Republic is elected by a 
 majority vote, and the power of the people is lodged 
 in the hands of its representatives on a basis of 
 equality. The Governor of Connecticut, who was 
 to the little republic what the President is to the 
 larger federation, and his council were elected by 
 the people at large, the suffrage being almost uni 
 versal, but each town had an equality of representa 
 tion in the Assembly. While Connecticut exercised 
 no such influence on the American people as Mas 
 sachusetts and Virginia, to it belongs the credit of 
 having brought about at the formation of the Con 
 stitution of the United States, the compromise by 
 which the states were given equal representation in 
 the Senate and the composition of the House of 
 Representatives was accepted. 
 
 Why the Connecticut Englishmen should have 
 developed an individuality marked and character 
 istic enough to differentiate them from the English 
 men of Massachusetts and those of the other New 
 England colonies it is not easy to determine, but 
 that distinction was early apparent and has sur 
 vived. The popular name of Americans among 
 Europeans is "Yankees," and the term is synony 
 mous in the European mind with sharp trading, 
 
FIRST WRITTEN CONSTITUTION 343 
 
 acquisitiveness, and abnormal curiosity about the 
 affairs of one s neighbors, 1 but among Americans it 
 is only the New Englanders who are regarded as 
 the real Yankees, and their distinguishing qualities 
 are supposed to be typical of the people of Con 
 necticut. As a matter of fact, as every American 
 knows, the Massachusetts man rather resents the 
 appellation of Yankee. 
 
 The little federal republic of Connecticut was 
 allowed to develop peacefully and normally ; its con 
 stitution was not violently wrenched out of shape 
 like that of Massachusetts at the end of the seven 
 teenth century. It silently grew until it became the 
 strongest political structure on the continent. 2 
 
 Side by side with the federal republic of Hart 
 ford there grew up another federation under the 
 name of New Haven, w r hich was founded in 1638. 
 As Hooker was the leading spirit at Hartford so 
 
 1 "Rural Yankees, impudent, inquisitive, grasping, sharp, drawling in 
 speech and utterly without manners, a class which has most fortunately 
 passed away, but which once furnished the stock materiaJ for Charles Dickens 
 and other English writers who ridiculed Americans. Occasionally , in remote 
 parts of New England, you may find survivors of this class, and if one fastens 
 himself on you, as they are apt to do, you will never forget him." Sydney 
 George Fisher: Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial Times, vol. ii, p. 140. 
 
 "Obadiah or Zephaniah, from Hampshire or Connecticut, who came in 
 without knocking; sat down without invitation; and lighted their pipe with 
 out ceremony; then talked of buying land; and, finally, began a discourse on 
 politics, which would have done honor to Praise God Barebones, or any of 
 the members of his parliament." Mrs. Grant, Memoirs of an American 
 Lady, p. 286. 
 
 An equally uncomplimentary picture of these inquisitive Yankees may be 
 seen in Washington Irving s Knickerbocker. 
 
 2 Fiske: The Beginnings of New England, p. 128. 
 
344 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 another clergyman, John Davenport, was foremost 
 in the affairs of the younger colony. Davenport had 
 none of Hooker s liberality and tolerance; he was 
 typical of the intense Puritanism of his time, and 
 New Haven was intended to be even more extreme 
 in its theocratic government than Massachusetts. 
 According to Davenport, man found in the Bible a 
 perfect and sufficient rule for the conduct of civil 
 affairs, and membership in the church was a pre 
 requisite of citizenship; it was Massachusetts over 
 again. Just as Hartford had been formed by the 
 federation of the towns, so the New Haven colony 
 came into existence by a union of New Haven, 
 Milford, Guilford, and Stamford. New Haven, 
 similar to Hartford, set up its own establishment 
 without regard to the sovereignty of England or the 
 rights or claims of any other body of Englishmen. 
 The founders of New Haven assumed as an inher 
 ent right the right to be independent and, as its 
 corollary, to do as they saw fit. They had not even 
 a shadowy claim to the title of the land which they 
 occupied. They simply planted themselves there 
 and were content to let the future take care of itself. 
 Connecticut, when these two little republics came 
 into existence, reproduced what had happened in 
 Massacusetts a few years before. The sweetness 
 and mildness of the Plymouth Pilgrims found their 
 counterpart in Hooker and the Hartford colony; 
 the grim intolerance and blind obedience to Biblical 
 law and the passionate zeal to regulate all conduct 
 
FIRST WRITTEN CONSTITUTION 345 
 
 was the Puritan dower to the New Haven republic. 
 Davenport and his associates read in the Bible that 
 w r isdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out 
 her seven pillars, 1 and in accordance with this in 
 junction each town was governed by seven pillars of 
 the church, who were not only the pillars of the 
 church but also the foundation and capstone of 
 society, as they were the magistrates of the colony, 
 and judges as well as jury. The New Haven 
 fathers would not permit juries because they could 
 find no warrant for the institution in the laws of 
 Moses. In Hartford there was practically universal 
 suffrage ; in New Haven only church members were 
 allowed to vote, which resulted in nearly one-half 
 of the settlers being disfranchised and the power of 
 government passing into the hands of the most 
 illiberal element of the community, who used their 
 power with all the perverted zeal that intolerance 
 has always delighted in. It was not sufficient that 
 they regulate the affairs of the little state, but they 
 must needs make men walk according to their own 
 peculiar notions. They were continually prying into 
 what men and women said or thought, and word 
 or thought that departed from the standard bigoted 
 dogmatism set up was swiftly punished. 
 
 " Goodman Hunt and his wife, for keeping the 
 councils of the said William Harding, baking him 
 a pasty and plum cakes, and keeping company 
 with him on the Lord s day, and she suffering 
 
 Proverbs ix, 9. 
 
346 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 Harding to kiss her, were ordered to be sent out 
 of town within one month after the date hereof 
 (March 1, 1643), yea, in a shorter time if any mis 
 carriage be found in them." l The way to reform, 
 to subdue the devil and chasten the spirit, lay 
 through the statute-books, for the surest means to 
 make men God-fearing and strengthen them against 
 temptations of the flesh was to enact a law that 
 would provide a punishment for its violation. The 
 laws that New Haven enacted are delicious in their 
 quaintness, and it is these enactments with which 
 that veracious Tory refugee, the Rev. Samuel 
 Peters, tickled the fancy of the world when he pub 
 lished his Blue Laws of Connecticut. 2 There was 
 so little of this spirit in Hartford that its occasional 
 manifestation attracts attention by its rarity. There 
 is mention made of a Hartford man being punished 
 for saying that he looked forward with pleasure to 
 meeting some of the members of his church in hell, 
 and considering the temper of some of those mem 
 bers perhaps the remark was not unwarranted. 
 
 They were a godly and proper people, these 
 Connecticut forefathers, to whom virtue was a pre 
 cious thing and unchastity severely punished, and 
 yet they saw no vice in "bundling," which was 
 carried to greater lengths in Connecticut and 
 Massachusetts than elsewhere, and at last became 
 such a scandal that the church was forced to sup 
 press it. Webster defines the intransitive verb 
 
 1 Johnston: Connecticut, p. 99. 2 See p. 185. 
 
FIRST WRITTEN CONSTITUTION 347 
 
 bundle " to sleep on the same bed without undress 
 ing; applied to the custom of a man and woman, 
 especially lovers, thus sleeping" ; and the last edition 
 of the Century Dictionary gives this definition : "In 
 New England (in early time) and in Wales, to 
 sleep in the same bed without undressing; applied 
 to the custom of men and women, especially sweet 
 hearts, thus sleeping." Defenders of the colonists 
 have denied that bundling was a common or 
 generally sanctioned custom, but Stiles, who has 
 written an extremely interesting little book on the 
 subject, which shows careful investigation and 
 judicial impartiality, says:- 
 
 " Badinage, ridicule and misrepresentation aside, 
 however, there can be no reasonable doubt that 
 bundling did prevail to a very great extent in the 
 New England colonies from a very early day. It is 
 equally evident it was originally confined entirely 
 to the lower classes of the community, or to those 
 whose limited means compelled them to economize 
 strictly in their expenditure of firewood and candle 
 light. Many, perhaps the majority, of the dwellings 
 of the early settlers, consisted of but one room, in 
 which the whole family lived and slept. Yet their 
 innocence and generous hospitality forbade that the 
 stranger, or the friend whom night overtook on 
 their threshold, should be turned shelterless and 
 couchless aw r ay, so long as they could offer him even 
 a half of a bed." 1 
 
 1 Stiles: Bundling; its Origin, Progress, and Decline in America, pp. 66-67. 
 
348 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 In Massachusetts the custom was not confined 
 to the lower classes, if contemporary writers are to 
 be believed; and mothers who carefully watched 
 their daughters saw no impropriety in bundling. 
 After the French and Indian wars, the young men 
 returning from camp and army, where they had 
 learned vices and recklessness, deprived bundling 
 of any innocence it possessed. The evil became 
 so apparent that a decided movement was made 
 against it. Jonathan Edwards denounced it from 
 the pulpit, and one by one the ministers who 
 had allowed it to pass unnoticed joined in its 
 suppression. 1 
 
 Stiles says, "We may notice, in this connection, 
 that it is very common, even at the present day, in 
 New England, to speak of one as having bundled 
 in with his clothes on, if he goes to bed without 
 undressing ; as for instance, if he came home drunk, 
 or feeling slightly ill, lay down in the daytime, or in 
 a cold night found the blankets too scanty." 2 
 
 Bundling is said by the detractors of America to 
 have originated in America, but like many other 
 American institutions, especially those of which the 
 
 1 Fisher: Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial Times, vol. i, p. 287. 
 
 2 Stiles: op. tit., pp. 13-14. 
 
 I am told by a woman, who traces her descent back to colonial times and 
 until her marriage lived in Marblehead, that in that quaint old Massachusetts 
 seaport, bundling still survives to a limited extent, but only among the lowest 
 classes. 
 
 " It is a certain fact, well authenticated by court records and parish regis 
 ters, that, wherever the practice of bundling prevailed, there was an amazing 
 number of sturdy brats annually born into the state, without the license of 
 the law or the benefit of clergy." Irving, A History of New York, p. 210. 
 
FIRST WRITTEN CONSTITUTION 349 
 
 world no longer approves, it is an exotic. Stiles 
 traces it back to England, Scotland, and Wales, and 
 undoubtedly it was a transplanted custom. 
 
 One of the most interesting phases of American 
 development is that marked spirit of justice which 
 made it possible for liberty and bigotry to exist side 
 by side without provoking civil war or conflict. 
 In Massachusetts we have those gentle Pilgrims 
 going their own way without interference from the 
 Puritans made strong by their belief that they were 
 raised up by the Lord for His especial purpose. In 
 Connecticut Hooker preached tolerance and taught 
 men liberality and went about his work unharmed 
 by the zealots of New Haven, whose zeal for con 
 version was as great as that of the early Spaniards, 
 who knew only one way to convince men of their 
 errors. Wlien Roger Williams revolted against the 
 Massachusetts theocracy he was banished, which 
 was a political necessity, but he was allowed to set 
 up his own government unmolested. This broad 
 spirit of humanity, this recognition of the rights of 
 others, this almost scrupulous regard to obtain 
 nothing by conquest and to abstain from force in 
 dominating weaker colonies compare this with 
 the prevailing spirit existing in Europe, which was 
 the legacy of history, and see how remarkable, 
 almost inexplicable it appears. The natural temp 
 tation of Massachusetts would have been to incor 
 porate Plymouth, peaceably if possible, forcibly if 
 necessary; of Hartford to have regarded with fear 
 
350 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 and distrust the establishment of New Haven; to 
 have been watchful and suspicious, and to have 
 raised a force to repel invasion or to seek a pretext 
 to use it for aggression. In all the history of the 
 colonies that attempt was never made, and English 
 men who had established settlement or colony had 
 nothing to fear from men of their own blood; nor 
 did they live in constant apprehension of having to 
 yield their independence to satisfy the rapacity of 
 conscienceless adventurers or the ambition of self- 
 constituted rulers. 
 
 With the settlement of Connecticut begins the 
 long chapter of Indian warfare that raged through 
 out the seventeenth century and was closed late in 
 the next only when the red man had been practically 
 exterminated and the superior skill and resources 
 of the white man overmatched the cunning and 
 fanaticism of the savage. 
 
 The Indian has been one of the subordinate 
 causes to influence American civilization, not by 
 grafting his own civilization on that of the English, 
 not because the English absorbed him, his customs, 
 language, or religion; not because the Indian in the 
 smallest degree swayed an unyielding and firmly 
 established civilization; but because Indian warfare 
 and the necessity of subduing the Indian to clear the 
 way for the invading white man left its lasting mark 
 on the character of the colonists. Two great bar 
 riers challenged the Englishman; the wilderness 
 and the Indians. In New England as well as in 
 
FIRST WRITTEN CONSTITUTION 351 
 
 the South, later when there was that response to the 
 imperious call of the West, the ground was contested 
 by the aborigines, who resisted the despoiler to the 
 end. Slowly civilization drove back savagery, wrest 
 ing from it its inheritance, paying in full in blood; 
 and men w^ere made keen and became hardened by 
 the conflict; they were made cruel by contact with a 
 foe whose warfare exacted vengeance to the last drop. 
 The Indian wars kept alive the military spirit 
 and while the Americans are not a warlike people, in 
 them the military spirit is highly developed they 
 made the pioneer and settler live in the fear of 
 surprise and always ready to resist it; it deprived 
 them of that sense of security that might have sunk 
 them in sloth and brought contentment in isolation. 
 Had there been no Indians, the Americans might 
 easily have become a pastoral and agricultural 
 people, physically soft, unsuspicious, fonder of the 
 gentle arts than the ruder struggle of commerce. 
 The Indian hardened the body of the American 
 by making him a soldier, as from youth up he 
 was accustomed to firearms, and at church and in 
 the field his musket was always by his side. It 
 produced that extraordinary military initiative and 
 resource that was the admiration and amazement 
 of European military critics, that made it possible 
 for men in the ranks to rise to command, that made 
 a standing army unnecessary. The readiness with 
 which Americans in their early days took to the 
 field was the result of this training, and the tactics 
 
352 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 which the Indian had taught them they used against 
 men of their own race. The Indian sharpened the 
 wits of the white man because the cunning of the 
 savage was superior to the slow- moving mind of 
 the Englishman ; he taught his own love of cruelty 
 and delight in suffering. 
 
 There are to be found American apologists for 
 the American treatment of the Indian ; and perhaps 
 these apologies are not without warrant, and we 
 read with horror accounts of massacre, rapine, and 
 torture; the white man no less cruel and merciless 
 than the Indian. But Englishmen were confronting 
 a foe who knew no mercy, and to whom the gener 
 osity of the victor in the hour of triumph was 
 interpreted not as the mercy of the strong but the 
 fear of the weak; a foe that understood only the 
 meaning of reprisal ; whose respect for their enemy 
 increased the more he imitated their own methods 
 and exacted life for life and tortured and destroyed 
 even as they did. "Often the white men and red 
 fought one another wherever they met, and dis 
 played in their conflict all the cunning and merciless 
 ferocity that made warfare so dreadful. Terrible 
 deeds of prowess were done by the mighty men on 
 either side. It was a war of stealth and cruelty, 
 and ceaseless, sleepless watchfulness. The contest 
 ants had sinewy frames and iron wills, keen eyes 
 and steady hands, hearts as bold as they were ruth 
 less." l Men on the frontier lived from month to 
 
 1 Roosevelt: The Winning of the West, vol. i, p. 191. 
 
FIRST WRITTEN CONSTITUTION 353 
 
 month and year to year under the terror which at 
 length taught them to regard their enemies as wild 
 beasts. 1 
 
 A higher civilization was opposed to a lower, a 
 rudimentary race sought to interpose an obstacle 
 to the spread of a race highly developed. It was 
 inevitable that the conflict should come and civiliza 
 tion win the mastery. It was not ethical, perhaps, 
 but it was inexorable. 
 
 1 Doyle: English Colonies in America, vol. iii, p. 348. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS BORN 
 
 IN the hagiology of each nation, says Emerson, 
 the lawgiver was in each case a man of eloquent 
 tongue, whose sympathy brought him face to face 
 with the extremes of society. In the hagiology of 
 Rhode Island we have the lawgiver of eloquent 
 tongue, a man of such ardent sympathy that he was 
 able to envisage the future, who gathered around 
 him the extremes of society as society manifested 
 itself through its religious views ; a man half mystic 
 but yet extremely practical, whose liberality made 
 him far in advance of his time, but who was able 
 to draw the line between liberty and license. The 
 name of Roger Williams is inseparably associated 
 with Rhode Island, and it vividly recalls the narrow 
 formalism of the Puritan, his intense intolerance 
 and the methods he employed to root out any 
 attempt to challenge the supremacy of the theocracy. 
 There came to Massachusetts in 1631 "the 
 founder of a new state, the exponent of a new 
 philosophy, the intellect that was to harmonize 
 religious differences, and soothe the sectarian as 
 perities of the New World; a man whose clearness 
 of mind enabled him to deduce, from the mass of 
 crude speculations which abounded in the seven- 
 
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS BORN 355 
 
 teenth-century, a proposition so comprehensive, 
 that it is difficult to say whether its application has 
 produced the most beneficial result upon religion, 
 or morals, or politics." 1 This striking figure was 
 Roger Williams, a Welshman, then about thirty 
 years old, who had taken his degree at Pembroke 
 College, Cambridge, but who had incurred the 
 hostility of Laud for the boldness of his opinions. 
 He was a man of scholarship and ability, with all of 
 a Welshman s fiery love of argument, "conscien 
 tiously contentious," as one of his biographers has 
 said; but "most men who contribute materially 
 towards bringing about great changes, religious or 
 moral, are conscientiously contentious. Were they 
 not so they would not accomplish the work they are 
 here to do"; 2 pugnacious, turbulent, and at times 
 guilty of " blazing indiscretions," but always over 
 flowing with charity and driven impetuously for 
 ward to preach the great doctrine of civil and 
 religious liberty. A very human man this, "lovely 
 in his carriage," whom men of his race trusted and 
 the Indians loved, "a mighty and benignant form, 
 always pleading for some magnanimous idea, some 
 tender charity, the rectification of some wrong, the 
 exercise of some sort of forbearance towards men s 
 bodies and souls." 3 Not the kind of man who would 
 easily fit into "the Puritan starch and uniform," 
 
 1 Arnold: History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Planta 
 tions, vol. i, p. 20. 
 
 3 Adams: Massachusetts: Its Historians and its History, p. 25. 
 3 Tyler: History of American Literature, p. 243. 
 
356 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 but one who would rudely shock the narrow for 
 mulas of stiff saints cast in the mould of an iron- 
 bound church. He was determined to run counter to 
 the theocratic oligarchy. 
 
 Invited soon after his coming to Salem to become 
 assistant to the pastor, he quickly incurred the dis 
 pleasure of the rulers of Massachusetts by writing 
 a treatise in which he attacked the validity of the 
 Massachusetts patent, holding that the King had no 
 power to grant the land to settlers unless they pur 
 chased it from the Indians. Such a doctrine was 
 monstrous, as it struck at the root of all society 
 and would have established the duty of the strong 
 to respect the rights of weak - 9 native races, which, 
 if observed, robbed colonization of its great profit 
 and gave little encouragement to adventurers to 
 risk much for the honor of the nation and their 
 own advantage. Not content with this heinous 
 sin, he must needs still further attempt to disrupt 
 society by boldly announcing that the magistrates 
 had arrogated to themselves too much power, and 
 that the state had no right to control the religious 
 opinion of its subjects. Perhaps it was fortunate 
 for Williams that he gave utterance to these views 
 in Massachusetts and not in England, for there he 
 would probably have been hanged for sedition, at 
 least he would have been branded, and made to 
 stand in the pillory with his ears cropped. 
 
 Massachusetts dealt with heresiarchs in another 
 way. The obstinate pastor was brought before the 
 
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS BORN 357 
 
 General Court and offered an opportunity to re 
 tract. He stood stubborn in his recusancy. Then 
 began one of those solemn farces which so delighted 
 the Puritans, but which to them was no farce but 
 the great tragedy of Satan fighting to keep his con 
 trol over a soul brought to damnation through his 
 devilish machinations; to them a ceremony as 
 awful and impressive as the auto-da-fe. Hour after 
 hour he was confronted by the accusing dialec 
 ticians, but he faced his judges serenely, perhaps 
 secretly glad to be given this great opportunity to 
 spread his doctrines before this high and mighty 
 audience; and a jury, which convicted him before 
 he uttered the first word in his defence, passed 
 sentence of banishment; or in the delightful eu 
 phemism of John Cotton, one of his foremost ad 
 versaries, he was "enlarged out of Massachusetts." 
 Tempering justice with mercy, he was given six 
 weeks, it then being the depth of winter, to make 
 his preparations for departure, but Williams was 
 no man to sit with hands folded and tongue bridled. 
 Full of energy and defiance, scorning to recant 
 although he had been condemned, he at once began 
 preparations to found a new colony recruited from 
 men who shared his opinions. This contumacy 
 merited extreme measures, and the rulers of Massa 
 chusetts made preparations to rid themselves of 
 their danger by putting Williams on a ship about 
 to sail for England, when he received timely warn 
 ing and plunged into the wilderness. After many 
 
358 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 adventures he and a few followers laid the founda 
 tion of a settlement which is now the city of Provi 
 dence in the state of Rhode Island. It was land 
 belonging to the Indians on which he set foot, and 
 faithful to his principles he made no attempt to 
 seize it, but bought it from the Indians. 
 
 We shall for the moment leave Roger Williams 
 beginning the new life at Providence on amicable 
 terms with the Indians and go back to Massachu 
 setts, because certain events there had a direct 
 bearing on what was to become in the course of time 
 a new state ; and we get a very clear insight into the 
 Puritan mind and the state of society in the early 
 days of the Massachusetts colony. Williams ar 
 rived in New England in 1631. Three years later 
 there came to Boston William Hutchinson and his 
 wife Anne, who was to play the most conspicuous 
 part in a great religious controversy, but it was 
 something much more vital than a mere theological 
 dispute - "it was the first of many New England 
 quickenings in the direction of social, intellectual, 
 and political development, New England s earli 
 est protest against formulas." 1 This Mistress Anne 
 Hutchinson was a woman "of haughty and fierce 
 carriage, of a nimble wit and active spirit, and a 
 very voluble tongue, more bold than a man, though 
 in understanding and judgment inferior to many 
 women." This is the portrait drawn by one of 
 her bitter enemies and perhaps exaggerates her 
 
 1 Adams: Three Episodes of Massachusetts History, vol. i, p. 367. 
 
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS BORN 359 
 
 most undesirable qualities and ignores those that 
 redeemed her, but in a few vigorous strokes it paints 
 her probably very true to life. Of her "ready wit 
 and bold spirit," 1 in the moderate words of Win- 
 throp, who had bitter occasion more than once to 
 experience both, there has been given abundant 
 proof. Of her husband little need be said. He is 
 described by contemporaries as " a man of very mild 
 temper and weak parts and wholly guided by his 
 wife." 2 Perhaps it was fortunate. One small frame 
 house would hardly have been large enough to 
 shelter two such turbulent spirits as Mistress Anne. 
 She \vas at that time about thirty-four years old, a 
 woman whom not even her most devoted eulogist has 
 called beautiful or even pretty, but who possessed 
 that most insidious and greatest of all gifts of her 
 sex, that indefinable and intangible magnetism of 
 sympathy, the possession of which makes a woman 
 become for the moment vividly interested in the 
 man with whom she holds converse and stimulates 
 him and attracts him; which gives more than it 
 takes and leaves the impress of its own individuality. 
 She was not a learned woman, but she had a re 
 markable native talent for disputation which she 
 clothed in language difficult to confute. That she 
 exercised great power over men and intellectually 
 fascinated them is indisputable. 
 
