BARNES- POPULAR HI STORY OF THE •#■ «§^ 4> ■# M:' int^ ^ ^ Hr w UNITED STATES LIBRARY OF THE University of California, GIFT OF Class UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Gift of PaUUks^ No. ilCd Received Ijd^" ,/ GEORGE WASHINGTON. Barnes' Popular History of the United States of America BY Joel Dorman Steele, Ph.D., F.G.S: and Esther Baker Steele, Lit. D. E y I S E D EDITION From Prehistoric America to the Present Time rriTH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME I NEW YORK A. S. BARNES & COMPANY MCMIV £178 .5» Copyright 1875, 1878, 1895, 1900, 1902, 1903, and 1904, By a. S. BARNES & CO. PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION. nPHE year 1904, bringing as it does the celebration of the great expansion of our country involved in the Louisiana Purchase, is an obviously opportune time for presenting a new and revised edition of this standard History of the United States designed for popular reading. Barnes' History has been found to fill a want not supplied by brief, didactic text-books on the one hand, or, on the other by cumbersome and expensive sets of volumes, which, moreover, have in many cases treated only of special periods. In this History there is told in convenient form the story of our country from the prehistoric America of the Mound Builders to the treaty with Panama, the preparations for the long delayed Isthmian canal and the launching of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis. It is a narrative full of human interest as well as instruction, proving again that history may offer attractions more inviting than those of fiction. At this time particularly there is an impatience with the purely critical treatment of historical themes. Certain of our broader minded historians have themselves complained that research has killed imagination and the critical spirit has smothered the human interest which a history should have if it is to convey a picture of life. Such an interest pervades the pages of Barnes' History. It affords a convenient, accessible and easily read story of our country's evolution, and in these crowded and strenuous days this new edition will, it is believed, be found to have a usefulness and value immediate and universal. 221747 PREFACE. fOUR centuries ago, it was not known that the earth is round, much less that so vast an ocean awaited a Columbus and a new con- tinent a Cabot. North America was then a wilderness, and its inhabitants were savages. The story of its marvelous development is now to open before us. It will be ours to tell it, not in a dull, dry-as-dust style, but with somewhat of the earnestness of the men who cut down the primeval forest ; and the fire of the soldiers who first subdued the heathen possessor and at last drove out the British invader. We shall find every hard fact to be brightened with the romance of real life, than which nothing is more stirring, and every era of our history to be full of patriotic devotion and heroic endeavor. Looking back from our standpoint of the years, we shall see plain men of many nationalities working on, all unconsciously laying the foundation of a new empire ; yet, under the guidance of a Hand reached down from above, building wiser than they knew, and establishing a home for liberty — civil and religious — its first in the wide world. America was discovered just at the close of the fifteenth century. The sixteenth was spent in numerous explorations and attempts by the Spanish, the English, and the French to settle and get possession of this splendid prize of a continent. The seventeenth century was one of colonization. It wit- nessed the establishment of all the thirteen colonies except Georgia. Re- ligious and political refugees flocked to this fair land of promise. The advance guard of civilization planted its standard from the " River of May '* on the south to the " Great River of Canada " on the north. The Cavalier found a home on the Potomac, the Puritan on Cape Cod, the Huguenot on the Cooper, and the Quaker on the Delaware. With a strange misappre- hension of the extent of the territor}' bestowed, and a curious jealousy of rival nations, all the English grants extended westward from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the French southward from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf, and the Spanish northward from the Gulf to the Arctic Ocean. Nearly three-quarters of the eighteenth century was occupied in crystallizing the scattered settle- ments into colonies regularly organized and governed, and in the struggles of the English to get control of the continent. PREFACE. This preparatory work was the ante-natal growth of the republic which was born July 4, 1776. It is therefore treated in the Introduction as a neces- sary prelude to the Hundred Years of American Independence. This relation of great colonial contests is followed by a chapter on the manners and customs of " y® olden tyme." Here are portrayed the curious laws, the quaint habits, and the strange attire, which have now all passed away. Part II., embracing the Revolutionary War, begins the book proper. Here will be found a narrative of those years of waiting and sacrifice during which the nation achieved its independence. The battles are described with unusual fulness, as becomes these centennial times and the interest every locality will naturally possess in the events of its own neighborhood. Anecdotes and inci- dents illustrative of the feelings of the day are freely interspersed. Accurate maps and diagrams enable the reader to trace easily every campaign, while a calendar indicates the important events of every day throughout the eventful struggle. Part III. covers the Constitutional History of the country, embracing the formation of the Constitution and the gradual development of the nation down to i860. This is detailed in four chapters of two decades each, indi- cating as many different stages of growth and characteristic ideas. It has two great episodes : the war of 18 12-14, which secured for the young Repub- lic the respect of foreign nations ; and the war with Mexico, which gave to it New Mexico and California, and let the tides of emigration pour into the El Dorado of the West. Part IV. treats of the Civil War, which resulted in the abolition of slavery and the centralization of the governing power. Part V. narrates the important events which have occurred since the close of the civil war. In preparing this story of our past, no pains have been spared to gather the best material from every source. The most reliable authorities have been consulted, recent investigations have been examined, and the ripest fruits of historical research have been carefully gathered. It has seemed that a narrative so full of picturesque incident and roman- tic adventure, should sweep the reader along as by a charm and a fascination ; that a history so pregnant with pure thought and high endeavor, should awaken the sympathy and arouse the ambition of the most sluggish ; and that a freedom which has cost so much sweat of brain and blood, so much treasure of money and life, should grow inexpressibly precious. Thus may the outcome of this fresh attempt to tell the story of our Independence be a rruer reverence for the past, a purer patriotism for the present, and a more hopeful outlook for the future. T^BLE op CONTENTS. ■^^i^S8C'^^S><2^ PART I -IHTRODUCTIOH, CHAPTER I. EARLY HISTORY OF AMERICA. Prehistoric Peoples — The Mound Builders — The North American Indians — In- pac« dian Dialects — Indian Picture-Writing — Manners and Customs of the Indians — Discovery of America — The Northmen — The Problem of the Age — Geo- graphical Knowledge in the Fifteenth Century — Christopher Columbus — His Expedition — The Voyage — The New World Discovered — The Return to Spain — Subsequent Voyages of Columbus — Death of Columbus — ^The Ca- bots — Vasco de Gama — Amerigo Vespucci— The New World Named 9-26 CHAPTER II. EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS. Ponce de Leon — Balboa Discovers the Pacific Ocean — Discovery of the Mis- sissippi — French Explorations — Verazzani — Cartier Discovers the St. Law- rence — Coligny Plans a Colony — Ribaut Lands at Port Royal — Failure of the Colony and its Fate — Laudonni^re Ascends the St. John's River — Founding of St. Augustine — Cruelty of Melende?^— English Explorations and Settlements — Frobisher — Drake in the Pacim: — Sir Humphrey Gilbert — Sir Walter Raleigh Secures the Patent of Virginia — The Colony of Roanoke — Settlement of Virginia — Captain John Smith — Virginia in the Sev- enteenth Century — Settlement of Maryland — Settlement of Plymouth Colony — The Pilgrims — Settlement of Massachusetts Bay— Religious Disturbances — Roger Williams Banished — Union of the Colonies — Difficulties with the Indians — Salem Witchcraft — Settlement of Connecticut — Settlement of New York — New Netherland — The Redemptioners — Minuits Purchases Man- hattan Island — Administration of Governor Stuyvesant — New York Sur- rendered to the English — Death of Leisler — Berkeley and Carteret Found New Jersey — Settlement of Pennsylvania — William Penn — Settlement of the Carolinas — Charleston Founded — The Huguenots — Settlement of Georgia — Savannah Founded — Contests with the Spaniards 27-66 TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. COLONIAL WARS. New France — ^The Jesuit Missionaries and their Labors — Champlain — Mar- fam quette — La Salle — French Settlements in the Seventeenth Century — King William's War — Atrocities of the Indians — The Attack on Schenectady— Descents on Haverhill and Deerfield — French Policy in the West — Wash- ington's Journey to Fort le Bceuf— His Return and its Perils — Capitula- tion of Fort Necessity — The Proposed Confederation — Defeat of Braddock — Conquest of Acadia — Crown Point — Reduction of Fort William Henry — Fort du Quesne Captured by the English — Louisburg Retaken — Wolfe Lays Siege to Quebec — Capture of Quebec — Death of Wolfe and Mont- calm — Conspiracy of Pontiac — The Long Struggle Cements the Colonies. 67-83 CHAPTER IV. COLONIAL LIFE. The Colonies — Their Extent and Population — Agriculture — Manufactures- Commerce — Scarcity of Money — The First Mint — The Pine-Tree Money — Introduction of the Printing-Press — Mode of Travel — The Postal System — Progress of Education — Founding of Yale College — Free Schools Estab- lished — Education in New York — Education in the South — Colleges at the Opening of the Revolution — New England in the Seventeenth Century — Manners and Customs — Modes of Punishment — Early Meeting-Houses — A Puritan Sabbath — Fast and Thanksgiving Days — A Thanksgiving in Connecticut — The Houses of Early Times — Family Life — Social Distinc- tions — Training-Day — Dress and Jewelry — Sumptuary Laws — Wages — Manners and Customs of the Dutch — Colonial Life in the South 84-130 PART II — THB WAR OF THB RBYOLUTIOH. CHAPTER I. ALIENATION OF THE COLONIES. Injustice of England toward the Colonies— Arbitrary Restrictions Imposed on Commerce and Manufactures— Taxation of the Colonies Proposed— Writs of Assistance— The Stamp Act— Speech of Patrick Henry— The Mutiny Act— Opposition and Excitement of the People— Resistance in North Carolina— Franklin before the House of Commons — General Gagt arrives in Boston— The Boston Massacre— The Regulators Defeated at Alamance Creek— Tea Destroyed at Boston— Retaliatory Measures Adopted— Com- mittees of Correspondence Appointed— Meeting of the First Continental Congress— State of the Country I3I-I45 TABLE OF CONTENTb. CHAPTER II. OPENING OF THE WAR. Movements in Boston — Lexington and Concord — Gathering of the Militia — ^Tke pag» British Flight to Charlestown — Assembling of Troops at Cambridge — Ethan Allen Captures Ticonderoga — Meeting of the Second Continental Congress — Reinforcement of the British at Boston — Martial Law Declared — Bunker Hill Occupied— The Preparations for Defence — Battle of Bun- ker Hill— Results of the Battle— Effect of the Battle on the Patriots- Washington Assumes Command of the Army — Number and Condition of the Troops at Cambridge— Boston Besieged— Events Elsewhere— Affairs in New York and the Carolinas— Foreign Mercenaries Sought by England — Arnold's Expedition against Quebec— Siege of Quebec — Death of Mont- gomery — Canada Abandoned 146-165 CHAPTER III. INDEPENDENCE YEAR— 1776. Condition of the Army — The British Evacuate Boston — Movements in North Carolina — The Attack on Fort Moultrie — Thomas Paine Espouses the Cause — Declaration of Independence — Popular Rejoicing in Philadelphia — Appearance of the British before New York — Battle of Long Island — The Retreat from Long Island — Execution of Nathan Hale— Occupation of Harlem Heights— Operations in the Highlands— Fort Washington Taken by the British— The Retreat through New Jersey— Capture of General Lee — Barbarities of the Hessians— The Campaign in Pennsylvania— Battle of Trenton — State of the Finances— Robert Morris 166-IQ5 CHAPTER IV. THIRD YEAR OF THE REVOLUTION— 1777. The Campaign in New Jersey — Battle of Princeton — Renewed Hopes of the Patriots — Franklin as Commissioner to France and his Success — Lafayette espouses the American Cause — England secures Hessian Auxiliaries — British Plan of Campaign for 1777 — Evacuation of Fort Ticonderoga — Battle of Oriskany — Origin of American Flag — Relief of Fort Schuyler — Battle of Bennington — Death of Jane McCrea — First Battle of Saratoga — Second Battle of Saratoga — Death of General Eraser — Surrender of Bur- goyne — Narrative of Madame Riedesel — The Campaign in Pennsylvania — Battle of Brandywine — Massacre at Paoli — Battle of Germantown — Events about New York — Depredations of the British in Connecticut — Capture of General Prescott — Burning of Kingston, N. Y. — Capture of Fort Mercer — Washington encamps at Valley Forge 196-246 TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. FOURTH YEAR OF THE REVOLUTION— 1778. Camp at Valley Forge— Battle of the Kegs— Light-Horse Harry— Demoraliza- pagb tion of the People — Demoralization of the Army — Intrigues against Wash- ington — The Conway Cabal — Arrival of Baron Steuben — Alliance with France — Efforts at Conciliation — Battle of Monmouth — Heroism of Mary Pitcher — Attempt to Recover Rhode Island — Massacre at Wyoming — Operations in the West — Indian Atrocities in New York — The Johnsons and the Six Nations — Operations in the South — Capture of Savannah by the British — Exploits of Sergeant Jasper 247-269 CHAPTER VI. FIFTH YEAR OF THE REVOLUTION— 1779. Campaign in Georgia and South Carolina — British Depredations in South Carolina — Operations in New York and Connecticut — General Putnam at Horse Neck — Capture of Stony Point — Capture of Paulus Hook — Expe- dition against Fort Castine — Battle of Chemung — Subjugation of the Six Nations — Attack upon Savannah — Exploit of Colonel White — Operations of the American Navy — Paul Jones — Capture of the Serapis 270-282 CHAPTER VII. SIXTH YEAR OF THE REVOLUTION— 1780. Depression of the Country — Siege and Surrender of Charleston — Subjugation of South Carolina — Partisan Warfare in the Carolinas — Exploits of Marion and his Men — Operations of Tarleton — Patriotism of Nancy Hart — Sum- ter's Attack at Hanging Rock — General Gates assumes Command in the South— His Defeat at Camden — Death of DeKalb — Battle of King's Mountain — Activity of Marion and Sumter — Operations around New York — Knyphausen in the Jerseys — Treason of Benedict Arnold — Trial and Execution of Major Andre — Adventure of John Champe — Arrival of Reinforcements from France 283-305 CHAPTER VIII. THE LAST YEAR OF THE REVOLUTION— 1781. Disaffection of the Continental Troops — Robert Morris appointed Financial Agent — General Greene assumes Command in the South — Battle of Cow- pens — Patriotism of Elizabeth Steele — Battle of Guilford Court-House — Emily Geiger — Execution of Colonel Hayne — Arnold Invades Virginia — British Detestation of Arnold — Comwallis in Virginia — Events Elsewhere — Siege of Yorktown — Surrender of Cornwallis — End of the War — With- drawal of the British Army — Washington's Farewell to the Army 306-324 TABLE OF CONTENTS. PART III —THE COKSTITUTIOHAL PERIOD^ CHAPTER IX. THE DEVELOPMENT OT THE REPUBLIC. Condition of the Country at the Close of the War — Conflict of Interests between 9Msa the States — Meeting of the Constitutional Convention — The New Constitu- tion Formed and Adopted — George Washington elected President — The Inauguration — The First Congress — The First Cabinet — Political Parties — Hamilton's Financial Policy — Troubles with the Indians in the North- west — The Second Congress — Washington Re-elected — American Sympa- thy with the French Revolution — The Jay Treaty — Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee admitted to the Union — Declination of a Third Term by Washington — Success of his Administrations — Social Observances — Elec- tion of John Adams — Threatened Difficulty with France — The Alien and Sedition Laws — Death of Washington — Washington City in 1800— Churches Founded in the Eighteenth Century — The First Cotton Mill in the United States — Eli Whitney Invents the Cotton-Gin — Manners and Customs at the Close of the Eighteenth Century 325-353 CHAPTER X. AMERICAN NATIONALITY ASSURED— 1800-1820. Election of Thomas Jefferson as President — His Cabinet — His Policy — Repeal of the Sedition Act — Ohio admitted to the Union — Acquisition of Lou- isiana — Extent of Louisiana — Expedition against Tripoli — Death of Alex- ander Hamilton — Re-election of Jefferson — ^John Randolph — Trial of Aaron Burr — Fulton and the First Steamboat — The Embargo Act — ^James Madison elected President — His Cabinet — Rupture with England — Louis- iana admitted to the Union — Madison Re-elected — War declared with England — Attempted Invasions of Canada — Successes of the American Navy — Military Movements at the North and West — Naval Battle on Lake Erie — War with the Southern Indians — English Devastation of the South- em Coast — Opposition to the War by Massachusetts — Oswego — Chippewa — Lundy's Lane — Plattsburg — Washington occupied by the British— Battle of New Orleans — The Dartmoor Massacre — Indiana admitted to the Union — ^James Monroe elected President — His Cabinet — State of the Country — Colleges Founded — Foreign Missionary Society — American Bible Society — Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama, and Maine admitted to the Union — Re-election of James Monroe — The Missouri Compromise 354-^409 CHAPTER XI. INTERNAL DISSENSIONS— 1 820-1 840. Financial Prostration of the Country — The Monroe Doctrine — John Quincy Adams elected President — Lafayette's Visit to the United States — Mis- souri admitted to the Union — Internal Improvements Proposed — The TABLE OF CONTENTS. Erie Canal — Completion of the Capitol — Death of Adams and Jefferson — pack — The First Railroad in the United States — Andrew Jackson elected President — Character of Jackson — His Cabinet — Wholesale Removals from Office — The Foot Resolutions — The Debate between Webster and Hayne — Death of James Monroe — The United States Bank — The Tariff Compromise — Re-election of Andrew Jackson — Formation of the Whig Party — The Press in 1835 — Indian Troubles — Arkansas and Michigan admitted to the Union — Martin Van Buren elected President — Financial Crisis of 1837 — The Movement for Canadian Independence — General Harrison elected 'President 408-435 CHAPTER XII. CULMINATION OF DOMESTIC DIFFICULTIES.— 1840-1860. Popularity of Harrison — His Death — John Tyler becomes President — Dorr's Rebellion — Anti-Rent Difficulty in. New York — The Mormons — Morse and the Magnetic Telegraph — Florida admitted to the Union— Annex- ation of Texas — ^James K. Polk elected President — The Oregon Boun- dary — War with Mexico — Battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma — Battle of Monterey — Battle of Buena Vista — Cerro Gordo — Cap- ture of Mexico— Peace Declared — Fruits of the War — General Taylor elected President — Iowa and Wisconsin admitted to the Union — President Taylor's Cabinet— Congress of 1850 — Millard Fillmore, President — Dis- covery of Gold in California — " Manifest Destiny " — Opening of the Erie Railroad — Franklin Pierce elected President — Bleeding Kansas — The Know-Nothing Party — James Buchanan elected President — His Cabinet — The Dred Scott Decision — Minnesota and Oregon admitted to the Union — The Donation Law — ^John Brown — Abraham Lincoln elected President — Secession of the Southern States 436-480 PART lY.-THS CIYIL WAR. CHAPTER XIII. FIRST YEAR OF THE CIVIL WAR.— 1861. The Inauguration of Lincoln — His Cabinet — Events at the South — Attack on Fort Sumter— Effect at the North— Surrender of Fort Sumter— The De- fence of Washington— Death of Ellsworth — War in West Virginia and Missouri — Battle of Bull Run — War on the Sea and along the Coast — Letters of Marque issued by the Confederate Government — Southern Ports Blockaded— Foreign Relations — The Trent Aflfair 481-494 TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIV. SECOND YEAR OF THE CIVIL WAR— 1862. Operations in the West — Capture of Fort Donelson — Battle of Pittsburg Land- Mfli ing — Military and Naval Operations along the Mississippi — Battle of Cor- inth — Battle of Murfreesborough — Capture of New Orleans — The Contest in Missouri — Movements in North Carolina — ^The Monitor and Merrimac —The Peninsular Campaign— Battle of Williamsburg — The Capitol Threatened— Battle of Fair Oaks— The Seven-Days Battles — Lee invades Maryland — Battle of Antietam — Battle of Fredericksburg — Indian Trou- bles in the West— Eflfects of the Blockade at the South 495'^9> CHAPTER XV. THIRD YEAR OF THE CIVIL WAR— 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation — Negro Soldiers — Grant's Movement against Vicksburg — Battles of Port Gibson, Jackson, Champion Hills, and Big Black River — Surrender of Vicksburg — Capitulation of Port Hudson — Battle of Chickamauga — Battles of Lookout Mountain and Chattanooga — Scenes after the Battle — Anecdote ol the Third Ohio and the Fifty-fourth Virginia Regiments — Operations before Knoxville — Battle of Chancellors- ville — Stonewall Jackson — Lee's Invasion of Maryland — Battle of Gettys- burg — Fall Campaign in Virginia — Capture of Fort Wagner — Conscription Laws — Riot in New York — Dedication of Gettysburg Battle-Field — Cavalry Raids 53I'-5Sf CHAPTER XVI. FOURTH YEAR OF THE CIVIL WAR— 1864. Grant appointed Commander-in-Chief— Sherman's March to Atlanta — Battles of Dallas, Resaca, New Hope Church, Allatoona Pass, and Kenesa\r Mountain — Johnston Superseded — Hood's Three Attacks on Sherman- Capture of Atlanta — The March to the Sea — Capture of Fort McAllister — Battles of Franklin and Nashville — The Overland Campaign — Battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania Court-House, Cold Harbor, and before Pe- tersburg — Early's Raid upon Washington — The Mine Disaster — Gloomy Feeling at the North — Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley — ^The Meridian Campaign— The Red River Campaign 560-583 CHAPTER XVII. LAST YEAR OF THE CIVIL WAR— 1865. Plan of the Campaign— Cavalry Movements— Sherman's March through the Carolinas— Fall of Charleston— Battles of Bentonville and Averysboro— Desperate Condition of Lee— Attack on Fort Steadman — Battle of Fire 13 TABLE OF CONTENTS. Forks — Evacuation of Richmond— Lee's Retreat— The Surrender at Appo- pagb mattox Court-House — Downfall of the Confederacy— Capture of Jefferson Davis — Assassination of Lincoln — Cost of the War — Financial Policy of the Government— Sanitary and Christian Commissions — The Southern Women 584-600 PART Y — THE HEW ERA* CHAPTER XVIII. THE DECADE OF RECONSTRUCTION. The Inauguration of Johnson — Disbanding of the National Army — ^Johnson's Plan of Reconstruction — Adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment — Con- gressional Policy — Fourteenth Amendment — The Southern States Re- stored to the Union — Impeachment of the President — Universal Amnesty — Maximilian in Mexico — The Atlantic Telegraph — The Fenians — Grant's Administration — Cabinet — The Pacific Railroad — Black Friday — Reunion of the Presbyterian Church — Fifteenth Amendment — The Ninth Census — Annexation of Santo Domingo — The New York Ring — The Alabama Claims— Fire in Chicago— Fire in Boston — The " Back Pay " — Grant's Second Administration — Cabinet — Death of Horace Greeley — Indian Wars — The Credit Mobilier — Panic of 1873 — Patrons of Industry — Admission of Colorado — Death of Distinguished Men 603-620 CHAPTER XIX. THE CENTENNIAL DECADE— 1876-1886. The Centennial year and its Celebration — The International Exhibition — Changes in the Cabinet— Operations of the " Whiskey Ring "—Presidential Nominations — General Schenck and the Emma Mine— Troubles with the Sioux — The Election — The Disputed Returns— The Electoral Commission — Hayes Declared Elected — His Life — His Cabinet — Withdrawal of Troops from the South — Civil Service Reform — Labor Disturbances — The Telephone — The Silver-bill — The Fisheries Award— The Tenth Census— The Presidential Election of 1880— Election of James A. Garfield —Indian Schools and the Education of the Indian— Sketch of James A. Garfield— His Cabinet— Republican Party Difficulties— The Assassination of Garfield— His Long and Weary Struggle— His Removal to Long Branch, N. J.— His Death— Its Effect upon the Country— The Accession of Chester A. Arthur to the Presidency— Sketch of President Arthur- Cabinet Appointments— Centennial of Battle of Yorktown — Mississippi Flood — Brooklyn Bridge Opened — New Orleans Exposition— Standard Time — Arctic Explorations — Important Bills — Tariff Discussion— Civil Service Reform— Election of Grover Cleveland — Sketch— Cabinet— Death of General Grant 621-645 TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER XX. ERA OF REFORM— 1885-1889. 'fhe Development of the Navy — The New Cruisers — The Army — Indian In- dustrial Schools — Indian Troubles — The Public Debt — The Edmunds Anti-Polygamy Bill — The Presidential Succession Bill — The Foreign Con- tract Labor Bill — The Canadian Fisheries Question — Reduction of the Public Debt — Cabinet Changes — The Interstate Commerce Bill — The Captured Confederate Flags — The Centenary Celebration of the Adoption of the Constitution — The " Blizzard " of March, 1888 — The Earthquake in South Carolina — The Government Civil Service System — The Pres- idential Campaign — The Mills Bill — Benjamin Harrison elected Presi- dent—His Genealogy — His Biography — Selection of His Cabinet — His Attitude toward Civil Service Reform — The Pension Roll — Its Wonderful Increase — Corporal Tanner — The Celebration of the Centennial of the Inauguration of Washington— Formation of the New Territory of Okla- homa — Admission of the New States — North and South Dakota, Washing- ton, and Montana 646-655 Summary of Events, 1889-1890 655-657 CHAPTER XXI. CLOSE OF THE HARRISON ADMINISTRATION— 1891-1893. Reciprocity with Brazil — Postal Subsidy — International Copyright — A Cir- cuit Court of Appeals — Closer Inspection of Immigrants — Italian Riot in New Orleans — Complication with Italy — Chinese Exclusion Act — American Registration — Hog Embargo Raised by Germany, Denmark, Italy, France, Austria — Patrick Egan Minister to Chili — Secretary Blaine Resigns — Campaign of 1892 — The Party Platforms — Cholera — Columbian Celebration in New Fork — Death of Mrs. Harrison — Cleve- land Elected — Reciprocity Treaties— Death of Gen. B. F. Butler — Of Ex-President Hayes — Of Secretary Blaine — Revolution in Hawaii — Grover Cleveland Inaugurated — Boston Fire — Business Depression... 