 In her was the spirit of the mystic as well as that 
 
 1 Winthrop: History of New England, vol. i, p. 239. 
 
 2 Winthrop: op. cit., vol. i, p. 356. 
 
360 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 of the reformer. She drew around her the women 
 of the colony, first, innocently enough, simply 
 repeating to them the sermons she had heard in 
 the meeting-house, but later acting as interpreter 
 and critic. Now we have seen that the Puritans 
 would tolerate no attempt on the part of the people 
 to depart from the Word of God as it was given to 
 them by their ministers, and they, despite all 
 their pious humility and their constant reiteration 
 of unworthiness, were fully conscious of their 
 position of commanding importance in the com 
 munity, and for the preservation of their own 
 privileged class permitted no rival prophets. Neo- 
 logical tendencies were sternly suppressed. The 
 Puritan ministers at the beginning of Massachu 
 setts were lawgivers as well as teachers, and their 
 authority rested on the blind obedience with which 
 they were obeyed by their congregations. We do 
 not often associate the idea of superstition with the 
 Puritans, and yet, in a sense, the Puritans were no 
 less superstitious than any other religious sect who 
 passively submitted to a narrow and dogmatic creed 
 and disciplined themselves to accept without ques 
 tion the rule of life as expounded to them by their 
 spiritual leaders. 
 
 Mrs. Hutchinson not only arrogated to herself, in 
 flat defiance of the clergy, the ability to interpret the 
 Scriptures, but she was possessed of something of 
 which even the most learned and godly among them 
 were deficient. She professed at times to feel the 
 
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS BORN 361 
 
 Spirit of God upon her and to speak from the in 
 ward knowledge that had come to her. She dis 
 claimed the gift of prophecy or that she was divinely 
 inspired, although it is not easy to see where she 
 drew the shadowy line, but she asserted that she 
 was apart and different from ordinary women ; and 
 this claim to a precious gift was the one thing to 
 condemn her in the eyes of the clergy. Grace came 
 from without, not from within, which was the pre 
 sumption of sin and not the humility of the regen 
 erate struggling to be made strong. In the eyes of 
 the ministers, Mrs. Hutchinson, by her claim to 
 mantistic qualities, was guilty of blasphemy, and of 
 course there was always the suspicion of the devil s 
 help. Mr. Hales, "a young man very well conceited 
 of himself and censorious of others," after Mrs. 
 Hutchinson s removal to Aquidneck, "was also 
 taken with her heresies, and in great admiration of 
 her, so as these, and other the like before, when she 
 dwelt in Boston, gave cause of suspicion of witch 
 craft." 1 
 
 It is proof of that immanent sense of personal 
 liberty so deeply rooted in the English character, 
 which has manifested itself in the whole history of 
 the race, that even in that early day of the minis 
 ter-ridden Puritan colony Mrs. Hutchinson should 
 have been able to gather around her a follow 
 ing who with vigor and courage supported and 
 defended her. Winthrop declared that the whole 
 
 1 Winthrop: History of New England, vol. ii, p. 10. 
 
362 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 church of Boston, with few exceptions, had become 
 her converts ; Welde, who was to become her chief 
 accuser, lamented that persons of quality and gentle 
 men and scholars were among her adherents. Deep 
 down in the hearts of those gentlemen and scholars, 
 there must have been the quickening thought that 
 Puritan oppression was no less to be feared than the 
 oppression from which they had fled in England ; it 
 was a protest against the attempt to stifle individual 
 ism. It was the beginning of the great Antinomian 
 controversy that raged with such bitterness in New 
 England until the Puritan theocracy ceased to 
 exist. 
 
 Theological controversies, it has been truly ob 
 served, are as a rule among the most barren of the 
 many barren fields of historical research; and the 
 literature of which they are so fruitful may, so far 
 as the reader of to-day is concerned, best be de 
 scribed by the single word impossible. 1 It would 
 weary the reader to translate into modern language 
 the curious jumble of words which were the 
 weapons employed by these valiant champions, nor 
 is it necessary in a work of this character. It would 
 be profitless to discuss the merits of the Covenant 
 of Grace as distinguished from the Covenant of 
 Works; and these obscure theological disputes 
 about trifles that mean nothing, which aroused 
 passion and rooted bigotry deeper, and advanced 
 the world not one iota, and contributed nothing to 
 
 1 Adams: op. dt. t vol. i, p. 366. 
 
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS BORN 363 
 
 the happiness or the welfare of mankind, seem to us 
 now so childish that we are amazed that men of 
 common sense should so foolishly waste their time 
 and their energies when much better things were 
 waiting to be done. 
 
 Mrs. Hutchinson s teachings had now reached 
 that point when they threatened the disruption of 
 the colony, and she was brought to trial before the 
 General Court. It was a trial typical of the time 
 and the Puritan character. The woman, shortly to 
 become a mother, made to stand in the presence of 
 that august tribunal until "her countenance dis 
 covered some bodily infirmity," unprovided with 
 counsel, her witnesses browbeaten, the few mem 
 bers of the Court who were well disposed towards 
 her rebuked by their associates, faced her accus 
 ers boldly and showed her skill in dispute; she met 
 the subtle arguments of her persecutors with the 
 ingenuity for which she was famous and more than 
 once disconcerted her judges; but nothing moved 
 them. Passionless they would have gazed on the 
 lustrous bosom of Phryne as they looked without 
 emotion on the mock humility of their victim. 
 Pleading, but defiant, when Governor Winthrop 
 pronounced sentence of banishment she asked: 
 "I desire to know wherefore I am banished," to 
 which Winthrop replied: "Say no more. The 
 court know^s wherefore, and is satisfied." It was 
 indicative of the farcical proceedings. The Court 
 was satisfied; the reasons it was not necessary to 
 
364 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 state, for every one understood; the justice of the 
 sentence no one considered. There are Massachu 
 setts historians who regard the trial and banishment 
 of Mrs. Hutchinson as a stain upon the Puritan 
 Commonwealth and wish it could be expunged, but 
 they are oversensitive. The men who banished 
 Mrs. Hutchinson were men of the seventeenth cen 
 tury who were under the influence of their age. To 
 have expected them to show the liberality and 
 tolerance of the twentieth century would have been 
 an anachronism. 
 
 The great Antinomian controversy and the ban 
 ishment of Mistress Anne Hutchinson stamp the 
 character of the Puritan and the peculiar institution 
 which he founded in Massachusetts. It revealed 
 at once his whole theory of government and the 
 relation existing between the church and the state. 
 It is perfectly intelligible and entirely logical when 
 we realize that the Bible was the Puritan Constitu 
 tion ; it is mystifying and confusing when that salient 
 fact has not been grasped. Doyle, with all his 
 learning and painstaking research, seems to have 
 missed the key to the Puritan character, without 
 which it can never be understood. Referring to 
 the church at Salem having appointed, against the 
 remonstrances of the General Court, Roger Williams 
 as its pastor, Doyle says: "For this contumacy, and 
 for its supposed complicity in Williams s seditious 
 courses, Salem was punished by being disfranchised 
 till it made an apology. Such an incident oddly 
 
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS BORN 365 
 
 illustrates the manner in which civil and ecclesias 
 tical affairs were blended." l 
 
 The incident would be more than odd, it would 
 be impossible, had the Puritan been content to 
 render to Csesar the things that were Caesar s and 
 been able to accept the modern philosophy that 
 God made man, but man made the State. It was 
 impossible for the Puritan to do this, and in his 
 mind there was never any conflict between human 
 and divine law. He was as convinced of the fal 
 libility of human action when it opposed the pro 
 visions of his great code as is an American judge 
 who unhesitatingly declares a statute void because 
 it violates a fundamental inhibition of the American 
 Constitution. The Puritan treatment of Mrs. Hutch- 
 inson shows his intense narrowness and how 
 deficient he was in the saving grace of charity. He 
 could argue for days over the meaning of an obscure 
 text in the Bible, but his heart was as iron when 
 he racked the woman shortly to feel the pains of 
 maternity. It was this persecution that, unknown 
 to himself, was to spread colonization and make 
 Massachusetts the mother and maker of states. 
 Again we see the sempiternal revolution of the 
 wheel. Driven forth by religious persecution, the 
 Puritan builds for himself a new state. Driven to 
 persecution by the narrowness of his religion, he 
 in turn becomes the oppressor and furnishes the 
 impetus for the forward march of civilization. 
 
 1 Doyle: English Colonies in America, vol. ii, p. 122. 
 
366 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 Some of Mrs. Hutchinson s adherents founded 
 towns that afterwards became the state of New 
 Hampshire. Mrs. Hutchinson herself and a con 
 siderable following bought from the Indians the 
 island of Aquidneck, and settlements were estab 
 lished at Portsmouth and Newport, which later 
 were incorporated with Williams s colony at Provi 
 dence and became in time the modern state of 
 Rhode Island. 
 
 Just as North Carolina was to Virginia "Rogues 
 Harbor," where the outcasts of society were made 
 welcome and no one was so inquisitive as to ask 
 the latest arrival why he came or whether he 
 brought his real name with him, which two cen 
 turies later was the etiquette of the western mining- 
 camp, where personal history was always strictly 
 tabooed, Rhode Island was to the other New 
 England colonies a pit of abomination. It was 
 called in derision and contempt the Isle of Errors 
 and the Religious Sink of New England, for it was 
 the only place where every odd bit of theology could 
 be found and prophets could safely deliver them 
 selves of their inspirations and new sects could 
 be founded without fear of punishment. Cotton 
 Mather, who was not overmuch given to delicate sar 
 casm, said that if any man lost his religion, he could 
 be sure to find it in Rhode Island. That colony 
 was the seventeenth-century Hyde Park Sunday 
 meetings where every man could call his own 
 audience about him and speak to his heart s content. 
 
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS BORN 367 
 
 One of Mrs. Hutchinson s supporters in Aquid- 
 neck was Samuel Gorton, who bred turbulence 
 wherever he lodged. He was " a proud and pes 
 tilent seducer," in the vigorous language of that 
 day, which had no reference to his morals but to 
 his irrepressible energy in spreading his horrific 
 doctrines. The modern biographer would term him 
 a crotchety, cantankerous man, decidedly inclined 
 toward anarchy and inconveniently assertive of 
 pretty nearly everything that society disapproves. 
 Doyle describes him as "a singularly puzzle-headed 
 and illiterate man, full of courage and energy, and 
 honest, so far as honesty is compatible with a mor 
 bid passion for notoriety which is gained by the up 
 holders of unpopular views." l He wrote much, but 
 he had no power of clear expression and it is not 
 easy to follow his argument. 
 
 A London clothier, he set up as a preacher without 
 ordination and cherished that same doctrine of di 
 vine inspiration which so outraged the Puritans of 
 Massachusetts when proclaimed by Mrs. Hutchin- 
 son. Coming to Plymouth, he soon displayed those 
 qualities that made him for many years a thorn in 
 the side of New England. One account has it that 
 the wife of his pastor preferred his teachings to 
 those of her husband, while from another historian 
 we learn that with more zeal than tact he defended 
 his wife s servant who had been severely punished 
 for a trifling infraction of church discipline. He 
 
 1 Doyle: English Colonies in America, vol. ii, p. 187. 
 
368 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 found it wise to flee Plymouth and seek refuge 
 at Aquidneck, where he celebrated his coming by 
 creating a schism among Mrs. Hutchinson s fol 
 lowers, which led to the founding of Portsmouth. 
 Wherever he tarried trouble was sure to abide, 
 and soon Portsmouth would have no more of him, 
 and for its own peace flogged him and cast him out. 
 We next hear of him at Pawtuxet, which was within 
 the jurisdiction of Providence, where even the broad- 
 minded and tolerant Roger Williams was driven to 
 complaint. Always agitating, his hand ever against 
 the government, "having abused high and low at 
 Aquidneck," Williams plaintively writes, he was 
 now "bewitching and madding poor Providence." 
 It is difficult to understand what power this illiterate 
 and muddle-headed man possessed, but instead of 
 accepting Fiske s conclusion, "probably such suc 
 cess as Gorton had in winning followers was due 
 to the mystical rubbish which abounds in his pages 
 and finds in a modern mind no doorway through 
 which to enter," * it is more probable that in the 
 revolt against theological tyranny and a dim long 
 ing for real religious freedom is the explanation to 
 be found. Williams, true to his principles, although 
 disapproving of Gorton, would not silence him, 
 but when he refused to submit to the authority of 
 the magistrates, some of the leading citizens of 
 Providence appealed to Massachusetts for advice 
 and assistance in dealing with this disturber of the 
 
 1 Fiske : The Beginnings of New England, p. 167. 
 
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS BORN 369 
 
 peace. It is not necessary to follow in detail future 
 events. Gorton and some of his followers, after a 
 stout resistance, were captured by an armed force 
 and taken to Massachusetts and sentenced to work 
 in irons during the pleasure of the court and 
 strictly forbidden to communicate with any one 
 except the elders and the assistants. But Puritan 
 obstinacy was more than matched by the stubborn 
 ness of Gorton who doubtless knew his Epictetus 
 and was strengthened by the philosopher s defiance. 
 
 Despite his fetters Gorton continued to propagate 
 his heresies, and he was like to have bewitched 
 Massachusetts as he had poor Providence had not 
 the court amended the sentence to banishment 
 from the colony on pain of death. To Aquidneck, 
 where he had abused high and low, he returned, 
 and because he was a victim of the religious perse 
 cution of Massachusetts he was received with 
 sympathy. 
 
 I have outlined the adventurous career of this 
 tailor-preacher and mystic because it was the asylum 
 that Rhode Island offered to discordant religious 
 elements that gave it a character unlike those of the 
 other New England colonies and made it possible 
 for the theocracy of New England to be broken 
 down; which was necessary if men were to gain 
 intellectual freedom and escape from the stag 
 nation of the narrow rule of a creed that was a 
 bar to their highest spiritual development. Under 
 the rule of the theocracy the minds of men could 
 
370 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 only expand along certain lines, but perfect devel 
 opment was impossible. Great and wonderful as 
 was the work wrought by the theocracy and the 
 character which it created, there came a time when 
 instead of making men strong it weakened them by 
 its intolerance and its rigid command of blind obe 
 dience; and the power of the theocracy began to 
 crumble when the teachings of Roger Williams and 
 his disciples took root and theological disputes no 
 longer held the first place as the highest expression 
 of intellect. 
 
 When, in the progress of society, Buckle says, its 
 theological element begins to decay, the ardor with 
 which religious disputes were once conducted be 
 comes sensibly weakened. That time, in America, 
 had not yet come, but it was foreshadowed; and it 
 was because the narrow theology of Massachusetts 
 broke down before spreading its destructive influ 
 ence over a wider area and becoming indoctrinated 
 in the race that it was possible for the Americans to 
 be what they are liberal in religion and thought, 
 with a speculative audacity that has made them 
 ready to embrace every new idea and explore every 
 new realm of mind or deed. They were not clogged 
 by hampering tradition, and of all tradition an 
 intensely formalistic religion is the most impeditive. 
 Buckle adds in the paragraph which has already 
 been quoted and it concisely reveals the change 
 produced in the Massachusetts character by the 
 displacement of theology as the highest expression 
 
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS BORN 371 
 
 of intellectual activity that " the most advanced 
 intellects are the first to feel the growing indif 
 ference, and, therefore, they are also the first to 
 scrutinize real events with that inquisitive eye which 
 their predecessors had reserved for religious specu 
 lations. This is a great turning-point in the his 
 tory of every civilized nation. From this moment 
 theological heresies become less frequent, and liter 
 ary heresies become more common. From this 
 moment, the spirit of inquiry and of doubt fastens 
 itself upon every department of knowledge, and 
 begins that great career of conquest, in which by 
 every succeeding discovery the power and dignity 
 of man are increased, while at the same time most 
 of his opinions are disturbed, and many of them 
 are destroyed; until, in the march of this vast but 
 noiseless revolution the stream of tradition is, as 
 it were, interrupted, the influence of ancient author 
 ity is subverted, and the human mind, waxing in 
 strength, learns to rely upon its own resources, and 
 to throw off incumbrances by which the freedom of 
 its movements had long been impaired." 1 
 
 Gorton, who served a purpose, was an ill-bal 
 anced and undisciplined man; Williams, whose 
 light still burns with undiminished brilliance, was 
 of splendid sanity. In that heterogeneous mixture 
 of Antinomians and Gortonites and Quakers and 
 other strange conglomerations of sects there was 
 a serious element of liberal thinkers; men and 
 
 1 Buckle: History of Civilization in England, vol. i, p. 554. 
 
372 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 women were groping in the dark to free themselves 
 from the slavery and superstition that had for 
 centuries overlaid thought, but which the Refor 
 mation had begun to clear away. They were sick, 
 sick unto death, of the mockery of Christ; of the 
 sham and pretence of the church; of religion that 
 was forever preaching damnation but offered never 
 a word of hope; that crucified but bathed no 
 wounds; that to the soul-thirsty gave vinegar and 
 tantalized with a cup of cold water. Long had they 
 been bound only to find themselves free in a wilder 
 ness; they were longing to use their freedom, but 
 they did not know how to exert their strength. It 
 was natural, when restraint had been cast off, that 
 they, not having experienced that long discipline 
 which hardens character and brings it under con 
 trol, should go to extremes and take up with every 
 vagary that promised the intellectual liberty they 
 so ardently craved. Almost each man felt he was 
 privileged to create his own moral code. Some 
 were opposed to all forms of government because 
 it elevated men in authority over their fellows, and 
 they were able to prove to their own satisfaction 
 that Christ taught that all men stood equal before 
 Him. It was sufficient for a man to refuse to obey 
 a law because he was unable to reconcile it with 
 his conscience. Ingenuity could find in the Bible 
 that a man was permitted one wife or many. There 
 was, we are told, either too much marriage or too 
 little. It was a strange, tumultuous, undisciplined, 
 
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS BORN 373 
 
 muddle-headed band of extremists, but with the 
 germ of an idea in their not over-logical brains, 
 that the tyranny and precise formalism of Massa 
 chusetts drove to seek refuge in Rhode Island. 
 
 Out of that ruck rises the majestic figure of 
 Roger Williams, as impressive in its dignity and 
 strength of character and liberality two hundred 
 years in advance of his time as Everest towering over 
 the plains in the mystery of its solitary grandeur. 
 Williams was able to distinguish between liberty 
 and license, to grant freedom to all men, and yet 
 to require the obedience of all to the discipline of 
 law and the will of society. In a letter that has often 
 been quoted he defended himself from the charge 
 that the freedom he contended for led to licentious 
 ness and every kind of disorder, and used the well- 
 known illustration of the captain and the ship. 
 There goes many a ship to sea," he wrote, "with 
 many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and 
 woe is common ; and is a true picture of a common 
 wealth, or a human combination, or society. It 
 hath fallen out sometimes, that both Papists and 
 Protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked in 
 one ship ; upon which supposal I affirm, that all the 
 liberty of conscience that ever I pleaded for, turns 
 upon these two hinges: that none of the Papists, 
 Protestants, Jews, or Turks, be forced to come to 
 the ship s prayers or worship, nor compelled from 
 their own particular prayers or worship, if they 
 practice any." Yet notwithstanding this liberty, he 
 
374 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 maintains, "the commander of this ship ought to 
 command the ship s course, yea, and also command 
 that justice, peace and sobriety be kept and prac 
 tised, both among the seamen and all the passengers. 
 If any of the seamen refuse to perform their service, 
 or passengers to pay their freight; if any refuse to 
 help in person or purse, towards the common 
 charges or defence; if any refuse to obey the com 
 mon laws and orders of the ship, concerning their 
 common peace and preservation; if any shall rise 
 up and mutiny against their commanders and offi 
 cers; if any shall preach or write, that there ought 
 to be no commanders nor officers, because all are 
 equal in Christ, therefore no masters nor officers, no 
 laws, nor orders, no corrections nor punishments; 
 I say I never denied, but in such cases, whatever is 
 pretended, the commander or commanders may 
 judge, resist, compel, and punish such transgressors, 
 according to their deserts and merits." l If Williams 
 had done nothing more than to write this letter, it 
 would have established his perdurable fame. 
 
 Massachusetts was the attempt to establish a 
 political community on a basis of religious tyranny, 
 an experiment often before made; Rhode Island, 
 much more wonderful, was to see for the first time 
 a political organization foundationed on religious 
 liberty, which succeeding was powerfully to affect 
 the thought not only of America but of the whole 
 
 1 Arnold: History of Rhode Island, vol. i, p. 225; Lamed, vol. iv, 
 p. 2713. 
 
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS BORN 375 
 
 world; that was to free men not alone from the 
 thraldom of the church, but was to liberate them 
 from political slavery; that was to spread demo 
 cratic institutions; for it was only when the power 
 of the autocracy of the church and the oligarchy 
 of an aristocratic political class was broken down 
 that it became possible for democracy to take 
 root. It is a striking contrast this, Massachusetts 
 wedded to its theocracy, and Rhode Island, sepa 
 rated by no impassable natural or artificial barriers, 
 under the very eyes of Massachusetts, peopled by 
 her own people, inspiring liberty. America was 
 wide enough to shelter all; there was room here 
 for the narrow-minded and stern Endicott and the 
 broad and benignant Williams; it was the fore 
 runner of American liberality. 
 
 It was an experiment scoffed at, and it was 
 prophesied that a scheme so revolutionary would be 
 of short duration. But it endured. Like every great 
 movement that has influenced the course of civiliza 
 tion, it encountered the contempt and opposition of 
 the adherents of older institutions. Those institu 
 tions absorb the highest talent, the greatest ability, 
 all the power that comes from wealth and learning ; 
 and the cohesive strength of men leagued to main 
 tain an existing state of society has a disciplinary 
 effect on those who adhere to its conventions and 
 who are contemptuous of the disorganized rabble 
 which the new order at first attracts. There are in 
 every such movement, three successive stages which 
 
376 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 are common to all social revolutions: first, unre 
 strained enthusiasm, which is its strength; then 
 more practical considerations prevail, and, finally, 
 if the revolution is to accomplish its work, disci 
 pline is enforced and individual enthusiasm subor 
 dinates itself to social regulation. 
 