658-664 CHAPTER XXII. COLUMBIAN DECADE AND THE CLEVELAND AND McKINLEY ADMINISTRATIONS— 1894-1901. The Columbian Exposition in Chicago — Assassination of Mayor Harrison of Chicago — Currency Famine — Wilson Tariff Bill — Republican Mayor in New York — Free Silver Agitation — The Venezuela Incident — The Cuban Revolt — Filibusters — The Party Platforms — Bryan's Campaign — McKinley Elected — Business Revival — The Klondike — Cuban Diffi- culties — The Destruction of the "Maine" — War with Spain Declared — The Battle of Manila — Blockade of Cuba — The "Merrimac" — Agui- naldo — El Caney — San Juan Hill — Destruction of Cervera's Fleet — Porto Rico — Treaty of Peace — Hawaii — Rebellion of the Filipinos — Samoa — The Census — McKinley Re-elected — The " Boxer" Rebellion — The Allied Powers in China — Capture of Aguinaldo — McKinley Assas- sinated 665-702 TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXIII. ROOSEVELT'S ADMINISTRATION— 1901-1904. Continues Policy of McKinley — Prince Henry of Prussia's Visit — Volcanic pagb Eruptions in the West Indies — The "Trust" Issue — Anthracite Coal- miners' Strike — President appoints Commission to Attempt Settlement — Check in Business Prosperity — Governor Taft Appointed Secretary of War — Cuban Reciprocity Bill Passed — Dangerous Condition of Venezuelan Question — Canadian-Alaskan Boundary Settled by Com- mission — The Isthmian Canal Complications — Louisiana Purchase Exposition 703-712 It**** 1 Frontispiece. Portrait, George Washington. tAcs 2 Columbus in his Study, &c., &c. — Initial 9 3 The Serpent Mound 10 4 The Mounds near Little Rock, Ark 11 5 Indian Symbols 13 6 Specimen of Indian Picture-Writing 15 7 Indian Life 17 8 An Indian Family Moving 18 9 Norman Ship (from the Bayeux Tapestry) 20 10 The Ancient Tower at Newport, R. 1 20 11 Portrait, Columbus 21 12 Behaim's Globe ( 1492) — Eastern Hemisphere 22 13 " " (1492) — Western Hemisphere 23 14 Columbus Discovering Land , . 24 15 A Spanish Caravel 24 16 Columbus Taking Possession 25 17 Tomb of Columbus at Havana 26 18 Balboa — Initial 27 19 De Soto's March 28 20 Portrait, Jacques Cartier 28 21 Map of Early American Discoveries 29 22 Portrait, Admiral Coligny 29 23 Old Gateway at St. Augustine, Florida 30 24 Raleigh introduces Tobacco into England 32 25 The Deserted Colony of Roanoke 33 26 The Ruins at Jamestown 34 27 Smith Explaining his Compass to the Indians 35 28 Pocahontas 36 29 Selling Wives to the Planters 38 30 Drummond brought before Berkeley 40 31 Portrait, Lord Baltimore 42 32 Signing the Compact in the Cabin of the Mayflower 43 33 Plymouth Rock 44 34 Welcome, Englishmen. — Plymouth, 1621 45 LIST OF ILLUSTPLA.TIONS. PAGB 35 Fac-simile of First Map Engraved in New England 47 36 Roger Williams Received by Canonicus 48 37 Portrait, King Philip 49 38 GOFFE at HADLEY 50 39 The Old Witch House, Salem 52 40 The Charter Oak 54 41 The Half-Moon in the Hudson 55 42 Portrait, Governor Stuyvesant 57 43 The English Landing at New York, 1664 5t 44 The Tomb of Peter Stuyvesant 59 45 Seals of New Amsterdam and New York 60 46 Statue of Penn in Philadelphia 61 47 Huguenots going to Church 64 48 Portrait, General Oglethorpe, aged 102 65 49 Penn's Treaty Tree 66 50 The Death Whoop — Initial 67 51 Portrait, Samuel Champlain 68 52 Marquette Descending the Mississippi 69 53 A Fortified House 70 54 The Indian Attack on Schenectady 71 55 Mrs. Dustin Disposing of her Captors 72 56 Map of the French and Indian Wars (1689 to 1763) 73 57 An Incident of Washington's Return 75 58 Portrait, Benjamin Franklin 76 59 Washington at Braddock's Defeat 77 60 Portrait, General Wolfe 80 61 Quebec in Early Times 81 62 The Grave of Braddock 83 63 Clearing a Home in the Backwoods — Initial 84 64 Pine-Tree Shilling 85 65 The Old Stage-Coach 86 66 Early Printing-Press 89 67 A Scold Gagged 90 68 The Stocks 90 69 The First Church erected in Connecticut (1638) 91 70 Whitefield's House, Guilford, Connecticut 95 71 Training-Day in the Olden Time 97 72 A Wedding Journey 98 73 Dutch Mansion and Cottage in New Amsterdam 102 74 Dutch Courtship 106 75 Ye Dutch Schoolmaster 106 76 Early American Plow 114 77 The Pillory 115 78 The Old-Time Fireside 119 79 Ancient Chair (brought over in the Mayflower) 125 80 The Woolen Spinning-Wheel 126 81 Field Sports of the South 130 82 The Boston Tea-Party — Initial 133 83 Portrait, William Pitt, Earl of Chatham 135 84 Patrick Henry Addressing the Virginia Assembly 136 85 Map of the Colonies 138 Full-page Portrait, Benjamin Franklin 139 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE 86 Faneuil Hall , 140 87 The Regulators Threatening Governor Tryon 142 88 Carpenter's Hall 144 89 England Forcing Tea down the Throat of America 145 90 The Light in the Steeple — Initial 146 91 Paul Revere Spreading the Alarm 147 92 Map, Vicinity of Boston and Concord 148 93 Putnam Starting for Cambridge 149 94 Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga , 150 95 The Prayer before the Battle of Bunker Hill 152 96 Map of the Battle of Bunker Hill 153 97 The Bayonet Charge at Bunker Hill 154 98 The Old Magazine at Williamsburg, Va 158 99 Specimen of Continental Money 161 100 The Prescott Gate, Quebec 163 loi A Street in Quebec — Scene of Arnold's Attack 165 102 Evacuation of Boston — Initial 166 103 Boston One Hundred Years Ago .• 169 104 The Attack on Fort Moultrie 171 105 Liberty Bell 173 106 Map of Battle of Long Island 178 107 Prison-Ship at Wallabout 179 108 The Retreat from Long Island 180 109 Map of the Lower Hudson 185 no A Hessian Grenadier 188 111 Washington Crossing the Delaware 191 112 Washington's Visit to General Rall 194 113 Portrait, Robert Morris 195 114 Franklin at the French Court — Initial. 196 115 Death of General Mercer and Mercer Monument 198 116 Portraits, Pulaski, Kosciusko and Baron DeKalb 202 117 Ruins of Fort Ticonderoga 205 118 The Alarm at Fort Schuyler 209 119 Mrs. Schuyler Setting the Grain-Fields on Fire 212 120 General Eraser Covered by Sharp-Shooters 217 121 Map of the Upper Hudson 219 122 Portrait, General Burgoyne 224 123 " General Gates 225 124 Map of Operations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania 230 125 The Paoli Monument 232 126 Battle of Germantown — Attack on Chew's House 234 127 Capture of General Prescott 237 128 Execution of a Spy at Kingston, N. Y 240 129 Washington's Headquarters at Valley Forge 246 130 Washington at Prayer — Initial 247 131 In Camp at Valley Forge 251 132 Portrait, Marquis de Lafayette 255 133 Louis XVI. , Marie Antoinette and the Dauphin 259 134 Medal Commemorating the Alliance between France and the United States 259 135 Molly Pitcher at the Battle of Monmouth 261 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 4 »AGE 136 Portrait, Joseph Brandt (after Catlin) 269 137 " Red Jacket (after Weir) 270 138 Map of Operations in Virginia and the Carolinas 272 139 Giving the Countersign at Stony Point 275 140 Capture of the Serapis by the Bon Homme Richard 281 141 The Decatur Monument 282 142 Patriots making Arms and Ammunition — Initial 283 143 A Rendezvous of Marion and his Men 288 144 Nancy Hart and the British Soldiers 292 145 The Old Sugar House, Liberty Street, New York 298 146 Capture of Major Andre 302 147 The Monument at Tarrytown 305 148 General Wayne Confronting the Rioters— Initial 306 149 Mrs. Steele and General Greene 310 150 The Partisan Leaders of the South 314 151 Map of the Siege of Yorktown 320 152 Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown 321 153 Portrait, George the Third 324 154 Washington's Inauguration at Federal Hall— Initial 327 155 Washington's Headquarters at Newburg 330 156 Map, Territorial Growth of the United States 332 157 Washington and his Cabinet 335 158 Daniel Boone's Exploring Expedition 340 159 Mount Vernon 343 160 Portrait, Napoleon Buonaparte 34S 161 Medal, Washington and Lafayette 353 162 Portrait, Thomas Jefferson— Initial 354 163 Jefferson going to his Inauguration 356 164 Chief-Justice Marshall in the Library of Congress 359 165 Duel between Hamilton and Burr 363 166 The Clermont, Fulton's Steamboat 366 167 Portrait, Elskwatawa, the Prophet 370 168 Burning of the Richmond (Va.) Theatre 371 169 Map of the War of 1812-14 (Northern Region) 374- 170 General Scott and the two Indians 37^ 171 " Old Ironsides " 378 172 Capture of the Frolic 379 173 Sackett's Harbor in 1814 380 174 Portrait, Captain James Lawrence 382 175 Perry's Headquarters 384 176 Perry leaving the Lawrence 385 177 A Caricature of the Time— (Queen Charlotte and Johnny Bull got their Dose of Perry) 386 178 Portrait, Oliver Hazard Perry 387, 179 Map, Southern Region of the War of 1812-14 388' 180 Weatherford in Jackson's Tent 389 181 The Attack on Oswego 390 182 Colonel Miller at Lundy's Lane 392 183 The Ruins of Fort Erie— Buffalo in the Distance 393 184 British Soldiers Burning Books in the Library of Congress 394 185 The Battle of New Orleans 397 18 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE i86 Portrait, Emma Willard 402 187 Chicago in 1820 405 188 The Old Block-House, Chicago 407 189 Portrait, John Quincy Adams — Initial 408 190 Lafayette at the Tomb of Washington 411 191 Monticello, the Home of Jefferson 415 192 The First Railroad Train in the United States 416 193 Portrait, Andrew Jackson 419 Full-page Portrait, Daniel Webster 421 194 Portraits, Hayne and Webster 422 195 Henry Clay Addressing the Senate 425 196 The United States Bank 426 197 The Dade Monument at West Point, N. Y 430 198 Portrait, William Henry Harrison 434 199 Birthplace of Martin Van Buren 435 200 Portrait, John Tyler 436 201 The Tomb of Harrison 438 202 View of Nauvoo City 441 203 House in which the First Congress of Texas Met 444 204 Santa anna Rebuked by Houston 446 205 Capture of the Mexican Battery by Captain May 450 206 A Scene at Monterey 452 207 Map Illustrating the Mexican War 454 208 On the Summit of the Cordilleras 458 209 Secretary Preston and the Boatswain 462 210 Portrait, General Zachary Taylor 463 211 Bird's-eye View of San Francisco 466 212 Ashland, the Home of Henry Clay 47o 213 Scenes in Kansas 473 214 Portrait, James Buchanan 475 215 *• Abraham Lincoln 479 216 Fort Sumter 480 Full-page Portrait, Abraham Lincoln 482 217 Mass Meeting in Union Square, New York — Initial 483 218 Lincoln's Early Home in Illinois 485 219 Attack on Fort Sumter from Morris Island 487 220 " Stonewall" Jackson at the Head of his Brigade 491 221 Intercepting the Trent 494 222 Group of Union Volunteers — Initial. 495 223 Surrender of Fort Donelson. . . 498 224 The Midnight Council of War 499 225 Donaldson's Point and Island No. 10 503 226 Map of Operations in the East 505 227 Heroism of Colonel Rogers 507 228 Bird's-eye View of New Orleans 510 229 Naval Duel between the Monitor and the Merrimac 514 230 Map of the Peninsula 516 231 Building a Corduroy Road through a Swamp 517 232 Portrait, General George B. McClellan 520 233 " General Robert E. Lee 522 234 Death of General Kearney 525 235 Storming the Bridge at Antietam . . 527 236 The Monitor at Sea 530 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGB 237 Reading the Emancipation Proclamation — Initial 531 238 Running the Batteries at Vicksburg 532 239 Map of Vicksburg and Vicinity.. 534 240 Map of Chattanooga and Vicinity £36 241 A Charge at Missionary Ridge 530 242 Lee and Jackson Planning the Battle of Chancellorsville 542 243 Stonewall Jackson in his Tent 545 244 Portrait, Major-General George G. Meade 548 245 Map of Gettysburg and Vicinity 549 246 Repulsing a Charge at Gettysburg 551 247 Drafting 556 248 The National Monument at Gettysburg 559 249 An Impromptu Fortification — Initial 560 250 Map of Operations in the West 563 251 The March to the Sea 565 252 Crossing the Rapidan— Grant's Telegram 568 253 Map of Grant's Campaign around Richmond 569 254 Portrait, General Ulysses S. Grant 573 255 Sheridan's Arrival at Cedar Creek 576 256 Naval Battle in Mobile Bay 579 257 The Alabama 582 258 Portraits, Sherman and Sheridan 583 259 Refugees Following the Army— /mV/a/ 584 260 Sherman at the Head of his Troops 586 261 Portrait, General Joseph E. Johnston 587 262 City of Richmond 589 263 Cavalry Charge oit the Confederate Wagon-Train 591 264 Signing the Terms of Surrender 593 265 Portrait, Jefferson Davis 594 266 Assassination of President Lincoln 596 267 A Scene at the Surrender of Lee 600 268 Reconciliation — Initial 603 269 The Grand Review— Marching down Pennsylvania Avenue 605 270 Portrait, Andrew Johnson 607 271 The Great Eastern in Mid-Ocean Laying the Cable 610 272 General Grant's Residence at Galena, III., in i860 612 273 Driving the Last Spike 613 274 Portrait, Horace Greeley 617 275 Centennial Medal — Reverse 620 276 Group of Sioux Indians 623 277 Portrait of Rutherford B. Hayes 624 278 The Bland Silver Dollar 627 279 The White House 629 281 Portraits of Garfield and Arthur 631 282 Assassination of President Garfield • 633 283 Garfield Looking out upon the Sea at Long Branch 634 284 Centennial of Battle of Yorktown 636 285 The Brooklyn Bridge 637 286 Arctic Sledging 639 287 Grover Cleveland 643 288 Grant's Birthplace ; Tomb, Etc 644 289 Man-of-War with Search Light 647 290 Bknjamin Harrison 652 2Ql PORIRAIT, JaMKS G. BlAINE = 663 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE 292 William McKinley 674 293 The "Viscaya" in New York Harbor 678 294 Manila Harbor 684 295 Battle of Manila Bay — Map 685 296 American Troops in Porto Rico 693 297 Treaty Commissioners 695 298 Theodore Roosevelt , . . 702 299 Louisiana Purchase Exposition — Towers Flanking Main Entrance... 707 300 Louisiana Purchase Exposition — Festival Hall and Cascades 713 301 Panama Canal Profile and General View 716 PART I. IntroHttrtm Lift we the twilight curtains of the Past, And, turning from familiar sight and sound. Sadly and full of reverence let us cast A glance upon Tradition's shadowy ground, Led by the few pale lights which, glimmering round That dim, *trange land of Eld, seem dying fast'' CHAPTER I. EJ(kLY ElSTO(kY OF JME^ICJ, HE authentic history of North America is comprised within four centuries. All back of that rests upon ruins and traditions, and is largely mythical. The Indians were noc the most ancient inhabitants of North America. Through the whole length of the Mississippi Valley are found the remains of a numerous and civilized people which once occupied this coun- try. This race is known as the Mound Builders, from the large number of mounds which they erected, seemingly as monu- ments to distinguished dead, or 10 EARLY HISTORY OF AMERICA. as grana altars for religious purposes. Sixteen miles east of Little Rock, Arkansas, are two of these elevations, the larger of which is over two hundred and fifty feet in height. Its summit is crowned with a magnificent elm which has stood four hun- dred years. Near by is a sheet of water known as Mound Lake, three and a half miles long and a quarter of a mile broad, the result evidently of excavation for the mound material. The two mounds are encircled by a ditch which encloses an area of over ninety acres. Elsewhere are seen extensive earthworks constructed with considerable skill. They crown a steep bluff, or are carried across the neck of a peninsula formed by the bend of a river. If there is no access to springs or streams, they contain artificial reservoirs for holding water. Fort Hill, on the Little Miami River, Ohio, consists of an embankment nearly four miles in extent, and from ten to twenty feet high, varying according to the natural advantages of the ground. In Adams county, Ohio, is a curious earthwork, representing an immense serpent, one thousand feet long, holding in its mouth an egg- shaped mound one hundred and sixty feet in length, and having its tail twined into a triple coil. These mounds rarely contain more than one skeleton. Many tools and ornaments of copper, brass, silver, and precious stones, such as knives, axes, chisels, bracelets, and beads have been found ; as also cloth and thread and vases of potteiy. Near Nashville, in Tennessee, an idol made of clay and gypsum was ex- humed. Roman and Persian coins have been discovered ; and in Western New York a silver piece, with the date a.d. 600, found far below the surface, furnishes a theme for many a speculation. The Mound Builders worked the copper mines about Lake Superior, and their old pits are now familiarly known in that region as the ** ancient diggings." In one of these mines near Eagle Harbor, a mass of copper was found which weighed forty- six tons. The block had been separated from the original vein and the surface pounded smooth. About it lay stone hammers, copper chisels and wedges in abundance, as if the workmen had but just departed. Upon these mounds and mines the largest THE SERPENT MOUND. PREHISTORIC PEOPLES. II forest trees are now growing. On one mound near Marietta, Ohio, there are trees which must have seen at least eight cen- turies. The age of the mounds themselves is a matter of conjec- ture alone. " A race that long has passed away- Built them : a disciplined and populous race Heaped with long toil the earth, while yet the Greek Was hewing the Pentelicus to forms Of symmetry, and rearing on its rock The glittering Parthenon." — Bryant. When the Jesuit missionaries first came to America, they found the Indians not only entirely ignorant of this people, but possessed of no tradition concerning them. Whence these un- known races came to our shores we know not. It is. natural THE MOUNDS NEAR LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS. to suppose, however, that their home was Asia — the birthplace of man. Within the past century fifteen Japanese vessels have, it is said, been driven by storms across the Pacific Ocean, and wrecked on the American coast. Such events may have hap- pened anciently, and the shipwrecked crews may have settled the new country. Formerly, too, as geologists tell us, before Behring Strait was cut through, the two continents were con- nected. Parties of adventurers may then have crossed, and finding a pleasant land on this side, may have decided to make it their home. All is conjecture, however, and we know not when nor whence the Mound Builders came, nor when nor whither they went. 12 EARLY HISTORY OF AMERICA. Most curious of all the remains found on this continent are those of Arizona. Here are not only Spanish cathedrals dating back of the Revolutionary struggle, and ruins of Spanish towns indicating an early and extensive colonization, now disappeared, which must have been in its glory when as yet only a few woe- begone English settlers half starved in their rude cabins along the Potomac River and Plymouth Bay ; but recent explorations have revealed other and prehistoric remains, belonging to a race which has left behind no tradition even of its name or origin. The Gila Valley alone, it is estimated, must once have been occu- pied by one hundred thousand inhabitants. In the great Tonto Basin, bounded by the rivers Gila, Verde and Black Mesa, and the White Mountains, nearly every hill within a range of ten thousand square miles is covered with broken pottery, so perfectly glazed that its bright coloring is still preserved. Here are ruins of pueblos four stories high, and with walls two feet thick ; aqueducts, reservoirs, irrigating canals, and regular fortifications. Along the cliffs in many places are multitudes of caves dug into the solid rock, where the inhabitants seem to have taken refuge and made a last stand against an invading foe. These caves are often twenty feet deep, and closed by mason work of stone and cement still well preserved. These retreats are only accessible by means of ladders, or by narrow paths along the edge of projecting crags, where a single false step would plunge one to inevitable destruc- tion. In the larger caves, the front wall is bastioned and loop- holed ; while in the ceiling of the principal room is a man-hole enabling one to enter a series of chambers with which the whole mountain is honeycombed. In the thick deposit of bat-lime which now covers the floor, are broken pieces of pottery like those found so abundantly in the ruined villages along the river valleys. The timbers used in the various rooms were evidently cut with stone hatchets. The chambers are dark and the walls are yet black with the smoke from the fires of the ancient cave- dwellers. One can but speculate on the fearful struggle which appar- ently forced this people to leave their fortified villages and cultivated fields, and to hew for themselves asylums in the rock ; the long months and years during which they continued the con- test in their mountain fortresses ; the details of this final death- struggle ; and when and how the last of this host yielded, and the nation was blotted out of existence. INDIAN DIALECTS. 13 THE JMOF^TH AMERICAN IJMDI/1N3. The first inhabitants of whom we have any definite knowledge are the Indians — so named because the earliest European explorers of this country supposed they had reached the eastern coast of India. The total number of these aborigines, at that time within the present limits of the United States, was probably four hundred thousand, of whom about one-half lived east of the Mississippi. They all had much the same look, and doubtless a common origin. They were, however, divided into numerous tribes and spoke different languages. Diligent study of these tongues has classed them all into, perhaps, seven great families — the Algonquin, the Iroquois, the Mobilian, the Dakotah or Sioux, the Cherokee, the Catawba, and the Shoshonee. These are the names by which they are commonly known to us, but not, in general, those used among the natives. The terms Huron, Iroquois, etc., are only nick-names given by the whites ; Sioux is an Algonquin appella- tion. The various tribes were divided into clans, each with its own symbol, as a tortoise, deer, snipe, or hawk, often tattooed on the warrior's breast. Over the clan was a chief or sachem, who represented it at the grand councils and governed it according to custom and tradition. ^^^^ INDIAN SYMBOLS. The Algonquins dwelt along the Atlantic coast from Cape Fear northward, and were those with whom the Jamestown and Plymouth colonists alike came in contact. The Narragansetts, Pequods, Massachusetts, Mohegans, Manhattans, Delawares, Powhatans, Shawnees, Miamis, Illinois, Sacs, and Foxes, were tribes of this wide-spread family. Their memory is perpetuated by the histories of Pocahontas, Powhatan, Massasoit, King Philip, Black Hawk, Tecumseh, and Pontiac. The Iroquois occupied a territory in the heart of the Algon- quin region — a tract south of Lake Ontario, covering the head- waters of the Susquehanna, Delaware, and Ohio, which General 14 EARLY HISTORY OF AMERICA. Scott well termed the " strategic centre " of the United States. Here was the home of the Five Nations, so famous in all the colonial wars. Here Red Jacket and Joseph Brandt figured as characters more like ancient Romans than wild forest Indians. In the time of their greatest prosperity this confederacy did not number over fifteen thousand, and it could not send out much over two thou- sand warriors. But they were fierce, bloodthirsty, and restless for conquest. Pushing along the valleys from their headquarters on the great watershed of Central New York, they carried their triumphant arms to the soil of Kentucky and Virginia. Their power was felt to the Kennebec on the east and the Illinois on the west. The Delaware tribe was triumphantly and ignominiously styled their " woman." Of the five nations, the Mohawk was the most dreaded. When, among the peaceful Indians along the Connecticut, a messenger stalked into their council-room exclaim- ing, '* The Mohawks are come to suck your blood," there was no thought of safety except in flight or submission. The Mobilians stretched along the Gulf from the Atlantic to the Rio Grande. They comprised within their limits the com- paratively insignificant tribes, of the Uchee and the Natchez. The Creeks, Seminoles, Choctaws, and the Chickasaws are interwoven with the later history of the country at the south, as the Sioux, Miamis, Illinois, Sacs, etc., are on the north. The separate languages were completely organized, though no savage had ever attempted their analysis, or knew anything about sounds, letters, or syllables. The study of their speech by Europeans has shown many peculiarities. Thus the Algon- quins had no // the Choctaws no d; the Iroquois, except the Oneidas, whose tongue was soft and liquid, no /. The Algonquins loved consonants, while every word in the Cherokee ended in a vowel. They all lacked abstract or general terms. The Algon- quins, for example, had no word for oak, but a name for each kind of oak. There was no word for fishing, but a specific name for fire-fishing, net-fishing, etc. They always compounded words so as to express new ideas. Thus, as the Indian never kneels, when Eliot, the famous New England missionary, wished to translate that thought, he was forced to use a definition merely, and the compound word is eleven syllables long — wutappessittukqus- sonnoowehtunkquot. The Indians never said " father " alone, but always included with it a possessive pronoun. Consequently the Doxology used by Christian Indians reads, '' Our Father, his Son, THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 15 and their Holy Ghost." Their tongues were thus peculiarly syn- thetic, and often subject, predicate, and object were conjugated as one word. The Cherokee language had but eighty-five sylla- bles, which were analyzed by an educated Indian known as George Guess, who assigned a character to each. Thus one may learn to read and write this tongue in a very short time. The Indians had no written language, though they used on occasions a species of hieroglyphics or picture-writing. A series of rude symbols scratched on a tree or rock gave any information desired. Schoolcraft gives the following, used by his Indian guides to inform their comrades that a company of fourteen whites and two Indians had spent the night at that point. Nos. 9, 10 indi- cate the white soldiers and their arms ; No. i is the captain, with a sword ; No. 2 the secretary, with the book ; No. 3 the geolo- gist, with a hammer ; Nos. 7, 8 are the guides, without hats ; Nos. II, 12 show what they ate in camp ; Nos. 13, 14, 15 indicate how many fires they made : SPECIMEN OF INDIAN PICTURB-WRITING. The Indian was a barbarian. His condition was that known in geology as the Stone Age of man, since his implements and tools were made of that material. His stone hatchet was so rude that to cut down a large forest tree would have required a month's time. He had no horse, cow, or other domestic animal of burden. He had no knowledge of any metals except gold, silver, and copper, and these to a very limited extent. Labor he considered as degrading, and fit only for women. His squaw, therefore, built his wigwam, cut his wood, and carried his burdens when he 1 6 EARLY HISTORY OF AMERICA. journeyed. While he hunted or fished, she cleared the land for his corn by burning down the trees, scratched the ground with a crooked stick or hoed it with a clam-shell, and dressed skins for his clothing. She cooked his food by dropping hot stones into a tight willow basket containing materials for soup. The leavings of her lord's feast sufficed for her, and the coldest place in the wigwam was her seat. He rarely spoke to his wife or children. He would sit on the ground for days, leaning his elbows on his knees in stupid silence. He was crafty and cruel. His word was no protection. False and cunning, he never hesitated to violate a treaty when his passions prompted him to hatred. He was hos- pitable, and the door of his wigwam was always open to any comer, who had but to enter, sit down at the fire, and to be served without a word. He would give up his own mat or skin that his guest or a passing traveler might rest thereon. He remembered a benefit and often saved his benefactor at the peril of his life. He loved to gain his end by stratagem and rarely met an enemy in fair fight. No victory was prized when the conquest cost the life of a warrior. He could endure great fatigue, and in his expeditions often lay without shelter in severest weather. It was his glory to bear the most horrible tortures without sign of pain. An Indian wigwam at the best was only a temporary shelter. It was built of bark resting on poles, and had an opening at the top to let out the smoke and let in the light. The fire was built on the ground at the centre. The lodge was moved from place to place whenever fancy suggested. The most frequent reason was the scarcity of game or fuel. Indeed, it is said that when the whites first came to this country the Indians supposed it to be because they had consumed all the wood in their own land, and that they were in quest of fuel. The Iroquois built larger and more permanent dwellings. These were often thirty or forty and sometimes over two hundred feet in length, each inhabited by several families. Many of these were irregularly gathered in a town, on the bank of some river or lake, where they were fortified, perhaps, by a palisade and deep ditch. '* A person entering one of these wigwams on a winter's evening might have beheld," says Parkman, '' a strange spectacle ; the vista of fires lighting the smoky concave ; the bronzed groups encircling each — cooking, eating, gambling, or amusing themselves with idle badinage ; wrinkled squaws, hideous with three-score years of hardship ; grizzly old THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 17 warriors, scarred with war-club and tomahawk ; young aspirants, whose honors were yet to be won ; damsels, gay with ochre and wampum ; and restless children, pell-mell with restless dogs. Now a tongue of resinous flame painted each wild feature in vivid light ; now the fitful gleam expired, and the group vanished from sight as the nation has from history." INDIAN LIFE. The Indians married young, the girls at thirteen or fourteen, and the boys by eighteen. Meanwhile the latter were required to show their manhood by long endurance of famine and by bringing in plenty of game. A marriageable girl wore an adver- tisement of the fact upon her head. The marriage ceremony often consisted of nothing more than the bride's bringing to the bridegroom a dish of cooked corn and an armful of fuel. War and the chase were the natural state of the Indian. The battle-field and the hunting-ground contained everything of special honor or value. The bow was placed in the boy's hands as soon as he could grasp it. His training henceforth was to shoot the arrow, to glide upon the snow-shoe, to hurl the toma- hawk, and to cast the spear. To dance the war-dance, to sing the war-song, to go forth on the war-path, to lie in wait for his enemy, and to bring back the scalp of one whom he had slain, were i8 EARLY HISTORY OF AMERICA. his highest delight. Two or three warriors roaming through the forest, with only a bag of pounded corn hanging at the side for food, would watch a hostile village or party for weeks, hiding in rocks or thickets, awaiting a chance for a surprise, to assassi- nate a defenceless man, woman, or child ; then hastily cutting off the scalp, as proof of their prowess, would hurry home again in triumph. The war party marched in single file, the chief in advance, while the last one erased the tracks they had made. A captive was often brutally mangled before reaching the village of AN INDIAN FAMILY MOVING. his captors. Here he was obliged to run the gauntlet between a double row of its entire population, who turned out to receive him, each inflicting a blow as he passed. The council decided his fate. He might be adopted into some family, to supply the place of a lost member, or be sentenced to the torture. This was too horrible for description. The body was gashed with knives, the hair and beard were torn out, the fingers and toes were wrenched off, the flesh was seared with red-hot stones and punc- tured with sharpened sticks ; and finally the bleeding, mangled body was tied to a stake and burned to ashes. "W hile life lasted the victim of their cruelty uttered no groan, but sang the war- song of his clan, boasted of his exploits, told the names of those whom he had slain, and taunted them with their unskilfulness in devising tortures in comparison with those which he had himself inflicted on their kinsmen. 