 The theocracy of Massachusetts, the aristocratic 
 institutions of Virginia, the alien customs of New 
 York, have disappeared, but the gospel spread by 
 Roger Williams lives. 
 
 Rhode Island interests us not at all for any con 
 tribution it made to the constitutional struggle or 
 the development of the spirit of constitutional 
 government. It defied no proprietors nor royal 
 governors. It did not threaten the authority of the 
 King. It took no part in upholding the funda 
 mental principle of English political liberty, that in 
 the control of the purse is the real sovereignty of 
 the people. It gave birth to no new social condi 
 tions as did Virginia and Maryland and the other 
 southern colonies. It injected no new strain into the 
 English character as did Puritan Massachusetts. 
 But no survey of American psychology is complete 
 without Rhode Island, where was laid the founda 
 tion of that liberty of conscience and religious free 
 dom which have had so much to do in making the 
 American character. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 HOW THE DUTCH CAME AND WENT 
 
 OF the thirteen original colonies we have thus 
 far dealt with eight, each of which contributed a 
 distinct element to the making of what was later 
 to become the American nation and left its peculiar 
 characteristics upon the psychology of the race, or 
 laid that system of popular and democratic govern 
 ment that logically and irresistibly developed into the 
 political system on which the American Republic 
 rests. The five remaining colonies New Hamp 
 shire, New Jersey, Delaware, New York, and Penn 
 sylvania demand little attention at our hands at 
 this stage of the inquiry. It is true that of those 
 five colonies two were to become the most important 
 and influential states of the Union and were in the 
 second period of American politico-psychology what 
 Massachusetts and Virginia were in the first; but 
 while Virginia and Massachusetts were the mother 
 who gave birth to a race of giants and suckled them. 
 New York and Pennsylvania were father and 
 tutor to teach them strength and how to walk fear 
 lessly. It will perhaps appear remarkable to him 
 who has read American history and ignored its 
 psychology that this assertion should be made, but 
 if we call the roll of those eight colonies whose 
 
378 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 establishment has formed the theme of the pre 
 ceding pages, we shall see how essential they were 
 to the first stage of American development, and how 
 little influence New York and Pennsylvania exer 
 cised at that time. 
 
 Let us briefly review what each contributed. 
 Massachusetts gave Puritanism and its institutions, 
 the spirit of which still lives; Virginia and Mary 
 land and the other southern colonies, which were 
 their offshoots, the institution of slavery and a social 
 system that produced momentous political conse 
 quences which, modified by later economic and 
 political causes, have influenced the American peo 
 ple and make the South to-day different in thought 
 and manner from the North or the rest of the Eng 
 lish-speaking world ; Connecticut and Rhode Island, 
 the seed of Massachusetts, nurtured more benig- 
 nantly, were the beginnings of that great liberty of 
 conscience which is the just pride of Americans. 
 Now if we turn to New York, we find that it laid 
 no foundation on which has been erected a diutur- 
 nal structure. The civilization of the Dutch suc 
 cumbed before a more virile race, a race endowed 
 with a peculiar genius to govern and leave its 
 ineffaceable mark. All that the Dutch brought to 
 America language, customs, political principles 
 has been overlaid by the speech and institutions and 
 political philosophy of the English, as Herculaneum 
 withered under the scorching ashes of Vesuvius, and 
 became merely a memory on which a newer and 
 
HOW THE DUTCH CAME AND WENT 379 
 
 more lasting civilization was reared. Search as we 
 may, we can find no trace of the Dutch strain or that 
 the Dutch left any indesinent impress upon the 
 American character or were able to modify a con 
 quering race or impose upon it their own civili 
 zation. We have seen that the Indian stimulated 
 certain qualities of the Englishman; the influence 
 exercised by the negro on the character of the white 
 man has been referred to and we shall make more 
 detailed reference to it later; but the Dutch came 
 and went like visitors in a household, whose little 
 peculiarities are the only thing by which they are 
 remembered, but from whom nothing has been 
 learned. The early colonial history of Pennsylvania 
 is no less barren of results, redeemed only by the 
 romantic personality of Penn and the Quaker 
 invasion. 
 
 New York as a Dutch colony explains why 
 Holland failed where England succeeded, and it 
 elucidates how it became possible for England 
 to secure the continent while France and Spain 
 labored to no purpose. The English were coloni 
 zers as well as traders, the Dutch were traders only ; 
 they had no genius for over-sea empire-building. 
 Where the English planted themselves there imme 
 diately was instituted a political system that begat 
 a spirit of loyalty to English institutions and at the 
 same time created an intense spirit of independence 
 and pride in the work of their own hands and the 
 colony which they had created. With the Dutch it 
 
380 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 was different. Neither the States General nor the 
 Dutch West Indian Company had dealt with the 
 New Netherlands to foster any spirit of loyalty, and 
 it was with indifference that its people regarded 
 the political changes that made them at one time 
 owe allegiance to Holland and later to England. 
 "Nothing could show more strongly the lack of any 
 vigorous sense of nationality than the passivity with 
 which the Dutch settlers suffered themselves to be 
 handed backwards and forwards without protest or 
 expression of interest." 1 One cannot picture such 
 a thing in Massachusetts or Virginia; it would be 
 difficult to imagine those stubborn Puritans or those 
 fiery Virginians tamely submitting to be treated as 
 chattels and like fortresses or munitions of war the 
 spoil of the conqueror. There would have been an 
 uprising to tax all the energy of the United Pro 
 vinces to suppress. 
 
 The marked difference in the character of the 
 Dutch and the English and the proof, if additional 
 proof is wanting, that it was the English and not 
 the Dutch who laid the foundation of American 
 psychology, is to be found in the political ties that 
 bound the colonists to England, which led to their 
 independence and their birth as a nation, as con 
 trasted with the slight importance the New Nether- 
 land settlers attached to their political relationship 
 to the home government. The Puritan settlers, 
 Goldwin Smith, says, "in common with the other 
 
 1 Cambridge Modern History, vol. vii, p. 41. 
 
HOW THE DUTCH CAME AND WENT 381 
 
 colonists of the period, retained not only their love 
 of the old land, but their political tie to it. They 
 deemed themselves still liegemen of a sovereign on 
 the other side of the Atlantic. This created a rela 
 tion false from the beginning. Herein lay the fatal 
 seeds of misunderstanding, of encroachment on the 
 side of the home government, of revolt on that of 
 the growing colony, and ultimately revolution"; 
 and he goes on to say that "the English colony 
 unhappily was a dependency, and when it grew 
 strong enough to spurn dependence there was a 
 bond to be broken which was not likely to be broken 
 without violence and a breach of affection." 1 It is 
 to be regretted that such a clear thinker as Goldwin 
 Smith should have failed to comprehend the exact 
 nature of the relationship that existed between 
 the English colonists and the mother country, the 
 mental attitude of his countrymen both at home 
 and in America, and the causes that produced the 
 discontent of the colonists ; and it is only with that 
 knowledge that it becomes possible to understand 
 why the Dutch accomplished nothing. 
 
 In previous chapters I have endeavored to cor 
 rect the widespread but erroneous impression that 
 the Englishman when he emigrated to America, 
 whether as a Puritan colonist or a southern planter 
 or landholder, divested himself of his national 
 ity and ceased to remain an Englishman. But the 
 truth is that in all things, political principles no less 
 
 1 Smith: The United States, p. 6. 
 
382 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 than in his manners and customs and his religion, 
 he was as much the Englishman in Massachusetts 
 or in Virginia as he had been in Lincolnshire or in 
 Suffolk. These Englishmen did not merely " deem " 
 themselves liegemen of a sovereign; they were. 
 Because they lived in Virginia they were no less 
 Englishmen than those of their kin who were still 
 living in the ancestral halls of Kent; distance 
 neither broke nor weakened the tie. It was because 
 they were Englishmen, it was because they were 
 Englishmen and had not ceased to be Englishmen, 
 that they insisted upon the same rights and privi 
 leges, the same liberty, the same safeguards, the 
 same political freedom that were enjoyed by English 
 men elsewhere, that inherently belonged to the Eng 
 lishman whether he acknowledged allegiance to 
 his sovereign in London or in Jamestown. In the 
 Cambridge synod of 1646 the ministers defined the 
 relations of Massachusetts toward England in these 
 words: "We depend upon the state of England for 
 protection and immunities of Englishmen." l " The 
 complaints of the people in the colonies," Straus 
 says, " were at no time because of the form of their 
 government, or that of the mother country, but 
 because of the encroachments upon, and utter 
 disregard of, the natural rights, privileges and im 
 munities to which they deemed themselves entitled, 
 equally with those residing in England." 2 
 
 1 Adams : The Emancipation of Massachusetts, p. 90. 
 
 2 Straus: The Origin of Republican Form of Government in the United 
 States of America, p. 3. 
 
HOW THE DUTCH CAME AND WENT 383 
 
 We have seen that in the colonies, almost from 
 the very beginning, there were continual uprisings 
 of the people to resist the encroachments of their 
 governors or to assert their prerogatives ; they were 
 defiant not only of the local authorities but of the 
 Crown itself when they believed themselves the 
 victims of oppression or tyranny. But it created 
 no false relation ; it was, on the contrary, a relation 
 perfectly understood and perfectly satisfactory ac 
 cording to the spirit of the age; and of all things 
 the historian must avoid the error of visualizing the 
 past by the false light of the present false because 
 modern clearness of thought magnifies and distorts ; 
 it is too cruelly keen to make allowances for only a 
 partially developed concept of the philosophy which 
 men once accepted as final. Bacon s rebellion, for 
 example, was no more an effort to "spurn depend 
 ence" than the uprising led by Wat Tyler was an 
 attempt to make Kent or Hartfordshire independ 
 ent principalities; but both were the expression of 
 popular discontent and were the only means then 
 known to correct grievances, to readjust a burden 
 some and unjust system of taxation, and to secure 
 the reaffirmation of rights which were the immemo 
 rial privileges of Englishmen. Just as Tyler rode 
 at the head of his motley rabble three centuries 
 before Bacon aroused the spirit of Virginia, so 
 Cromwell marshaled his hosts nearly a century 
 before Washington created an army. In searching 
 for a precedent the Englishmen of America found 
 
384 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 the Grand Remonstrance framed by the Puritans 
 of England, and they indicted their sovereign with 
 the Declaration of Independence. But in neither 
 case was it a deliberate attempt to break a bond 
 because it was politically galling. An English sov 
 ereign lost his head because he defied the liberties 
 of the people and attempted to set up an au 
 tocracy; a later English sovereign lost his colonies 
 because he was deaf to remonstrance and clung to 
 the exploded idea that Englishmen might be taxed 
 without their consent. In the time of Cromwell 
 England was in spirit a republic. The English 
 colonies had long been republican not alone in 
 spirit but in the form of their governments, and in 
 that mood it needed only a choice bit of rhetoric 
 to make them cast out even the semblance of 
 monarchical institutions and openly embrace that 
 form of government for which their training and 
 their natural inclinations had for so long prepared 
 them. 
 
 Returning to those Dutch settlers who planted 
 themselves on the Hudson, we see how they differed 
 from the men of English stock who rooted them 
 selves in the North. While English governors and 
 their courts were ruling with a firm and, in many 
 cases, oppressive hand, which made men more 
 determined than ever to resist encroachments and 
 widen their liberty, Dutch stadtholders were en 
 gaged in the ridiculous pastime of governing by 
 paper proclamations, which appealed to stolid 
 
HOW THE DUTCH CAME AND WENT 385 
 
 humor and were to be laughed at over the com 
 forting contentment of pipes. The London Com 
 pany was invested with political as well as commer 
 cial powers; Baltimore s charter, similar to that of 
 every other English proprietor, contained a dis 
 tinct recognition of the political rights of the 
 settlers; but the company of Dutch merchants 
 which was granted by the States General the exclu 
 sive monopoly of trading in the New Netherlands 
 was under no such restrictions, and the Dutch 
 temperament, unlike the English, was too sluggish 
 and too unimaginative to make them passionately 
 demand their political independence. "As a crea 
 ture of the States General, the West India Company, 
 the declared rival of the French for the Canadian 
 fur trade, managed affairs in the colony with an 
 iron hand. Scant consideration was given the 
 settler. The policy of the company was purely 
 commercial." 1 
 
 It was the English Governor Fletcher who taught 
 these Dutchmen the meaning of political liberty 
 when he said to them: "There are none of you but 
 are big with the privileges of Englishmen and 
 Magna Charta." It has been well said by an Ameri 
 can author that the Dutch fought heroically for 
 their independence against the Spaniards, and won 
 the gratitude of the civilized world by driving him 
 out of Northern Europe. But, their independence 
 
 1 Military Minutes of the Council of Appointment of the State of New 
 York, vol. i, p. 2. 
 
386 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 once attained, they settled down to the substantial 
 enjoyment of it and the commerce of the Indian 
 seas, and have remained in that happy state ever 
 since. They had no passion for conquest, and were 
 not wandering over the earth with empires in their 
 brains, like the English. 
 
 In the charter of the Dutch East and West India 
 Companies 2 the right of the colonists or it would 
 be more proper to call them traders, because they 
 were not colonists in any real sense of the word to 
 maintain self-government was so completely ignored 
 that no provision was made for popular assemblies 
 or legislatures, nor were the colonists permitted the 
 right to vote, and this effort of the home govern 
 ment to keep their children in a state of perpetual 
 tutelage aroused not even passive resistance. We 
 have only to contrast the rights of the English 
 colonists with the withholding of all rights from the 
 Dutch colonists to see how little foundation there 
 is for the oft-repeated assertion that it is to the 
 Dutch Americans owe the origin of a Republican 
 form of government or the institutions on which 
 American society is founded. The laws under 
 which the English colonists lived were laws framed 
 by themselves, and whether good or bad, at least 
 they had the satisfaction of knowing that they were 
 their own work, that the code they erected for them- 
 
 1 Fisher: Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial Times, vol. ii, p. 15. 
 
 2 For the full text of the charter of the West India Company see Van 
 Rennselaer Bowier Manuscripts, p. 87 et seq., and the Charter of Freedoms 
 and Exemptions, p. 137 et seq. 
 
HOW THE DUTCH CAME AND WENT 387 
 
 selves was the expression of their own requirements 
 and their own moral nature. If they branded and 
 imprisoned and maimed and hanged, it was because 
 the welfare of the community, as they considered it, 
 demanded drastic discipline. Even their tyranny 
 was intelligent and was not the mere caprice of a 
 William the Testy. It was discipline enforced by 
 a majority of the community and not by governors 
 whose actions they were unable to control; who 
 were as deaf to public opinion as the Spanish 
 governors were to the meek protests of the Indians. 
 The Dutch governors, Irving says in that most de 
 lightful of all books, enjoyed that uncontrolled 
 authority vested in all commanders of distant 
 colonies or territories. They were, in manner, abso 
 lute despots in their little domains, lording it, if so 
 disposed, over both law and gospel, and accountable 
 to none but to the mother country; which it is well 
 known is astonishingly deaf to all complaints 
 against its governors, provided they discharge the 
 main duties of their station squeezing out a 
 good revenue. 1 Whatever was wrong could be 
 corrected with a proclamation. If pestiferous New 
 Englanders or trespassing Swedes invaded the terri 
 tory of the New Netherlands, if sailors were unruly 
 or there was too much private traffic in furs, if 
 Dutch hausvrows were too prone to gossip, the 
 Testy one retired to the solitude of his cabinet and 
 brought forth a proclamation which he issued with 
 
 1 Irving: A History of New York, p. 167. 
 
388 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 sublime faith in its potency as a cure for all evils. 
 Nothing destroyed his belief in the efficacy of his 
 Edicts. Contrast with that the stern methods of the 
 English both north and south, and the measures 
 they adopted to make men and women walk in the 
 narrow way and respect lawful authority. It was 
 only after Kieft was dismissed that there was some 
 semblance of breaking the autocratic power of the 
 governor by the appointment of a supreme council, 
 and then it began to penetrate the heads of these 
 incompetent colonizers that they could learn from 
 the English. It was recommended that the Dutch 
 should be encouraged to settle in towns and villages 
 "as the English are in the habit of doing," which is 
 still further testimony that in the art of colonization 
 it was from the Dutch the English learned little if 
 anything, while it is to the English the Dutch owe 
 much. 
 
 Equally fallacious is the widespread impression 
 that the Dutch were extremely liberal in religious 
 belief, and that the same spirit which made them 
 offer asylum to the Separatists in Holland con 
 trolled them in their settlements in the New World. 
 The Dutch of the New Netherlands were no less 
 narrow in the maintenance of one religion than 
 were the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay in their 
 attempts to suppress the "pestilent seducer." The 
 Reformed Church was alone recognized ; unlicensed 
 preachers were suppressed and if they persisted, 
 their contumacy was punished by fine and impris- 
 
HOW THE DUTCH GAME AND WENT 389 
 
 onment; with the exception of Massachusetts, no 
 where was such harshness meted out to the Quakers 
 as in New Amsterdam. Perhaps nothing better 
 demonstrates the utter incapacity of the Dutch for 
 colonization and their unfitness to found a colonial 
 empire than their sterility and the slow growth of 
 population. After they had been in possession for 
 more than forty years of the fairest part of America 
 they numbered but ten thousand, while at that time 
 the Puritan colonies, with a much less fertile soil to 
 sustain them and climatic rigors to contend with 
 which sorely tried them, could count their people 
 at not less than fifty thousand. It was impossible 
 for the Dutch to have peopled a continent. 
 
 In another way the difference between the Dutch 
 and English character is illustrated. The heart of 
 the Dutch province was Manhattan Island with a 
 far-flung outpost at Albany, and between were 
 scattered farms and straggling settlements. Rela 
 tively to that day Albany was as remote from New 
 York as London is from St. Petersburg in ours ; in 
 one sense the distance was greater, as there was no 
 telegraph to bridge space and destroy time; there 
 was no constant stream of travelers flowing back 
 and forth to bring half the world in intimate contact. 
 Judging by what happened in New England, seeing 
 what took place in the South, we are warranted in 
 believing that had the English been the first settlers 
 on Manhattan Island and established an outpost up 
 the river at Albany, it would have been only a short 
 
390 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 time before those Albanian Englishmen would have 
 cut loose from the nominal control of New York and 
 set up a government of their own, in the same way 
 that Connecticut and New Hampshire and Rhode 
 Island came into existence. Englishmen would have 
 felt the imperious necessity of governing themselves 
 and being their own political masters, but the Dutch 
 had no such impulse. They were quite content with 
 their lot; trade they understood, but political 
 science did not vex them; and whether they were 
 ruled by imbeciles in New York or men of intelli 
 gence in Holland made little difference so long as 
 they were allowed to drive their bargains and were 
 not disturbed when they smoked their long pipes 
 after their midday meal. 
 
 The Dutch brought over with them an aristocratic 
 system of land tenure that was even more harmful 
 than the plantation and manorial systems of Vir 
 ginia and Maryland. Great estates were in the 
 hands of the patroons, who would not part with an 
 acre but worked them with tenants, which was one 
 of the reasons population increased so slowly and 
 the colony remained in such a backward condition 
 until after the English occupation. Immigrants 
 both from Europe and the English colonies were 
 not content to be the tenants of Dutch masters 
 when in neighboring colonies they could take up 
 land and become its owners. The great estates of 
 the South were made possible by slavery and the 
 shipping of indented white servants, but although 
 
HOW THE DUTCH CAME AND WENT 391 
 
 the Dutch were keen slave traders and a fairly large 
 number of African slaves were to be found in New 
 York, they were principally used as house servants 
 and seldom employed in field labor. The Dutch 
 had it in their power to attract to their vast territory 
 the best yeomanry of England and the cream of the 
 peasantry of Europe, for as there was little infusion 
 of slave labor the cultivation of the soil by free white 
 men was no degradation ; but in this as in so many 
 other things we see Dutch ineptitude. They were 
 unable to grasp their opportunies or to found last 
 ing social institutions. An American biographer of 
 Peter Stuyvesant finds that "in New York City, the 
 high stoop house, and the peculiar observances of 
 New Year s Day which continued until 1870, are 
 two familiar relics of Holland. The valuable cus 
 tom of registering transfers of real estate has been 
 received from the same source." 1 A pitifully weak 
 foundation on which to attempt to erect a lasting 
 monument to Dutch genius ! 
 
 Virginian institutions were economically unsound 
 and morally vicious, yet the Virginian was redeemed 
 by his fondness for outdoor sports, his love of adven 
 ture, his daring, and the appeal which nature always 
 made to him, and his intellect and creative political 
 genius profoundly excite our admiration. The 
 Dutch overlords were aristocrats of a different cali 
 bre. They took their pleasures more reposefully and 
 with that phlegmatic love of ease which was as 
 
 1 Tuckerman: Peter Stuyvesant, p. 186. 
 
392 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 characteristic of their amusements as it was of their 
 business methods. They gained little because they 
 feared to venture much. It was a natural instinct 
 in the Virginians to gamble; temperamentally they 
 were adventurers, and from being speculators in 
 commerce they became speculative political philo 
 sophers, their speculations tempered by a strain 
 of clear thinking and material prudence. The 
 Dutch had no love of speculation ; great rashness, 
 which is the audacity of genius, was foreign to their 
 nature as well as their training. 
 
 No people who have played a part in affecting the 
 destinies of mankind and that the Dutch did, no 
 one who is familiar with their history or that of 
 Europe in the sixteenth-century will deny offer 
 such a curious and puzzling study. They were en 
 dowed with many heroic virtues ; against the mighty 
 power of Philip II of Spain they successfully offered 
 their puny resistance; no sacrifice w r as too great for 
 them to make, no torture too great for them to bear ; 
 and yet virile, industrious, undegenerate and those 
 qualities make the mystery all the greater -- they 
 have influenced the world so little. On their soil they 
 were the modern Antaeus and invincible, but when 
 they wrestled in a new land their sinews were made 
 weak and their strength was gone. Schiller says the 
 pressure of circumstances surprised them and forced 
 a transitory greatness upon them, which " they never 
 could have possessed and perhaps never will pos 
 sess again"; that necessity created genius and acci- 
 
HOW THE DUTCH CAME AND WENT 393 
 
 dent made heroes. 1 The crisis produces its genius 
 or hero, who influences not only the thought of his 
 own time but moulds the future. In Holland he did 
 not. The example of the rise of the Dutch Repub 
 lic could have had little if any influence in bringing 
 about the birth of the American Republic. It is in 
 teresting to note that when the United Provinces 
 resolved to renounce their allegiance to the King and 
 to seek foreign assistance, they had no thought of 
 founding a republic, but were ready to submit them 
 selves to a monarch less bigoted and cruel than 
 Philip; 2 and to compare that action with the course 
 of the English colonists when they resolved on in 
 dependence. Independence did not mean to them 
 simply a change of rulers; they were not willing to 
 free themselves from the connection with the British 
 Crown merely to become the subjects of another 
 King. Circumstances had forced them into revolt, 
 and they staked everything on their own strength. 
 Note again how different were the results of the 
 adoption of the Declaration of Independence in 
 America and the Act of Abjuration, the Declara 
 tion of Dutch Independence, in 1581. In America, 
 once independence was resolved upon, the colonists 
 agreed to stand or fall together, and opposition was 
 silenced. The Tories were of course to be reckoned 
 with, but they were able to drive no wedge between 
 the allied colonies. But in Holland "Providence 
 
 1 Schiller: History of the Revolt of United Netherlands, Introduction, p. 9. 
 * May: Democracy in Europe, vol. ii, p. 48. 
 
394 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 did not permit the whole country, so full of wealth, 
 intelligence, healthy political action so stocked 
 with powerful cities and an energetic population, to 
 be combined into one free prosperous common 
 wealth." 1 Ambition, venality, religious intolerance, 
 many causes, kept kindred provinces apart which 
 ought to have been united. 
 
 Before leaving New York, brief reference must be 
 made to an episode which happened after the Eng 
 lish were masters. In itself it means nothing, it had 
 no important consequences, it turned no stream of 
 thought, but it is of interest as showing how the 
 same causes were operating North and South, how 
 the same considerations influenced men through 
 out the spread of the colonies. 
 
 The reader will recall the panic that possessed the 
 Maryland Protestants after the dethronement of 
 James II and the Davis and Pate rebellion. In 
 New York there was a similar panic, there was for 
 the moment equal uncertainty and fear whether the 
 Protestants or Papists would rule ; and as authority 
 was broken, the time was opportune for any man of 
 courage or reckless adventure w T ho could play on 
 the fears or passions of the people to seize the gov 
 ernment. Such a man was found in Jacob Leisler, 
 but it is difficult to tell whether he is worthy to be 
 placed in the valhalla of history or was merely a his 
 torical mountebank, for the estimates of his charac 
 ter and motives are conflicting and there are neither 
 
 1 Motley: The Rise of the Dutch Republic, vol. iii, p. 516. 
 
HOW THE DUTCH CAME AND WENT 395 
 
 letters nor diaries to reveal the inner nature of the 
 man. His patronymic stamps his nationality. A 
 German merchant, according to some of his bio 
 graphers a brewer, regarding Papacy with horror, 
 he, if his detractors are to be believed, "seized" 
 New York, while more friendly critics tell us that 
 he was "induced" to become a leader in a great 
 emergency; just as Bradstreet became the head of 
 the provisional government in Massachusetts when 
 a similar movement drove Andros from power. 
 Whether patriot or adventurer, the fact remains 
 that Leisler became the de facto governor of New 
 York, and to the sound of trumpets proclaimed 
 William and Mary King and Queen of England and 
 their colonies over the seas. His stormy rule lasted 
 for two years, when he was tried and hanged for 
 high treason. "Calm and impartial judgment, en 
 lightened by truth, now assigns to Jacob Leisler the 
 high position in history of a patriot and martyr," * 
 one of his eulogists declares ; and another holds it to 
 be "the office of history to bear witness to Jacob 
 Leisler s integrity as a man, his loyalty as a subject, 
 and his purity as a patriot" 2 The founder of the 
 democracy of New York was Jacob Leisler, says 
 still another historian, who adds that "Leisler was 
 truly an honest man, who though a martyr to the 
 cause of liberty, and sacrificed by injustice, aris 
 tocracy and party malignity, ought to be consid- 
 
 1 Lossing: The Empire State, p. 113. 
 
 1 Frothingham: The Rise of the Republic, p. 95. 
 
396 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 ered as one in whom New York should take pride 
 - although the ancestors of many of her best men 
 denounced him as a rebel and a traitor." * 
 
 It was under Leisler s administration that the 
 first Colonial Conference was called to enable the 
 colonies to take concerted measures to repel French 
 aggression and carry the war into Canada. The 
 resultant consequences were neither militarily nor 
 politically important at the time, but it was the 
 germ that was later to bring forth the Great 
 Confederation which was to expand into the 
 Republic. 
 
 In the settlement of Pennsylvania as of Mary 
 land one name predominates. There is a certain 
 semblance between Baltimore and William Penn; 
 both were primarily inspired by the same motives; 
 Baltimore, as we have geen, was animated to estab 
 lish a Catholic colony $nd at the same time toler 
 antly to countenance the observance of other forms 
 of religious worship; Penn, even more liberal in his 
 religious views because his creed was broader and 
 less encumbered by ceremonial tradition, found his 
 guidance in the simple doctrine of the equality of 
 man. With him that doctrine was no dogma, but a 
 practical code that governed him in all the rela 
 tions of life. In the history of the colonies there is 
 no man whose aim was so lofty or whose purposes 
 were so high and who so steadfastly clung to his 
 
 1 Dunlap: History of the New Netherlands, vol. i, p. 211. 
 
HOW THE DUTCH CAME AND WENT 397 
 
 ideals. A religious enthusiast, a philanthropist in 
 the widest interpretation of the word, a man in 
 whom an exact sense of justice was perhaps the 
 dominating quality, he was still no narrow closet 
 mystic who conceived it unnecessary to take thought 
 of the morrow. The fervid eloquence and zeal of 
 George Fox had made this man turn to Quakerism 
 as the one outlet to satisfy his spiritual nature, the 
 simplicity and charity of all that Fox taught ap 
 pealed with peculiar force to his impressionable tem 
 perament, for Penn s emotions while deep-centred 
 also lay close to the surface, a seeming contradic 
 tion but not uncommon in men of great impulses. 
 Baltimore, we have previously had occasion to re 
 mark, was no diarist, and we search in vain for any 
 intimate self-revelation of his real character or his 
 innermost feelings; all that we know of him is his 
 record as proprietor and administrator. 
 
 About Penn there is no uncertainty. He has left 
 copious letters and essays and pamphlets ; he argued 
 openly on the questions of the day ; what he thought 
 the world knows. In turning his back on the re 
 ligion of his fathers, sincerity and conviction alone 
 moved him ; he risked disinheritance for the sake of 
 conscience; he was willing to suffer calumny and 
 social ostracism rather than renounce his new-found 
 belief. And yet there was an intensely practical 
 side to Penn s character which made him a great 
 administrator and ranks him foremost among the 
 colony builders ; and this spirit of the practical was 
 
398 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 typical of Puritanism, and Quakerism was merely 
 another expression of the same moral agencies that 
 produced the Puritan. 
 
 All that we know as Puritanism, the Puritan in 
 England and America, Calvinism, Quakerism, the 
 forces which they set in motion, forces as old as cre 
 ation and as eternal as eternity, that produced 
 such men as Wycliffe, Huss, Zwinglius, Calvin, 
 Roger Williams, and William Penn; all the sects 
 and movements now conveniently known as Non- 
 conformism; all the prophets and their disciples, 
 sprung from the same source. It was a spiritual as 
 well as an intellectual revolt; in some respects it 
 was the intellect rather than the spiritual nature of 
 man that made him seek new inspiration ; that made 
 him a rebel against superstition and tradition ; that 
 made him revolt against injustice and oppression 
 buttressed in a social structure resting on a founda 
 tion of moral and intellectual slavery which denied 
 him opportunity. It was a vague but at the same 
 time practical longing for a betterment of condi 
 tions; and for so many centuries had men been 
 taught to believe that society and the church were 
 interwoven, that to them it seemed possible to bring 
 about reform only in one way, and that was to es 
 cape from the iron hand of the church that stifled 
 their aspirations. No other religio-social movement 
 that has endured, that has been something more 
 than a mere emotional outburst with its appeal to 
 the higher nature of man, has so influenced char- 
 
HOW THE DUTCH CAME AND WENT 399 
 
 acter and modified society as the great Puritan 
 movement in combining with a singular devotion 
 to a concept of duty and the regulation of life, an 
 intensely practical and commercial spirit; and as I 
 have previously explained, the term "Puritan" is 
 used here in its wider sense and embraces forces 
 that were in existence long before the word Puritan 
 designated exclusively a particular form and ob 
 servance of religious belief. It was perhaps the 
 strictness of life which it enjoined, the sense of order 
 and thrift which it inculcated, the preciseness with 
 which existence must be regulated, the hatred of all 
 extravagance and waste, whether of emotion or 
 physical vigor; the respect which men were taught 
 to have for their bodies and the inanimate things 
 with which they were surrounded, that made the 
 Puritan so intensely practical, and founded the New 
 England thrift often treated with contempt, but a 
 very vital force in the making of character, which is 
 seen in the difference between the Puritan civiliza 
 tion and the development of the Puritan colonists 
 and the men who settled the South. 
 
 The practical side of Penn s character is shown in 
 the settlement of his proprietary grant, his Frame of 
 Government, the treaty he made with the Indians 
 here the principles that ever controlled him ex 
 ercised a greater influence than selfish considera 
 tion and his laying out of the city of Philadel 
 phia. Alone among the leaders of the English col 
 onization in the seventeenth century, he can claim 
 
400 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 to be a city founder. That dignity, the result of 
 symmetry and spaciousness, in which Philadelphia 
 ranks above any city of its own age and kind, is 
 largely due to Penn s wise choice of a site and to his 
 systematic construction. 1 Like Calvert his aim was 
 to found a place of refuge for the people of his 
 faith, but it was only for a short time that Maryland 
 was a Catholic colony and it was never exclusively 
 Catholic, while in Pennsylvania the teachings of 
 George Fox and the influence of Quakerism were 
 the dominating forces; and the political and social 
 life of the colony, and later the state, was influenced 
 by the tenets of the Quaker faith. With Baltimore, 
 as we have seen, toleration must have been more or 
 less a matter of expediency, although in saying that 
 we detract nothing from his liberality and broad 
 statesmanship. With Penn religious equality and 
 personal liberty were a moral conviction without re 
 gard to political or other considerations, and he 
 brought to his side men who thought and believed 
 as he did, who were as zealous in maintaining what 
 to them was the right as the Puritans were equally 
 zealous in suppressing every effort to weaken the 
 power of the theocracy. 
 
 The Puritanism that was planted on the shores of 
 New England was bound to break down or to be 
 profoundly modified, because it was narrow and 
 dwarfing and was in essence a form of slavery 
 repugnant to men born with the freedom of intellect ; 
 
 1 Cambridge Modern History, vol. vii, p. 50. 
 
HOW THE DUTCH CAME AND WENT 401 
 
 it was the attempt so often made, but which has 
 always been resisted, to substitute for the moral 
 ity of the intellect blind obedience to a warped 
 creed. The religious and moral code of Penn 
 was broader, and the more narrowly it was fol 
 lowed the more the spiritual nature of its believers 
 expanded. To men seeking to overthrow the tram 
 mels of superstition and escape from a system 
 that cast their lives in a contracted mold, the 
 philosophy of the Quaker was more attractive than 
 that of the Puritan; there was a certain flexibility 
 in Quakerism that could adjust itself to changing 
 conditions, while Puritanism was too rigid ; it would 
 break under the strain, but it could not bend to the 
 play of forces. Puritanism was as unyielding as a 
 rod of iron; Quakerism was a fine-strung wire 
 vibrating to the music of the soul. The Puritans, 
 all sects, in fact, clung to their dogmas, their doc 
 trines, their sacraments, without which it was im 
 possible to conceive at that time religion could 
 exist. The Quakers had no ceremonies, no liturgy; 
 they w r ere satisfied simply to accept the inspiration 
 of the Scriptures and the divinity of Christ; to cut 
 away all formalism, to bring men to face God 
 rather than to look on their priests, to reject out 
 ward observances which mean nothing and obscure 
 those things that Christ taught and all men can be 
 lieve irrespective of creed or the manner in which it 
 is recited. "The baptism which saves the soul is 
 not dipping in or sprinkling with water, but the 
 
402 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 answer of a good conscience toward God, by the 
 resurrection of Jesus Christ." 
 
 Pennsylvania and New York were the two col 
 onies in which there were from the beginning a 
 conglomerate population and a strong alien ele 
 ment, which made both less strictly English than 
 their neighbors to the north or those more remote 
 of the south. From the time when the Mayflower 
 brought over her first company until we near the 
 end of the first quarter of the eighteenth-century, 
 about 1720, a year that marks the beginning of that 
 great Irish emigration, there was no alien immigra 
 tion into New England and the population was fed 
 by the arrival of Englishmen and natural increase, 
 the birth rate being higher then than it is now 
 among either the English or Americans of native 
 stock. The people of New England, prior to the 
 tide of European immigration, were a homogeneous 
 race, alike in religion and customs, a fecund people, 
 who became colonizers and "emigrants" in turn, 
 who were filled with the resistless Wanderlust that 
 took them to New York and to the South and the 
 West, impelled to seek new homes because popu 
 lation was constantly pressing on the land and 
 exerted a centrifugal force that drove men from 
 the centre to extend their boundaries. In the south 
 ern colonies the admixture of foreign blood began 
 earlier, but unlike New York it tinctured rather 
 than colored the English element. Huguenots and 
 the Scotch-Irish, as we have seen, found foot- 
 
HOW THE DUTCH CAME AND WENT 403 
 
 ing in the South, and about the middle of the 
 eighteenth-century there was a considerable influx 
 of "German Palatines" into Maryland, but this 
 infusion was not great enough to destroy the homo 
 geneity of the southern Englishmen. In New York 
 there were Dutch, English, French, Swedes, Ger 
 mans, Jews, Walloons, "and a rabble from all parts 
 of the world." New Amsterdam, we are told, had 
 "so many odds and ends of humanity that, twenty 
 years after Hudson had discovered Manhattan, 
 fourteen languages were spoken in its streets"; 1 
 and when the eighteenth-century was rapidly draw 
 ing to a close, it was the boast of New York that 
 men speaking the tongue of every civilized people 
 were to be found in the city. 2 
 
 In Pennsylvania there were Swedes, Germans, 
 Welsh, Scotch-Irish, and English. The German 
 element was particularly strong, Penn s liberality 
 offering them that promise of religious freedom 
 which was denied them in their own country. 
 Mennonites, Tunkers and other sects, the German 
 branch of that great movement which produced 
 Puritanism and Quakerism in England, to escape 
 persecution, came in large numbers, and they were 
 followed by Lutherans and members of the German 
 Reformed Church. Soon the allurement of the new 
 world appealed to the Germans, and they came in 
 the eighteenth-century as they continued to come 
 
 1 Avery: A History of the United States and its People, vol ii, p. 91. 
 
 2 McMaster: A History of the People of the United States, vol. i, p. 55. 
 
404 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 in the nineteenth, and are still arriving in the twenti 
 eth. Just as at first they fled to escape religious 
 persecution, and at a time nearer to us they left to 
 avoid military service and others came solely be 
 cause the New World offered a betterment of condi 
 tions, so in the early days of Pennsylvania the 
 German immigration soon ceased to be due to reli 
 gious oppression and was influenced by the same 
 considerations that have always controlled great 
 migratory movements, the hope of better things. 
 All during the colonial period and until the revolu 
 tion the Germans continued to come in large 
 numbers to Pennsylvania and became such a con 
 siderable element in the population that the " Penn 
 sylvania Dutch," as they were commonly called, 1 
 were in language and manners and customs apart 
 from the English and were little influenced and 
 slowly assimilated by them. Then as now these 
 Germans settlers were distinguished by their indus 
 try, sobriety, love of order and thrift; and next to 
 the Puritans the Germans have contributed more 
 to the making of the American character than any 
 other race or strain. Usually the German landed 
 penniless or so near poverty that he had to rely 
 solely upon his own efforts for a living, but he 
 went quickly to work at whatever offered, he was 
 
 1 Until quite recently, Americans commonly spoke of Germans as "Dutch 
 men," and even now the term "Dutch" is used colloquially or in contempt 
 to describe a German; and the expression "a thick-headed Dutchman, "ap 
 plied to an obtuse German, or a German immigrant who has recently landed 
 and is unfamiliar with the language or American ways, is frequently heard. 
 
HOW THE DUTCH CAME AND WENT 405 
 
 sparing and frugal and looked forward to realizing 
 his ambition, which was to take up a few acres and 
 farm. This was forest land, and before he could 
 put plough to it he must build himself a rude cabin 
 and with axe and torch clear away the trees and the 
 underbrush; but his optimism, his industry, and 
 the help of his neighbors soon put him on his feet, 
 and when his circumstances improved he was able 
 to buy a redemptioner, add more land to his hold 
 ings and surround himself with greater comforts. 
 A trait characteristic of the Germans, which from 
 the beginning has always endured, is that they 
 have ever been loyal to their adopted country. 
 There was a strong Tory element in Pennsylvania 
 which exerted a powerful influence against the 
 adoption of the Declaration of Independence, and 
 without Pennsylvania union was impossible; but 
 it was the Germans who beat down Tory opposi 
 tion and brought the support of Pennsylvania to 
 the other colonies. They were equally loyal to 
 the new-born Republic, and the way in which 
 they responded to Lincoln s call to arms and 
 freely offered their lives to preserve and maintain 
 the Union the muster rolls of the Northern armies 
 eloquently testify; and the prominent part taken 
 by American generals of German birth is a part 
 of the history of that great conflict. 
 
 The three remaining colonies, New Jersey, New 
 Hampshire and Delaware, can be dismissed with a 
 
406 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 few sentences. New Jersey was within the Dutch 
 grant of the New Netherlands, but its existence was 
 of indifferent concern to them and the few wlio 
 crossed the river and settled there found Swedes 
 from the Delaware, who always trespassed on 
 Dutch soil ; and there was of course a scattering of 
 Puritans, for wherever there was vacant land or the 
 promise of founding a successful settlement there 
 the Puritan went. 
 
 The genesis of New Hampshire is a counterpart 
 of Connecticut and Rhode Island; they w r ere all 
 three the offshoots of Massachusetts and born in the 
 throes of religious persecution. When Mrs. Hutch- 
 inson and her followers were banished from Mas 
 sachusetts some went to Providence and founded 
 what later became the state of Rhode Island ; others 
 settled Exeter, and in the usual fashion of that time 
 soon a new colony arose. Just as Connecticut was 
 founded by the establishment of little towns which 
 were afterwards politically incorporated, so the be 
 ginning of New Hampshire came from the four 
 towns of Portsmouth, Dover, Exeter and Hampden, 
 w^hich were founded either by Puritans from Eng 
 land or their coreligionists from Massachusetts. 
 There as elsewhere in New England the church re 
 public was established, the straggling settlement 
 clustering about the rude meeting-house, which 
 was always the heart of the independent state of 
 the Puritans in the New World. The New Hamp 
 shire settlements were too weak to stand alone and 
 
HOW THE DUTCH CAME AND WENT 407 
 
 not strong enough to sink mutual jealousies and find 
 strength in confederation. For twenty years they 
 quarrelled, then they applied to Massachusetts to 
 be taken under her jurisdiction, and forty years 
 later, during which time the towns had made no 
 progress, the English courts decided that Massa 
 chusetts had no legal title and New Hampshire be 
 came a royal province and was governed from Lon 
 don. There is really no history of New Hampshire 
 apart from Massachusetts in this period, and the in 
 fluence of Massachusetts was so strong that the 
 younger colony developed no originality and 
 brought no contribution to the thought of the time. 
 Delaware was originally settled by the Dutch, 
 who claimed it by right of discovery and as em 
 braced in the grant of the New Netherlands although 
 the English also asserted title to it as part of Vir 
 ginia, which had neither metes nor bounds but ex 
 tended indefinitely from ocean to ocean. The 
 Dutch established a small settlement in 1631, but 
 their rule was short, as the settlers were massacred 
 to a man by the Indians in revenge for the killing of 
 one of their chiefs. In 1638 Peter Minuit, who had 
 formerly been the agent of the Dutch West India 
 Company and governor of the New Netherlands, 
 but who resented his removal from office, under the 
 patronage of the Queen of Sweden and prominent 
 merchants, led a Swedish colony to Delaware Bay, 
 where a fort was erected and a settlement created at 
 what is now the site of Wilmington. This is the 
 
408 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 first and only colony founded by Sweden in the New 
 World, but Sweden wrote her brief chapter in Amer 
 ican colonization in water. She brought nothing to 
 the common stock ; she left not the slightest mark of 
 her nationality or character. Little impression as 
 the Dutch made as colony builders, still less was 
 that made by the Swedes, who bequeathed not even 
 a trace of language, custom or law. At a later 
 stage in the development of the American people 
 we shall have to deal with a great Scandinavian in 
 flux, but that has no bearing on the colonial period. 
 The Swedes attach no such sentiment to the spot 
 that was their landing-place in the New World as 
 the English do to Plymouth Rock, but with the 
 Swedes it was merely a passing incident in their life 
 that had no more lasting consequences than the 
 scars of childhood have on a man s nature ; with the 
 English it was veritably the rock on which was built 
 a civilization no less than a polity which was to 
 affect all mankind. 
 
 The petty quarrels between Dutch and Swedish 
 governors, the transfer of sovereignty to Dutch and 
 English as the results of the fortunes of war, the 
 disputes between proprietors as to boundaries, the 
 inclusion at one time of Delaware in Pennsylvania 
 and its subsequent independence, are of no concern 
 for the purpose we have in view. As a colony Dela 
 ware is as nonexistent as New Hampshire or New 
 Jersey; they were members of a family that influ 
 enced it neither for good nor evil, they brought 
 
HOW THE DUTCH CAME AND WENT 409 
 
 to it no added lustre, nor did they bow its head in 
 shame. In a family distinguished for the extraor 
 dinary brilliancy and attainments of its sons they, 
 by their commonplace and placid temperament, 
 simply served as a background to make more con 
 spicuous those talents which they were denied. 
 
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INDEX 
 
 Aberginians, the, 176. 
 
 Act concerning religion, 281. 
 
 Action, human, inexorable result of 
 causes, 66. 
 
 Adams, Brooks, on persecution of 
 witches in Massachusetts, 181. 
 
 Alaska, appropriation for care of insane 
 in, 60; effect of climate on mentality 
 in, 61; increase of insanity in, 60; Sig 
 nal Corps duty curtailed in, 60. 
 
 Albany, under the Dutch, 389, 390. 
 
 Allen, Ethan, at Fort Ticonderoga, 
 voiced the Puritan spirit, 276. 
 
 Alliances, entangling, 272. 
 
 Alva, Duke of, cruelties of, 120. 
 
 America, aesthetic civilization of Eng 
 land not transplanted to, 90 ; constant 
 change in, 35; contrast with England, 
 at the beginning of the seventeenth 
 century, 72 ; crucible to fuse elements 
 of race and amalgamate them into 
 nationality, 314; crumbling of theo 
 cracy foreshadowed religious and men 
 tal liberality, 370 ; early settlement of, 
 accomplished by English without as 
 sistance from alien races, 311 ; fertility 
 of the soil, 72; haven for distressed, 
 326; individualism in, 295; jealous of 
 authority of royal governors, 295; jus 
 tice in, 349; land of natural bounty, 
 204 ; literary exploitation of, 4 ; loyalty 
 of Germans in, 405; no classes in, 76; 
 no native civilization in, 52; oppor 
 tunity for the individual, 316; political 
 isolation of, 296; political methods in, 
 result of political isolation, 296; politi 
 cal union in, beginning of, 210 ; politi 
 cally differentiated from mother coun 
 try, 296; settlement of, beginning of 
 modern colonization, 86; spirit of 
 broad humanity in, 349; temperature 
 in, 58; thermometric variation, 63; 
 unanimity in struggle for independ 
 
 ence, 393; variety of products due to 
 climatic variation in, 71. 
 