1492.] DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. I9 The religion of the Indian varied greatly in different tribes. Those of New England had no word for God, and there is no evidence of a religious ceremony among them. The Iroquois had faith in a Great Spirit, and in happy hunting-grounds where the departed warrior might hope to hunt and feast and be as lazy as he pleased. The Natchez had temples for the worship of the sun, and sacred fires which were never allowed to expire. The Indians believed in protecting spirits, who cared not alone for human beings but even for animals. They were cautious about giving them any offence, frequently offering them gifts to pro- pitiate their favor. They handled carefully the bones of beaver, buffalo, deer, and other game, lest the spirits of the dead might inform those of the living, and teach them to escape the hunter's toils. They would often talk to animals as if they were human beings, and beg their pardon for having wounded them, explain- ing the necessity which compelled the attack, and exhorting the sufferer to endure the pain so as not to bring disgrace on his family. The Indian invoked the aid of these various powers, whose presence he acknowledged in nature, and implicitly relied on their protection. He was anxious to have such a guardian for himself. The young Chippewa, for example, retired to a solitary lodge in the forest, blackened his face, and fasted for days, that he might become pure and exalted enough to behold in a vision his protecting deity. Everywhere there was an idea of sin which was to be atoned for, of the duty of self-denial and sacrifice, and of rewards and punishments for good and evil. So prevalent was this sentiment that Le Clercq thought one of the apostles must have reached America and taught the Indians the sublime truths of Revelation. DIgCOVEF(Y OF AJVIERICA. As early as the tenth century, the Northmen settled Green- land, whence, according to the Icelandic Sagas, their venture- some sailors pushed westward, discovering Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Vinland or Vineland, which is generally supposed to be the coast of New England. After that, other adventurers repeatedly visited the New World, explored the country, and bartered with the natives. A rich Icelander, named Thorfinn 20 THE EARLY HISTORY OF AMERICA. [1492. NORMAN SHIP (FROM THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY). Karlsefni, spent three winters on the coast of Massachusetts, where his wife bore him a son named Snorre, said to be the first child born of Euro- pean parents in this coun- try. The Northmen, how- ever, finally forgot the way across the ocean, and almost the existence of the Vinland their an- cestors had discovered. They left behind them, so far as we know, not a trace of their occupation, and were it not for their legends, we should not have dreamed that they ever visited our shores. The old stone tower at Newport, Rhode Island, long thought to have been erected by the Norsemen, is very like some which are still standing in the part of England from which Governor Arnold came ; while the singular inscription on the rock at Dighton was quite probably made by the Indians. Centuries passed in which no vessel essayed the forgotten •assage across the far-stretching Atlantic. The shadows of the Middle Ages were dispersed, and Europe was kindling with newly awakened life. The Crusades had developed the mari- time importance of such Italian cities as Genoa, Pisa, and Venice. A taste for luxury had grown and strengthened. The art of printing by movable types had just been invented, and books of travel were eagerly read. Marco Polo and other eastern travelers had told the most marvelous stories of Asiatic coun- tries, of " Cathay" (China) and the good- liest island of " Cipango " (Japan), where the soil sparkled with rubies and diamonds, and pearls were as plentiful as pebbles. An extensive trade had been opened up with the East. The shawls, spices, precious stones, and silks of India THE ANCIENT TOWER AT NEWPORT. 1492.] DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 21 and Persia were brought to Europe, and sold in the Western marts. But the route was tedious. The goods were borne by caravans to the Red Sea, carried by camels to the Nile, and thence shipped across the Mediterranean to Italy. The problem of the age was how to reach the East by sea, and thus transport these rich pro- ducts in ships directly to Europe. The earth was generally be- lieved to be a great flat plain, washed on every side by one vast ocean. A few wise geographers had already conceived the novel idea of its rotundity. But, in their calculations the globe was very much smaller than we now know it to be, and Asia extended much further to the east ; so, by sailing westward from Europe they expected, perhaps by a short voyage, to reach the eastern shore of their own continent, which was to them the only one in the world. ^* It is singular," says Washington Irving, " how much the success of this great undertaking depended upon two happy errors, the imaginary extent of Asia to the East, and the supposed smallness of the earth ; both, errors of the most learned and profound philosophers, but without which Columbus would hardly have ventured upon his en- terprise." Christopher Columbus, a learned navigator of Genoa, enthusi- astically adopted these views. Many events conspired to confirm his belief. A globe, published by Martin Behaim, one of Columbus's friends, in 1492 — the very year Columbus made his west- ward voyage — shows very clearly the current idea at that time. It is curious to notice how in this map the dry details of geography are - enlivened by mermaids with golden tresses and azure eyes, sea-serpents, and various monsters supposed to inhabit these un- known regions. A westerly gale washed on the coast of Portugal a piece of curiously carved wood. At the Madeiras, canes of a tropical growth were picked up on the beach, and once the bodies of two men of an unknown race were cast upon the shore. At last, Columbus determined to test the new theory by actually under- taking the perilous voyage. Eighteen years of weary waiting followed. He sought aid in Genoa, Venice, and Portugal ; but in vain. Finally, after innumerable repulses, he obtained an audience ^^^^i^^M^L S. ^Kv,% COLUMBUS. 22 EARLY HISTORY OF AMERICA. [1492. THE EASTERN HEMISPHERE.— /V^w BehainCs Glche^ 1492. with Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. His demands seeming extravagant, he was refused. He left the court, and was already two leagues away, when Isabella, convinced of the grandeur of his scheme, called him back and pledged her own jewels to raise the necessary funds. This sacrifice, however, was not needed, as the court treasurer advanced money for the outfit. Three ships were equipped — the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina. The first only was decked, the other two being merely open boats, or caravels. The sailors were many of them impressed, the bravest seamen shrinking from this hazardous undertaking. Columbus sailed from Palos, August 3, 1492. Touching only at the Cana- ries, he struck out boldly to the west. Forty days had come and gone. Fresh terrors were born in the hearts of his fearful crew. All the laws of nature seemed 1492.] DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 23 THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE.— i^row Behatnt's Globe, 149a. changing. The needle no longer pointed to the star in the north, and they were alone, without a guide, in the vast, trackless ocean. The trade-winds blew them steadily westward, and there was no hope of returning against it. They came into the Sargasso Sea, and now they should certainly perish in the stagnant waters. At times, signs of land appeared, and their hearts revived as they saw in the distant horizon the semblance of a shore. But it was only the clouds which mocked their hopes, and which faded away, leaving them still on a boundless sea. Still the days came and went, and still their prows, westward bent, pointed only to " Long ridgy waves their white manes rearing, And in the broad gleam disappearing ; The broadened, blazing sun declining, And western waves, like fire-floods, shining.'* ( 24 EARLY HISTORY OF AMERICA. [1492. COLUMBUS DISCOVERING LAND. At last they became turbu- lent and clamorous. They exclaimed against Colum- bus as a wild fanatic. They thought of their far-away homes, and demanded a return from this hopeless voyage. They even resolved to throw the admiral overboard if he persisted in a refusal. But his iron will beat down their feebler purposes, and he sternly reminded them that the expedition had been sent out to seek the Indies, and added that, happen what might, by God's blessing, he should persevere until he accomplished the enterprise. The very next day brought new hope. Fresh -water weeds floated past their ships; a branch of thorn with berries on it ; and, above all, a carved staff", which they eagerly ex- amined. Not only land, but inhab- ited land was before them. In the evening, Columbus, standing on the prow of his vessel, saw a light faintly glimmering in the horizon. At two ^ ^^^^^^^ ,^^^^^, in the morning, a shot from the (From a drawing attributed to Columbus.] 1492.] DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 2S Pinta announced the joyful intelligence that land was in sight. The dream of Columbus was realized at last. On that mem- orable Friday morning, October 12, 1492, a shore, green with tropical verdure, lay smiling before him. The perfume of flowers filled the air, and beautiful birds hovered round singing, as it were, '' the songs of the angels." Clad in scarlet, and bearing in his hand the royal banner of Spain, he stepped upon the land, kissing it in an overflow of joy and gratitude. Thanking God for His goodness, and planting the sacred cross, he took formal posses- sion of the country in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella. He called the island San Salvador. Believing that he had reached COLUMBUS TAKING POSSESSION. the islands lying off" the eastern coast of India, he named them the West Indies, and the simple natives who flocked down to the shore to witness his arrival he called Indians. Afterward Columbus visited Cuba and Hayti. He actually sent an envoy to a chief in the interior of Cuba, supposing him to be the king of Tartary. Hayti he thought to be the Ophir of Solomon. On his return to Spain, Columbus was received with the great- est enthusiasm. He was accorded the rare honor of telling his story seated in the presence of the king and queen. When he dilated upon the plants, birds, gold, and, above all, the natives who might yet be converted to the true faith, the two sovereigns fell upon their knees, while the choir sang a hymn of thanksgiving. 26 EARLY HISTORY OF AMERICA. [1498. TOMB OF COLUMBUS AT HAVANA. Columbus afterward made three other voyages of discovery. In 1498 he reached the mouth of the Orinoco, which he con- sidered the great river Gihon, having its source in the Garden of Eden. His good fortune, however, had long since deserted him. Malice and envy did their worst. He was sent home from Hispaniola in chains, and died at last a worn-out, disgraced old man, igno- rant of the fact that he had discovered a New World. Meanwhile, to other European eyes than those of Columbus had been grant- ed the first sight of the mainland. John Cabot, a Venetian, sailing under a com- mission from Henry VII. of England, discovered Cape Breton, probably in 1494. He, however, like Columbus, was seeking the route to the Indies, and supposed this to be the territory of the " Great Cham," king of Tartary. Sebastian Cabot continued his father's explorations, and sailed along the coast as far south as Maryland. He became convinced that it was not the eastern coast of Asia, but a new continent, that had been discov- ered. As Vasco de Gama, a Portuguese, about this time (1498) rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and found the long-sought way to the East, little attention was paid to the discoveries of Cabot. " He gave a continent to England," says Biddle, " yet no man can point to the few feet of earth she has allowed him in return." The New World was not destined to receive its name from either Cabot or Columbus. Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian navigator, and a friend of Columbus, accompanied an expedition which reached the continent, and on his return wrote some letters de- scribing his discoveries. These were published by a German geographer, who proposed that the new country should be called America, in honor of his hero. People liked the name, and it goon came into general use. CHAPTER II EX(PL0(kAT10J^S AJ^(1) SETTLEMEJ^TS. D VENTURERS, thirsting for gold and glory, now flocked to America — the land of wonder and mystery. Spanish, French, and English were eager to explore this new and richer Cathay. Ponce de Leon, an aged cava- lier, sailed in search of a miraculous foun- tain said to exist somewhere in the regions discovered by Columbus, whose magical waters, flowing over beds of gold and gems, would ensure to the old a second youth and vigor. He did not find the fountain, but he came in sight of a land blooming with flowers. It was Easter Sun- day (15 12), a day which the Spaniards call Pascua Florida, or Flowery Easter. So he gave the name Florida to this beautiful region. The following year Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Darien, and from the top of the Andes first caught sight of the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean glittering in the morning sun. Reverently kneeling, he thanked God for the wonderful vision. Descending to the shore, he waded into the water, bearing his drawn sword in one hand and the banner of Castile in the other, taking pos- session of the ocean, and all the coasts washed by its waters, for the crown of Spain. Cortez, with a handful of followers, took possession of Mexico and all the fabulous wealth of the Montezumas. Pizarro con- quered Peru, and revelled in the riches of the Incas. De Soto, with a chosen band, explored the fastnesses of Florida, hoping to find *' a second Mexico with its royal palace and sacred pyramids, or another Cuzco with its Temple of the Sun enriched with a frieze of gold." Gay cavaliers with helmet 28 EARLY HISTORY OF AMERICA. [1541. and lance, priests with holy vestments and vessels, marched through the wilderness for years. With the fluttering of ban- ners and the clangor of trumpets, they followed the ignis fatuus DE SOTO'S MARCH, of gold and treasure they hoped to find. Thus they traversed Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. In 1541 they discovered the Mississippi River. Beneath its muddy waters De Soto himself found a grave. It was all the New World had to give its most knightly adventurer. The French eagerly followed in the footsteps of the Spaniards. Verazzani, a Florentine in the ser- vice of Francis I., coasted along the shores of Carolina and New Jersey, and entered the present harbors of Newport and New York. He named the country New France, and claimed it all for his king. The report published on his re- turn was the earliest account given of the eastern coast of the United States. He thought the savages were "like the people JACQUES CARTIER. 1534.] FRENCH EXPLORATIONS. 29 in the uttermost parts of China," and that the country was '' not void of drugs and spices and other riches of gold, seeing that the color of the land doth so much argue it." In 1534, Cartier dis- covered a magnificent river, which, the next year, he ascended to the present site of Montreal. In honor of the day, he named the part of the gulf he entered, St. Lawrence — a term that has since spread to the river and the rest of the gulf. Coligny, the famous French admiral, formed a plan of found- ing an empire in the New World which should offer an asylum to the distressed Huguenots. It was to be a colony based on religious ideas. This was half a century before the Piignms ADMIRAL COLIGNY. 30 EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS. [1562. landed at Plymouth. The attempt seemed full of promise, *' but no Mayflower ever sailed from a French port." Jean Ribaut commanded the first expedition (1562). He landed at Port Royal. The company were delighted with the novelty of the wild forest scenes. The new land seemed to them '* the finest, fruitfulest, and pleasantest of all the world." A fort was erected, and named Carolina, after Charles IX. of France. Thirty men were selected to remain, while Ribaut returned to France. This little party was now alone with the savage and the wilderness. They found no gold. Hunger came, and home-sickness. The green woods became a dismal prison, and the solitude a terror. They resolved to escape at every peril. Building a frail bark, they turned the prow toward France. A storm shattered their ship. At last, to avoid starvation, they killed and ate one of their own number, whom the lot decided should die for the rest. This horrible food only prolonged their lives for a new misfortune. After perils and sufferings untold, they had just come in sight of their own cherished coast when they were taken prisoners and carried to England. Two years afterward a second attempt was made by Laudon- ni^re, and a fort built on St. John's River, or the River of May, as they styled it. Here his company of adventurers, greedy of gain and of gold, quar- reled among them- selves, fought with the Indians, and, too lazy to till the land, starved as easily and slowly as they could. But the Spanish were by riO means willing to relin- quish their claim to Florida — as all North America was at that time THE OLD GATEWAY AT ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA. called by them. Melendez, a brutal soldier, was sent by Philip II. to occupy Florida and drive out the French. They sighted land on St. Augustine's day (August 28, 1565). The foundations of a town, now the oldest 1565.] ENGLISH EXPLORATIONS. 3I in the United States, were soon laid and named in honor of that saint. Burning with zeal, Menendez, with five hundred soldiers, then hurried northward through the wilderness, and in the midst of a terrible tempest attacked the French fort and massacred nearly all the colonists. Charles IX. did nothing to avenge the deed. A bold Gascon, Dominique de Gourges, however, equipped a fleet at his own expense, sailed across the ocean, stormed the Spanish forts on the River of May, and put the garrison to the sword, under the very trees where they had slaughtered the captured Huguenots. Thus ended, for a time, the French attempts in the New World. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the English made repeated efforts to explore and colonize this country. Frobisher, seeking in vain to find the northwest passage to India, entered Baffin's Bay, and claimed the whole country for the crown of England. Drake, following in the footsteps of Magellan, rounded Cape Horn, ascended the western shore of America as far as the present boundary of Oregon, and, returning, refitted his ship in some harbor of California (1579). Sir Humphrey Gilbert sought to establish a colony in Newfoundland. Returning home in the Squirrel, a little bark of ten tons, it was overtaken by a fearful storm. Sitting aft, with a book in his hand, Gilbert was heard to cry out to his companions in the other ship, "We are as near Heaven by sea as by land." That night the lights of the Squirrel suddenly disappeared, and neither ship nor sailors were ever seen again. Gilbert's half-brother, the famous Sir Walter Raleigh, having secured a patent for a vast extent of territory which he called Virginia, in honor of the "Virgin Queen" of England, made several unsuccessful attempts to establish settle- ments therein. The first colony was planted on Roanoke Island (1585). Instead of tilling the ground^ the settlers hunted for gold. Finding none, they were only too glad to return home with Drake, who happened to stop there on one of his buccaneering expeditions. They brought back with them the weed which the lethargic Indians used for smoking, and the custom of " drinking tobacco," as it was called, soon became exceedingly popular, in spite of the anathemas of the physicians, the Puritans, and even of King James himself, who wrote a tract against its use. It is said that one day, when Raleigh was sitting in his study privately practicing this new accomplishment, his servant entered with a tankard of ale. Seeing his master with a cloud of smoke issuing 32 EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS. [1587. from his mouth, the terrified domestic dashed the ale in his face as a partial extinguisher, and rushed down the stairs screaming for instant help, for Sir Walter would soon be burnt to ashes. Another colony was now sent to Virginia. It hap- pily consisted of families. The pre- sence of woman brought cheerful- ness and beauty, and in the pros- pect of home cir- cles and influence it bade fair to be permanent. The " City of Raleigh " was founded on the site of the former settlement. A faithful Indian chief was here bap- tized and received the rank of a feudal baron — Lord of Roanoke. Here, also, was born the first child of English parents on the soil of the United States — Virginia Dare, grand-daughter of Governor White. The threatened invasion of the Armada occu- pying the attention of England, it was three years before supplies were sent out to the infant colony. When at last the long-delayed ship sailed into the harbor she found it silent as the grave. The homes were all deserted, and not a living thing remained to tell the fate of their once hopeful occupants. On the trunk of a tree was found carved the name of a distant island, Croatan. The lateness of the season forbade any attempt to seek the island, and, appalled by the desolation and ruin which they beheld, the fleet returned without leaving a settler behind. To this day the " Lost Colony of Roanoke " remains a mystery. A century had now passed since the discovery of America, but ae yet neither English nor French had planted a permanent colony, save in the graves of their heroic adventurers. The Spaniards had, north of the Gulf of Mexico, only a feeble settlement at 1600.] SETTLEMENT OF VIRGINIA. 33 St. Augustine and another at Santa F6. The difficulties which attended the passage of the Atlantic, the perils of the wilderness, the treachery of the Indians, all conspix^ed to prevent the rapid colonization of the New World. The experience of every attempt could be summed up in the quaint language of the English company under Captain Popham, " We found only extreme extremities." Early in the seventeenth century, several successful trading voyages called the attention of English merchants and noblemen to the question of iVmerican colonization. King James I. accord- ingly divided the vast territory called Virginia, extending from Cape Fear to Passamaquoddy Bay, between two rival companies, the London and the Plymouth. The former was to have the southern, and the latter the northern portion; and, to prevent disputes, their settlements were to be at least one hundred miles apart. All the region south of this grant was known as Florida, and all north, as New France. A book of the time defines Vir- ginia as " that country of the earth which the ancients called Mormosa, between Florida and New France." 3 34 EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS. [1607. gETTtZ:j\1ENT OF V1F(Q1JN1A. On April 26, 1607, a fleet of three vessels sent out by the London Company entered Chesapeake Bay. Captain John Smith, afterward called " The Father of Virginia," was on board, but in chains, a victim to the jealousy of meaner men. As they rode into that magnificent harbor, they passed two headlands, which they called Charles and Henry, after their young princes at home. The good anchorage inside suggested the name Old Point Comfort, and the noble stream they now ascended was styled James River, after the king. Their first settlement was also loyally christened James- town. The crumbling, ivy- clad church tower still stand- ing on the banks of the James, about fifty miles from its mouth, marks the site of the oldest Eng- lish settlement in the United States. The colonists were poorly qualified for the work they had undertaken. There were no families, yet they were to establish homes in the wil- derness. There were houses to build, yet they numbered only four carpenters to forty- eight labor -despising gentle- men. They were to lay the foundations of a colony, yet they had but twelve laborers. The first year, the gentlemen spent their time in searching for gold, when they should have been planting corn. Food soon became scarce. Before autumn, sickness swept away half their number. Wingfield, the president of fhe council appointed by the king for their government, was unfaithful and avaricious, and even tried to escape to the Indies with the best of their scanty stores. Smith, by the power of his genius, now rose to command. "He proved more wakeful to gather provisions than the covet- ous were to find gold ; and strove to keep the country more than the faint-hearted to abandon it." He declared that "He who will not work may not eat." He was the first to clearly compre« THE RUINS AT JAMESTOWN. 