 American character, see Character, 
 American. 
 
 American civilization, see Civilization, 
 American. 
 
 American colonies, see Colonies, Ameri 
 can. 
 
 American colonists, see Colonists, 
 American. 
 
 American development, a phenomenon 
 of migratory movements, 315. 
 
 American generals of German birth, 
 405. 
 
 American history, advancing frontier 
 important factor in, 308; four great 
 epochs of, 42 ; study of molten civiliza 
 tion, 315. 
 
 American home, no sentiment of ances 
 tral roof tree, 316. 
 
 American houses, over-heating of, 62. 
 
 American humor, obvious and broad 
 without coarseness, 74. 
 
 American individualism traceable to 
 Calvinism, 123. 
 
 American influences in formation, 20. 
 
 American institutions, origin of in Eng 
 land, 134; efforts to find other sources, 
 133; traceable to the Dutch, 391. 
 
 Americanism made manifest by Decla 
 ration of Independence, 136. 
 
 American liberality, forerunner of, in 
 Rhode Island colony, 375. 
 
 American mind, the, 69. 
 
 American nation, the, elements contri 
 buted by colonies, 377; seed sown in 
 early armed advocacy of rights of the 
 people, 367. 
 
 American people, the, a natural growth, 
 81; a new race, 77, 213; aptitude for 
 business influence of heredity, 91 ; art 
 subservient to material, 90; begin 
 nings of, 19; debt to Connecticut, 342; 
 
424 
 
 INDEX 
 
 debt to English, 26; dependent upon 
 individual effort, 65; devotion to ma 
 terial conditions, 64; differentiated by 
 climate, 45; early record of, 19 ; effect 
 of clothing, food, and structure of 
 houses on physical characteristics, 61 ; 
 English stock modified by blood of 
 Europe, 77; exploitation of virgin ter 
 ritory by, 64; foreign element aid to 
 new race, 77; founders neither soldiers 
 nor priests, 88; four great epochs in 
 history of, 42; hardening effect of 
 pioneer struggle upon, 65 ; influence of 
 economic system in South upon, 378; 
 men of large ideas, 66; mentally and 
 physically a new race, 20; national 
 standards of, 27; national vitality of, 
 37; no wars of aggression or conquest 
 in early history of, 43, 53 ; North and 
 South contrasted, 54; not hybrid, but 
 new race, 185 ; not poetically inspired 
 in early days, 80 ; origin traced through 
 Virginia and Massachusetts, 233 ; petty 
 strife of, 320 ; physical vigor of, 82 ; po 
 litical isolation of, 45; process of se 
 lection in early days, 82; progenitors 
 of, 88 ; race characteristics influenced 
 by variation in temperature, 54; race 
 of extraordinary intelligence, 64; re 
 sult of survival of fittest among, 65; 
 spirit of 1776 born a century and a half 
 before that day, 136 ; struggle against 
 nature of, 47; unusual opportunity to 
 study as a race, 52; variation from 
 Puritan type, 185. 
 
 American Protective Association (A. P. 
 A.), 286. 
 
 American psychology, difference be 
 tween Puritan and Pilgrim of funda 
 mental importance, 102; effect of 
 Rhode Island colony upon, 376; false 
 premise of, 32; influence of climate, 
 size of country, rainfall and food upon, 
 71; influence of sun and snow, 276. 
 
 American race, created by an obstinate 
 king, 138; influence of nature in de 
 velopment of, 64 ; influence of war on 
 development of, 43. 
 
 American Revolution, folly of rulers and 
 quarrels of Church prepared colonists 
 minds for final armed resistance, 304. 
 
 American society founded on Republi 
 can form of government, 386. 
 
 American social and political institu 
 tions, 313. 
 
 American spirit of expansion and ex 
 tension, 306. 
 
 American thought, effect of Rhode Is 
 land upon, 374. 
 
 Americans, the, a grave people, 77; a 
 natural growth, 81; belief in univer 
 sal equality of man, 79; blend of Pu 
 ritan and Cavalier, 247; called from 
 plow to battlefield, 81; constant ef 
 fort to improve conditions, 268 ; conti 
 nental not insular, 67; divine discon 
 tent of, 268; foreign infusion in, 20; 
 idealistic spirit among, 326 ; individu 
 alism marked characteristic of, 296 ; in 
 fluenced by foreign blood, 77 ; lack of 
 reticence, 26; love of fun, 74; mental 
 influence of new conditions on parent 
 stock, 296; nomadic spirit in blood, 
 316; not a poetical people, 80; not con 
 sciously national hypocrites, 79; not 
 warlike but of highly developed mili 
 tary spirit, 351 ; obtrusiveness of, 78 ; 
 optimism of, 37, 316; peculiarly self- 
 reliant temper foredoomed English 
 rule in colonies, 321; phenomenal 
 youth of, 35; political and oratorical 
 training of, 266; political philosophy 
 of, 261; political system, 271; prone to 
 melancholy, 74; readiness for field 
 service result of Indian warfare, 351; 
 reflect Puritan protest against 
 usurped authority, 136; right to vote 
 and chance to be voted for, 79 ; saved 
 from contentment and physical soft 
 ness by fear of Indians, 351 ; specula 
 tive audacity of, 370; treatment of 
 Indian reflection of Indian treatment 
 of victims, 352. 
 
 Analysis of facts above religious specula 
 tion marks advance of nation, 371. 
 
 Anarchist and fanatic, modern, resem 
 blance of Samuel Gorton to, 367. 
 
 Annapolis, 293. 
 
 Antinomian controversy, beginning of, 
 362 ; reveals Puritan character, 364. 
 
 Antinomians, Gortonites and Quakers 
 mixed in Massachusetts colony, 371. 
 
INDEX 
 
 425 
 
 Aquidneck, haven for all victims of 
 persecution, 369. 
 
 Argument among the Greeks and Ro 
 mans, emotion, 149; among the Puri 
 tans, matter of conscience and educa 
 tion, 151. 
 
 Aristocracy, English, an elastic institu 
 tion, 245. 
 
 Aristocratic oligarchy, in Virginia, 261. 
 
 Ark and Dove, 278. 
 
 Armada, Spanish, defeat of, 119; endur 
 ing consequences of English victory, 
 120. 
 
 Army, standing, 351. 
 
 Art, absence of in America, 37 ; analysis 
 of, 37. 
 
 Art and literature, ancient, 40; Eliza 
 bethan age in, 41 ; result of extremes 
 of wealth and poverty, 38. 
 
 Assembly and town meeting formed 
 public opinion in colonies, 292. 
 
 Atavism, 82. 
 
 Bacon and Newton, 295. 
 
 Bacon, Nathaniel, 267, 293, 383. 
 
 Bacons andLockes, human veins of gold 
 in a dull mass of quartz, 157. 
 
 Bagehot quoted, 35. 
 
 Baltimore Lord (Cecilius), 277, 278, 285, 
 286, 287, 290, 298, 397. 
 
 Baltimore, fifth lord, 303. 
 
 Barriers to American colonization, 350. 
 
 Bavaria, religious persecutions in, 332. 
 
 Bellingham, Richard, punishment of 
 Quaker women, 177. 
 
 Berkeley, Sir William, Bacon s indict 
 ment of, 267; his contempt for the 
 printing press, 252 ; treatment of Puri 
 tans, 251. 
 
 Bible, Constitution of Puritan, 146, 167, 
 364, 365; dictated Sunday observance, 
 153; essential to education of Puritan 
 youth, 162; influence of teachings on 
 Puritanism, 122; left its impress upon 
 the English, 122; popularity with, 
 and appeal to the masses, 121. 
 
 Biblical constitution of Puritan, key 
 note to his influence on national char 
 acter, 147. 
 
 Bigotry, religious, of Europe, 174; in 
 American colonies, 349. 
 
 Birth rate, 81. 
 
 Black labor, 334. 
 
 Blague, 75. 
 
 Blair, Dr., incident of attempt to estab 
 lish college in Virginia, 265. 
 
 Blue Laws, 154, 185, 346. 
 
 Boston described by English traveller, 
 221. 
 
 Boston Common, 166. 
 
 Boston Harbor fortified, 136. 
 
 Boswell, incident of Oglethorpe and the 
 Prince of Wiirtemburg, 327. 
 
 Bradford, account of famine in Ply 
 mouth, 203; description of Maypole 
 practices, 203. 
 
 Brewster, Elder, clothes of, 198. 
 
 British men-of-war in Charleston Har 
 bor, 319. 
 
 Browne, Robert, founder of Separatist 
 movement, 105. 
 
 Bryce, quoted, 36. 
 
 Buckle, effect of climate, etc., on the 
 human race, 51 ; on progress of society 
 and religious disputes, 370. 
 
 Bundling, in Massachusetts and Con 
 necticut, 346, 347, 348, 349. 
 
 Burgesses, House of, Maryland, 287, 298, 
 303. 
 
 Burgesses, House of, Virginia, 239, 262. 
 
 Business methods of Dutch colonists and 
 of Virginians, 392. 
 
 Calvert, George (Lord Baltimore), seek 
 ing harbor for company of colonists, 
 276. 
 
 Calvin, 158, 174. 
 
 Calvinism, 123, 130, 131, 398. 
 
 Cambridge synod, 382. 
 
 Campbell, on Elizabeth s obduracy, 126; 
 on the Englishman s respect for fact, 
 128; on the Puritan sermon, 155. 
 
 Cardross, Lord, 317. 
 
 Carlyle, on the Puritan ideal, 110; on 
 " our thinking," 79. 
 
 Carolina, all frontier, 312; backwoods of 
 Virginia, 308; beginning of, 306; ex 
 ample of commercial spirit of English 
 colonies, 310; frontier of English colo 
 nies in America, 308; physical and 
 moral results of rice growing, 322; 
 split into North and South, 307. 
 
426 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Caste, 78. 
 
 Catarrh, American climate conducive 
 to, 63. 
 
 Catholic Church, in America, character 
 ized by tolerance, 285 ; instrument in 
 development of American character, 
 285; mass celebrated for first time, 
 279 ; non-political in America, 285. 
 
 Catholic immigration to America, 285. 
 
 Catholicism, American, has not weak 
 ened the fibre of American Republi 
 canism, 285; modified by continued 
 immigration from Catholic countries 
 of Europe, 286. 
 
 Catholics, action of Maryland legisla 
 ture to prohibit proselyting of, 303; 
 gave character to Maryland, 304 ; in 
 Maryland constrained to take oath of 
 allegiance, 304; discriminated against 
 in New Hampshire, 283 ; persecution 
 of, in Maryland, 287, 301 ; picked men 
 of Maryland, 304; regarded as enemies 
 of England, 299 ; regarded with suspi 
 cion throughout the colonial period, 
 283; taxed without representation, 
 304. 
 
 Cavaliers, the, effect of political perse 
 cution, 246; illustrious names among, 
 233; ruling class in Virginia, 241; mi 
 gration to Virginia, 243 ; and Round 
 head, no distinction in respect to line 
 age, 244. 
 
 Channing on the long smouldering of 
 the American Revolution, 321n. 
 
 Character, subject to vagary without 
 hardening of discipline, 372. 
 
 Character, American, a reflection of cli 
 mate and political institutions, 78; 
 articles of faith of, 79 ; contradictions 
 of, 77; contribution of Virginia to, 215; 
 debt to Puritan not Pilgrim, 101 ; desire 
 for expansion acquired through Vir 
 ginia settlement, 235; difference of 
 men in " new " West and " old " East, 
 233 ; effect of natural phenomena on, 
 46; effect of political system upon, 
 297; foundation of, in unimaginative, 
 narrow, over-refined, intellectual type, 
 95; friction with governors and Church 
 disputes, 319; fusion of temperaments 
 of English, Dutch, Huguenot, French, 
 
 Scotch, and Irish, 314; German contri 
 bution to, 404; hardened and made 
 firm in Indian warfare, 351 ; individual 
 softness of, inadequate in forming 
 new national mold, 104; individual 
 ism traceable to Calvinism, 123 ; influ 
 ence of religious tolerance of Mary 
 land settlers on, 276; influence of 
 sects and creeds in Maryland, 287; in 
 fluenced by call of the land beyond, 
 308; land hunger of Englishmen not 
 appeased by transplanting, 306 ; mili 
 tary initiative in, 351; no impress 
 of Dutch settlers upon, 379; reflects 
 Puritan protest against usurped au 
 thority, 136; result of environment, 
 56; review of fundamental facts of, 
 212; rude strength of, 320; Saxon 
 strain in, 77; source of liberty of con 
 science and religious freedom, 376; 
 spirit of expansion and extension, 306 ; 
 strength and moral purpose of, trace 
 able to Puritan, 276; traced to Puritan 
 in Massachusetts, Cavalier in Virginia, 
 Catholic in Maryland, 304 ; unaffected 
 by Swedish settlers, 408; wrought by 
 exercise of individual expression, 335. 
 
 Characteristics, American, candor, 26; 
 constant activity and restlessness, 68; 
 constant use of .superlative, 75 ; contra 
 diction in, 78; European interpreta 
 tion of "Yankee," 343; molded by 
 environment, 45, 52; national de 
 spair, 77; nervousness, excitability, 
 63; optimism, 37; physical, influenced 
 by clothing and food, 61; reticence, 
 lack of, 26; self-reliant to obstinacy 
 and full of hope, 74 ; sense of humor, 
 tendency to exaggeration, 75; traced 
 to natural causes, 64. 
 
 Charleston, 324. 
 
 Charters, English, of the colonies, 385. 
 
 Chroniclers, early, ingenuousness of, 85. 
 
 Church, aristocracy and caste in fellow 
 ship of, 127; hierarchy secret of per. 
 petuation of, 128 ; persecution of, 105. 
 
 Church and society, believed insepara 
 ble, 398. 
 
 Church and state, relation of among 
 Puritans, 364. 
 
 Church of England, feeble hold in Amer- 
 
INDEX 
 
 427 
 
 ica in colonial times, 287; persecution 
 of itinerant preachers, 105. 
 
 Church republic, character of New Eng 
 land settlement, 406. 
 
 Church rule, resistance to, gave first 
 branch colony, 338. 
 
 City, 316. 
 
 Civil code, reduced to writing and 
 adopted on American soil, 341. 
 
 Civilization, great movements of, en 
 counter contempt of older institutions, 
 375; three stages of, 376; wheel of, pe 
 riodic revolution of, 23. 
 
 Civilization, American, antagonistic ele 
 ments infused by common resistance 
 to oppression, 96; battled with sav 
 agery, 351 ; constant change in, 35 ; debt 
 to Virginia aristocracy, 247 ; difference 
 between East and West, 68; distinct 
 from English, 41 ; foreign critics of, 25 ; 
 formative condition of, 34; higher op 
 posed to a lower in contest of colonists 
 and Indians, 353; Indian one of the 
 causes to influence, 350 ; new, 408 ; new 
 and obvious, 26 ; new political philoso 
 phy in, 34; phenomenal youth of, 35; 
 Puritan psychologically of first impor 
 tance, Virginia first chronologically ,91 ; 
 speculation as to results if Virginia 
 influence had predominated, 92; with 
 out cross currents of tradition, 296. 
 
 Civilization, English, influence of Bible 
 on, 122. 
 
 Civilized nation, turning point in history 
 of, 371. 
 
 Class distinction, 200, 242. 
 
 Class rule in Maryland, 292. 
 
 Class system in Virginia resulted in aris 
 tocratic oligarchy, 261. 
 
 Clergymen, work of, 330. 
 
 Climate, 68, 72 ; effect on activity of man, 
 65; effect on Englishmen in Virginia, 
 274; effect on race, 45; cold wave, 69; 
 sudden transition of, 62; summer, of 
 Naples ; winter, of Moscow, 73 ; varia 
 tions of, their influence upon man, 59; 
 use of tobacco result of, 63. 
 
 Climatic influence, 56; qualities, trans- 
 mittible through interracial mar 
 riages, 56; variation in the United 
 States, 71. 
 
 Clothes, colors of, among the Puritans, 
 196. 
 
 Cold, mental effect of, 60. 
 
 Cold wave, effect on immigrant, 69 ; ex 
 planation of, 69 ; feature of American 
 climate, 70. 
 
 Colonial ancestry, American, 201. 
 
 Colonial Conference, political conse 
 quences of, 396. 
 
 Colonial life, individual in, 264. 
 
 Colonies, American, aggression not 
 feared, 350; as members of a family, 
 408; contribution to nation by eight 
 earliest, 378; dumping ground for 
 criminals and paupers, 288; each 
 founded for reason and purpose of its 
 own, 275 ; ever easily led ; hard to drive, 
 366; formed as branch of settlement 
 already established, 338; founded with 
 high purpose, 326 ; golden age of, 220, 
 226 ; no effort to incorporate nor con 
 quer one another, 349 ; Massachusetts, 
 Virginia, Maryland compared, 276; 
 Penn s services to, 397; republican 
 government of, 384; same considera 
 tions influenced North and South, 394 ; 
 withheld from war without consent of 
 home government, 317; without manu 
 factures ideal to English merchants, 
 325. 
 
 Colonists, American, absorb character 
 istics of new land, 85; and Indians, 
 352; character molded by Indian war 
 fare, 350 ; claimed rights as Englishmen 
 of English Crown, 383 : commercial ra 
 ther than artistic, 89; comparative 
 comfort among, 202; complaints of, 
 382 ; danger from enemies, 204 ; English 
 view of, 321 ; fear of accession of Wil 
 liam of Orange, 299 ; frontier universal 
 feature of, 312 ; housing of, 201 ; motive 
 of settlement, 84; not divested of na 
 tionality, 381; outgrew their institu 
 tions, 320; permanent character of 
 settlement, 87; rough, boisterous, fond 
 of horse-play, 74; struggle for support, 
 204; term of disdain in England, 265. 
 
 Colonization, English, no colony feared 
 invasion or rapacity from their own 
 blood, 350; in Maryland centred in 
 cities, 325; in South Carolina, 325; in 
 
428 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Virginia, estates not cities or towns, 
 325; method of, varies with physical 
 conformation of section, 235 ; modern 
 political philosophy of, begins in 
 America, 86; Roman and English con 
 trasted, 86; spread through persecu 
 tion in Massachusetts, 365. 
 
 Comity, international, violation of, 18. 
 
 Commerce and love of gain in English 
 man made for nobler qualities in pio 
 neer, 305; in Virginia, 264 ; of England, 
 ambition of every Englishman, 329; 
 with New England and West Indies, 
 developed through Carolina settle 
 ment, 310. 
 
 Commonwealth, transition to Monarchy, 
 politico-religious consequences of, 
 300. 
 
 Communication, freedom of, isolates no 
 section of the United States, 316. 
 
 Communities, older, constantly aban 
 doned to begin life anew in America, 
 316. 
 
 Confederation, Great, the, germ of, in 
 Colonial Conference, 396. 
 
 Connecticut, became strongest political 
 structure on the continent, 343 ; begin 
 ning of branch colonization in new soil, 
 338; colony of allied towns, 339; consti 
 tution, miniature constitution of na 
 tion, 342; constitution, model on which 
 the Constitution of the United States 
 founded, 341; gave compromise of 
 representation to Constitution of U S., 
 342; settlement of, began chapter of 
 Indian warfare, 350; protest of dissi 
 dents against iron-clad theocracy, 337. 
 
 Connecticut and Rhode Island, begin 
 ning of liberty of conscience, 378. 
 
 Constitution, American, see also United 
 States, Constitution of, 148, 150, 172, 
 272, 342. 
 
 Constitution, first written one in Amer 
 ica, 340. 
 
 Constitution, the Puritan, 146, 150. 
 
 Constitutions made for men, not men 
 for constitutions, 320. 
 
 Controversy, means of education among 
 Puritans, 152. 
 
 Conventions, disciplinary effect of, 375. 
 
 Convicts, number of, in Maryland, 288. 
 
 Copley, Sir Lionel, Governor of Mary 
 land, 300. 
 
 Cotton, influence on lives and character 
 of cultivators, 321. 
 
 Cotton, John, 153, 281, 339, 357. 
 
 Court, among Puritans, autocratic au 
 thority of, 363. 
 
 " Crackers," " mean whites " of Georgia, 
 336. 
 
 Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 117. 
 
 Creed in the colonies more important 
 than ethics of religion, 301; of the 
 Puritan, 155. 
 
 Creeds, exotic and mysterious, 144. 
 
 Criminals and paupers shipped to Amer 
 ica, 288; range of offense in "crimi 
 nal" classes, 289. 
 
 Criticism, European, of America, 25, 37. 
 
 Criticism of Americans by Americans, 
 27. 
 
 Cromwell, 108, 263. 
 
 Crown, responsibility of, for colonial 
 quarrels, 383. 
 
 Crown and governors failed to grasp 
 the inevitable import of development 
 of colonies, 320. 
 
 Customs, universality of certain, 34. 
 
 Cynicism, 78. 
 
 Dale, Sir Thomas, letter to Earl of Salis 
 bury, 222 ; opens Virginia to all sorts 
 and conditions of labor, 223 ; inaugu 
 rates individual land ownership in 
 Virginia, 228. 
 
 Darwin, adaptation of species to cli 
 mate, 50; influence of conditions upon 
 physical development, 49. 
 
 Davenport, John, 344. 
 
 Davis and Pate, leaders of rebellion in 
 Maryland, hanged, 294. 
 
 Declaration of Independence, first un 
 answerable assertion that a new people 
 had come into existence, 136; fore 
 shadowed by Hooker s sermon, 340; 
 influence of Calvinism upon signers, 
 124. 
 
 Delaware, settled by Dutch, 407. 
 
 Demagogue, the, 159. 
 
 Democracy, arose from religious ele 
 ment in Puritan colonization, 116; 
 
INDEX 
 
 429 
 
 assumed its most distinctly American 
 features in frontier life. 308; auto 
 cratic rule of Church shaken by, 338; 
 birth of, in Hartford, 341; in Rhode 
 Island colony, 375 ; moral and psycho 
 logical effects of, 34 ; not born in New 
 England but on English soil, 131 ; 
 philosophic principle of, 338 ; progress 
 from Calvinism, 130; seed planted a 
 century and a half before fruits visi 
 ble, 261; spur to initiative, 76; uuor- 
 dained by God, 339. 
 
 Destiny, 10, 12. 
 
 Development, spiritual, 79. 
 
 Diaries, pathos in, 164. 
 
 Dickens, type for caricature in " Yan 
 kee," 343. 
 
 Dignity and power of man increased as 
 tradition questioned, 371. 
 
 Discipline, drastic, of Puritan laws, 387. 
 
 Discontent, colonial, cause of, 266. 
 
 Distances, relative, of colonial times, 
 389. 
 
 Diversions of idle rich, in America, 23; 
 in London, in Rome, 24. 
 
 Doctrine and dogma, Penn distinguishes 
 between, 396. 
 
 Doctrine of equality of man, foundation 
 of Penn s character, 396. 
 
 Dogma, popular abhorrence of deviation 
 from, 281. 
 
 Dogmas and sacraments foreign to 
 Quaker faith, 401 
 
 Dogmatic creed, Puritan submission to, 
 360. 
 
 Dogmatism, deviation from, punished, 
 345. 
 
 Doyle, description of Gorton, 367; on 
 Baltimore s charter, 277; on Puritan 
 blending of civil and ecclesiastical 
 affairs, 365. 
 
 Draco and Solon, codes of, 147. 
 
 Drama of 1776, might have been averted 
 by tact and sympathy toward colonists, 
 266. 
 
 Dress, indicative of rank, 192, 194; regu 
 lated by law in Massachusetts Colony, 
 193. 
 
 Dudley, deputy governor of Massachu 
 setts, letter to Countess of Lincoln, 
 142. 
 
 Dutch, Act of Abjuration, 393; adopt 
 English method of settlement, 388; 
 and English colonists, contrast of, 
 380; civilization, in America, overlaid 
 with English institutions, 378; civili 
 zation, in America succumbed before 
 race with genius to govern, 378 ; colo 
 nies, not sources of Republican gov 
 ernment and American institutions, 
 386; colonies, state of perpetual tute 
 lage by home government, 3#6; colo 
 nists, unambitious and stolid, 390; 
 commerce not conquest, ambition of, 
 386; East and West India Companies, 
 charter of, 386; governors, autocratic 
 power of, 387 ; Irving s description of, 
 387; heroic struggle against Philip II, 
 392 ; in America, no inclination to in 
 dependent branch colonies, 390 ; inef 
 fectual in a new land, 392 ; ineptitude 
 for colonization, 391; learn coloniza 
 tion from the English, 388; mere 
 traders, 379; narrow in maintenance 
 of one religion, 388; overlords, love of 
 ease distinguishing characteristic, 
 391; placid contentment of, 385; puz 
 zling and curious study, 392 ; refugees 
 in England, 121 ; settlers in Delaware 
 massacred by Indians, 407 ; slow growth 
 of population among, 389; stadtholders 
 governed by paper proclamations, 
 384; system of land tenure, 390; trans 
 mitted no characteristic to American 
 civilization, 379; traders, not colonists, 
 386; unfitness for colonization, 389; 
 victory over Spain, last martial effort, 
 386; virile, industrious, undegenerate, 
 yet without influence as colonizers, 
 392 ; West India Company, 380; without 
 vigorous sense of nationality, 380. 
 
 "Dutchmen," colloquial term for Ger 
 man, 404. 
 
 Dutch Republic, little influence on 
 American Republic, 393. 
 
 Economics, modern, continue methodsof 
 Puritan theocracy, 168. 
 
 Education in Maryland, 291,292 ; popular, 
 destructive to theocratic rule, 171 ; 
 universal, opposed to Calvinistic sys 
 tem, 171. 
 
430 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, 348. 
 
 Effingham, Lord Howard of, 262. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, reign of, 117 ; champion 
 of Protestantism, 118; pretext for exe 
 cution of Mary Queen of Scots, 119. 
 
 Elizabethan age, 41. 
 
 Elson quoted, 312. 
 
 Emigrant, either devil loving or God 
 fearing, 231. 
 
 "Emigrants" from New England to 
 other colonies, 402. 
 
 Encroachments of rights as Englishmen 
 led colonists to Revolution, 382. 
 
 Endicott, Governor, intolerance of, 177. 
 
 Energy, 54. 
 
 England, aesthetic civilization of, not 
 transplanted to America, 90; compared 
 with the United States, 31 ; conditions 
 in stimulated emigration to colonies, 
 229 ; eighteenth century in, 31 ; forces 
 of progress and reaction, 295; growth 
 of criminal class in, 229; military ser 
 vice, church, and bar gave distinction 
 as well as politics, 297 ; no cessation of 
 Sunday labor, 155 ; of Cromwell, a re 
 public, 384; two schools of political 
 thought, 295; unconsciously incited 
 colonists to rebellion, 261 ; vain hope of 
 Virginia s support for Restoration, 
 271 ; yardstick of comparison for Amer 
 ica, 26. 
 
 English, achievement, era of, 118; ad 
 venturers looked to Georgia for divi 
 dends, 329; and Dutch colonies, popu 
 lation compared, 389; and Dutch 
 colonists, contrast of rights, 386; and 
 French Revolutions, methods of, in 
 dicative of racial differentiation, 128; 
 aristocracy, an elastic institution, 245; 
 as colonizers, 87; blinded by conceit, 
 267; character, 128; effect of liberty of 
 conscience in Rhode Island on, 376; 
 civilization, overlaid transient cus 
 toms of Dutch, 378; civilization, stable 
 condition of, 33; civilization, trans 
 mission to American colonies, 32; im 
 minent sense of personal liberty, 361 ; 
 colonial policy, 325 ; colonies, Georgia 
 most discontented of, 335; colonies, 
 power in charters of, 385; colonies, 
 stern methods of, 388 ; colonists, defi 
 
 nite revolt against oppression, 393; 
 colonists, demanded safeguards and 
 political freedom of Englishmen in 
 England, 382 ; colonists, effect of Amer 
 ican climate on, 73; colonists in Vir 
 ginia, effect of climate on, 274; colo 
 nists, laws expression of own require 
 ments, 387 ; colonists, political ties with 
 England, 380; colonists, transition 
 from towns and villages to wilderness, 
 72; influence on America, 26; insular 
 ity, 265 ; mind taught cunning of sav 
 age in America, 352; moral strength 
 became political force in America, 
 131 ; occupation of New York changed 
 land tenure, 390; politics, corruption 
 of, 27; quality of assimilation, 135; 
 resistance to fact, not to phantom of 
 abstract thought, 128 ; rule in America, 
 weakness of, 320 ; sovereign beheaded, 
 assertion of rights of people, 384 ; sov 
 ereign,. colonies lost to, for infringe 
 ment of rights as Englishmen, 384; 
 statesmen made no provision for ex 
 pansion of colonies, 320. 
 
 English colonization, judicious mixture 
 of theology and greed, 93. 
 
 Englishmen, in America, 33; adapta 
 tion to extremes of temperature, 62; 
 comparison with Latin, Celt, and Teu 
 ton, 305; gradually casts off political 
 traditions of England, 271 ; imperious 
 demand for self-government, 390; in 
 Connecticut, marked individuality of, 
 342 ; in England, part of dynastic and 
 military forces, 296; in Massachusetts 
 no different from Englishman in Lon 
 don, 175; in Virginia and Massachu 
 setts from the same social stratum, 
 217; loses his insularity, 67; mental at 
 titude toward injustice, that of Eng 
 lishmen in England, 381 ; perpetuated 
 rights and privileges won in England, 
 298 ; phlegmatic yet possessed of desire 
 for adventure, 305. 
 
 English people, the, their power unreal 
 ized until the rebellion, 131 ; evolution 
 from serfdom to warrior for spiritual 
 freedom, 132. 
 
 English politics, corruption of, 27, 28, 29, 
 30. 
 
INDEX 
 
 431 
 
 English race, ambition rises above smug 
 complacency, 268. 
 
 Entail and primogeniture, 248, 261. 
 
 Entangling alliances, birth of a national 
 polity, 272. 
 
 Enterprise, fertility of soil promotes, 58. 
 
 Enthusiasm, strength of great social 
 movements, 376. 
 
 Environment, affects transplanted race, 
 47 ; effect of, 56 ; effect on Englishman s 
 political traditions, 271 ; modifies char 
 acter, 56. 
 
 Equality of man, Penn s doctrine of, 
 3%. 
 
 Estates in Dutch colony compared with 
 manorial system of Virginia and Mary 
 land, 390. 
 
 Europe, filled up reservoir of American 
 population with emigrant stream, 315; 
 spirit of, in colonial times, 349; wars 
 in, following English settlement of 
 America, 44. 
 
 European criticism of America, 25, 37. 
 
 European powers fought their battles in 
 America, 317. 
 
 European writers, attitude of, toward 
 America, 24. 
 
 Evolution, animal, vegetable, and na 
 tional, 20. 
 
 Exaggeration, a national weakness, 74; 
 reason for in America, 75. 
 
 Exeter, founded by followers of Anne 
 Hutchinson, 406. 
 
 Experience, channel of knowledge for 
 race as for individual, 21 ; futility of, 
 22. 
 
 Extravagance, emotional and physical 
 and material hatred of, by Puritan, 399. 
 
 Extremists in intellectual liberty, reac 
 tion from theocracy, 372. 
 
 Faith, Quaker, simplicity of, 401. 
 
 Families, 316. 
 
 Farmer and agricultural labor, 59. 
 
 Federation of independent towns by 
 wanderers from Massachusetts, 341. 
 
 Ferrero quoted, 40. 
 
 Fertility of American soil, spirit of en 
 terprise due to, 58. 
 
 Fisher, Mary, 177. 
 
 Fiske quoted, 304, 308, 368. 
 
 Fletcher, suggested political liberty to 
 Dutch, 385. 
 
 Food, scarcity of, in Plymouth colony, 
 203. 
 
 Foreign blood, fusion of, in South Caro 
 lina foreshadowed national absorption 
 of races a century later, 314 ; tinctured 
 rather than colored English in South 
 ern colonies, 402. 
 
 Foreigner, his advantage in writing 
 history, 15; his influence in America, 
 20, 77; absorbed by English, 134; rapid 
 merging of, in America, 58. 
 
 " Foreigners," colonists so considered 
 by Englishmen, 265. 
 
 Formalism, absence of, in Quaker faith, 
 401. 
 
 Formalistic religion, most impeditive in 
 civilized progress, 370. 
 
 Formulas, New England s first protest 
 against, 358. 
 
 Fox, eloquence converted William Penn 
 to Quakerism, 397; teachings of, domi 
 nating forces in Pennsylvania, 400. 
 
 Foxe s Book of Martyrs, 121. 
 
 Freedom and Catholicism judged in 
 compatible in English view, 299. 
 
 Freedom of religious belief brought in 
 genious moral codes, 372. 
 
 French aggression, first measures to 
 repel, 396. 
 
 French as colonizers, 87. 
 
 Frontier, first extended by formation of 
 branch colony, 338; life in, more ro 
 mantic and more sordid than on sea 
 board, 308: life in North Carolina, 312; 
 men lived in terror of Indian, 353 ; per 
 petual condition in American history, 
 309; value of advancing, 308. 
 
 Fun, 74. 
 
 Furniture, "genuine colonial," 201; 
 later importation from England, 203. 
 
 General Court at Hartford, 340. 
 Generals, American, of German birth, 
 
 405. 
 George III misread the success of the 
 
 colonies, 266; indictment of, 267. 
 Georgia, alluring picture of commercial 
 
 possibilities, 330; charter, 331; contest 
 
 for introduction of black labor, 334; 
 
432 
 
 INDEX 
 
 " Crackers," 335; failure of , 336 ; mili 
 tary outpost between English and 
 Spanish possessions, 329, 331; neither 
 schools nor literature in, 336; original 
 plan of, 329; paupers in England not 
 regenerated by fresh start in, 332; 
 quarrel with Spain, 332; romantic in 
 terest in founding as refuge for un 
 fortunates, 326 ; scheme of settlement 
 had patronage of Church and society, 
 330; Scotch in, 332; slave labor pro 
 hibited, 331; thriftlessness, crime, and 
 lawlessness in, 336; trustees surrender 
 charter, 335 ; Utopia in new world, 335. 
 
 German colonists loyal to Republic, 405 ; 
 contribution to American character, 
 404; element in Pennsylvania, 403; 
 immigrant in America, characteris 
 tics of, 404; immigration, motives of, 
 404; in American army, 405; Palatines, 
 Maryland s first immigrants, 403; stat 
 ure of Americans compared with, 49. 
 
 God and mammon, copartnership in 
 motive of colonization, 329. 
 
 God instead of priest, judge, in eyes of 
 Quaker, 401. 
 
 God made man, but man made the State 
 beyond Puritan grasp, 365. 
 
 Goodman Hunt and wife, banishment 
 of, 345. 
 
 Gorton, Samuel, 367, 368, 369, 371. 
 
 Government, machinery of, 263. 
 
 Governors, colonial, character of, 265. 
 
 Governors, royal, 263, 295, 318. 
 
 Grand Model, the, constitution of John 
 Locke, 307. 
 
 Grand Remonstrance, the, Declaration 
 of Independence of Puritans in Eng 
 land, 384. 
 
 Gravity, 77. 
 
 Greatness, America s, Cavalier s share 
 in, 233; material aspiration and attain 
 ment, 64. 
 
 Greeks and Romans, spell of oratory 
 among, 149. 
 
 Green quoted, 122, 123, 130. 
 
 Grigsby, Hugh Blair, pictures Cavalier 
 as " slave," 226. 
 
 Growth, mental, wrought by slow and 
 gradual change, 14. 
 
 Growth, of a people, 19; of a race, 21. 
 
 Habits, the nature of man himself, 62. 
 
 Harding, William, in case against Good 
 man Hunt and wife, 345. 
 
 Hartford, colony of, bigotry in, rare, 
 346; counterpart of Plymouth Pil 
 grims, 344; settlement of, 337; suffrage 
 in, 345. 
 
 Hatred, achievements founded upon, 
 104. 
 
 Heat, 54; effects of, mentally and physi 
 cally, 62; influences on character of 
 labor employed, 322 ; physiological ef 
 fects, 63 ; suffering caused by, 62. 
 
 Heresiarchs, treatment of, in America 
 and England, 356. 
 
 Heretic, abomination of all creeds, 279 ; 
 extermination of, a matter of con 
 science, 281; hatred of, enjoined by 
 assiduous teachings of centuries, 281 ; 
 sole refuge in America, Maryland, 281. 
 
 Heroic era of prowess in conflict of colo 
 nist and Indian, 352. 
 
 Historians, American, anti-Puritan, 211. 
 
 Historians, visualizing past by present 
 light, 383. 
 
 Historical movements, imperceptible 
 influence of, 127. 
 
 Historical psychologist, difficulties of, 
 36. 
 
 Historical psychology, comparison as 
 basis of, 36 ; study of motives and re 
 mote causes, 66. 
 
 History, nothing miraculous or haphaz 
 ard in, 21; perennially weaves same 
 pattern, 248 ; perspective of, value and 
 limitations, 97; present reproduces 
 past, 27; repetition of errors in, 22; 
 turning point of, 119; wheel of, 22, 121, 
 157, 365; written on palimpsest, 21. 
 
 Hoar, Senator, on Bradford s History, 
 203 ; on difference between Puritan and 
 Pilgrim, 100; simile of Pilgrim and 
 Mayflower, 103. 
 
 Holland, provinces of, divided in ambi 
 tion to detriment of single Common 
 wealth, 394. 
 
 Holmes, Obadiah, whipping of, 172. 
 
 Home, as now conceived creation of the 
 Puritan, 154. 
 
 Homogeneity of English race in America, 
 402. 
 
INDEX 
 
 433 
 
 Hooker, Thomas, 171; finds supporters 
 in belief in democracy, 338 ; leader of 
 migration to Connecticut, 339; sermon, 
 foreshadowing basic truths of Decla 
 ration of Independence, 340. 
 
 Hospitality, origin of bundling in New 
 England, 347. 
 
 House of Commons, assertion of rights 
 against king prototype of colonial re 
 bellion, 294; power of Puritans cur 
 tailed in, 127. 
 
 House of Representatives, 342. 
 
 Huguenots, 307, 402. 
 
 Human action proved by Bible among 
 Puritans, 365. 
 
 Hume quoted, 156. 
 
 Humor, 74, 75. 
 
 Hutchinson, Anne, 358, 359, 362, 363, 364. 
 
 Hutchinson, Colonel, memoirs of, 187, 
 190. 
 
 Hypocrisy, national, 79. 
 
 Iced water, climatic explanation of use 
 in America, 63. 
 
 Idealism, of Americans, 17. 
 
 Idle Rich, 23. 
 
 Imagination, 72, 74, 95. 
 
 Immigration, beginning of, 311; Ger 
 man, 404; in colonies, 402; in New 
 York and Pennsylvania, 402; interco 
 lonial, 315; religious refugees, changed 
 to adventurers and commerce seekers, 
 404. 
 
 Imprisonment for debt in England, 328. 
 
 Indentured servants in Virginia, 224. 
 
 Independence, Dutch, meant change of 
 rulers; English, self-government, 393; 
 gift of English, 379; New Haven colo 
 nists assume, as inherent right, 344; 
 modern conception of, unknown to 
 Puritans, 383; of American colonies, 
 350. 
 
 Indians, cant of solicitude for, 95; ex 
 termination of , inevitable, 353; fear of, 
 saved American colonist from physi 
 cal softness, 351 ; killing of, by Puritans 
 explained, 183; made the colonist a 
 good soldier, 351 ; respect for enemy in 
 ratio to cruelty displayed, 352; slaves 
 in South Carolina, 317; stimulated 
 qualities in colonists, 379; subordinate 
 
 cause to influence American civiliza 
 tion, 350; taught his cunning to Eng 
 lishman, 352 ; torture of white captives, 
 175; warfare in America, 350; warfare 
 left lasting mark on character of colo 
 nists, 350. 
 
 Indifference, 78. 
 
 Indigo supplanted by cotton in South 
 Carolina, 321. 
 
 Individualism, American, in early days, 
 65 ; natural progression of that already 
 developed in England, 295. 
 
 Initiative, 76; how developed, 64. 
 
 Inquiry, spirit of, turning point in his 
 tory of nation, 371. 
 
 Insanity among women in Western farm 
 houses, 59; caused by isolation. 59; in 
 Alaska, 60; inciting cause of, 61. 
 
 Institutions, cohesive strength of, on 
 community, 375. 
 
 Intelligent tyranny of Puritan colonists, 
 387. 
 
 Irish Catholics in America, 285. 
 
 Irish emigration, beginning of, 402. 
 
 Irish Tories sent to Virginia, 224. 
 
 Irving, on Dutch governors of New 
 Netherlands, 387; on illegitimacy and 
 bundling, 348. 
 
 James I, his obduracy lays foundation 
 for Puritan America, 138. 
 
 Jamestown, controlling object of settle 
 ment, 92; founded, 215. 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas, 254. 
 
 Jenkins, Captain, 333. 
 
 Johnson, proprietary governor of South 
 Carolina deposed, 318. 
 
 Juries forbidden in New Haven, 345. 
 
 Justice, marked spirit of, in America, 
 349; mockery of court trial among 
 Puritans, 357 ; robbed of terror in colo 
 nial life, 264. 
 
 Know-Nothingism, political influence 
 of, 286. 
 
 Labor, 160; false doctrine of, in South 
 Carolina, 323 ; free white, under stigma 
 where slavery thrives, 289. 
 
 Labor legislation, beginning of, in Puri 
 tan Sunday, 160. 
 
434 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Land hunger made Englishmen coloniz 
 ers and conquerers, 305. 
 
 Landing place of English in New Eng 
 land, sentiment of, 408. 
 
 Landowners, large, created by feudal 
 and patriarchal states of society, 291. 
 
 Latimer s prophecy, 117. 
 
 Law, advance from unwritten law to 
 formal codification, 146 ; basis of civil 
 ized society, 146; codes of Draco and 
 Solon interpret distinct phases in 
 Athenian development, 147; colonial, 
 although harsh in light of modern 
 liberality, was in tune with spirit of 
 time, 270; faulty but conscientious, 
 387; framed by settlers themselves, 
 386; in rudimentary state, customs 
 and traditions take the place of, 146; 
 juries forbidden in New Haven, 345; 
 reflect mentality of creators, 147. 
 
 Law courts, parody of justice among 
 Puritans, 357. 
 
 Laws to guard against temptations of 
 the flesh, 346. 
 
 Leaders, Puritan, conscientiously con 
 tentious, 355. 
 
 Legislation for the benefit of British 
 merchant, 266. 
 
 Leisler, Jacob, 395. 
 
 Leroy-Beaulieu quoted, 59, 148. 
 
 Lexington and Bunker s Hill, no imme 
 diate poetical celebration of, 80. 
 
 Lexington and Concord, 137. 
 
 Liberal thinkers among conglomeration 
 of sects, 371. 
 
 Liberality, distinction of Roger Wil 
 liams, 354. 
 
 Liberty, common goal of Puritan and 
 Cavalier, 246. 
 
 Liberty and license, distinction of, 373. 
 
 Locke, John, 307. 
 
 Low, on Parliamentary Elections, 29. 
 
 Lowell, Holmes, Emerson, Hawthorne, 
 Whittier, 209. 
 
 Luther, belief in witchcraft, 180; preem 
 inently human, 158. 
 
 Lyon, Hannah, 194. 
 
 Lynching, 31. 
 
 Macaulay on English aristocracy, 245 ; on 
 Puritanism, 130. 
 
 Machinery of government, 263. 
 
 Manorial system, the, in Maryland, 290. 
 
 Marblehead, survival of bundling in, 
 348. 
 
 Marmalet-Madames, romance in Puritan 
 times, 166. 
 
 Marriage among Puritans, economic ne 
 cessity, 166. 
 
 Mary, Queen, of England, martyrs in 
 reign of, 117. 
 
 Maryland, 282; aristocratic class in, 292; 
 asylum for Roman Catholics, 298 ; at 
 tempted rebellion in, 294; Catholics 
 predominated among original colo 
 nists, 278 ; charter, 284 ; connecting link 
 between North and South, 275; con 
 victs in, 288 ; education in, 292 ; extraor 
 dinary power vested in proprietor, 
 277; first mention of Catholic priests 
 in English colonization, 278; founders 
 of better calibre than in Virginia, 287; 
 horse-racing and cock-fighting, 291, 
 293; liberality result of compromise 
 between conviction and necessity, 279; 
 manorial system, 290 ; only colony 
 founded as refuge for Roman Cath 
 olics, 275; only place under English 
 rule where religious sects were unmo 
 lested, 280; political views modified by 
 decline of demand for slave labor, 289; 
 Protestants in, 300; Puritan influence, 
 287; religion in, 278; ripe for rebellion 
 before Massachusetts or Virginia, 304; 
 slaves, 290, 292; tobacco, 290, 291; toler 
 ance a matter of expediency and pol 
 icy, 280,285; toleration act, 281; treat 
 ment of heretics, 281 ; wheat, 289. 
 
 Maryland and Massachusetts, analogy 
 in religious freedom as object of, 276. 
 