1607.] SETTLEMENT OF VIRGINIA. 35 hend that nothing was to be gained by the colony except through labor. He taught the gentlemen to swing the axe until they became accomplished wood-cutters. Enforcing morality as well as industry, he kept an account of all profanity, and at night poured a cup of cold water down the sleeves of the offenders. Yet the colonists, we are told, " built a church that cost fifty pounds and a tavern that cost five hundred." Smith wrote home : '' I entreat you rather send but thirty carpenters, husbandmen, gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths, masons, and diggers -up of trees' roots than a thousand such as we have." SMITH SHOWING HIS COMPASS TO THE INDIANS. Meanwhile, Smith made many expeditions, cultivating the friendship of the Indians, exploring the country, and bringing back supplies of food for the colony. He went northward as far as Maine, and on one of his maps the names " Plymouth " and ''Cape Ann" first appear. In an expedition up the Chesapeake, he was taken prisoner by the Indians. With great coolness he amused his captors by an astronomical lecture, exhibiting his compass, and showing them how " the sun did chase the night round about the world continually." They allowed him to send letters to Jamestown, and, having no idea of a written language themselves, were astonished at his making the paper talk to his friends of his condition. With commendable forethought, the gun- powder taken from him was carefully laid aside for planting the 36 EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS. [1608. next year. The illustrious captive was carried from place to place over the same peninsula since rendered famous by McClellan's campaign. On being brought to the great chief Powhatan, his good fortune seemed to fail him, and he was condemned to die. According to Smith's account, his head was laid on a stone, and the Indian's war-club was raised to strike the final blow, when Pocahontas, the young daughter of the chief, whose love the cap- tive had won, rushed forward, threw her arms about his neck and arrested the descending blow. Powhatan, touched by this act of devotion, released the prisoner. The little Indian maiden often thereafter aided the colonists, bringing them food and warning them of danger. She grew up to be a beauti- -^^Iv-. ful woman and was converted to the Christian religion. In the little church at Jamestown she was baptized from the pine trough which was used as a font, and in her broken English plighted her faith to a young planter named John Rolfe. In 6i6 he took his dusky wife to England. Lady Rebecca, as she was called, ^'the first Christian ever of her nation," by her naive simplicity and goodness, won universal admiration. It is said, however, that King James was jealous of Rolfe, fearing that, " hav- ing married an Indian princess, he might lay claim to the crown of Virginia." So high did the tide of royalty run in those days that Rolfe came near being called to account for having pre- sumed, a private person, to marry into the royal family of even a petty Indian tribe. Owing to this same jealousy. Smith dared not allow Rebecca to call him father, as she had been accustomed to do. Just as she was preparing to return to her wilderness home, Lady Rebecca died, leaving, however, a son, from whom some of the most distinguished families of Virginia have been "croud to boast their descent. Meanwhile, Smith was wounded and forced to return to POCAHONTAS. 1609.] SETTLEMENT OF VIRGINIA. 37 England. He never received for all his services a foot of ground, not even the house he had built, nor the land he had cultivated. Deprived of his care, everything went to ruin. A winter of hor- rible famine — long remembered in their annals as the ^' Starving Time" — ensued. Thirty of their number seized a ship and turned pirates. In six months the colony was reduced from five hundred to sixty. These fled in despair from the terrible place — some even bent upon burning the town where they had suffered so fearfully. As, dropping down the river, they neared the open sea, they met their new governor, Lord Delaware, coming with supplies. A sudden revulsion of feeling followed. Overawed at the change in their condition, they returned to their deserted homes with a chastened joy. ** It is the Lord of Hosts ! " said they ; " God will raise our state and build his church in this excellent clime." Now came better times. A new charter was obtained from the king. The council in London, which had heretofore stupidly tried to govern the colony, was abolished. The settlers obtained *'a hande in governing of themselves." July 30, 1619, the first legislative body was assembled in America. It consisted of the governor, council, and the house of burgesses, or deputies from the different boroughs or plantations. Every freeman had the right to vote. A written constitution was granted, and the foundations of civil liberty were laid in Virginia. A hardier and better class of men began to flock to the New World. New settlements were established and plantations lined both banks of the James Kiver as far as the present site of Richmond. Tobacco had proved a valuable article of export. It was cultivated so eagerly that at one time the gardens and even the public squares and streets of Jamestown were planted with it. The production of this staple greatly increased the demand for labor. At first "apprenticed servants" were sent over from England and bound out to the planters for a term of years ; being often men who had committed some crime or had rebelled against the government. In 161 9, twenty negroes were brought by a Dutch ship and were quickly purchased by the planters. From this small beginning sprang the institution of slavery, which afterward became so important an element in the history of the United States. As yet, few of the feebler sex had dared to cross the At- lantic, but about this time the proprietors sent out a load of 38 EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS. [1619. industrious, virtuous young women, who were sold as wives to the planters for one hundred pounds of tobacco per head. So great was the demand that, as the records quaintly tell us, " one widow " who was sent over in a subsequent lot went readily with the rest, and the price of the " faire maidens" ran up to a hundred and fifty pounds of the market weed. Domestic ties were now formed, homes established, and the perma- nence of the col- ony was insured. During the life of Powhatan, there was peace with the Indians, but after his death they resolved to exter- minate the colony (1622). Distributing themselves in small parties, they entered the houses and even sat down at the tables of those whose death they were planning. At a given signal they fell upon the whites in all the outlying plantations. Jamestown fortunately escaped, through the faithfulness of a converted Indian. A merciless war ensued. After a second massacre, some years later, the Indians were ex- pelled from the region, and their rich lands along the York and the James occupied by the planters. According to the idea of King James, the London Company was too willing to grant rights to the colonists. He therefore took away its charter and made Virginia a royal province (1624). Thereafter the king appointed the governor and the council, though the colony retained its assembly. The royal governors were oftentimes unprincipled men, who ruled for their own good and not that of the settlers, shovT-ing no sympathy for the province and no care for the people. The Navigation Acts passed by the parliament in 1660, which were intended to give SELLING WIVES TO THE PLANTERS. 1660.] SETTLEMENT OF VIRGINIA. 39 England the control of the trade of the colonies, pressed heavily on Virginia. They required that the commerce of the colony should be carried on in English vessels, all their tobacco shipped to England, and all their goods purchased in that country. The colony contained few towns or centres of influence. The cultivation of tobacco, as the great staple, and the introduction of slaves, naturally led to the establishment of large estates. These often descended to the eldest son and were perpetuated in the family. The great proprietors were generally men of intelligence, accustomed to control. They became the magistrates and mem- bers of the council and assembly. A powerful landed aris- tocracy was thus growing up and obtaining rule in the prov- ince. Virginia was also intensely royal. During the civil war in England it sided with the king. After the execution of Charles I. many loyalists took refuge on the shores of the Chesapeake. There they found " every house a hostelry and every planter a friend." At one time there was even a possibility of the young prince coming to the New World. Cromwell, however, sent over a ship of war to Virginia, and the colonists quickly submitted. Under the Commonwealth, the People of Virginia were allowed to elect their own officers and to enjoy all the privileges of an equal franchise. A change, however, was at hand. The news of the Restoration of Charles II. aroused transports of joy, but it was the knell to the political privileges of the common people. The next assembly (1661) consisted almost entirely of cavaliers and great landholders. The Church of England was made that of the colony. All had to contribute to its support. In each parish a board of vestrymen was appointed, with power to assess taxes and fill any vacancy in its body. Dissenters were heavily punished. A fine of twenty pounds was imposed on absentees from church. Baptists were declared to be " filled with new-fangled conceits of their own heretical invention." A member who was thought to be kindly disposed toward the Quakers was expelled from the Board of Burgesses. The right of suffrage was confined to freeholders and housekeepers. The vestrymen became a close corporation and imposed taxes at pleasure. The assemblymen remained in office after their term had expired, and voted themselves a daily pay of two hundred and fifty pounds of tobacco (about nine dollars in value) — an enormous salary for those days of poverty. The common people, feeling themselves deprived of the 40 EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS. [1676. political rights they had so long enjoyed, were ready for an uprising. Little knots of men gathered in the gloom of the woods to talk over their wrongs. A young planter named Nathaniel Bacon, known in history as the " Virginia Rebel," sympathizing with the democracy, became its leader, July, 1676. Governor Berkeley not proving able to protect the frontier from, the Indians, Bacon rallied the frightened yeomanr}^, put the In- dians to rout, and then, returning, forced Berkeley to dissolve the old assembly and issue writs for a new election. The governor,, however, failed to keep faith, and civil war broke out. James- town was burnt, patriots firing their own houses, lest they might protect the enemies to their liberty. Bacon died in the midst of success. Dis- pirited by his loss, the people scat- tered their forc-es. The principal men were hunted down with ferocious zeal. Hansford, a gallant native Virginian, per- ished on the scaf- fold, the first mar- tyr to the cause of American lib- erty. His last words were, ** I die a loyal subject and a lover of my country." As William Drummond was brought in, the vindictive Berkeley, bowing low, remarked with cruel mockery, " I am more glad to see you than any man in Virginia. You shall be hanged in half an hour." The patriot was condemned at one o'clock and hanged at four the same day. The gallows received twenty-two victims, and yet Berkeley's revenge was not satisfied. Charles II., when he heard the tidings, impatiently exclaimed, " The old fool has taken more lives in that naked country than I did for the mur- der of my father." DRUMMOND BROUGHT BEFORE BERKELEY. 1676.] SETTLExMENT OF MARYLAND. 41 Berkeley was recalled. But the rebellion had been a century too early. The governor who succeeded ruled more arbitrarily than ever. The king appointed all officers of the colony. Even the members of the assembly were hereafter elected only by free- holders. Yet as the spirit of liberty spread, the people found means to thwart their oppressors, and in spite of adverse circum- stances, the colony grew rapidly in wealth and population. " There was no need of a scramble ; abundance gushed from the earth for all. The morasses were alive with water-fowl ; the creeks abounded with oysters, heaped together in inexhaustible beds ; the rivers were alive with fish ; the forests were nimble with game ; the woods rustled with coveys of quails and wild turkeys, while they rung with the merry notes of singing birds; and hogs, swarming like vermin, ran at large in. troops. It was the best poor man's country in the world." In 1688 it had a population of fifty thousand, and exported twenty-five thousand hogsheads of tobacco, on which England levied a tax of one hundred and thirty-five thousand pounds. gETTX-EMENT Of JVIAF(YX.A]MD. Lord Baltimore (George Calvert) came to Virginia (1629)^ seeking a refuge for his Catholic brethren, who were then perse- cuted in England; but finding that persons of his faith were harshly treated, he secured from the king a grant of land north of the Potomac, on the annual payment of two Indian arrows and one-fifth of the gold and silver which might be found. This ter« ritory received the name Maryland, in honor of the queen, Henri- etta Maria. Its charter, unlike that granted to Virginia, gave to all freemen the right of making the laws. All sects were to be tolerated, and there was to be no interference from the king, nor any English taxation. The first colony was founded at an Indian town near the mouth of the Potomac. Religious liberty obtained a home, its first in the wide world, at the humble village of St. Mary's. The infant colony flourished wonderfully. The land had already been tilled by the Indians and was ready for planting. Food was plenty and contentment reigned. Tobacco became the staple ; slaves 42 EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS. [1634. were introduced ; and much the same manners and customs ob- tained as in Virginia. There was, for a time, serious difficulty with a colony of refugees from Virginia under Clayborne, who refused to submit to the new gov- ernment. The Puritans, coming in large numbers, obtained the majority over the Catholics. Two governors were elected; one Catholic and the other Protestant. Confusion ensued, and then civil war. Finally the Catholics found themselves disenfranchised in the very col- ony they had planted. In 171 5, the fourth Lord Baltimore re- covered the government, and religious toleration was again granted. Maryland remained under this administration until the Revolution. LORD BALTIMORE. S^>>^i^^<^X^^ gETTLEMflJMT Of PI.YMOUTH COLO]MY. One stormy day in the fall of 1620, the Mayflower dropped anchor in the harbor of Cape Cod. It bore a little band of one hundred and two Pilgrims. They had neither charter from the king nor the patronage of any company. They were exiles flee- ing from persecution at home and seeking religious freedom in the New World. They had expected to settle the milder coun- try near the Hudson, but instead were borne to the tempestuous coast of Massachusetts. Before any one landed, they assembled in the cabin and signed a compact agreeing to submit to such "just and equal laws" as should be enacted for the "general good." John Carver was chosen governor. They sailed about for a month seek- ing a good location for their intended settlement. Meanwhile, Cap- tain Miles Standish and his soldiers, each armed with coat of mail, sword, and match-lock musket, explored the country by land. 1620.] SETTLEMENT OF PLYMOUTH COLONY. 43 SIGNING THE COMPACT. The old chronicles narrate various inci- dents of their differ- ent excursions. One day they found " five or six people with a dogge, who were savages," and who " all ran away and whistled the dogge after them." Then Bradford (the future governor) was caught in an Indian deer-trap, to the great amusement of the party ; and after- ward they stumbled upon some heaps of earth, in one of which were baskets of Indian corn. This they carried back to the ship in a great kettle left among the ruins of an Indian hut. It fur- nished them seed for their first crop, and the owners, being after- ward found, were carefully paid. At another time having con- cluded their morning-prayers, they were preparing to breakfast, when a strange yell was heard and a shower of arrows fell in the midst of their little camp on the beach. They returned the salute w^ith powder and ball, and their savage assailants fled. The little shallop which was used for coasting along the shore encountered a furious gale, and lost sail, mast, and rudder. With great difficulty they brought it to land. Darkness was already upon them, and the rain froze on their garments as they stood. They kindled a fire out of the wet wood on the shore, and passed the night as best they could. The next day was spent in cleaning rusty weapons, drying drenched " stuff," and reconnoitering the place. Every hour was precious. The winter was rapidly clos- ing in. The party in the Mayflower was anxiously awaiting their return, yet, being " y® last day of y® weeke, they prepared ther to keepe y^ Sabbath." PLYMOUTH ROCK. 44 EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS. [1620. On Monday, December 21, the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. A grateful posterity has kept the day in honored remembrance, and " Forefathers* Rock," on which they first set foot, is still preserved as an object of veneration. It was probably the only stone large enough for the purpose of landing in all that bleak, sandy coast. The cutting blasts of winter fell upon them. Half of the men were sick from exposure. Yet they resolutely set at work build- ing rude log-cabins. At one time there were only seven well persons in the colony. They " carried out the dead through the snow and the cold, and returned to take care of the sick." When spring came, the graves they had dug far outnumbered the houses they had built. But the hearts of the survivors never misgave them. When the Mayflower returned to England she carried back not a single home-sick pilgrim. The summer found them with flourishing fields of barley, peas, and Indian corn ; fish, wild fowls, berries, and native fruits in abundance ; nineteen log-cabins, each with a little enclosure for a private garden ; a rude store-house, twenty feet square, for the protection of their common property ; and a platform on the hill crowned with five guns as a means of defence. A little brook ran by the humble town, and springs of clear, fresh water were near. That " the birds sang in the woods most pleasantly," and the wild wood-flowers were " very sweet," is their own record, and testifies to their cheerful content. The feeble colony met with no opposition from the Indians. A pestilence had nearly annihilated several tribes inhabiting that portion of the coast, and thus, providentially, as the Pilgrims devoutly believed, left a clear place for them to occupy. One pleasant morning they were startled by the coming of an Indian, who, in broken English, bade them ''Welcome." He proved to be Samoset, a petty chief who had picked up a little of the language from the crews of fishing -vessels. He afterward brought Massasoit, the head chief of the Wampanoags. A treaty was made with him and faithfully observed for over half a cen- 1622.] SETTLEMENT OF PLYMOUTH COLONY. 45 WELCOME, ENGLISHMEN. — PLYMOUTH, 162I. tury. In 1622, Canonicus, sachem of the Narragansett tribe, sent to Plymouth, as a token of defiance, a bundle of arrows tied with a rattlesnake's skin. The governor sent back the same skin stuffed with powder and ball. The superstitious savages, think- ing it some fatal charm, passed it in terror from hand to hand till it came back again to Plymouth. The first crop proved inadequate for the winter. A new body of emigrants arrived, but they were unprovided with food, and so only increased the privations and difficulties of the colony. Even at the end of three years we are told that ^* at night they knew not where to have a bit in the morning." At one time there was only a pint of corn in the settlement, which allowed five kernels to each person. Yet such was their pious content that at a social dinner, consisting only of clams, eaten off the lid of the same chest on which the compact was signed in the cabin of the May- flower, good Elder Brewster returned thanks to God for having " given them to suck the abundance of the seas and of the treas- ures hid in the sand." The plan first adopted of working their lands in common failed, as at Jamestown, and a portion was assigned each settler. Thrifty, God-fearing, and industrious, the Pilgrims steadily gained in abundance and comfort. Car- goes of sassafras, then much esteemed in pharmacy, furs and lum- 46 EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS. [1628. ber were sent to England. After a time they raised enough corn to sell to fishing-vessels and to barter with the Indians. For over eighteen years the government in church and state was a strict democracy — all the male inhabitants forming the legislature. The increase of population afterward caused it to be made representative, and each town sent a committee to the gen- eral court. The Plymouth colony remained independent till 1692, when it was united to that of Massachusetts Bay. gETTl.EJVlEp^T OF MASg^CHUgETTg ByVY. The success of the Pilgrims greatly encouraged the establish- ment of other settlements. Large numbers of the best Puritan families in England were induced to emigrate. In 1628, five ship- loads landed at a place which they named Salem, from the Hebrew word meaning peace. Their circumstances were far different from those of the Pilgrims. It was June when they approached the coast. " What with pine woods and green trees by land," writes the old chronicler, " and yellow flames painting the sea, we were all desirous to see our new Paradise." They had a grant from the Council of New England, which had taken the place of the old Plymouth Company. They had a charter from the king, authorizing them to govern themselves. Moreover, their connec- tions in England were powerful. They brought tools, cattle, and horses. They were not, however, exempted from the hardships incident to a settler's life. The winter was very severe and they were forced to subsist on ground-nuts, shell-fish, and acorns, so difficult to obtain at that season of the year. One of them wrote : " Bread was so very scarce that sometimes I thought the very crumbs of my father's table would be sweet unto me. And, when I could have meal and water and salt boiled together, it was so good, who could wish better?" Other settlements were rapidly formed — Charlestown, Dor- chester, Watertown, Lynn, and Cambridge. One thousand emi- grants under the highly-esteemed Governor Winthrop estab- lished themselves at Boston — from its three hills first called Tri-Mountain — which became the capital of the colony. The government was vested in a governor chosen by the 1630.] SETTLEMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 47 FAC-SIMILE OF FIRST UAP ENGRAVED IN NEW ENGLAND. people, and a legislature elected in the same manner. None but freemen, however, could vote, and none but church members were eligible to citizen- ship. " Each settlement," says Hildreth, ''at once assumed that township authority which has ever formed so marked a fea- ture in the political or- ganization of New Eng- land. The people assem- bled in to wn - meeting, voted taxes for local pur- poses, and chose three, five, or seven of the prin- cipal inhabitants, at first under other names, but early known as 'select- men,* who had the expen- diture of this money and the executive management of town affairs. A treasurer and a town clerk were also chosen, and a constable was soon added for the service of civil and criminal processes." Each town constituted, in fact, a small state almost complete in itself. It is a noticeable fact that what we now call Massachusetts grew up around two centres, separated not only by forty miles of wilderness, but by a great diversity of thought. Plymouth and the Bay were two little republics, that for sixty years maintained their independence. In England, the Pilgrims who settled the former were Separatists ; that is to say, they had left the Church of England aftd set up churches for themselves. The Puritans, who came to the Bay, were Non-conformists ; t. e., they simply re- fused to conform to certain rules and usages of the Church of Eng- land, but remained, as it were, members under protest. Plymouth was weak in men and money ; the Bay was strong from the first. The former was settled by plain, practical people, having only one university man — Elder Brewster; the latter had a superabun- dance of highly educated persons. In 1640, the Bay numbered seventy-seven clergymen ; they dominated in all political action and engrafted on the Puritan colony the best learning of the Old World. At Plymouth all voted who were elected to the right of 48 EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS. [1636. citizenship ; at the Bay, church membership was a sine qua non, so that not a quarter of the adults were ehgible to that trust. At Plymouth were found quiet, peace, and contentment ; at the Bay, the rush of business and the strife of parties, impelling the tides of hfe which set off to establish new centres in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and other colonies. Religious toleration was rarely seen in those days. Indeed, those who were themselves cruelly persecuted were often the most intolerant in their treatment of any who differed with them. The Puritans had crossed the sea to establish a Puritan colony, and they required everybody to attend their worship. A strict uniformity of belief was enforced. Religious distur- bances soon arose. Roger Williams, an eloquent young minister, had adopted the idea of " soul -liberty," as he expressed it, i. e,, the responsibility of every man to his own conscience alone. It ROGER WILLIAMS RECEIVED BY CANONICUS. was a novel sentiment in those days, and was especially unsuited to the Puritan method of government. Williams was accordingly expelled from the colony. Exiled by Christians, he found a home with Pagans. Canonicus, a Narragansett chief, gave him land for a settlement, which he gratefully called Providence (1636). Mrs. Hutchinson, who rebelled at the restpaints placed upon women, and claimed to have special revelations of God's will, was also banished, and joined the new colony. The Quakers had come to Boston overflowing with zeal, and even courting persecution. 1656.] KING PHILIP'S WAR. 49 They received it in abundance. Several were hanged. Num- bers were flogged and expelled. These, too, found a hearty welcome at the Providence plantation, the exiled Williams freely sharing his lands with religious refugees of every class. Thus were laid the foundations of the State of Rhode Island. Its fundamental principle was its founder's favorite one of entire liberty of conscience. A union of the colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut, was formed in 1643, under the title of The United Colonies of New England. This was a famous league in colonial times, and was the germ of the Federal Union of later days. The object was a common protection against the Indians and the encroachments of the Dutch and French settlers. Massasoit, like Powhatan, was the friend of the whites. After Massasoit's death, his son. King Philip, as he was called, brooding over the constant encroachments of the settlers, the loss of game, and the usurpation of his favorite hunting-grounds, at last organ- ized a confederation of various tribes to drive out the intruders. The struggle began ere his plans were completed. Some Indians being tried and hanged for mur- der, Philip, in revenge, fell upon Swanzy, a little settlement near his home at Mount Hope (1675). Troops came, and he fled, mark- ing his flight by burning build- ings and by poles hung with the heads, hands, and scalps of the hapless whites whom he met on the way. All the horrors of Indian warfare now burst upon the doomed colonists of New England. The settlements were widely scattered. The Indians lurked in every forest and brake. They watched for the lonely settler as he opened his door in the morning, as he was busy with his work in the field, or walked along the forest path to church. The fearful war-whoop, the deadly tomahawk, the treacherous ambuscade, filled the col- KING PHILIP. (From an Old Print.) 