 Maryland and Virginia, 289, 290, 292. 
 
 Massachusetts, Cambridge Synod de 
 fines relationship toward England, 382 ; 
 colonists held to coast by mountains, 
 235; Catholics and Episcopalians dis 
 franchised, 281; democratic through 
 method of settlement, 249; denied 
 liberty of conscience to Catholics, 283 ; 
 early settlers were road-builders, 227; 
 enforced unity of belief according to 
 intolerance of time, 281 ; first resistance 
 of England, 136; first to found branch 
 
INDEX 
 
 435 
 
 colony, 338 ; gave Puritanism and vital 
 institutions to nation, 378 ; institutions 
 result of town settlement, 250 ; minis 
 ters of, in early days lawgivers as well 
 as teachers, 360; political community 
 on a basis of religious tyranny, 374; 
 Quakers scourged, 281 ; reproduced Ro 
 man city-state, 249; society attacked 
 by Roger Williams, 356; tyranny of, 
 drove colonists to Rhode Island, 373; 
 wanderers from, found first demo 
 cratic form of government in Amer 
 ica, 341 ; wealth commercial not landed, 
 249; witches, 178, 180. 
 
 Massachusetts and Virginia, effort in 
 both colonies to check governors for 
 encroachments of liberty, 266 ; defiance 
 of English authority in both, 246; dif 
 ference between soldier of fortune and 
 austere man of conscience, 95; differ 
 ent physical and economic conditions, 
 226; economic not social causes devel 
 oped distinction, 249; institutions re 
 sult of difference between town and 
 plantation settlement, 250; mother to 
 a race of giants, 377 ; religious differ 
 entiation of, 251; same stock, same 
 ideals, 246. 
 
 Massasoit, state reception of, 112. 
 
 Master and slave, relation of, in South 
 Carolina, 323. 
 
 Material aspiration, 64; spiritual strug 
 gles with, 17. 
 
 Mather, Cotton, 366. 
 
 Mayflower, character of passengers, 88 ; 
 descent from passenger list, 201 ; fur 
 niture and heirlooms, 201; homespun 
 passengers not touched with genius on 
 reaching America, 133; passengers 
 settlers and not transients, 85; record 
 of cargo, 202. 
 
 Maypole in England, 205. 
 
 " Mean whites," maleficent influence on 
 South, 242; "white trash" in South, 
 257. 
 
 Mecklenburg resolution, not precursor 
 of Declaration of Independence, 313. 
 
 Mediocrity, resents a fixed idea, 210. 
 
 Meeting-house, heart of independent 
 state of Puritan, 406. 
 
 Melancholy, American prone to, 74, 77. 
 
 Men, character of, not made by cod 
 dling, 335. 
 
 Menendez, Adelelantado, 307, 317. 
 
 Mennonites and Tunkers, 403. 
 
 Merchants, English, legislation in favor 
 of, 266. 
 
 Merry England, sports in, 205. 
 
 Migration from Massachusetts colony, 
 mixed character of, 339. 
 
 ^Migratory movement, controlled by 
 hope of betterment, 404; from Middle 
 West to West, 317; impulse in 
 America, 315. 
 
 Military initiative in Americans, 351. 
 
 Milton, 188. 
 
 Mind, American, the, commercial in 
 stinct of, 13; keen, alert, 69. 
 
 Ministers, among Puritans, lawgivers as 
 well as teachers, 360; of Church of 
 England, low estate of, 126. 
 
 Minuit, Peter, 407. 
 
 Miracle used to explain Puritan states- 
 mancraft, 133. 
 
 Mixed blood, 56. 
 
 Mixture of sects in Massachusetts 
 colony, 371. 
 
 Montgomery, Sir Robert, 327, 329. 
 
 Morality of intellect as foundation of 
 religion, 401. 
 
 Morals, conventional standards of, 22; 
 early American, reflection of religious 
 bigotry in Europe, 173; modern and 
 ancient compared, 23. 
 
 Mourt, on origin of Thanksgiving, 208. 
 
 Mourt s "Relation," details of May 
 flower cargo, 112. 
 
 Nation, advance of, 371 ; aspirations and 
 ideals assure survival of, 109; in the 
 founding of a, men of gentle nature 
 have no place, 104; unconscious of 
 subtle progress of historical move 
 ment until climax, 127. 
 
 Nationalities, all absorbed into the Eng 
 lish, 134; merging of, 58. 
 
 Nationality, sense of, in English and 
 Dutch, 379. 
 
 Nature, character affected by, 73; com 
 pelling or relaxing effect of man ac 
 cording to climate, 65; effect of, on 
 the pioneer, 83; from Puritan point of 
 
436 
 
 INDEX 
 
 view, 83; human, fundamentally un 
 changed, 22 ; influence of, on American 
 race development, 64; mechanical pro 
 cess of, 22; never ending war with 
 man, 73 ; struggle against, 47. 
 
 Natural law, fallacy of, 33. 
 
 Natural phenomena, effect on American, 
 46. 
 
 Naval warfare between English and 
 Spanish colonists in America, 333. 
 
 Navigation Act, 219, 310. 
 
 Neal, estimates money transferred to 
 American colonies, 113; tribute to 
 character of Puritan emigrant, 115. 
 
 Negroes, 323, 379. 
 
 New Amsterdam, variety of languages 
 in streets of, 403. 
 
 Newcastle, Duke of, 30. 
 
 New England, alien element in, 402; 
 birth rate in, 402; carriages in Boston, 
 221; climate, benefit to colonists, 69; 
 colonists, fecund people, 402; colonists 
 not miraculously transformed in 
 crossing Atlantic. 133; disapproval of 
 Catholics persisted after colonial 
 period, 283; disregard of periodical 
 fast and feast days in, 208; earliest 
 protest against formulas, 358; effect 
 of climate upon settlers, 63; gay circle 
 around governors, 221; ground con 
 tested by aborigines, 351 ; immigration 
 from, recognized as desirable by South 
 Carolina, 314; its people lived in city 
 and settlement, 220, 226 ; Maypole ob 
 servances, 206; migration from, 316; 
 miniature court in Boston, 221; people 
 of, homogeneous race and fecund, 402 ; 
 Puritanism, in essence a form of slav 
 ery, 400 ; search for lucrative trade re 
 sponsible for first colony in North 
 Carolina, 306; settlement, church re 
 public, 406; war code, same as that 
 observed in Old England, 182; wolf 
 baiting, 206. 
 
 New Englanders, " Yankees," 343. 
 
 New England and Virginia, correspond 
 ence of time and cause of settlement 
 and population, 243. 
 
 New Englander and Virginian, tradi 
 tional contrast, 220. 
 
 New Hampshire, 366, 406, 408. 
 
 New Haven, founded, 343; formed by 
 union of smaller towns, 344; laws of, 
 346 ; suffrage confined to church mem 
 bers, 345; theocratic government of, 
 345. 
 
 New Jersey, 408. 
 
 New Netherlands, no asylum for creeds, 
 388; no loyalty to home country, 380; 
 soil cultivated by white labor, 391. 
 
 New race, the, physical and spiritual de 
 velopment, 79. 
 
 Newspapers, 74, 292; their attacks on 
 public men, 77; unconscious humor of, 
 76; vocabulary of superlatives, 74. 
 
 New York, alien element in population 
 of, 402 ; Dutch colony of, without im 
 press on American nation, 378; lan 
 guages spoken in, 403. 
 
 New York and Pennsylvania, father 
 and tutor to American race, 377. 
 
 Neman s Land, 307. 
 
 Non-conformism, influenced character 
 more than all other religio-social 
 movements, 398. 
 
 Non-conformists, all sects included in, 
 sprang from same source, 398. 
 
 North Carolina, character of settlers, 
 309 ; first to throw off British authority, 
 313 ; frontier settlement, 312 ; immigra 
 tion other than English, 311 ; isolated 
 and backwoods settlement, 325; odds 
 and ends of humanity in settlement 
 typical of perpetual migration in 
 America, 315; taxes remitted, 309; 
 turmoil in, 311. 
 
 Nullification, doctrine of, 319. 
 
 Oglethorpe, James, 327, 330, 333. 
 
 Oligarchy, 375. 
 
 Opinions, disturbed and destroyed by 
 civilization s march, 371. 
 
 Oppression of court and governor in 
 English colonies, 384. 
 
 Oratory, American, traced to early dis 
 cussion and protest against England, 
 266. 
 
 Papacy, 395. 
 
 Papist, Protestant, Jew, and Turk, posi 
 tion of, in Roger Williams s ideal Com 
 monwealth, 373. 
 
INDEX 
 
 437 
 
 Parliament, struggle with king, 262. 
 
 Parliamentary Commissioners recognize 
 Virginia s right to regulate her taxa 
 tion, 263. 
 
 Parliamentary Government, develop 
 ment of, in England, 294. 
 
 Patriotism, birth in Virginia, 273. 
 
 Patroons, great estates of, in Dutch 
 colonies, 390. 
 
 Peasantry, white, absence of, in America, 
 238. 
 
 Penn, William, as administrator, 397; 
 as city builder, 400; as diarist, 397; 
 character of, 396; conversion of, 397; 
 doctrine of man, 396; foremost among 
 the colony builders, 397; ideals main 
 tained, 396; letters, essays, pamphlets 
 of, 397; religious enthusiast, 397, 399; 
 resemblance to Baltimore, 396; self- 
 revelation, 397. 
 
 Pennsylvania, alien element in popula 
 tion of, 402; brought to support of 
 Declaration of Independence by Ger 
 man element, 405; " Dutchmen," slow 
 ly assimilated by English, 404; early 
 history of, redeemed by personality of 
 Penn, 379; intolerance of Catholics, 
 283 ; motive of founder, 396. 
 
 Pennsylvania and Maryland, religious 
 liberality compared, 396. 
 
 Pennsylvania and New York, only colo 
 nies with strong alien element, 402. 
 
 People, the, effect of early influences 
 on political and social institutions, 
 319; ignorance of masses strength of 
 feudalism and autocracy, 167; incipi 
 ent realization of strength of, 118; in 
 creased consciousness of their power, 
 261 ; moral and psychological attitude 
 of, reflects material condition of coun 
 try, 321 ; power manifested in Puritan 
 ism, 130; power of, recognized through 
 Virginia Assembly, 262; reform of, 
 frustrated by Elizabeth, 127; rights of, 
 primarily recognized in Puritan Sun 
 day, 161. 
 
 Persecution, made Massachusetts mo 
 ther and maker of states, 365; Puritan, 
 expression of morals of time, 173 ; reli 
 gious, 174; political, made Cavalier, 
 246; religious, made Puritan, 246. 
 
 Persians, child training among, 23. 
 
 Pestilent seducer, Massachusetts term 
 for dissenter, 367, 388. 
 
 Peters, Rev. Samuel, wrote Blue Laws of 
 Connecticut, 346. 
 
 Philadelphia, dignity and symmetry of, 
 work of Penn, 399. 
 
 Philanthropy proves in vain, 332. 
 
 Philosophy, modern, beyond grasp of 
 Puritan, 365; of Quaker, compared 
 with that of Puritanism, 401 ; partly de 
 veloped, regarded as finality in colo 
 nial times, 383. 
 
 Physical, the, its influence on the Amer 
 ican people, 61. 
 
 Physical research in England, 295. 
 
 Physical selection, 82. 
 
 Pilgrim, agent of fate in gentler mood, 
 103; a Separatist, 212; Brownists, 105; 
 ceremonies, color in, 112; character, 
 circumlocutory flight to America, sym 
 bolic of, 106; confusion with Puritan, 
 207, 298 ; consumption among, 73 ; free 
 dom, liberty, and English speech 
 sought in America, 107; gentleness 
 undisturbed by Puritanism, 349; had 
 separated from Church of England, 
 141 ; inspiration to poet and story-tel 
 ler, 101, 103, 112; insularity of, made 
 stay in Holland intolerable, 106; made 
 slight impress on American character, 
 101 ; merged in Puritan, 102 ; motive for 
 settlement in America, 94 ; no rebel but 
 peace-seeker, 106; not virile enough to 
 found a race, 102 ; poetical conception 
 of, 101, 103; settlers, not transients, 
 87; strain in Puritan blood, softening 
 influence of, 241; viewed as Saxon 
 Heptarchy to present-day England, 
 101. 
 
 Pioneer, 83 ; alert through living in fear 
 of surprise, 351; enforced hospitality 
 responsible for bundling, 347; rude 
 strength of, necessary to development 
 of country, 320. 
 
 Pistol carrying, origin of custom, 324. 
 
 Plantation life, patriarchal and feudal, 
 324. 
 
 Plymouth Pilgrims, counterpart in 
 Hooker s colony, 344; strong in reli 
 gious faith, 73. 
 
438 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Plymouth Rock, literal foundation of 
 new civilization, 408. 
 
 Poetry, 80. 
 
 Poets, 38, 39, 40. 
 
 Political and social history of South 
 Carolina illustrates formative effect 
 of early influence on character of peo 
 ple, 319. 
 
 Political despotism, thrives on unlet 
 tered masses, 167. 
 
 Political distinction one road to fame in 
 colonies, 297. 
 
 Political idealism strongly developed in 
 America, 296. 
 
 Political independence, foreign to Dutch 
 colonists, 385. 
 
 Political liberty, defined by Roger Wil 
 liams, 374. 
 
 Politico-psychology, molded by early 
 colonies, 377. 
 
 Political science, not understood by the 
 Dutch, 390. 
 
 Political system, American, its influence 
 on society, 78; not dependent upon 
 geographic limits, 67; result of reform 
 in church polity, 116 ; sources of, 377. 
 
 Political teachings of More, Hobbes, and 
 Locke, 295. 
 
 Political union, American, beginning of, 
 210. 
 
 Politics, English, corruption in, 27. 
 
 Popular conception of " Yankee," 343. 
 
 Popular discontent in England and colo 
 nies, 383. 
 
 Population of New England fed by new 
 English settlers and natural increase, 
 402. 
 
 Portsmouth and Newport established, 
 366. 
 
 Practical, the spirit of, characteristic 
 of Puritanism and Quakerism, 397, 
 399. 
 
 Press, slight influence in colonial times, 
 292. 
 
 Priests, Roman Catholics, first mention 
 of, 278. 
 
 Primogeniture and entail, 248, 261. 
 
 Printing, influence on popular move 
 ment in England, 121. 
 
 Priscilla and her Puritan sisters in a 
 romantic light, 167. 
 
 Progress and reaction, perennial forces 
 in civilization, 295. 
 
 Proprietors and ministers, carelessness 
 of, stimulated colonists to defensive 
 union, 321. 
 
 Prosperity in the United States due to 
 freedom of communication, 316. 
 
 Protestant clause in Maryland charter, 
 278; intolerance in Maryland, 301. 
 
 Protestantism, English, a political force 
 in reign of Elizabeth, 118; made the 
 common people a power, 131 ; militant 
 form of, 120; safeguard of English 
 liberties, 120. 
 
 Protestants regarded English Catholics 
 as traitors to cause of liberty, 299. 
 
 Providence settled by Roger Williams, 
 358. 
 
 Psychologist, historical, builds on order 
 of consequence not dates, 91 ; distin 
 guished from historian, 66; intrinsic 
 detachment from the present, 98 ; work 
 of, minute analysis of historical fig 
 ures, 97. 
 
 Pyschology, American, foundation of, 
 380; influence of French and Indian 
 wars on, 44; influence of material 
 struggle on, 90. 
 
 Psychology, national, difficulties of in 
 vestigation, 36; effect of conflict with 
 nature on, 45. 
 
 Psychology, new, in America, 33. 
 
 Psychology of a people, reflection of ma 
 terial condition of country, 321. 
 
 Public opinion formed in Assembly and 
 town meeting, 292. 
 
 Puritan, the, ability to concentrate, 210; 
 absorbent mind of, 152; adherent of 
 Church of England, 212; American ig 
 norance of the influence exercised by, 
 9; artistic feeling checked, 90; at 
 tempted to cure abuses, 107; backed by 
 strong interests, 113; basis of Ameri 
 can character, 184 ; belief in restricted 
 salvation, 176 ; Bible his constitution, 
 146; bilateral, 157; birth rate, 82; cap 
 tained efficiently, 113; character, basis 
 of, 98, 144 ; character, owes strength of, 
 to theocracy, 370 ; character, revealed 
 in Antinomian controversy, 364; char 
 acter, trial of Anne Hutchinson typi- 
 
INDEX 
 
 439 
 
 cal of, 363; children, as restive under 
 religious instruction as children to 
 day, 163; Church of England man, 107, 
 109; clothes, 189, 197, 199; colonists, 
 differentiation from settlers in South, 
 399; colonists, no poverty among, 202; 
 confusion with Pilgrim, 207, 298; con 
 sistent regard for Biblical commands, 
 161 ; constitution of, 146 ; contrast with 
 Mayflower and Virginia colonists, 115; 
 court trial among, 357; determined by 
 Biblical constitution, 147; democratic, 
 192 ; denied equality of birth and in 
 tellect, 200; denounced popish super 
 stition and political despotism, but 
 substituted Protestant superstition 
 and theocratic despotism, 168; de 
 nounced theatre but saw no sin in 
 cock-fighting, 293; diction, in tracts 
 diffuse, 151; in judgment, terse, 166; 
 difficulty in determining Sabbath from 
 "evening to evening," 153; dower of 
 grim intolerance, 345 ; dress regulated 
 by law, 193, 199 ; dry, sarcastic, ironic, 
 209 ; educated by controversy and argu 
 ment, 151 ; education at meeting-house 
 and hearthstone, precursors of board 
 schools and factory laws, 168 ; emigra 
 tion, effect on England, 113; essentially 
 a business man, 12; establish commu 
 nity in Maryland, 287; exertion for 
 support necessary, 204; extravagance 
 in clothes censured, 191, 196; but per 
 missible according to income, 194, 199; 
 fabled and true estimate of, 99; fight 
 ing and vengeful elements in, 108; 
 fanatics, 157; fanaticism protest 
 against insincere fanaticism of creed 
 in church, 143 ; ferocity in Indian war 
 fare, 182 ; first Protestant founder of a 
 college at an English university, 188 ; 
 fixed idea of, 210 ; gaming, dancing and 
 theatre under ban of, 207; good and 
 evil attributable to hand of God, 176 ; 
 " Puritan gray," a myth, 198; great so 
 cial law of people s right to education 
 revealed to, 167; harshness of, 175; 
 heart of American civilization, 97, 216; 
 hegira to New World covered 13 years, 
 243; home, tenderness and refinement 
 of, 145; home life, 190, 198; household 
 
 equipment, 203; humor, 209; idea of 
 rational enjoyment was sermon, 154; 
 imagination awakened in struggle for 
 freedom, 144; incident of "Betty, 
 daughter of an eloquent preacher," 
 164; inconsistencies of, 177; industry 
 and determination to succeed, 205; in 
 essence a Democrat, 192 ; in fiction and 
 in fact, 184; in tradition, hard faced, 
 atrabilious, 209; inventory of " appar- 
 rell " for 100 men, 197; key to, in Bible 
 as constitution, 364; left England to 
 reform Church, 141 ; less logical than 
 admirers have assumed, 170; letters of 
 John Winthrop, 189; lip service and 
 divine right of kings resented, 143; 
 living protest before he left England, 
 136; love of color, 198; made by reli 
 gious persecution, 246; majestic figure 
 of, 99; majority in Parliament, 138; 
 men of gentle blood among, 244; men 
 of learning, 188 ; men of rank enlisted 
 in cause of, 186; migration of a people, 
 114; migration of first importance in 
 American civilization, 91; mind, saw 
 no conflict between human and divine 
 law, 365; ministers, 361; misinterpre 
 tation of, 211 ; morbid self-reproach of 
 one youth, 164; movement represented 
 in Germany by Mennonites and Tun- 
 kers, 403; myth of "Blue Laws," 185; 
 name given to forces long existing, 
 399 ; narrow in faith, 158 ; no atavism 
 in talent of, 82 ; number of persecutions 
 for witchcraft, 180 ; obstinacy matched 
 by stubbornness of dissenter, 369 ; op 
 pression, dawning suspicion of, 362; 
 originator of " campaign of educa 
 tion," 167; originator of popular edu 
 cation, 170; participant in all suc 
 cessful settlement, 406; persecution, 
 expression of the morals of his time, 
 173; persecution of Quakers, 172; per 
 secution of witches justified by Bible, 
 179; physical selection forced charac 
 ter into a narrow mold, 82; played part 
 of Norman in England, 101; popular 
 education, 168 ; product of intolerance 
 and fanaticism, of his time, 139; pro 
 genitors of enlightened Protestantism, 
 171; propaganda of education aimed 
 
440 
 
 INDEX 
 
 at despotism, 170; purpose of coming 
 to America, 116; rank and file men of 
 standing, 115; rebel, of profound reli 
 gious conviction, before reaching 
 America, 135; recognition of rest for 
 human machinery, 160; relation to 
 Church of England, 114; relentless war 
 code of, 182 ; religion a part of every 
 day life, 145; religion of, made him 
 builder of new state, 365; resentful of 
 terms Brownist and schismatic, 142; 
 representative of spirit of his age, 171 ; 
 Sabbath, a religious bogey for genera 
 tions, 154 ; sad-color, 190, 195 ; school of 
 intellectual training was discussion of 
 Biblical constitution and polemical 
 warfare, 170; sermons, 163; sombre- 
 colored garments of, 190; sought a 
 renovated England with Bible as con 
 stitution, 110; spirit of, 77; spirit of re 
 sistance dominant in, 109; starch and 
 uniform, 355; " Puritan Sunday " dis 
 tinguished from " Continental Sun 
 day," 156; Sunday of economic, po 
 litical and religious importance, 160; 
 gloom of, 152; not indigenous to Mass 
 achusetts, 152; religious feature of, 
 obvious and over-emphasized; politi 
 cal and economic effects of subtler de 
 velopment, 162; superstitious in keep 
 ing with times, 360; supervised from 
 England, 193; suppression of immoral 
 ity, 206; supreme regard for facts, 165; 
 "take their pleasures sadly," 156; the 
 ocracy, bigotry, superstition, and 
 cruelty of , 171; theological controver 
 sies, triviality of, 362; theological 
 questions among, 171; Thursday lec 
 ture brought from England, 156; tor 
 tured by sermons, 163; treatment of 
 witches and witchcraft, 178; typical, 
 of imagination, 191 ; utilitarian motive 
 in dress of, 197; voiced rights of the 
 people, 161; was not an unkempt im 
 migrant, 112; wolf baiting as sport, 
 206; women, colors and variety in 
 dress of, 194, 196, 199; French styles 
 among, 199; youth had the modern 
 small boy s disregard for elderly pe 
 destrians, 165. 
 
 Puritan and Cavalier, liberty common 
 cause of, 246. 
 
 Puritan and Pilgrim, colonies con 
 trasted, 102 ; confusion of, 112 ; differed 
 as " Hebrew prophet from St. John," 
 100; difference in character seen in 
 treatment of Quakers, witchcraft, 
 heretics, 141; divergence govern 
 mental as well as temperamental, 100, 
 147; hardy pioneers, 112; neither enter 
 tained hatred of color, 112; neither 
 superior to teachings of his time, 141 ; 
 theocratic state, purpose of Puritan; 
 Pilgrim made no adaptation of the 
 Bible to practical government, 148. 
 
 Puritan colonists, religion among, gave 
 birth to American democracy, 116. 
 
 Puritanism, social movement, 213; blind 
 obedience to creed above morality of 
 intellect, 401 ; characteristics embraced 
 under term, 399; conception of social 
 equality and logical path to demo 
 cracy, 130; dogmas and sacraments of, 
 401; elegance and luxury represented 
 by, in England, 188 ; embodied spirit of 
 protest against existing order, 111; 
 first solution of labor problems, 155; 
 in essence slavery, 400; influence of the 
 Bible on, 122; in Virginia, 251; leads 
 to Democracy, 130; political-social 
 movement, 155; polity as well as a re 
 ligion, and supplied a new trinity, 143; 
 reaction against, in England, 210; re 
 bound from, in America, 210 ; recruited 
 from all ranks, 111; struck blow at 
 ignorance, 167. 
 
 Puritanism and Quakerism, 398. 
 
 Quakerism, flexibility to changing social 
 forces, 401 ; spiritual and intellectual 
 revolt, 398. 
 
 Quakers, influence on political and social 
 life of Pennsylvania, 379; lashed by 
 Pilgrims and Puritans, 141 ; Penn con 
 verted to faith of, 397 ; persecution of, 
 by Puritans, 172, 173, 175, 176, 177, 178, 
 281 ; simplicity of, 401 ; treatment of, in 
 New Amsterdam, 389. 
 
 Quakers in Pennsylvania and Puritans 
 in Massachusetts, zealous for right as 
 they saw it, 400. 
 
INDEX 
 
 441 
 
 Quarrels with governors, 320; with 
 mother country, lesson of, 320. 
 
 Rabble, attracted to every great social 
 movement, 376. 
 
 Race, American, developed through 
 frontier life, 308; agencies of change 
 in, often unperceived, 127; a new, in 
 America, 185; a strong people never 
 self -contented, 2G8; causes that pro 
 duce changes often obscure, 136; de 
 velopment traced to wars, 43; effect 
 of temperature on, 54; inexorable 
 mastery of rudimentary, in conflict 
 with highly developed, 353; religion 
 as a determining factor in, 116 ; result 
 of accumulative influences, 135. 
 
 Race development, American, influence 
 of nature on, 64; effect of climatic 
 conditions and physical environment 
 on, 233; study of geographical condi 
 tions, 66 ; traced to the effects of war, 
 43. 
 
 Races, great, are mixed races, 56; sav 
 age, become extinct because material 
 all-sufficient, 109. 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 216, 306. 
 
 Raleigh and Gilbert, 92. 
 
 Rebellion, in early history of colonies, 
 267; in England and colonies, simi 
 larity of, 383; latent spirit of, early 
 manifest in colonies, 268. 
 
 Recognition of rights of others and 
 bigotry side by side in America, 349. 
 
 Reform, develops beyond original con 
 ception, 159. 
 
 Reformation, began to dissipate super 
 stition of belief and slavery, 372; caste 
 system untouched by, 130. 
 
 Reformer, grows subjectively on his 
 own inspiration and from reflection 
 of it in others, 159; qualities of, 159. 
 
 Reformers, petitions to Queen Elizabeth, 
 125 ; Roger Williams and Anne Hutch- 
 inson, 354-3G3. 
 
 Religion, comfortless preaching of, 372; 
 difficult to estimate its influence on 
 nation or race, 1 16 ; discordant element 
 of, 369; formalistic, most impeditive in 
 civilized progress, 370; in America, 
 dread of having new country battle 
 
 field of, 299; in America, failure of, 
 when injected into politics, 286; in 
 seventeenth century, inseparably in 
 terwoven with life, 98; intolerance of, 
 in colonial period, 283; of Dutch colo 
 nies, no liberality in, 388; Puritan s 
 had to do with the individual soul, 
 123; state control attacked, 356; tor 
 ture f or^the glory of, 175. 
 
 Religion and customs, early, of New 
 England, unaltered by alien immigra 
 tion, 402. 
 
 Religio-social movements, non-conf orin- 
 ism greatest of, 398. 
 
 Religious binotry of the Puritan, 140; 
 disputes weakened as progress pushes 
 aside theological element of society, 
 370; freedom drew Germany s non 
 conformists to Pennsylvania, 403; 
 freedom in seventeenth century un 
 known, 278; intolerance harsher than 
 political, 269 ; speculation, 295. 
 
 Religious sink of New England, 366. 
 
 Republic, germ of, 396; in England 
 under Cromwell, 384. 
 
 Republic of Connecticut, 343. 
 
 Republican form of government, Eng 
 lishmen s inclination and training for, 
 384. 
 
 Restoration, the, England hopes for 
 Virginia s support, 271; in Virginia 
 political revolution, 261. 
 
 Revenue, squeezing out of, duty of 
 Dutch governors, 387. 
 
 Revolution, American, accumulative 
 preparation for, in colonies, 319; at 
 time of, colonies had given birth to 
 men of widest attainments, 336; folly 
 of rulers and quarrels prepared way 
 for, 304. 
 
 Rhetoric, last straw in balance of Ameri 
 can rebellion, 384. 
 
 Rhode Island, asylum for dissenters, 
 outcome of theocracy s downfall, 369; 
 beginning of escape from creed, 369; 
 deprived Catholics of franchise, 283; 
 forerunner of American liberality, 
 374; no contribution to- constitutional 
 government, 376; pit of abomination 
 to other New England colonies, 366; 
 political organization founded on re- 
 
442 
 
 INDEX 
 
 ligious liberty, 374 ; refuge from Mass 
 achusetts precise formalism, 373; 
 religious freedom of, defended by 
 Roger Williams, 373; Roger Williams, 
 lawgiver of, 354; settlers of, refugees 
 from tyranny of Massachusetts, 373. 
 
 Ribaut, Jean, 307. 
 
 Rice, introduced into South Carolina by 
 accident, 322. 
 
 Rice planters (South Carolina), prefer 
 ence for city life, 324. 
 
 Ridiculous, the, 74. 
 
 Rolfe, John, 227; marriage to Pocahon- 
 tas, 228. 
 
 Romance, Puritan, description of a lov 
 er s lane in new country, 166. 
 
 Romanism, 120. 
 
 Sabbath, Puritan, enjoyment of, 162; 
 religious observance brought from 
 England, 152. 
 
 St. Bartholomew s Day, massacre of, 120. 
 
 St. Mary s, provincial capital of Balti 
 more s colony, 300. 
 
 Salem disfranchised for complicity in 
 Williams s sedition, 3C4; witches, 178. 
 
 Savannah, beginning under Oglethorpe, 
 331. 
 
 Scharf on early Maryland colonists, 291. 
 
 Schiller, 392. 
 
 Scotch, colony at Port Royal, 317; High 
 landers, in America, 332; immigration, 
 impress on American character, 311. 
 
 Scotch-Irish, 402. 
 
 Secession from Union led by South Caro 
 lina, 319. 
 
 Sectional diversity of character in Amer 
 ica, 233. 
 
 Sectionalism, East and West contrasted, 
 68. 
 
 Self-government, 339. 
 
 Self-reliance, 264. 
 
 Settlers, European, changed appearance 
 of, 49. 
 
 Seymour, Sir Edward, in curt retort 
 voiced epitome of England s colonial 
 greed, 265. 
 
 Sewell s Diary, 165. 
 
 Ship of State, illustration used by Roger 
 Williams, 373. 
 
 Simple Cobbler of Aggawam, the, 198. 
 
 Size, effect of, on ideas, 66 ; temperament 
 modified by, 67. 
 
 Slave insurrection in South Carolina 
 (1740), 324; labor and importation of 
 rum prohibited by Georgia charter, 
 331. 
 
 Slavery, curse of all the Southern colo 
 nies, 335; degraded free labor, 336; 
 destroyed because an economic fal 
 lacy, 256; destructive morally and 
 economically, 255; distinction in social 
 conditions emphasized by, 255; eco 
 nomic untruth of, 256 ; in Georgia, pro 
 hibited for economic and military rea 
 sons, 334; in Maryland, 289; in New 
 York, house servants, 391 ; in Virginia 
 and Maryland softened by contact with 
 civilization, 323; more baneful influ 
 ence in South Carolina than in any 
 other colony, 317; taint of color hope 
 less, 256; tobacco gave economic rea 
 son for, in Virginia, 238; variation of 
 house slaves and field slaves, 50; with 
 held education in Virginia, 252. 
 
 Smith, Goldwin, 381. 
 
 Smith, John, on Virginian emigrants, 
 223. 
 
 Smuggling strains relations between 
 English and Spanish colonies, 332. 
 
 Social level stands at level of intelligence 
 of common people, 167. 
 
 Social revolutions, basis of, 375; three 
 stages of, 376. 
 
 Social system, 78. 
 
 Society, American, cataclysmic forma 
 tion of, 25; European, slow advance 
 ment of, 25; former stages of, 24; 
 modern, has dissociated teachings of 
 Bible from temporal rule, 169; modi 
 fied by non-conformism, 399; repro 
 duction of itself, 24 ; stages of growth 
 in, 31. 
 
 Soil, fertile, influence on character, 59 ; 
 in New England and Virginia, 235. 
 
 South, the, awakening of manufactur 
 ing and spirit of competition, 55; 
 effect of agriculture on character and 
 mode of life, 55; differentiation from 
 North and English-speaking world, 
 378; misinterpretation of settlers of, 
 218. 
 
INDEX 
 
 443 
 
 South Carolina, attempt to reproduce 
 conditions of New England rather than 
 Virginia, 314; dread of slave uprising 
 never absent, 324; enslaved Indians, 
 317 ; first permanent settlement in, 313 ; 
 influenced politically and materially 
 by rice and indigo, 321 ; land grants to 
 master and servant, 313; method of 
 settlement combined Virginia and 
 Maryland, 325; mixed population, 314; 
 no manufactures in, 325; not colony of 
 white men using slaves, but of slaves 
 with white masters, 324. 
 
 Sovereign, English, and colonists, po 
 litical ties between, 381 ; power of, in 
 London and Jamestown, 382. 
 
 Sovereignty of people, control of purse, 
 376. 
 
 Spain and England, relations of, 332. 
 
 Spaniards, claim to Carolina as a part of 
 Florida, 307 ; hold in Northern Europe 
 broken by Dutch, 385. 
 
 Spanish Armada, see Armada, Spanish. 
 
 Spanish courted warfare with English 
 colonists in South Carolina, 317; hold 
 ings in America menace to English 
 colonies in South, 329; testimony on 
 English colonies, 92. 
 
 Spectral evidence, 181. 
 
 Speculation, audacity of American, 370. 
 
 Spencer, on adjustment of internal to 
 external relations, 49; on environment 
 and living body, 47; on physical condi 
 tion and race development, 48. 
 
 Spirit of the age, historian s interpreta 
 tion of, 383. 
 
 Spiritual development, 79. 
 
 Spying, method of guarding dogmatism 
 in New Haven, 345. 
 
 Standish, Miles, 88. 
 
 Staples, extensive cultivation of, in 
 fluences character of people, 322. 
 
 States, comparative size in East and 
 "West, 67; materially important later, 
 made little early impression on nation, 
 377; Northern, physical alertness of 
 people in, 54; Southern, effect of cli 
 mate on vitality in, 54. 
 
 Stiles on bundling in New England, 347. 
 
 Stubbes, Thilip, Anatomic of Abuses, 
 191. 
 
 I Suffrage, religious qualification abol- 
 [ ished in Massachusetts, 172; varied in 
 
 colonies, 345. 
 
 ! Summer, warmer than in Europe, 58. 
 ! Sumptuary laws in Massachusetts 
 Colony, 193; not peculiar to America, 
 200. 
 
 Superstition of belief attacked by refor 
 mation, 372. 
 
 Survival of fittest, a slow process, with 
 out catastrophic climax, 257. 
 Swedes, in America, left no trace of 
 customs or language, 408. 
 
 Tact, English deficient in, 266. 
 
 Taxation, contest over, in Maryland, 
 298; ever recurring dispute between 
 England and colonies, 318. 
 
 Temperament, 62, 67, 78, 83, 409. 
 
 Temperature, composition of new race 
 affected by, 55; effect of, on race 
 characteristics, 54; extremes of, neces 
 sary in wheat and corn-belts, 59. 
 
 Thanksgiving, 202, 208. 
 
 Thayer, Mrs., epitaph to, 81. 
 
 Theocracy, crumbling, foreshadowed re 
 ligious and mental liberality, 370; in 
 Massachusetts demanded banishment 
 of revolters, 349; means of overcoming 
 resistance to authority of, 339 ; opposi 
 tion to, 356; rigid adherence to, by 
 Puritan founders of Massachusetts in 
 vited resistance and led to new colo 
 nies, 337. 
 
 Theocratic rule of Massachusetts sur 
 vived by liberality of Rhode Island, 
 376; state foredoomed as education 
 spread, 168. 
 
 Theological controversies, fallibility of, 
 362; discussion crowded out of Vir 
 ginia by interest in fox chase, 272; 
 heresies replaced by literary heresies, 
 371; tyranny, revolt against, created 
 type of Samuel Gorton mold, 368. 
 
 Threeneedles, Sarah, 165. 
 
 Thrift, New England, origin in Puritan 
 character, 399. 
 
 Thursday lecture, 157. 
 
 " Times, the good old," social divisions 
 in, 200; simple amusements of, 205. 
 
 Tobacco, aristocracy of, distinct phase 
 
444 
 
 INDEX 
 
 of social development of world, 254; 
 continued invasion of forest land, 236 ; 
 cultivation of, created demand for 
 England s surplus labor, 231 ; cultiva 
 tion of, differentiates Massachusetts 
 and Virginia, 247; cultivation of, 
 required large territory, 236; event 
 ually became agricultural Minataur, 
 258; golden age of, 291; greatest lux 
 ury becomes one of world s necessi 
 ties, 226; in Virginia, rice in South 
 Carolina, illustrative of effect of cul 
 tivation of staple on character of peo 
 ple, 322 ; its effect on the character of 
 a people, 290; measure of value in 
 Maryland, 290; social and political 
 revolution through, 226. 
 
 Tolerance of opinion in the seventeenth 
 century, 268. 
 
 Toleration, with Baltimore, expediency ; 
 with Penn, moral conviction, 400. 
 
 Toleration Act, first in America, 281. 
 
 Tory element in Pennsylvania conquered 
 by German colonists, 405. 
 
 Town Meeting, a New England institu 
 tion, 250. 
 
 Tracts of Puritans, heavy, rambling, 
 discursive, 151. 
 
 Tradition, hampering element in pro 
 gress of a people, 370. 
 
 Treaty of Utrecht, effect on slave trade, 
 240. 
 
 Two fruitful sisters, quarrels of, 293. 
 
 Type, new, molding of, 20. 
 
 Types, American, 45; variation of, but 
 not a departure from, in the United 
 States, 57. 
 
 Tyranny, not form of rule, caused defi 
 ance of colonies, 383; of Massachusetts 
 drove colonists to Rhode Island, 373; 
 theocratic, bred its discontent, 338. 
 
 Tyrants, ultimate benefactors of man 
 kind, 104. 
 
 Ultramontanism, unknown in Maryland 
 
 Colony, 285. 
 
 Union, political, beginning of, 210. 
 Union, the, supported by Germans in 
 
 America, 405. 
 United Provinces, little thought of 
 
 founding a Republic, 393. 
 
 United States (see also America, Ameri 
 can, American People, Character, 
 Race, Temperament, etc.), climate in, 
 68 ; colonized by men in faith and pur 
 pose as varied as their climes, 275; 
 church and temporal power, 285 ; effect 
 of climatic extremes on inhabitants, 
 57 ; history of, new path in social pro 
 gress, 84; mental depression of winter 
 in, 59; record of physical achievement, 
 64 ; result of intersectional marriages 
 in, 57; slavery in, an economic fallacy, 
 256; spirit of enterprise in, 58; study of 
 a people always in flux, 315 ; unit in 
 territorial communication as well as 
 politically, 316; variation in soil, 58; 
 variation of temperature in, 54. 
 
 United States, Constitution of, 150; con 
 scientious endeavor to get greatest 
 good from it as code of morals and 
 liberty, 149 ; perennial argument over, 
 not the luxury of idle minds, 149. 
 
 Utopian experiment in Georgia, 326, 331. 
 
 Velasco, de, Don Alonzo, voices Spanish 
 view of Virginia colonists, 92. 
 
 Veto power retained by governor in 
 Maryland, 298. 
 
 Vigor, 54, 82, 361. 
 
 Virginia, absence of town life in, 253; 
 " a fat riche soile," 235; analogy with 
 Rome under patrician s domination, 
 255; aristocratic descent a myth, 217; 
 as acid to alkali of New England, 258 ; 
 Assembly refuses to recognize author 
 ity of Commonwealth, 263; attempts 
 to paint founders exclusively of crimi 
 nal class, 225; broader minded than 
 Puritan, 216 ; Cavalier emigration, 
 132 ; Cavalier, strength of, 241 ; ceased 
 to be place of exile, 273 ; character of, 
 laid in system of slavery and tobacco, 
 215; character of settlers, 223; class 
 distinctions, 237, 242; consciousness 
 of strength causes resentment of Eng 
 land s attitude, 265; contentment 
 transformed adventurers into incip 
 ient patriots, 273; contrast of aristo 
 crats and mental giants with " mean 
 whites," 242; control of taxation, 293; 
 criminals and paupers, 218; criminals 
 
INDEX 
 
 445 
 
 banished to, 224; denied foothold to 
 Lord Baltimore because of religion, 
 276 ; dependent upon slave labor, 258 ; 
 developed by isolation, 250 ; expedients 
 to create towns, 254; exploited for 
 English profit, 219; fallacy of commu 
 nism, 228 ; golden era of, 258 ; governing 
 classes highly educated, 253; growth 
 of black population, 239; " incurable 
 virus of liberty," 162; indentured ser 
 vants, 224, 324; influence of tobacco 
 on economic system, 236; introduction 
 of tobacco of momentous importance, 
 227; kidnapping of blacks a respect 
 able business, 240; land of rivers, 227; 
 limited slavery of white men in, 225; 
 manufacturing, 254 ; modern lawless 
 ness result of early social system, 
 243; more tolerant community than 
 Massachusetts, 269 ; mother of a race of 
 great men, 258 ; no sense of community 
 interests, 250; not a sea-faring people, 
 254; not merchants, 254; oligarchy as 
 well as aristocracy, 247; patriotism, 
 birth of, in, 273; persecution of Puri 
 tans, 252; persecution of Quakers, 251, 
 281; picture of plantation life, 259; 
 political offenders transported to, 
 224; pride in class system, 255 ; pros 
 perity developed life of ease and 
 pleasure, 272; Puritan element in, 233; 
 recognition of right of taxation, 263; 
 recruited from London slums and 
 villages of England, 231 ; redemption- 
 ers, 238; refuses to be pawn in Eng 
 lish politics, 272; refuses to support 
 Restoration, 271; schools, 252; semi- 
 feudal system of land tenure, 260; 
 significance of first assembly of Bur 
 gesses, 239; slaves, 323; social status 
 of settlers, 216; sowed slavery and 
 reaped freedom, 239 ; spirit of adven 
 turer, gambler, speculator, among 
 settlers, 217; survival of intellectual 
 race marred by slow extermination of 
 inferior class, 257; system of master 
 and servant fostered in, 236, 255,260; 
 taxation and royal governors, 263; 
 tobacco as currency, 229, 254; tobacco 
 as inducement for improved character 
 of settlers, 229; tobacco aristocracy, 
 
 254; tobacco became life of colony, 
 232; unmenacedby Indian massacre as 
 community bond, 237, 239; wealth 
 reared on a luxury, 258. 
 
 Virginia and Maryland, " Two Fruitful 
 Sisters," and their quarrels, 293. 
 
 Virginia and Massachusetts, content 
 ment in one, turmoil, spiritual and 
 material, in the other, 272; persecu 
 tions and changes in England less 
 keenly felt in Virginia, 270 ; theological 
 bigotry in, 258. 
 
 Virginians, fondness for outdoor sports 
 and daring and intellectual alertness, 
 391; political genius of, redeemed 
 economic unsoundness of institu 
 tions, 391; speculative in commerce 
 and political philosophy, 392. 
 
 Virginians and Puritans, motives con 
 trasted, 217. 
 
 Virtues, handed clown, 22. 
 
 Wallace quoted, 59. 
 
 "War of Jenkins Ear, events of, 333. 
 
 Warfare, border, training for American 
 soldiers, 44. 
 
 Wars, American, 53; American psycho 
 logy influenced by, 44. 
 
 Washington and Cromwell, analogy of 
 leadership, 383. 
 
 Wesley, John, belief in witchcraft, 180. 
 
 West, condition in winter, 59; gold 
 discoveries in, impetus to satisfy 
 American craving for the unexplored, 
 315. 
 
 Western mining camp, etiquette of, 
 366. 
 
 Westerner, the, 67; unconscious in 
 fluence of environment on, 234. 
 
 West India Company, commercial policy 
 of, 385. 
 
 White labor in New York Colony, 391. 
 
 Wife and child, status of, with Puritans. 
 154. 
 
 Wilderness and Indian, barriers to 
 American colonization, 350. 
 
 Wilderness preferred by liberal Puritans 
 to theocratic rule, 337. 
 
 William and Mary, accession of, gave 
 Maryland Protestants opportunity to 
 assert rights, 300. 
 
446 
 
 INDEX 
 
 William, the Testy, caprices of, 387. 
 
 Williams, Roger, appointed to church in 
 Salem, 364; arrives in Massachusetts, 
 354; banished as iconoclast, 357; cham 
 pions rights of aborigines, 356, 358; 
 character and liberality of, 373; dis 
 tinguishes between liberty and licen 
 tiousness, 373; establishes settlement 
 at Providence, 358 ; gospel of, survives 
 theocracy of Massachusetts and aris 
 tocratic institutions of Virginia, 376; 
 letter defining liberty of conscience, 
 373; picture of commonwealth, 373; 
 splendid sanity of , 371, 375; teachings 
 
 of, light on weakness of theocracy, 
 
 370. 
 
 Wilmington, Swedish settlement at, 407. 
 Winter, 54, 58. 
 Winthrop, John, 114, 189, 193, 195, 198, 
 
 200. 
 
 Wit, 74. 
 
 Witchcraft, 178, 179, 180, 182, 361. 
 Women, insanity from isolation, 60. 
 Writers, European, on America, 27. 
 
 " Yankee," European generality for 
 Americans, 342; resented by Massa 
 chusetts men, 343; wit, 209. 
 
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