50 EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS. [1675. ony with constant terror. In August, a company of eighty young men, " the very flower of the county of Es- sex," were returning from Deerfield with a train of wagons loaded with wheats which they had harvested. At a little stream, ever since that day called Bloody Run, they stopped to pick the grapes which hung in profusion from the trees along the road. Suddenly amid their glee, the Indians leaped upon them, like tigers, from the thicket. Only seven or eight of the entire party escaped. While the sav- ages were plundering the dead, troops came to the rescue, and^ in turn, cut down nearly one hundred of their number ere they could escape. At Hadley, the Indians surprised the people during a relig- ious service. Seizing their muskets at the sound of the savage war-whoop, the men rushed out of the meeting-house to fall into line. But the foe was on every side. Confused and bewildered, the settlers seemed about to give way, when suddenly a strange old man with long white beard and ancient garb appeared among them. Ringing out a quick, sharp word of command, he recalled 1676.] SALEM WITCHCRAFT. 51 them to their senses. Following their mysterious leader, they drove the enemy headlong before them. The danger passed, they looked around for their deliverer ; but he had disappeared as mysteriously as he had come. The good people believed that God had sent an angel to their rescue. History reveals the secret. It was the regicide Colonel Goffe. Fleeing from the vengeance of Charles II., with a price set upon his head, he had for years wandered about, living in mills, clefts of rocks, and forest caves. At last he had found an asylum with the Hadley minister. From his window he had seen the stealthy Indians coming down the hill. Fired with desire to do one more good deed for God's people, he rushed from his hiding-place, led them on to victory^ and then returned to his retreat, never more to reappear. All the long summer the cruel strife went on. But when winter came, and the forest was more open and the low ground frozen over, a large body of the colonists attacked the Indians in. their stronghold, in an almost inaccessible swamp in South King- ston. After a desperate struggle the fort was carried, and the wigwams filled with stores were burned to ashes. A thousand warriors were killed. The next year Philip was left almost alone. Hunted from place to place, he was tracked to the centre of a morass, where he was shot by one of his own people. It was a sad fate for a brave man, who, under other circumstances, would have been styled a hero and a patriot. The war had cost the colony six hundred men and one million dollars. Every eleventh house had been burned and every eleventh soldier killed. No help had been asked or received from England. The year 1692 is memorable as that of the Salem Witchcraft. This was a delusion which seems preposterous now, but which was then in accordance with the current belief of the times. It broke out in the family of Mr. Parish, a minister of Salem, where a company of girls had been in the habit of meeting with two West Indian slaves, to study the '' black art." Suddenly they began to be mysteriously contorted, to bark like dogs, purr like cats, and scream at some unseen thing which was sticking pins in their bodies. They accused an old Indian servant of bewitching them. On being scourged, she acknowledged the crime. A fast-day was proclaimed. Cotton Mather, a distinguished minister of Boston, and a firm believer in the delusion, came to investigate the case. The excitement spread. Impeachments multiplied. A special court was formed to try the accused. The jails rapidly filled. 52 EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS. [1692. Magistrates were busy. On the most foolish charges — as being seen flying through the air on a broom — respectable people were condemned to death. It was dangerous to express doubt of a prisoner's guilt. Fifty-five persons suffered torture and twenty were executed. All these might have escaped if they had con- fessed themselves guilty, but, with noble heroism, they chose death rather than a falsehood. When the people awoke to their THE OLD WITCH HOUSE— SCENE OF EXAMINATIONS AT SALEM. folly the reaction was wonderful. Judge Sewall was so deeply penitent that he observed a day of fasting in each year, and on the day of general fast rose in his place in the Old South Church at Boston, and in the presence of the congregation handed to the pulpit a written confession acknowledging his error, and praying " That the sin of his ignorance sorely rued, Might be washed away in the mingled flood Of his human sorrow and Christ's dear blood." The history of Maine and New Hampshire is almost identical with that of Massachusetts. The early settlements grew up out of various fishing stations along the coast. A story is told of an itinerant preacher, who, in his exhortations to the people of Ports- mouth, reminded them that as they had come thither for the pur- pose of free worship, they ought to be very religious. " Sir, you are quite mistaken," was the reply. " You think you are speak- ing to the people of Massachusetts Bay. Our main end is to catch fish." Maine was not one of the original thirteen colonies, and did not separate from Massachusetts till 1820. New Hampshire was three times given to Massachusetts, either from its own wish or by royal authority. In 1741 it became a royal province, and had its governor, who was appointed by the king. 1635.] THE PEQUOD WAR. 53 gETTLEJVlEJ^T OF COJMjM^CTICUT. The valley of the Connecticut — a name derived from the Indian word for long river — was settled from Massachusetts. Rumors of its rich bottom lands early attracted the attention of the pioneers struggling for an existence upon the barren sea-coast around Plym- outh and the Bay. In 1633 a company of traders from Plymouth sailed up the river and built a fort at Windsor. In the autumn of 1635 John Steele, one of the proprietors of Cambridge, led a pioneer company '' out west," as it was then considered, and laid the foundations of Hartford. They passed the winter in miser- able cabins, half-buried in the snow, living precariously on corn purchased of the Indians. The next year the main band, with their pastor, Thomas Hooker, a most eloquent and estimable man, *' the light of the western churches," came, driving their flocks before them, through the wilderness. For two weeks they traveled on foot, traversing mountains, sWamps, and rivers, with only the compass for a guide, and little beside the milk from their own cows for their subsistence. Mrs. Hooker being ill, was borne on a litter. They established Hartford, Wethersfield and Windsor, known as the Connecticut colony, giving the franchise to all freemen. New Haven was settled by a company of Puri- tans direct from England. Like the colony around Massachusetts Bay, they allowed only church members to vote. The settlers had not been a year in their new home when a war broke out with the Pequod Indians. Roger. Williams, hear- ing that this tribe was likely to obtain the aid of the Narragan- setts, forgot all the wrongs he had received from the Massachu- setts people, and, at the risk of his life, went to the Indian council, confronted the Pequod deputies, and, after a three-days struggle, prevailed upon the Narragansetts to take part with the whites. A body of ninety Connecticut colonists was now raised to attack the Pequod stronghold on the Mystic River. After spending nearly all night in prayer, at the request of the sol- diers, they set out on their perilous expedition. On the way they were joined by several hundred friendly Indians. The party approached the fort at daybreak (June 5, 1637). The barking of a dog aroused the sleepy sentinel, and he shouted, " Owanux ! Owanux ! " (the Englishmen ! ) — but it was too late. The troops were already within the palisades. The Indians collected them- 54 EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS. [1637. selves and made a fierce resistance ; but Captain Mason, seizing a firebrand, hurled it among the wigwams. The flames quickly swept through the encampment. The English themselves barely escaped. A few Indians fled to the swamp, but were hunted down. The tribe perished in a day. This fearful blow struck terror to the savages, and gave New England peace for forty years, until King Philip's war, of which we have spoken. '' The infant was safe in its cradle, the laborer in the fields, the solitary traveler during the night-watches in the forest; the houses needed no bolts, the settlements no palisades." The younger Winthrop, son of Governor Winthrop of Massa- chusetts and one of the most accomplished men of his time, went to England, and by his personal influence and popularity obtained from Charles I. the most liberal charter as yet given to the colonies. It was a precious boon to liberty. Twenty-five years afterward. Governor Andros, pompously marching from Boston over the route where the pious Hooker had led his little flock fifty years before, came " glittering with scarlet and lace " into the assembly at Hartford, and demanded the charter. A protracted debate ensued. The people crowded around to take a last look at this guarantee of their liberties, ■^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^* the charter pfovernment at an THK CHAKTEK OAK. O end. " Finis " was written at the close of the minutes of their last meeting. The freedom of the press was now denied. Persons about to marry had to give heavy bonds with sureties. The right to join in wedlock was taken from the clergy and given to the magis- trates. Payment of money to non-conformist ministers was for- bidden. Farmers were required to take out new titles to their land, at great expense. The rule of the governor became at last unendurable. When he was finally deposed, the people brought out the faded but now doubly-precious charter from its hiding- place, the general court reassembled, and the '' finis" disappeared. 1609.] DISCOVERY OF THE HUDSON RIVER. 55 3ETTX.EJVIE]MT OF NEW YORK. This was the only colony planted by the Dutch. In 1609, Henry Hudson, an English navigator in the service of the Dutch, while seeking a northwest passage to the Indies entered the harbor of New York. His vessel, the Half-Moon, was the first European ship to sail up that noble river which now bears his name. Strange was the sight which greeted his wondering eyes. " Sombre forests," says Bancroft, " shed a melancholy grandeur over the useless magnificence of nature, and hid in their deep THE HALF-MOON IN THE HUDSON. shades the rich soil which the sun had never warmed. No axe had leveled the giant progeny of the crowded groves, in which the fantastic forms of withered limbs that had been blasted and riven by lightning contrasted strangely with the verdant fresh- ness of a younger growth of branches. The wanton grape-vine, seeming by its own power to have sprung from the earth and to have fastened its leafy coils on the top of the tallest forest tree. $6 EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS. [1609. swung in the air with every breeze like the loosened shrouds of a ship. Reptiles sported in stagnant pools, or crawled unharmed over piles of mouldering trees." Red men, too, were there : sometimes conciliatory, as when they flocked about in their canoes to barter grapes, pumpkins, and furs for beads and knives ; sometimes vindictive, as when they beset the little exploring boat and sent Hudson's long-time comrade to a grave on the beach. About the time that John Smith went back to England, Hud- son turned his prow toward Holland. His voyage had rendered his name immortal. Legends of the daring sailor still live among the old Dutch families, and when the black thunder-clouds send their crackling peals along the Palisades, they say, " Hendrick Hudson and his crew are playing nine-pins now." It was the golden age of Dutch commerce. Holland imme- diately laid claim to the country and named it " New Nether- LAND." In 1613 some huts were erected on the present site of New York. The year after the landing of the Pilgrims, the Dutch West India Company obtained a patent for the territory between the Delaware and the Connecticut Rivers. To every one who should plant a colony of fifty persons they offered a iract of land sixteen miles in length, which they and their heirs should hold forever. These proprietors were called patroons, or lords of the manor. The famous anti-rent difficulties of after times grew out of these grants. To supply the requisite number of emigrants, ship-captains brought over many poor Germans, whose passage-money was paid by the patroons, whom they were in turn bound to serve for a given term of years. It was a profitable arrangement for all concerned. During the period of service the Redemptioners^ as they were called, gained a knowledge of the language and ways of the country, and were fitted to take care of themselves when they became independent. In that charming little volume, "■ New York Society in the Olden Time," a story is told of one of these settlers who, having completed his bondage of several years, quietly produced a bag of gold which he had brought over with him, and which was sufficient to purchase a farm. But, said his late master in surprise, " why, with all this money, did you not pay your passage, instead of serving as a redemptioner so long?" " Oh," said the cautious emigrant from the Rhine, " I did not know English, and I should have been cheated. Now I know all about the country, and I can set up for myself." Which was true phil- 1629.] SETTLEMENT OF NEW YORK. 57 osophy. These industrious settlers became respected citizens, and their descendants are to-day among the wealthy farmers along the Hudson. Peter Minuits came over as first governor in 1626. He bought the Island of Manhattan of the Indians for twenty-four dollars. Here was founded the city of New Amsterdam. Trade was opened with the Indians, and canoes pushed up every neigh- boring inlet to barter for otter and beaver skins. Meanwhile there was trouble with the Swedes on the Delaware, and the English on the Connecticut, both of whom had settled on lands claimed by the Dutch. Then, too, there was a fearful massacre of Indians, perpetrated by Governor Kieft, and in revenge the war- whoop echoed through every forest glen, and not a farm or ''bowerie" was safe. The colonists, indignant at his cruel folly, sent the governor home, but he was wrecked on the coast of Wales and miserably perished. Under Governor Stuyvesant came better times. He arranged the Con- necticut boundary line ; conquered New Sweden, as the colony on the Delaware was called ; made peace with the Indians, and built a palisade across the island where now is Wall street. Dutch industry and thrift meant prosperity here as well as in Holland. From the first, New York was a cosmopolitan city. Even at that early day eighteen languages were said to be spoken. The French Huguenots, the Italian Waldenses, the Swiss Calvinists, the world-hated Jew, all found a home and a refuge in this growing colony. The island was mostly divided into farms. The Park was crowned with forest trees and used for a common pasture, where tanners obtained bark and boys gathered chestnuts for half a century later. With all Governor Stuyvesant's honesty and ability, " Head- strong Peter," as they called him, was inclined to be obstinate. He especially hated democratic institutions. The English in the GOVERNOR STUYVESANT. $8 EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS. [1664. colony looked with longing eyes on the rights enjoyed by their Connecticut brethren, so that when, in 1664, an English fleet came to anchor in the harbor and demanded a surrender in the name of THE ENGLISH LANDING AT NEW YORK, IOL/4. the Duke of York, there was secret joy in the town. The stout- hearted governor had been a brave soldier in his time, and he stumped about on his wooden leg at a terrible rate, angrily tore up the letter of his council making terms, and swore he would hold the place at every cost. But the burgomasters made him put the pieces together and sign the surrender. The English flag soon floated over the island, and the name of the colony was changed to New York in honor of the new proprietor. England was now master of the coast from Canada to Florida. The English governors disappointed the people by not granting their coveted rights. A remonstrance against being taxed with- out representation was burned by the hangman. So that when, after nine years of English authority, a Dutch fleet appeared in the harbor, the people went back quietly under their old rulers. But the next year, peace being restored between England and Holland, New Amsterdam became New York again. Thus ended the Dutch rule in the colonies. Andros, who twelve years after played the tyrant in New England, was the next governor. He managed so arbitrarily that he was called home. Under his successor, Dongan, there was a gleam of civil freedom. By per- 1689.] SETTLEMENT OF NEW YORK. 59 p PETRUSr 5TUYVESANT I CaptamGeneraiiGbvernorinChiefof AmstenTam j JnNewNefherlandT^ow caJfed.New^lfSrlc An(ItheDutchWeitTnc[ial5land5.Die(£AD.I^ri| Aged 30 jears. Pf 54: .x:^^ S^"^ V^^Av5^ ?-^\^^- THE TOMB OF PETER STUYVESANT. (From St. Mark's Church, New York.) mission of the Duke of York, he called an assembly of the repre- sentatives of the people. This was but transient, for two years after, when the Duke of York became James II., king of England, he forgot all his promises, for- bade legislative assemblies, pro- hibited print- ing-presses, and annexed the colony to New England. When, how- ever, Andros was driven from Boston, Nichol- son, his lieuten- ant and apt tool of tyranny in New York, fled at once. Captain Leisler, supported by the democracy, but bit- terly opposed by the aristocracy, thereupon administered affairs very prudently until the arrival of Governor Slaughter, who ar- rested him on the absurd charge of treason. Slaughter was unwil- ling to execute him, but Leisler's enemies, at a dinner party, made the governor drunk, obtained his signature, and before he became sober enough to repent, Leisler was no more. The people were greatly excited over his death, and cherished pieces of his clothing as precious relics. For long after, party strife ran high and bitter over his martyrdom. In the latter part of the seventeenth century, Captain Kidd was noted as a bold and skillful shipmaster. He distinguished himself as a privateersman against the French in the West Indies, and received one hundred and fifty pounds for protecting New York city from pirates, who at that time infested the ocean highways. Being sent out against these sea-robbers, he finally became a pirate himself Returning from his guilty cruise, he boldly appeared in the streets of Boston, where he was captured in the midst of a prom- enade. He was carried to England, tried, and hung. His name and deeds have been woven into popular romance, and the song ' My name is Captain Kidd, as I sailed, as I sailed," is well known. 6o EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS. [1664. He is believed to have buried his ill-gotten riches on the coast of Long Island or the banks of the Hudson, and these localities have suffered many a search from credulous persons seeking for Kidd's treasure. When New Netherland passed into the hands of the Duke of York, he sold the portion between the Hudson and the Delaware to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. This tract took the name of Jersey in honor of Carteret, who had been governor of the island of Jersey in the British Channel. The first settlement, which was a cluster of only four houses, was called Elizabethtown, after his wife. His portion was called East, and Lord Berkeley's West New Jersey. The colonists were led by a brother of the proprietor, who came with a hoe on his shoulder to remind the people of the way to fortune and prosperity. The Quakers, Scotch Presbyterians, and others persecuted for conscience sake, grad- ually occupied the country. Constant trouble prevailed among the settlers regarding the land titles, and in 1702 the proprietors gave up their rights, and ^' the Jerseys," as the colony was long known, became a royal province. SEALS OF NEW AMSTERDAM AND NEW YORK. -'i==S^>^^i><^,^^:s-^ gETTLEME)MT Of PENN3YI.VAJMIA. William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, was a celebrated English Quaker. Wishing to establish a home for the oppressed Friends in England, he secured from Charles IL the grant of a large tract west of the Delaware, in lieu of sixteen thousand pounds due his father by the crown, on condition of paying annually two beaver skins. This territory Penn wished to have called Sylvania (sylva^ forest), as it was covered with woods ; but the king ordered it to be styled Pennsylvania, and although Penn offered the secretary twenty guineas to erase the prefix, his request was denied. Penn immediately sent a body of emigrants to begin the " holy experi- ment," and came himself the next year in the ship " Welcome." Right royally was he welcomed by the settlers already within the 1682.] SETTLEMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA. 6l boundaries of his land, for his first proclamation had preceded him with the spirit of a benediction. " I hope you will not be troubled at your chainge and the king's choice," he wrote, " for you are now fixt, at the mercy of no governour that comes to make his fortune great. You shall be governed by laws of your own makeing, and live a free, and if you will, a sober and industrious people. God has furnisht me with a better resolution, and has given me His grace to keep it." On the beautiful banks of the Delaware, in 1683, he laid the foundations of Philadelphia, the " City of Brotherly Love," which he intended should be a '' faire and greene country toune," with gar- dens around every house. It was in the midst of the forest, and the startled deer bounded past the set- tler who came to survey his new home. Yet within a year it had one hundred houses ; in two years numbered over two thousand in- habitants ; and in three years had gained more than New York in half a century. The government was most happily inaugurated, while the Philadelphia mansions were as yet mainly hollow trees. A legisla- ture appointed by the people was to make all the laws. Every sect was to be tolerated. Any freeman could vote and hold office who believed in God and kept the Lord's day. No tax could be levied but by law. Every child was to be taught a useful trade. It seemed to be Penn's only desire to make the little colony as happy and free as could be. Under a large spreading elm at Shackamaxon, Penn attended a council of the Indian chiefs. " We meet," said he, " on the broad pathway of good faith and good will ; no advantage shall be taken on either side, but all shall be openness and love. The friendship between you and me I will not compare to a chain; for that the rains might rust, and the falling tree might break. We are the same as if one man's body were to be divided into two parts ; we are all one flesh and blood." The savages were touched by his gentle STATUE OF PENN IN PHILADELPHIA. 62 EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS. [1683. words and kindly bearing. " We will live in love with William Penn and his children," said they, " as long as the sun and moon shall shine." They kept the history of the treaty by means of strings of wampum, and would often count over the shells on a clean piece of bark and rehearse its provisions. " It was the only treaty never sworn to, and the only one never broken." On every hand the Indians waged relentless war with the colonies, but they never shed a drop of Quaker blood. Penn often visited their wigwams, shared in their sports, and talked to them of God and Heaven. He found even in the breast of the red man of the forest a response to his faithful teachings and pure example. They gave him the name Onas, and the highest compliment they could confer on any person was to say he was like Onas. Penn soon returned to England. Fifteen years afterward he came back with his family, intending to make the New World his home. But he could not shut out disturbance and conflict. The boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania was uncer- tain. It was not settled until 1767, when two surveyors. Mason and Dixon, ran the line since famous as Mason and Dixon's line. The " Three Counties on the Delaware " became discontented. Penn gave them a deputy-governor and an assembly of their own. Delaware and Pennsylvania, however, remained under one gov- ernment till the Revolution. The colonists of Pennsylvania were unwilling to pay the rents by which Penn sought to reimburse himself for his heavy outlay, and, not content with the privileges already secured, constantly sought to weaken the authority of their benefactor. Penn sorrowfully returned to his native land, and finally died in want and obscurity. ^-^-S^^A^gtNC^^ gETTLEMEJMT Of THE cyVF{OLINy\g. Carolina, as we have seen, was first named in honor of a French monarch ; but it remained for the English to settle the country. A company of religious refugees from Virginia had already pushed through the wilderness and '* squatted " near the mouth of Chowan River. Here they established the Albe- marle colony. In 1663, Charles II., who in his lavish igno- rance had given away half the continent, granted the vast 1663.] SETTLEMENT OF THE CAROLINAS. 63 territory south of Virginia to eight proprietors, chiefly his cour- tiers and ministers. The plan — the " grand model," as it was called — of the colony which they proposed to establish was drawn up by Lord Shaftesbury and the famous philosopher, John Locke. It was the wonder of the day. All the vast territory — embracing the present States of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, and a large part of Texas and Mexico — was to be divided into counties, each containing four hundred and eighty thousand acres. Over each county were to be a landgrave and two caciques or barons. They were to hold one-fifth of the land, and the proprietors one-fifth, leaving the balance to the people. No one owning less than fifty acres could vote ; while tenants were to be merely serfs, and slaves were to be at the absolute will of their masters. The emigrants sent out by the English proprietors first sailed into the well-known waters where Ribaut had anchored over a century before, but afterward removed to the ancient groves cov- ered with yellow jasmine, which marked the site of the present city of Charleston, then only Oyster Point. The growth of the new colony was rapid. Thither came ship-loads of Dutch from New York, dissatisfied with the English rule and attracted by the genial climate. The French Huguenots, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, flocked to the land where religious perse- cution was to be forever unknown. Their church was in Charles- ton; and ''thither on every Lord's day, gathering from their plantations on the banks of the Cooper, they might be seen, the parents with their children, making their way in light skiff's, through scenes so tranquil that silence was broken only by the rippling of oars and the hum of the flourishing village at the confluence of the rivers." The Huguenot settlers were a valua- ble acquisition to Charleston. At one time they numbered sixteen thousand, and added whole streets to the city. Many of them were from families of marked refinement in France, and their elegant manners, no less than their industry, charity, and morality, made an impress on the growing town. They brought the mulberry and olive from their own sunny land, and established magnificent plantations on the banks of the Cooper River. They also intro- duced many choice varieties of pears, which still bear illustrious Huguenot names. Their eminently honorable descendants have borne a proud part in the establishment of the American Repub- 64 EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENTS. [1665. lie. Of seven presidents who were at the head of the Philadel- phia Congress during the Revolution, three were of Huguenot parentage. ^^fvS y5s\s'>x>^'=*>^" WHITEFIELD S HOUSE, GUILFORD, CONNECTICUT. wooden bars. After the Indians and wild beasts had been driven back by increased settlement, bolts and bars fell into disuse. The foundations of the huge old stone chimneys were about twelve feet square. Forest logs four feet in length were piled upon the ponderous andirons, and on occasions a big "back -log" was drawn into the house by a horse, and then rolled into the fireplace with hand-spikes. '* Blazing hearthstones " had then a meaning at which, in our days of fur- naces and steam -pipes, we can only guess. No need for artificial venti- lators when, through the crevices of the building, swept such keen, brisk currents of ain In the morning the farmer and his family sat down to their break- fast of '' bean porridge," or boiled cornmeal and milk, with a healthy appetite. Beer, cider, or cold water furnished their usual beverage ; for tea and coffee were unknown in New England homes in the seventeenth century. '' Rye and Indian " was the staff of life on which they leaned the most. We can fancy a New England table of those early days, with its pewter dishes, bright- ened to their utmost polish, and, in the wealthier households, here and there a silver beaker or tankard, the heirloom of the family. The dinner, which is at noon, opens with a large Indian pudding — ground corn sweetened with molasses — accompanied by an appropriate sauce ; next come boiled beef and pork ; then wild game with potatoes, followed by turnips and samp or succo- tash. Pumpkins were served in various ways. Supper was also a substantial meal, though generally eaten cold. Baked beans, baked Indian pudding, and newly-baked rye and Indian bread were standard dishes for Wednesday, " after the washing and ironing agonies of Monday and Tuesday " ; salt fish on Saturday, but never on Friday, the " Popish " fast-day ; and boiled Indian pudding, with roast beef for those who could get it, on Sunday. 96 COLONIAL LIFE. Although, from the scarcity of laborers, the proprietors toiled often in the same fields with the servants they had brought over from Old England, it must not be supposed that there were no grades or degrees in society. Titles, however, were used spar- ingly. Even that of Reverend does not seem to have been in use for at least a half century after the Mayflower touched port — the minister being addressed and recorded as Mr., Pastor, Teacher, or Elder. The first prefix, in fact, indicated much more in old colonial times than at present. Clergymen, the more distin- guished members of the General Court, highly-born and Univer- sity-bred men alone, were honored with it. Young men, of what- ever rank, were seldom granted it. To be called Mr., or to have one's name recorded by the secretary with that prefix, two hun- dred years ago, was a pretty certain index of the person's rank as respects birth, education, and moral character. As for the com- mon people above the grade of servants, the yeomen, tenants, owners of small estates, and even many deputies to the General Court, they were content with the appellation of GoodmaUy thei wives receiving the corresponding one of Goodwife. The title ol Sir was often given to undergraduates at a university or college who belonged to distinguished families. " Hence a son of Gov- ernor Winthrop, Mr. Sherman, or Governor Treat, returning home from Yale or Cambridge to spend a vacation, would be greeted by his old companions as Sir Winthrop, Sir Sherman, or Sir Treat." The Esquire or Squire was added or prefixed to de- scendants of the English nobility, sons of baronets, knights, etc. Such titles as " the Honored," " the Worshipful," '' the Worshipful and much Honored," sometimes occur prefixed to such names as John Winthrop, or Captain John AUyn. Militar}^ titles were especially reverenced, for a long time " Captain " being the highest given. Training-day was a great event. All the men from sixteen to sixty years of age were required to participate in the general drill. There does not appear to have been any uniform dress, and no music but that of the drum to inspirit the military movements ; but as every member of the militia practised for the defence of his own household, we can well imagine that there was lacking neither zest nor zeal. At Plymouth, by law, trainings were " always begun and ended with prayer." The pikemen — the tall- est and strongest in the colony — shouldered their pikes — ten feet in length, besides the spear at the end — with religious resolution ; NEW ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 97 the musketeers firmly grasped their clumsy old matchlocks ; and the young Puritan boys looked on and sighed with envy, longing for the time when they, too, might wear helmet and breastplate, or a cotton-stufFed coat to turn the Indian arrows. To be even a corporal in the militia was an honor which required an extra H^>^•^^i^^-^ 'Z;^^'^^^!^^^ TRAINING-DAY IN THE OLDEN TIME. amount of humility to bear without danger to the soul. John Hull, a prosperous Boston merchant, chosen to that office in 1648, praises God for giving him *' acceptance and favor in the eyes of His people, and, as a fruit thereof, advancement above his deserts." How would those ante-revolutionary fathers have stared at our swift express trains, our lines of telegraphic wires, and our pleasure-trips from Atlantic to Pacific shore ! Even a stage-coach was to them a luxury yet unknown. The fair bride accompanied her husband, gentleman or yeoman, on the wedding trip, from her father's house to his own home, wherever it might be, seated on a pillion behind him on his horse. She expected to prove a '' help meet for him," as the minister's wedding counsels emphatically enjoined ; and in her traveling costume of possibly a plain blue and white gown, the product of her own industry, she was as lovely in her sturdy husband's eye as the daintiest of modern brides can ever hope to be. Indeed, her fresh, glowing cheeks, and plump, elastic form might well strike envy to the heart of many a modern 7 g8 COLONIAL LIFE. A WEDDING JOURNEY. belle. Notwithstanding the general simplicity of dress, however, in the early colonial times, great public days called out many an elegant costume. The rich articles of apparel brought over by the higher class of emigrants were carefully preserved, and lace ruffles, elab- orate embroid- ery, silk and vel- vet caps, and gold and silver shoe and knee buckles, made a gathering of wealthy colonists a much gayer aflfair than a black-coat- ed party of to-day. Tightly -fitting small-clothes and high hose, a coat extending to the knees and fastened in front with buttons, clasps, or hooks and eyes, its full skirts stiffened with buckram and the habit itself profusely decorated with gold lace, a plaited stock of fine linen cambric with a large silver buckle at the back of the neck, a broad-brimmed, high-crowned, sugar-loaf hat, beneath which fell the long, luxuriant curls of the bleached or powdered wig, and a fashionable red cloak, gave to the dignified New England father an air of unquestionable gentility. The skins of animals were much used for garments. In the inventory of a wealthy Connecticut settler, who died in 1649, are enumerated " two raccoon coats, one wolf-skin coat, four bear-skins, three moose." Sheep and deer skins did like service. The small-clothes usually fitted quite closely to the person, and " those men were thought very fortu- nate whose forms were such that they could wear small-clothes above the hips without appurtenances, and stockings above the calf of the leg without garters." The well-to-do matrons carried their long-trailed gowns, " liberally set off with flounces and fur- belows," gracefully over one arm, or had them "trolloped" in loops at the side, or let them sweep their full course — " from half a yard to a yard and a half" — along the floor. If in this they transgressed the statute which forbade any excess '' beyond the necessary end of apparell for covering," some of them evidently NEW ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 99 fulfilled its requirements in the upper cut of their robes, for before the end of the seventeenth century we hear Boston denounced as a "lost town," because of its " strange and fantastick fashions and attire, naked backs and bare breasts." Not to be behind the sugar-loaf appendages which brought their husbands up in the world, the ladies appeared in towering head-dresses of crape, muslin, or lace. The distinctions in dress between the higher and lower ranks of society which marked the old country were jealously guarded here. But American air from the first seems to have been charged with independence, so that all who touched our shores felt more or less the influence of the electric current. The spirit of equal rights, born in the untamed forest and undis- turbed for centuries, refused to be banished its native haunts. It was, perhaps, as much an innocent ambition to rise in society as a mere love of finery which tempted the common people to ape the dress and condition of their betters in station. Before a score of years had passed, this tendency had become a source of anxiety to the careful colonial legislators. In 1640, it was ordered that as " divers Persons of severall Ranks are obsearved still to exceede " in their apparel, "the Constables of every towne within there Libertyes shall observe and take notice of any particular Person or Persons within thier several Lymits, and all such as they judge to exceede thier condition and Rank therein, they shall present and warn to appear at the particular Court." Among the pro- scribed articles appear "embroidered and needle -work caps," "gold and silver girdles," "immoderate great sleeves,'* and " slashed apparel." Rev. Nathaniel Ward, author of the " Body of Liberties," which was adopted (1641) as the code of laws for Massachusetts, and substantially for Connecticut, was sorely tried by the " female foppery " of the time. In a book entitled " The Simple Cobler of Agawam, in America, Willing to help Mend his Native Country, lamentably tattered, both in the Upper- leather and the Sole," etc., illustrative of colonial life and man- ners, he thus breaks forth : " I honour the woman that can honour herselfe with her attire ; a good text alwayes deserves a fair mar- gent ; I am not much offended if I see a trimme, far trimmer than she that wears it; in a word, whatever Christianity or Civility will allow, I can afford with London measure ; but when I heare a nugiperous gentle dame inquire what dresse the Queen is in this week ; what the nudiustertian fashion of the Court ; I meane the very newest ; with cgge to be in it in all haste, whatever it be : I lOO COLONIAL LIFE. look at her as the very gizzard of a trifle, the product of a quarter of a cipher, the epitome of nothing, fitter to be kickt, if she were of a kickable substance, than either honour'd or humour'd. To speak moderately, I truly confesse, it is beyond the ken of my understanding to conceive how those women should have any true grace, or valuable vertue, that have so little wit as to dis- figure themselves with such exotick garbes, as not only dismantles their native lovely lustre, but transclouts them into gant bargeese ill-shapen — shotten — shell-fish, Egyptian Hyeroglyphicks, or at the best into French flurts of the pastery, which a proper English woman should scorne with her heels ; it is no marvell they weare drailes on the hinder part of their heads, having nothing as it seems in the fore part, but a few squirrils* brains to help them frisk from one ill-favored fashion to another." The evil seems not to have been remedied in 1676, for we find that still the ^'rising Generation" was ''in danger to be corrupted" by an ex- cess in apparel, which is *' testified against in God's holy Word," and it was therefore ordered that '' what person soever shall wear Gold or Silver Lace, or Gold or Silver Buttons, Silk Ribbons, or other costly superfluous trimmings, or any bone Lace above three shillings per yard, or Silk Scarfes," should pay equal taxes with those whose rank or fortune allowed such privileges. The families of public and military officers, and " such whose quality and estate have been above the ordinary degree, though now decayed," were excepted from this decree. These good old fathers even went further in their restrictions : '' It is further ordered that all such persons as shall for the future make, or weave, or buy any apparell exceeding the quality and condition of their persons and Estates, or that is apparently beyond the necessary end of apparell for cover- ing or comeliness, either of these to be Judged by the Grand Jury and County Court where such presentments are made, shall for- feit for every such offence ten shillings." These sumptuary laws were not a dead letter, for we hear that Alice Flynt's '' silk hood " was cited before the court, and she re- quired to prove that she was entitled to wear it by her property of two hundred pounds; and of the "great boots" of Jonas Fair- banks, out of the shadow of whose guilt he managed to escape. The price of wages was also regulated by law, and it was settled (1641) that " carpenters, plowrights, wheelrights, masons, joyners, smithes, and coopers shall not take above twenty pence for a day's work from the loth of March to the loth of October, and not THE DUTCH IN NEW YORK. lOI above eighteen pence a day for the other part of the yere, and to work ten hours in the day in the summer tyme, besides that which is spent in eating or sleeping, and six hours in the winter." The court, however, soon '' found by experience that it would not avail by any law to redress the excessive rates of laborers' and work- men's wages, etc. ; for, being restrained, they would either remove to other places where they might have more, or else, being able to live by planting and other employments of their own, they would not be hired at all." — (Winthrop^ THE DUTCH IN JNEW YORK. The followers of Hendrick Hudson were quite a different people. To the bustling energy and severe religious laws of New England they opposed an easy good nature and impertur- bable content. Only in the painfulness of extreme neatness did they resemble and even surpass their northern and eastern neighbors. Let us recall a comfortable Dutch mansion of the seventeenth century. Its gable-end of small black and yellow Dutch bricks, receding in regular steps from the base of the roof to the summit, and there crowned with a " fierce little weather- cock," stood squarel)^ to the street. Not ashamed to let its age be known, it was proclaimed in straggling iron figures upon the front. The inevitable porch, elevated by a few steps, was covered by a wooden awning, or perhaps a lattice-work, over which luxuriantly drooped and wandered a wild grape-vine. Multi- tudes of wrens flitted in and out this sylvan nook, and, says a Scotch lady, reporting Albany life at this period, " while break- fasting or drinking tea in the airy portico, birds were constantly gliding over the table with a butterfly, grasshopper, or cicada in their bills to feed their young, who were chirping above." These porches were the universal rendezvous in the after-part of the day. The old people clustered together in one, the younger in another, and the children sat placidly on the steps and ate their bread and milk before retiring ; while the beaux sauntered along and cast shy glances toward their favorite maidens, or accepted an invitation to join the little group. The gutters on the roofs often stretched almost to the middle of the street, to the great I02 COLONIAL LIFE. annoyance of passers-by. The front door, opened only on rare occasions, was ornamented with a gorgeous brass knocker, wrought in a curious animal device. This was the pride of the housewife, and was burnished daily with intense solicitude. A wide passage extended through the house, with doors at either end ; this, furnished with chairs and having always a scrupulously DUTCH MANSION AND COTTAGE IN NEW AMSTERDAM. white sanded floor, served for a summer parlor. Aside from this reception-hall, there were but two large rooms on the first floor, with light, ample closets adjoining. On account of the difficulty of warming these, and to save the best furniture from the dust and smoke of huge wood fires, the family usually retired in the winter to a small addition in the rear, consisting of one or two rooms above and below. This was built of wood, as indeed was ordinarily the whole house, except the pretentious gable front. While the Connecticut mistress spun, wove, and stored her household linens in crowded chests, the Dutch matron scrubbed and scoured her polished floor and woodwork. Dirt in no form could be endured bv her; and dear as water was in the city. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE DUTCH. IO3 where it was generally sold at a penny a gallon, it was used unsparingly. Fine furniture was the good housewife's weakness. Ponderous tables, drawers resplendent with brass ornaments, quaint comer cupboards, beds and bedsteads, and even the frying-pan and immense Dutch oven had her most loving regards. ** The mirrors, the paintings, the china, but, above all, the state bed," records the author above mentioned, *' were considered as the family seraphim, secretly worshipped and only exhibited on very rare occasions." " The grand parlor," says Washington Irving, " was the sanctum sanctorum where the passion for cleaning was indulged without control. In this sacred apartment no one was permitted to enter excepting the mistress and her confidential maid, who visited it once a week for the purpose of giving it a thorough cleaning and putting things to rights — always taking the precaution of leaving their shoes at the door and entering devoutly on their stocking feet. After scrubbing the floor, sprinkling it with fine white sand, which was curiously stroked into angles, and curves, and rhomboids with a broom — after washing the windows, rubbing and polishing the furniture, and putting a new bunch of evergreens in the fireplace, the win- dow-shutters were again closed to keep out the flies, and the room carefully locked up until the revolution of time brought round the weekly cleaning day." In the early spring the good vrow donned her green calash, took her rake over her shoulder, and with her little painted basket of seeds went out to make the family garden. Myn- heer was much too clumsy to be trusted in the delicate care of salads and sweet herbs, celery or asparagus ; cabbages and potatoes and such like he cultivated in the field between the rows of Indian com, but into the little spot sacred to the tenderer plants, no foot of man intruded, after it was dug in spring. The stakes to the simple deal fence, which enclosed the garden and the orchard, were oddly ornamented with skeleton heads of cattle and of horses ; the jaws being fixed on the pole, with the skull uppermost. Samson's riddle here received a daily exempli- fication, for the birds built their nests therein and sent forth broods of young ones from the ghastly orifice. In clearing the way for the first establishment, a tree was always left in the mid- dle of the back yard for the sole benefit of these little songsters ; this tree being pollarded at midsummer when full of sap, every excised branch left a little hollow, and every hollow was the home I04 COLONIAL LIFE. of a bird. It was also a custom to leave an ancient tree, or to plant one of some kind directly in front of the doorway, which the household regarded with great veneration. Every family had a cow, fed through the day in a common pasture at the end of the town. They came at night and went in the morning of their own accord, like proper adjuncts to sedate and systematic households, and their tinkling bells never failed to warn of their approach along the grassy streets when the proper hour for milking arrived. Being allowed, however, to roam the town from evening to morning milking, they, by no means, improved the neatness of the highways, which presented a strange contrast in that respect to the immaculate interiors of the houses. On dark nights housekeepers were required to keep lights — tallow candles — in their front windows, and ''every seventh householder ** was obliged to " hang out a lanthorn and candle on a pole." The happy burghers breakfasted at dawn, dined at eleven, and retired at sunset. No change was ever made in the arrangements for the family dinner in favor of a guest, and the unexpected visitor was received at that meal with unmistakable signs of coldness and disfavor. A company tea, however, was a " perfect regale," and cakes, sweetmeats, cold pastry, and fruit in abundance garnished a table which also often tempted by a fine array of roasted game or poultry, or, in its season, shell-fish. Clams — called clippers — was a favorite food. The tea was served from a large porcelain tea-pot, " ornamented with paintings of fat little shepherds and shepherdesses tending pigs, with boats sailing in the air and houses built in the clouds " — a cherished souvenir of Delft in the dear mother-country. The decoction was taken without milk, but a lump of sugar was placed beside each cup, the company alternately nibbling and sipping according to indi- vidual relish. Another custom was to suspend an immense lump of sugar by a string from the ceiling directly overhead, so that it could be swung from mouth to mouth and prevent unnecessary waste. Irving has so inimitably portrayed a '* fashionable tea- party " of those days that it were a pity not to recall it here. '' These fashionable parties were generally confined to the higher classes, that is to say, those who kept their own cows and drove their own wagons. The company commonly assembled at three o'clock, and went away about six, unless it was winter time, when the fashionable hours were a little earlier, that the ladies might MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE DUTCH. lOS get home before dark. The tea-table was crowned with a nuge earthen dish, well stored with slices of fat pork, fried brown, cut up into morsels, and swimming in gravy. Sometimes the table was graced with immense apple pies, or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears ; but it was always sure to boast an enormous dish of doughnuts or olykoeks. At these decorous gatherings the young ladies seated themselves demurely in their rush-bottomed chairs, and knit their own woolen stockings ; nor ever opened their lips except to say. Yah Mynheer^ or, Yah ya Vrouw, to any question that was asked them. As to the gentlemen, each of them tranquilly smoked his pipe, and seemed lost in contempla- tion of the blue and white tiles with which the fireplaces were decorated ; wherein sundry passages of Scripture were piously portrayed. Tobit and his dog figured to great advantage ; Haman swung conspicuously on his gibbet, and Jonah appeared most manfully bouncing out of the whale." A silent grace before meat was the usual habit with the Hollanders. Mush or bread with buttermilk, *' and if to that they added sugar, it was thought delicious," constituted the standard family supper. On occasion of Dutch dances, a pot of chocolate and some bread were deemed sufficient refreshment. New Year's Day was the one of all the year for gayety and festivity. Our delightful fashion of New Year's calls is an inheritance from the Hollanders, who were also accustomed to exchange presents and other complimentary tokens on that day. General Washington, speaking of this usage, once remarked : " New York will in process of years gradually change its ancient customs and manners ; but whatever changes take place, never forget the cordial observance of New Year's Day." To the Dutch also we owe our Christmas visit of Santa Claus, colored eggs at Easter, doughnuts, crullers, and New Year's cookies. A Dutch belle of the seventeenth century wore her hair smoothly plastered back with suet tallow, under a quilted cap. Her gayly-striped linsey-woolsey petticoat — or rather petticoats, for her fortune was estimated by the number of garments she wore — came a little below the knee, affording an admirable view of her blue worsted stockings, adorned with bright red clocks, and her high-heeled, silver-buckled leather shoes. From her girdle depended her huge patch-work pocket, her scissors and her pincushion, potent charms, or possibly coquetries of the times, which did not fail to touch the tender part of Mj-nheer's io6 COLONIAL LIFE. nature when, between his puffs, he settled the question of a com- petent vrow. The work-basket always accompanied her on picnic excursions, and while '' the boys " fished or hunted to procure game for the coming supper, the girls con- soled themselves for their absence in knit- ting or sewing. The walls of the " spare room " in a Dutch home were not in- frequently covered with extra homespun garments, a rather unique decoration, but an honest certifi- cate of the industry, and considered as a sign of the wealth, of the household. As to Mynheer him- self, the number of his breeches or galli- gaskins rivalled those of his fair one's petti- coats, and unneces- sarily heightened the proportions of his rotund figure. His linsey-woolsey coat — doubly precious when spun and woven by the fair maid of his choice, as often it was, for love-gifts were substantial then — was profusely adorned with large brass buttons ; enormous copper buckles set off his unquestionably broad understanding ; a low-crowned, wide- brimmed hat shadowed his phlegmatic countenance, and his hair dangled down his back in a prodigious queue of eelskin. His pipe was an indispensable adjunct to his mouth. The young Albanian had a custom of proving his worth to his lady-love by pushing, with a cargo of blankets, guns, beads, and various articles packed in a light canoe, into the deep forest, attended only by a faithful slave, and establishing trade with the Indians. If he succeeded well, he enlarged his business and followed it through life, or disposing of his schooner — which it DUTCH COURTSHIP. MAl^NERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE DUTCH. 107 was his pride to own before he settled down — embraced less exciting mercantile or agricultural pursuits. The usual dower of a daughter was a well-brought-up female slave and the furniture of the best bed-chamber. There were two standard amusements among young people — sliding down hill in winter, and pillaging pigs and turkeys from a neighbor's garden. This was con- sidered frolic, not theft, though the owner — if he failed to over- take and chastise the robbers, which was his token of gallantry — never saw his property again. The married man shut himself out from these sports, as unbefitting his dignity, but the bride- groom was sure to receive such a visit from some of his old com- panions. A story is told of two parties out one night on the same business. Both attacked the same place. The chief of the second party, finding the game gone, suspected the other, and followed it to an inn, where he found the coveted pig roasting before the fire. Sending the maid out on a trivial excuse, he cut the string by which the pig was suspended, and laying it in the dripping-pan, carried it swiftly through the dark and quiet streets to another inn, where his companions were awaiting him. The first party, not to be outdone, and rightly guessing the offenders, sent a messenger to the other inn, where supper and " the pig " had just been served. Throwing a huge parcel of shavings before the door, he touched a match to them, and crying ** fire " with all his might, soon drew every occupant to the front. Steal- ing in the back way, he secured the traveled treasure, and rushing back to his friends, they feasted on the spoils. Strawberries abounded in June, when " the country people, perceiving that the fields and woods were dyed red, would go forth with wine, cream, and sugar ; and instead of a coat of mail, every one takes up a female behind him on horseback, and starting for the fields, set to picking the fruit and regaling themselves as long as they list." Our Dutch friends seem to have regarded offences of the tongue with as little favor as the Puritans, though their punish- ments were milder. In 1638, one Hendrick Jansen is made to stand at the fort door at the ringing of the bell, and ask the gov- ernor's pardon for having ** scandalized " him. This same Hen- drick Jansen, evidently an over-officious reformer, preferred a charge against the minister's wife for having ** drawn up her petti- coat a little way in the street." A woman who had the temerity to slander the minister was obliged also to appear at the fort door. io8 COLONIAL LIFE. and publicly confess that " she knew he was honest and pious, and that she lied falsely." The " wooden horse " was a peculiar pun- ishment. It had a very sharp back, upon which the offender was tightly strapped, or had weights tied to his feet, the horse being first put into the cart body. A woman was the first who received this penalty, and the instrument was named after her, " the horse of Mary Price." Culprits were sometimes led about the town fastened to the back of the cart, being whipped as they went. These customs continued as late as the middle of the eighteenth century, as witness an advertisement from the New York Gazette of March, 1750: '* The Public Whipper being lately dead, twenty pounds a year is offered to a successor at the mayor's office." This, with other short items, is printed on the margin of the sheet, in a transverse direction to the column matter, another instance of the economy of the early New Yorkers. The Dutch dominies were paid sometimes in beaver-skins — the dominie of Albany at one time received one hundred and fifty — and sometimes in wampum or seawant, a kind of Indian money consisting of strings of clam- shells. Its current value was six beads of the white or three of the black for an English penny. In 1641, the New York City Council complains that " a great deal of bad seawant, nasty, rough things, imported from other places," was in circula- tion, while " the good, splendid Manhattan seawant was out of sight or exported, which must cause the ruin of the country T The city schoolmasters of those days acted also as clerks, chor- isters, and visitors of the sick. The names of those old Dutch dignitaries sound strangely enough to modern ears. There were the hoofd-schout (high sheriff), the wees-meester (guardian of orphans), the roy-meester (regulator of fences), the eyck-meester (weigh-master), the geheim- schry ver (recorder of secrets), and the groot burgerrecht, or great YE DUTCH SCHOOLMASTER. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE DUTCH. I09 citizen, in opposition to the klein burgerrecht, or small citizen. Only the " great citizens," of whom there were not more than a score, could hold offices, and in 1668, the number being so small, and many inconveniences arising in consequence, the distinction was abolished. We have not particularized the family life of that exceptional class, the '' patroons," who occupied a position not unlike that of an English baron with feudal retainers. Their social customs were simply those of the best European society of the day. They, themselves, were regarded by their numerous tenants with a certain respect and reverence which has had no counterpart since the Revolution. Holmes characterizes this feeling and the former accepted distinction of ranks, in his poem of " Agnes," where a gentlemen of the olden time went out to drive, " And all the midland counties through, The ploughman stopped to gaze, Where'er his chariot swept in view Behind the shining bays, With mute obeisance, grave and slow, Repaid by bow polite — Ju?r such the way with high and low^ Till after Concord! s fight*' These lords of the manor lived in a princely way on their large estates, which passed from father to son for more than a century. When the Revolution broke out, many of them declared for the king, and thus their lands became confiscated and their names ceased to exist in the ruling offices of the country. Few, indeed, in our democratic day, even know of the existence in those times of estates whose tenants were numbered by thousands, the gather- ing together of which was like that of the Scottish clans. When death entered the family of the proprietor, they all came to do honor at the funeral, " and many were the hogsheads of good ale which were broached for them." When Philip Livingston, of Livingston Manor, died, at both town and country house " a pipe of wine was spiced for the occasion, and to each of the eight bearers a pair of gloves, mourning ring, scarf, handkerchief, and silver monkey spoon were given." The latter was so named from its handle, whose extremity was in the form of an ape. Every tenant also received a pair of black gloves and a handkerchief. The whole expense amounted to five hundred pounds. In later times (1753) Governor William Livingston wrote against extrava- no COLONIAL LIFE. gance in funerals ; and his wife, it is said, was the first one who ventured, as an example of economy, to substitute linen scarfs for the former silk ones. In August, 1673, a Dutch fleet recaptured New York from the British, and held it one year, calling it meantime New Orange^ after the Prince of Orange. During this time strict military dis- cipline prevailed. " The Dutch mayor, at the head of the city militia, held his daily parade before the City Hall (Stadt Huys), then at Coenties Slip ; and every evening at sunset he received from the principal guard of the fort, called hoofd-wagt^ the keys of the city, and thereupon proceeded with a guard of six to lock the city gates ; then to place a burger-wagt (citizen guard) as a night- watch at various places. The same mayors went the rounds at sunrise to open the gates and to restore the keys to the officer of the fort." The comfort-loving burgher who accepted the posi- tion of mayor in those days paid dearly for the honor in the loss of his leisurely fireside smoke before breakfast in the morning. Mrs. Sigourney has written some lines upon this period, which, as a picture of the times, we copy from Watson's " Annals of New York," to which book, and those equally rich and spicy volumes entitled " Annals of Philadelphia," by the same author, we are in- debted for many of the curious facts related in this chapter. The lines run thus : Lo, with the sun, came forth a goodly train, The portly mayor with his full guard of state. Hath aught of evil vexed their fair domain. That thus its limits they perambulate. With heavy, measured steps, and brows of care. Counting its scattered roofs with fixed, portentous stare? Behold the keys with solemn pomp restored To one in warlike costume stoutly braced. He, of yon fort, the undisputed lord. Deep lines of thought are on his forehead traced, As though of Babylon the proud command, Or hundred-gated Thebes were yielded to his hand. See, here and there, the buildings cluster round. All, to the street, their cumbrous gables stretching, With square-clipt trees and snug enclosures bound (A most uncouth material for sketching) — Each with its stoop, from whose sequestered shade The Dutchman's evening pipe in cloudy volumes played. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS IN THE SOUTH. Ill Oh, had those ancient dames of high renown — The Knickerbockers and the Rapaeljes, With high-heeled shoes and ample ten-fold gown. Green worsted hose, with clocks of crimson rays- Had they, thro' time's dim vista, stretched their gaze. Spying their daughters fair in these degenerate days, With muslin robe and satin slipper white, Thronging to routs, with Fahrenheit at zero, Their sylphlike form, for household toils too slight. But yet to winter's piercing blast a hero. Here had they marvelled at such wondrous lot, And scrubbing brush and broom for one short space forgot. Yet deem them not for ridicule a theme, Those worthy burghers with their spouses kind* Scorning of heartless pomp, the gilded dream, To deeds of peaceful industry inclined. In hospitality sincere and grave. Inflexible in truth, in simple virtue brave. Hail, mighty city ! high must be his fame Who round thy bounds, at sunrise, now should walk ; Still wert thou lovely, whatsoe'er thy name, New Amsterdam, New Orange, or New York, Whether in cradle sleep on sea-weed laid. Or on thine island throne, in queenly power arrayed. EAFJLY COLONIAL LIfE IN THE gOUTH. The manners of the Southerners on their plantations were quite distinct from those of either Puritan or Dutch. The first few years in all new colonies have necessarily a certain degree of sameness. An enforced rude state of living engenders rude and peculiar laws. Thus we find decrees in Virginia which strongly smack of New England quaintness. The Established Church of England was guarded with as jealous strictness in the South as were Puritan principles in the North; the first laws of both colonies pertaining to religious observances. In Virginia, accord- ing to the regulations of 1632, a room or house in every planta- tion was to be set apart for, and consecrated to, worship. Ab- sence from service " without allowable excuse ** was punished with a fine of a pound of tobacco, and if the absence continued a month, with fifty pounds. There are rumors of other penalties in earlier 112 COLONIAL LIFE. times, such as being tied neck and heels for a night, and serving as a slave to the colony — a week for the first offence, a month for the second, and a year and a day for the third. Certain culprits also are mentioned as being made to stand in church, wrapped in a snowy sheet and holding a white wand, like guilty ghosts or transfixed lepers ; or as having the initial letter of their crime fastened in a great, bold capital upon their back or breast, as in New England. Ministers were restrained from a neglect of their duties by a fine of half their salary if they absented themselves for two months ; losing the entire salary and the cure itself for an absence of double that length of time. The salary aforesaid consisted of ten pounds of tobacco and a bushel of corn — "the first-gathered and best" — from every male over sixteen, with marriage, christening and burial fees. In the earliest days, every twentieth calf, pig, and kid in the parish were also his due. The clerical liberty was fur- ther hedged in by an injunction not to give themselves " to excess in drinking or riot, spending their time idly by day or night, playing at cards, dice, or other unlawful games; but to read or hear the Holy Scriptures, or to employ themselves in other honorable studies or exercise, bearing in mind that they ought to be examples to the people to live well and Christianly." On the other hand, " he who disparaged a minister without proof, was to be fined five hundred pounds of tobacco, and to beg the minister's pardon publicly before the congregation." Drunken- ness was fined five shillings, and every oath cost one shilling. Virginians in 1674 are thus described by Bancroft: " The genera- tion now in existence were chiefly the fruit of the soil; they were children of the woods, nurtured in the freedom of the wilderness, and dwelling in lonely cottages scattered along the streams. No newspapers entered their houses ; no printing-press furnished them a book. They had no recreations but such as nature provides in her wilds ; no education but such as parents in the desert could give their offspring. The paths were bridleways rather than roads ; and the highway surveyors aimed at nothing more than to keep them clear of logs and fallen trees. Visits were made in boats or on horseback through the forests; and the Virginian, traveling with his pouch of tobacco for currency, swam the rivers, where there was neither ferry nor ford. The houses, for the most part of one story, and made of wood, often of logs, the windows closed by convenient shutters for want of glass, we»-e MANNERS AND CUSTOMS IN THE SOUTH. II3 sprinkled at great distances on both sides of the Chesapeake, from the Potomac to the line of Carolina. The parish was of such extent, spreading over a tract which a day's journey could not cross, that the people met together but once on the Lord's day, and sometimes not at all; the church, rudely built in some central solitude, was seldom visited by the more remote families, and was liable to become inaccessible by the broken limbs from forest trees, or the wanton growth of underwood and thickets/* The genial atmosphere of the '* sunny South," so unlike the bleak New England climate, and the entirely different products of the two soils, each requiring its own peculiar mode of culture, served constantly to increase the dissimilarity in character and manners which primarily existed between the northern and the southern settlers. The large plantations of the' latter necessi- tated a numerous train of servants. These, supplied at first by the apprentices brought over from England, were, in time, super- seded by negro slaves. There being but few books and little education in those early times — only a few families being able to send their sons and daugh- ters to England to be instructed — excitement was often sought in bull-baiting, horse-racing, fox-hunting, and cock-fighting. These amusements, looked upon with horror by the Puritans, were not considered at all derogatory to the southern gentleman, who copied his sports from those of the English nobility of that day. The finest of horses were imported from the mother country, at great care and expense, and the Virginian planter was pardonably proud of his well-stocked stables. The mode of originating a settlement, or, as Dr. Ramsay quaintly styles it, '* breaking ground on bare creation," is thus described in that author's History of South Carolina. The par- ties migrate from the earlier settlements usually in March, or about the breaking up of the winter. They " go with family and plantation utensils, a few bushels of corn, and some domestic animals. After fixing on a site, they build in two or three days a cabin with logs, cut down and piled one upon another in the form of a square or a parallelogram. The floor is of earth ; the roof is sometimes of bark, but oftener of split logs. The light is received through the door, and in some instances through a window of greased paper, or the bottom of a broken glass bottle. Shelter being prepared, their next care is to provide food. The large trees are girdled and the underbrush destroyed. The ground, 8 EAKLY AMERICAN FLOW. 114 COLONIAL LIFE. thus exposed to the action of the sun, is roughly ploughed or hoed, and so favors the growth of the seed corn that in ninety or a hundred days the ears are large enough to roast, and in six weeks more the grain is ripe. Meantime the settler lives on the corn he brought with him, and on game and fish. His axe and gun furnish him with the means of defence against In- dians, wild beasts, and robbers. Light wood or the heart of dry pine logs affords a cheap substitute for candles. The surplus of his crop may be bartered for homespun garments, or, if he is married, he may convert the wool of his sheep or the flax or cotton of his field into coarse clothing for domestic use." In a few years a frame house is built, floored, and shingled. Other grains besides corn are cultivated. Fruits and vegetables supply his table. He purchases one or two slaves. He builds a barn and other out- houses. His children are put to school. He becomes a member of a church. Tea, coffee, and sugar are found on his table. His house is glazed and decently furnished. His stock is enlarged and made to further serve the interests of his family. The woods are ransacked for dye-stuffs, in which Carolina abounds, and the homespun adds brilliancy to durability. In short, he has be- come an independent man and respected citizen. Emigrants from Maine and Vermont often struck into the then far west, along the banks of the Monongahela or even of the Ohio. We now speak of a time as late as just before the Revolu- tion. Having established the " tomahawk right " by hacking the trees around the circuit — four hundred acres — to which settlement gave them free possession, they commenced pioneer life. Wild turkeys, venison, and bears* meat gave them strength while they waited the growth of pumpkins, squashes, and potatoes. A hom- iny block was hollowed out by fire, and the corn was pounded by a pestle ; sometimes, to lessen the toil, by a sweep sixteen feet long. Nail-holes in a piece of tin formed a grater for the same purpose ; two stones were also used, made to play upon each other in the manner in vogue in Palestine since before the days when our Saviour spoke of ''two women grinding at the mill." A piece of deerskin stretched over a hoop and pierced with hot wire made a LATER COLONIAL TIMES. IIS good sifter or bolting cloth. A large trough sunk in the ground furnished a tan-vat for each family. Ashes were used instead of lime to unhair the skin ; bears* grease or hogs' lard served for fish-oil, and soot mixed with grease was an efficient blacking. The bark was shaved and pounded. Every family did its own shoe-making. ** Shoe packs " made like moccasins of single pieces of leather often answered every purpose. The women spun and wove the linsey-woolsey for the family clothing and fashioned every garment. LATEF( COJLOJNI/iJ. TIME3. In the course of their first century, the rigor of Puritan laws was somewhat softened. After the witchcraft terror had spent its fury, that crime, as well as heresy and blasphemy, disappeared from the statutes as capital offences. Here and there, by the side of lonely cross-roads,, the wanderer still stumbled over heaps of stones, '' the brand of infamy " under which the bones of the unhappy suicide were made to rest ; and the pillory, the stocks, and the whipping-post had by no means become obso« lete as efficient instruments in pointing morals. But branded cheeks and foreheads and decapi- tated ears were rapidly vanishing from sight as a means of stimulating sluggard religious consciences, and a man might venture now on a piece of mince-pie at Christmas without fear of fine or punishment. Crimes committed by slaves, who continued, to be held in New England until the Revolution, were severely punished, and as late as the middle of the eighteenth century negroes were burned at the stake for such crimes as murder and arson. Recreations and amusements, which in the first stages of pioneer life are necessarily few, now received more indulgence. "Popular assemblies" were introduced into Boston about 1740, and although at first severely frowned upon by " all ladies of pro- priety," so maintained and strengthened their hold that in a few years a handsome hall was built and supported by the lovers of THE PILLORY. Il6 COLONIAL LIFE. **musick, dancing, and other polite entertainments." In Litch- field, Conn., in 1748, when a violin was used for the first time as an accompaniment to the *' light fantastic toe," we learn that the pastime was enjoyed by ''most of the young people," and, further, that " the whole expense did not exceed one dollar, out of which the fiddler was paid ! " Yet we are told that fathers and mothers were wont, then as now, to shake their heads gravely, and sorrow- fully bemoan the extravagance of youth ! Verily, in those times money was money. Minuets and sometimes country dances belonged to polite circles ; '* among the lower orders hipsesaw was everything," says Watson in his Annals of Philadelphia. About the same time of the assemblies appeared the first theatri- cal performance in Boston, played at a coffee-house — itself a new institution. The idea was so repugnant to New England notions that a law was immediately passed which banished the drama from Massachusetts for a quarter of a century thereafter. In the middle and southern colonies, out of the Puritan ele- ment, life was much gayer. To the frequent balls in the southern cities, the- young ladies from the country, where the roads were rough, used to ride in on ponies, attended by a black servant, '' with their hoops and full dress arranged over the saddle fore and aft like lateen-sails ; and after dancing all night, would ride home again in the morning." When there was snow, sleighing, with a dance to follow, was a popular pastime with the young people, but early hours were always kept. The rough, unpainted sleigh, capable of carrying thirty persons, was expected to be at the door about one o'clock in the afternoon. The gentlemen were clothed in cocked-hats, tied under the chin with a blue cotton handkerchief, leaving the queue to its own sweet will, a large camlet cloak, and oversocks which covered the shoes and reached to the small clothes at the knee. Yarn mittens protected the hands and a woolen tippet the throat. The ladies were wrapped in linsey-woolsey cardinals, with hoods which *' were of such am- ple dimensions that their heads looked like so many beer-casks." The jingle of one or two cow-bells accompanied them. Arrived at the place of entertainment, the colored driver tuned his three-stringed fiddle, the gentlemen appeared in their square-toed pumps, and the ladies shook off their pattens, displaying little peak-toed, high-heeled slippers. They danced till eight o'clock, then hurried back to their homes, " for," says the relator of this entertainment, " to be abroad after nine o'clock on comroon occa- LATER COLONIAL TIMES. 11/ sions was a sure sign of moral depravity." The same old gentle- man, describing in 1828 to a young lady the courtship and wed- ding of her grandfather in New York, sixty years before, gives us the following picture : " The lover, after having received per- mission of her parents, pays his first visit to his beloved. In snuff- colored coat and small-clothes, cornelian brooch, paste buckles, lace frill-worked cravat, and heavily pomatumed and powdered hair, he is ushered into the family presence. On one side of the fireplace sit a bevy of maiden aunts, knitting. On the other side is the father, ** stretched at his ease in an arm-chair, in a black cap instead of his wig, wrapped in a blue gown, with his breeches unbuttoned at his knees, quietly smoking his pipe. Mrs. B. in a chintz dress and mob-cap was at his side, engaged in making patch-work ; whilst the lovely Prudence sat quite erect by her mamma, with her pincushion and housewife dangling from her waist, her eyes cast down, and her fingers diligently pricking themselves instead of her sampler." The young man shows his affection by keeping at a respectful distance from his sweetheart ; talks politics with the father, assists the mother in arranging her party-colored squares, picks up straying balls of yarn for the spin- sters, and when the bell rings nine gives one shy glance at his beloved and takes his leave. At the wedding which follows a succession of visits like the above, the guests mostly come on foot, for there are no hackney-coaches, and private carriages are not plentiful. The father of the bride is dressed in full-bottomed wig, velvet coat and breeches, gold buckles, and waistcoat reach- ing to the knees ; the mother in plain brocade and snowy cap ; the parson in " gown, cassock and bands, with a wig that seemed to consist of a whole unsheared sheepskin — for in 1768 it would have been rank heresy for a parson to appear at a wedding in simple black coat and pantaloons." The bride had her hair dressed over a high cushion and liberally pomatumed and powdered. The height of this tower was over a foot, and on its summit lay a single white rose. Her tight-sleeved, low-bodiced white satin dress was distended at the ankles by an ample hoop, beneath which crept her high-heeled, peaked and spangled white kid shoes. A lace hand- kerchief crossed over her bosom was fastened by a large brooch containing the miniature of her destined husband. The groom had his hair sleeked back and highly pomatumed, with the queue so stiff that, having had it dressed the afternoon before, he slept all night in an arm-chair, that it might not be disturbed. " His Il8 COLONIAL LIFE. coat was of a sky-blue silk lined with yellow ; his long vest of white satin, embroidered with gold lace ; his breeches of the same material and tied at the knee with pink ribbon." White silk stockings and pumps, lace wrist-ruffles and frill, the latter pinned with the miniature of his bride, completed his costume. After the ceremony every one saluted the bride with a hearty kiss. From this marriage in comparatively high life, let us invite ourselves to one in the wilds of Pennsylvania. The parties were hardy pioneers. A wedding was to them a frolic, which shared with reaping, log-rolling, and house-building for occasion of social gathering. The party started early in the morning from the house of the groom, proceeding in double file on horses decked in old saddles, old bridles or halters, and pack-saddles, with a bag or blankets thrown over them ; a rope or string served for a girth. The jovial company were above all reproach of fashionable extravagance, for not a store, tailor, or mantua-maker existed within a hundred miles. Every article of dress was home-made and forced to do the longest service possible. The gents appeared in shoe-packs, moccasins, leather breeches, leggins, and linsey hunt- ing-shirts ; the ladies in linsey petticoats and linsey or linen bed- gowns, coarse shoes, stockings, handkerchiefs, and, if any, buck- skin gloves. Fallen trees, interlocked grape-vines and sapiings — the work of mischief-lovers, friends or foes — often delayed their progress. Sometimes a party in ambush fired a feu de joie^ when the ladies shrieked, screamed, and implored help in finest femi- nine style, while their partners bustled around and offered pro- tection as valiantly as if they were veritable knights in full steel armor and bound to do battle to the death for their true lady- loves. As the party neared the house of the bride, two of the most chivalrous young men, with an Indian yell, set out full tilt for the bottle of whiskey which was hung out for the first arrival. Over logs, brush, and muddy hollows, in a flush of pride and dar- ing, they galloped on their large-boned, clumsy-footed steeds to the end of the goal. The prize won, they returned to the party, giving the first drink to the groom, who passed the bottle around ; every one, ladies included, joining in the dram. The ceremony over, dinner was in order. The table, made of a large slab of timber hewn out with a broad-axe and set on four sticks, was spread with beef, pork, fowls, and sometimes deer and bear meat. Wooden bowls and trenchers, a few pewter dishes and plates, some horn and some pewter spoons, served the company as well as LATER COLONIAL TIMES. 119 could china or silver. If knives were scarce, they carried always a substitute in the belts of their hunting-shirts. " After dinner dancing commenced, and usually lasted till the next morning. The figures were reels, or square sets and jigs. The commence- ment was always a square four, which was followed by what was called jigging it off; none were allowed to steal away to get a sleep, and if girls got tired, they were expected, for want of chairs, to sit upon the knees of the gentlemen. At nine or ten o'clock at night some of the young ladies would steal off with the bride. That was sometimes to a loft above the dancers, going there by a ladder ; and such a bride's chamber was floored with THE OLD-TIME FIRESIDE. clapboards, lying loose and without nails. Some young men, in the meantime, stole off the groom to his bride. At a later period, they sent them up refreshments, of which * black Betty,' so called, was an essential part, as she stood in their parlance for a bottle of whiskey." These entertainments sometimes lasted several days, or until every one was '' fagged out." Happy for the weary set if, when they were ready for their homeward ride, they found their property uninjured, for slighted neighbors were sometimes wont to show their stealthy presence, by cutting off the manes, foretops or tails of the horses belonging to invited guests. The prejudices of rank and social precedence brought over I20 COLONIAL LIFE. from England did not easily die out, even in New England. The official dignities there were all monopolized by a few leading fami- lies, descending often from father to son. And as office now shared with wealth and high English connections — " which were to be proud of" — in giving admission to the charmed circle of the gentry, we may conclude that the public treasury no longer fat- tened on fines wrung from contumacious candidates. Until within three years of the time when "all men" were declared to be '* created free and equal,'' the catalogue of Harvard College — Yale had just abolished the system — was arranged according to the social rank of the students. The list, made out each year and posted in the buttery, bore perpetual testimony to the rule of caste. In those days a young man's title to a superior room, or speedy attention at table, depended on the date of his father's commission as justice of the peace or some kindred petty sign of social degree. We can afford to laugh at it now as an excellent burlesque on the English custom of ranking by pedigree, but it was a sore reality then, as many an unlucky fellow proved. Fashion seems also to have invaded that scholastic sanctum, and to have divided popular attention with the sublimities of Horace and Homer. In 1754, the "overseers" of the college recommended the corporation to prohibit the wearing of " gold anr^ silver lace or brocade " by students. Indeed, it is very apparent that the day of the plainest, ugliest cuts for all male apparel had nowhere yet dawned. The early part of the eighteenth century was particularly characterized by high colors in dress. In 1724, a runaway barber is advertised. "He wore a light wig, a gray kersey jacket lined with blue, a light pair of drugget breeches, black roll-up stock- ings, square-toed shoes, a red leathern apron, and white vest with yellow buttons and red linings!" About the same time a lady, afflicted with the tender passion, thus bursts out in verse describ- ing the costume of her beloved : " Mine, a tall youth shall at a ball be seen. Whose legs are like the spring, all clothed in green ; A yellow riband ties his long cravat, And a large knot of yellow cocks his hat !" The colonial gentry, in their morning negligee, were wont to appear in elegant silk and velvet caps and dressing gowns, exchanging them when they went out for hats and cloaks which LATER COLONIAL TIMES. 121 glittered with broad gold lace. The evening drawing-room was enlivened by embroidered garments of flowered silk and velvet in blue, green, scarlet, or purple hues, adorned with gold lace, silver knee-buckles, and silver coat, vest, and breeches buttons. These buttons bore sometimes the initial of the wearer, but were often made of real quarter-dollars and eleven-penny bits, the former being used for the coats and the latter for vests and breeches. The other gentlemanly ornaments consisted of gold or silver sleeve-buttons, silver stock-buckle, and, perhaps, a shagreen- cased watch of tortoise-shell or pinchbeck, with a silver or steel chain and seal. The best gentlemen of the country were content with silver watches, although gold ones were occasionally used. Gold chains would have been a wonder. It was so rare to find watches in common use that it was quite an annoyance at the watchmaker's to be so repeatedly called on by street-passengers for the hour of the day. Wide laced ruffles, falling over the hand, a gold or silver snuff-box, and a gold-headed cane were con- sidered indispensable to gentility. A well-bred gentleman of 1776, arrayed in his stately suit of ceremony, moved with a court- liness and certain gravity of manner upon which we have hardly improved in our day of cultivated French nonchalance. It is not to be supposed, however, that any but an exceedingly small minority dressed in silks and velvets. Broadcloth in winter and silk camlet in summer were popular in wealthy circles — coat and breeches of the same material. In 1738, Benjamin Franklin advertises for clothes stolen from his wardrobe, among which we find : " Broadcloth breeches lined with leather^ sagathee coat lined with silk, and fine homespun linen shirts." Vests were made with great depending pocket-flaps, and breeches were short above the stride, suspenders being yet an unknown luxury. Working-men wore their breeches very full and free in girth, so that, when they became prematurely thin in the seat, they could be changed from front to rear. Worsted everlasting and buckskin were in great demand, espe- cially for breeches, and common people were content with leather, homespun, and various heavy wools for winter. Bear- skin coats and little woolen muffs of various colors, called muftees, were worn by men in severe weather. Homespun linens and other light stuffs, coarse and fine, served for summer. Boots had not yet come in use, but every thrifty householder kept on hand whole calf-skins and sides of stout sole-leather to be 122 COLONIAL LIFE. made into shoes as required. ** Before the Revolution no hired men or women wore any shoes so fine as calf-skin ; that kind was the exclusive property of the gentry ; the servants wore coarse neat's leather." Mechanics, workingmen, and ** country people attending markets " were universally clothed in red or green baize vests, striped ticking or leather breeches, and a leathern apron. On Sundays or holidays, a white shirt was substituted for the checked or speckled one, the deerskin breeches — greasy and stubbornly stiff with long wear, and only rendered supple by the warmth of the owner's limbs — were blacked or buft up, the coarse blue yarn stockings and well-greased shoes set off by a pair of large brass buckles, and the apprentice was at his best. Hired women wore short gowns of green baize and petticoats of linsey-woolsey, and were happy with wages of fifty cents a week. Until after the Revolution the dress of working-people and domestics was dis- tinct from that of the higher classes. Wigs went out of style about twenty years before the Revolu- tion, following the lead of George II. and the British officers in this country. Previous to that, their use was universal, and as human hair could not be obtained in sufficient quantity, horse and goat hair " in choice parcels " were freely advertised for this purpose. Gray wigs were powdered, the barber performing that office on his block-head. After wigs, queues and frizzled side- locks had their day. Sometimes the hair was confined in a black silk sack or bag, adorned with a large black rose. The three- cornered or cocked hat of pre-Revolutionary times is familiar to every one. Umbrellas were not known before the middle ot the century. The first used were made of oiled linen, very coarse and clumsy, with rattan sticks. Previous to that the gentlemen wore " rain- coats " and *' roquelaus " — a large oiled linen cape ; ladies wore ** camblets," and sometimes carried " quintasols " — a small article something like a parasol, imported from India. They were of oiled muslin in various colors. When umbrellas were first used as a protection from the sun, great ridicule was made of the idea. Ladies, as a preservative of their complexion, sometimes wore black velvet masks in winter and green ones in the summer, keep- ing them on by means of a silver mouthpiece. Veils were un- known, except in crape as a badge of mourning. Woman's extravagance was then, as it is now, a juicy topic for grumblers, and an English traveler relates how the Boston ladies LATER COLONIAL TIMES. 1 23 " indulge every little piece of gentility to the height of the mode, and neglect the affairs of their families with as good grace as the finest ladies in London." The practical satirists of the day had their own little jokes, and drove out some of the most offensive fashions by novel expedients. The loose dress called a trollopee being distasteful to them, they dressed the wife of the public hang- man of Philadelphia in one, and she paraded the streets in full cos- tume, mincing and strutting to the sound of burlesque music. Trollopees straightway became obsolete. The long red cloaks were quickly stripped from the shoulders of the ladies of the same city after a depraved female criminal had been hung, clothed in a scarlet mantle of the most approved style. The ''tower" head- dress, which had been petted to a ridiculous extreme, was effec- tually caricatured by a tall man, dre;ised in the latest feminine mode, and wearing a " tower " of colossal proportions, who made the tour of the city streets, preceded by a drum. No one but the dear creatures themselves guessed how much torture our great- grandmothers endured in the building up of a proper coiffure. In towns where there were a limited number of hair-dressers, and a grand party was in contemplation, it was no uncommon occur- rence for ladies to have their hair frizzed and curled — an opera- tion which required three or four hours in the hands of a skillful barber — the day before, and then to sit up all night to prevent its derangement ! It was a great relief when cushions and arti- ficial curled work came in, which could be sent out to the barber's- block and save the agony of personal attendance. The fashion- able caps a hundred years ago were the " Queen's Nightcap," the style always worn by Mrs. Washington, and the ** cushion head- dress," made of gauze stiffened out in cylindrical form with white spiral wire, and having a border called the ''balcony." A cap was indispensable in those days. Bare heads were quite out of character. Even the boys wore wigs like their fathers, and little girls caps like their mothers. The " musk-melon bonnet " had the crown shirred with whalebone stiffeners, and was in vogue just before the Revolution. It was followed by the " whalebone bon- net," which was shirred only in front. Bonnets were bonnets in those days, veritable sun umbrellas, tied down at the chin. The *' calash " was always made of green silk, so arranged that, when the wearer desired, it could be made to fall back on the neck and shoulders in folds like the cover of a buggy. To keep it up over the head, it was drawn by a cord held in the hand of the wearer. 124 COLONIAL LIFE. A modification of this fashion has been revived once or twice during the last half century. Satin, a favorite material for even- ing robes, was admirably suited to the stately manners of the gen- tlewomen of the day. Brocades and mantuas also shared the public favor. At one time gowns were worn without fronts, dis- playing a finely-quilted Marseilles, silk or satin petticoat, and a worked stomacher on the waist. Chintz for summer, and some sort of worsted for winter, were worn at home, and " thought dress enough for common days " in the best society. Kerchiefs and aprons were as necessary as caps, and ranged in material from the finest of linen cambric, gauze, and taffeta, monopolized by the rich gentry, to the coarsest of checks, homespun, and tow^ worn by the mass of the people. Before the invention of the spin- ning-jenny in 1767, pure cotton home fabrics were unknown, the homespun threads being too irregular to be of use except as a woof, and the supply being also very limited. The first cotton exported from the United States to England was sent in 1785, the ship taking but one bag. Hose were made of thread or silk in summer, and fine or coarse worsted in winter. Short gowns and long gowns are familiar names in our grandmothers' wardrobes, from the common linsey-woolseys to the stiff large-flowered bro- cades and satins, which we still love to produce as relics from old-fashioned chests which smell of camphor and cedar. The names of those old stuffs, of calamanco and durant and groset, of russet and wilton and tabby, of tandem and gulix and huckaback,, sound strangely now to the young American girl, who would be astonished to find that some of them were at least first cousins to fabrics which, somewhat refined, shine in the present market under high-sounding French titles. Somewhat less intelligible still is the following list of articles, dress materials, etc., taken from a Philadelphia advertisement of 1745 : '' Quilted humhums, turket- tees, grassetts, single allopeens, allibanies, florettas, dickmansoy,. cushloes, chuckloes, cuttanees, crimson dannador, chained soo- $oos, lemonees, barragons, byrampauts, naffermamy, and saxling- ham"! Although the majority of houses were still humbly and spar- ingly furnished, yet comforts had greatly increased during the growing prosperity of the colonies, and a few really elegant homes were found in every city of importance, belonging mostly to the traveled gentry, whose property had come by descent. About the close of colonial times we hear of one house in Boston which LATER COLONIAL TIMES. 125 ANCIENT CHAIR. (Brought over in the Mayflower.) had cost three thousand pounds, and of another whose furni- ture was worth one thousand pounds. Large mirrors, marble tables, and Turkey carpets figured in fine stone mansions. Elaborate carv- ings were seen on massive balustrades in spacious halls, and the parlor walls were sometimes adorned with painted leather hangings. Deep paneled wain- scots and carved cornices and mantles added to the solid elegance of these handsome dwellings. Crimson leather furnished a dignified upholstery to the straight high-backed mahogany chairs and sofas, while heavy damask curtains steadied the glitter from ponderous brass andirons and brass clock. There were a few private libraries of consid- erable size, but books were not plenti- ful, though well-selected and read with care. People bought an outfit of books as of furniture, expect- ing it to last a lifetime. Fielding, the father of English novelists, supplied the little that was desired of racy fiction. Smollett had just translated Gil Bias, and that, with the ever-delight- ful Don Quixote, kept up their sense of humor. The Vicar of Wakefield, nevAy out, was read till young and old had it almost by heart. Addison's Spectator and Johnson's Rambler were models for correct style. Shakespeare and Milton and Young were studied until their expressions were as familiar as thought ; while a careful perusal of Blackstone's Commentaries and Mon- tesquieu's Spirit of Laws was necessary to every gentleman who sought to be well-read. Everything, both in books and in furni- ture, was solid. Shams had not yet made their advent, and there were no veneered woods, no silver-plated wares. What would those straightforward, substantial New Englanders have thought of our day of dime novels and of shoddy ? But it was in the country towns, where the prim Puritan ele- ment had not been softened by recent English innovations, that one saw real New England life. White sanded floors, with unpainted pine settles, scoured to the last degree of whiteness ; maple, rush-bottomed chairs set squarely back against the white- washed walls; lofty clock-cases reaching to the ceiling; glass- 126 COLONIAL LIFE. doored corner closets wherein the china and silver — family treas- Yires — were arranged at pure right angles ; high chests of drawers filled with stores of household linen, packed squarely in ; — every- where an immutable regularity, angularity, and precision. Upon the walls, the little looking-glasses in two plates were framed with scalloped wood, and black mouldings set off the quaint, stiff bunches of flowers painted on glass or worked on satin — testimo- nies to fashionable accomplishment. Shining brass and copper candlesticks, ready to receive the tallow candles which had been snugly packed from the last dipping, were turned up on their large round base upon the wooden shelf. Fixed rules governed the arrangement of each article of furniture, and were as consci- entiously observed as were those which decided the proprieties of manner. Everything was stiff, uncompromising, and sedate — everything, except the dancing fiames in the open fireplaces which laughed at their own incongruous, frolicking reflections — the one freedom amid perpetual restraint. In the chambers, high, four-posted bedsteads kept guard over the same immaculate order. Their hangings and valances in the handsomest houses were sometimes of silk in summer and heavy damask in winter. More commonly, however, they were of snowy dimity, or of blue and white stuff like the coverlets. Sheets of home- spun, blankets of home- made flannel, quilts of various hues — marvels of industry, and narrow, downy pillows above the soft bolster, completed the equipments. The thrift of the New England house- wife reveled in crowded drawers of bed and table linen, which she worked early and late to produce. " She layeth her. hands to the spindle and her hands hold the distaff" was an emphatic record of her daily life. The two wheels, one small and worked by the foot for spinning linen thread, and the other large and turned by the hand for woolen yarn, were honored articles THE WOOLEN SPINNING-WHEEL. LATER COLONIAL TIMES. 12/ in every household. No less were her kitchen and larder a pride. The shining lines of pewter along the ample dresser, the painfully scoured floor and white pine furniture, the rows of jams and mar- malades, the strings of dried pumpkin and apples, the casks and bottles of cider, metheglin, and anise-seed cordial, all attested her careful forethought. In many houses a china or silver bowl of rum punch stood in the hall, a hospitable invitation to every guest, who all drank from the same dish. Flip and toddy were com- mon drinks, and a moderate use of the flowing bowl seems to have been almost universal. But woe to the man who overstepped the subtle line which divides the drinker from the drunkard. His name, posted in every alehouse — the keepers of which them- selves were required to be of ** good character " and " property- holders " — shut him out forever from further lawful tippling. Just before the Revolution, a unique punishment was in vogue in New York for drunkards. It consisted of " three quarts of warm water and salt enough to operate as an emetic, with a por- tion of /a7np oi/ to act as a purge." In 1772, a negro, found drunk and sent to Bridewell, died after enduring his sentence. If one were to tell all the curious local customs which pre- vailed here and there over the colonies, it would read spicily enough. Here is a choice dish : " The height of the fashion was to put into the kettle of chocolate several links of sausages, and, after boiling all together, to serve the guests with a bowl of chocolate and sausage. The latter was cut up, and the mess eaten with a spoon." When tea first came in use, it was boiled in an iron kettle and strained ; the leaves were well buttered, and the clear liquid was drunk " to wash down the greens." A dish called whistle-belly-vengeance was made by simmering the sour household brewed beer in a brass kettle, with crumbled crusts of brown bread, adding a little molasses. It was served hot. Yet, without carpets, gas, or other " modern improvements," taking their long journeys over rough roads in lumbering coaches or on horse, cooking by open fireplaces, and spinning and weaving all needful articles for use or wear by slow hand labor, our pre- Revolutionary fathers and mothers extracted, doubtless, quite as much comfort from life as their more luxurious descendants. The old-time physician did not neglect his patients though he always made his calls on foot, and never ventured to charge more than two shillings for each visit ; while fair ladies bustled through the muddy streets in pattens and galoshes, and deemed it no 128 COLONIAL LIFE. great hardship to sit out a round hour sermon with only the little tin or wooden foot-stove under their feet to temper the winter chill of the meeting-house which had never known a fire. When the frosts lay heavy on lake and river, came the festivities of skating, and the great ox was roasted on the thick-ribbed ice. With spring came May-day, still kept up in many parts with true Old England merriment. For ball and party invitations, since blank cards were yet unknown, the back of a common playing- card served as well as anything else ; why not ? No opportunity for promiscuous flirting or coquetry then, when a partner was engaged for the whole evening, each couple being expected to drink tea together on the following afternoon. We turn again to the sunny South, seeking repose in a Vir- ginia planter's luxurious home. We have seen how these spacious mansions were situated, dotting at long intervals the bank of some lovely river. Free, generous, a prince in hospitality, the southern gentleman kept open-house to all respectable strangers who might seek food or lodging. " The doors of citizens," says a southern writer, ** are opened to all decent travelers and shut against none. Innkeepers complain that this is carried to such an extent that their business is scarcely worth following. The abundance of provisions on plantations renders the exercise of this virtue not inconvenient, and the avidity of country people for hearing news makes them rather seek than shun the calls of strangers. The State may be traveled over with very little expense by persons furnished with letters of introduction, or even without them by calling at the plantations of private gentlemen on or near the roads." It was a delightful termination to a day of weary journeying when the bridle was loosed before one of these inviting country homes and the gentlemanly host uttered his courteous welcome. Over the low verandas and balconies climbed, in wanton luxuriance, the yellow jasmine, sweet honeysuckle, or the trumpet flower; the soft air was fragrant with the breath of scented shrubs which sprang from warm, moist earth ; everywhere was an atmosphere of delicious languor. Within the dwelling was the same air of repose. The music of the harpsichord was oftener heard than the hum of the spinning- wheel, though the southern matron had, too, her own peculiar round of duties. Black slaves performed all the domestic labors, it is true ; but the heart of the kind mistress was mindful of the wants of her large and, in many respects, dependent household, LATER COLONIAL TIMES. 1 29 in which she found sufficient employ. Her articles of luxury and many of her comforts were brought direct from England. Ships from Liverpool sailed up the river and delivered at the private wharf of the wealthy planter the goods of fashionable attire or household elegance which he had ordered from England, receiv- ing in return the tobacco sowed, gathered, and packed by the negroes on the plantation. Along the Potomac many of the plant- ers had beautiful barges imported from England, which were rowed by negroes in uniform. When they traveled on horseback, they were attended by their black servants in livery. The ladies often took their airing in a chariot and four, with liveried black postil- lions. A short distance from the family residence stood the kit- chen, which, like the laundry, was always separate from the mansion. From its large, open fireplace, presided over by some ancient Dinah or Chloe in gorgeous red or yellow turban, came savory dishes of sweet bacon, wild-fowl, or game. Hot biscuit were served at every meal, and no breakfast was complete with- out a plate of delicious *' hoe-cakes " — cakes made of Indian meal and baked before the fire, which are as naturally associated with the southern table as pumpkin-pies with the New England board or doughnuts with the Dutch. Conveniently retired, might be found the negro quarters ; a cluster of wooden cabins each with its own little garden and poultry yard, and with swarms of black babies, pickaninnies, gambolling in the sunshine. The south- ern planter, like the roving Merovingian kings of France, had artificers of all kinds in his retinue of servants: tailors, shoe- makers, carpenters, smiths, and so on through all the needful trades of ordinary life. There w«-^ample stables for the blooded horses, and kennels for the hounds, for the chase was a favorite diversion. Washington was passionately fond of it, and the names of his fox -hounds — Vulcan, Singer, Sweetlips, Music, Truelove, etc. — were carefully registered in his household books, the character of some of them giving us a faint hint of an under- current of sentiment, which in his grave dignity he seldom revealed. On his beautiful Mount Vernon estate, that wonderful man, as careful a proprietor as he was brave general and accom- plished gentleman, so watched over his exports that they became noted as always reliable, and it was said that any barrel of flour bearing his brand passed into West India ports without inspec- tion. Washington's early friend and patron, Lord Thomas Fairfax, 9 I30 COLONIAL LIFE. possessed one of the largest estates in America. His mansion house, called Greenway Court, in the Shenandoah Valley, was the scene of many brilliant festivities. He was an ardent loyalist, and when he heard of the surrender of Cornwallis, it is related that he said to his servant, " Come, Joe, carry me to bed, for it is high time for me to die.'' Nor did he long survive that event. His immense lands, valued at ninety-eight thousand pounds, were confiscated to the Union. They embraced five million two hundred and eighty- two thousand acres, including everything between the Potomac and the Rappahannock. When we read of one person enjoying the title-claim to an extent of territory covering all the present counties of Lancaster, Northumberland, Richmond, Westmore- land, Stafford, King George, Prince William, Fairfax, Loudon, Fauquier, Culpepper, Clarke, Madison, Page, Shenandoah, Hardy, Hampshire, Morgan, Berkeley, Jefferson, and Frederick — twenty- one in all — we do not wonder that in those times common people made bitter complaint that all Virginia was in the hands of a few owners. FIELD-SPORTS OF THE SOUTH — FOX-HUNTING. PART II. M W^ ^ % feti^Itifen. •* Over the hill-sides the wila knell is tolling. From their far hamlets the yeomanry come ; As through the storm-clotuis the thunder-burst rollings Circles the beat of the mustering drum. Fast on the soldiers path Darken the waves of wrath. Long have they gathered, and loud shall they fall ; Red glares the muskefs flash. Sharp rings the rifle's crash, Blazing and clanging from thicket and wall" — HOLMES. CHAPTER I. JLIEJ^ATIOJJ OF THE COLOJ^IES. HE scattered settlements along the Atlantic grew into a nation as naturally as infancy matures into manhood. The whole his- tory of the colonies pointed an index hand to Lexington and Bunker Hill. The Declaration of Independence was but the normal outgrowth of the contract signed by the Pilgrims in Cape Cod Harbor a little over a century and a half before. The so- called "■ Causes of the Revolution " only served to develop that which had its root in the very nature of things. This country was settled by men who fled from persecution at home, and America to them meant liberty above all things else. Free- dom was their birthright, and they had studied its principles thoroughly. To provoke such men by injustice, was to shake rudely every tie which bound them to the mother country. Just this England did, wantonly and continually. 134 ALIENATION OF THE COLONIES. [1750. The royal governors often carried matters with a high hand. There were attempts made to take away the charters of Massa- chusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. There were sugges- tions of creating a provincial peerage and of giving the Estab- lished Church the precedence in all the colonies. In the army, a ''regular" captain outranked a ''provincial" colonel. Every effort was made to keep the colonies dependent, and to favor the British manufacturer and merchant. Even Pitt, the friend of America, asserted that the colonists had " no right to manufac- ture a nail for a horse-shoe." Commerce and manufactures were \ bound hand and foot. In 1750, the Americans were forbidden to send pig-iron to England and to make steel or bar iron for home use. Iron-works were declared " common nuisances." The expor- tation of hats from one colony to another was prohibited, and no hatter was allowed to have more than two apprentices at one time, as the colonists, if let alone, " would supply all the world with hats." The importation of sugar, rum and molasses was bur- . dened with exorbitant duties ; and the Carolinians were forbidden to cut down the pine-trees of their vast forests, in order to con- vert the wood into staves, or the juice into turpentine and tar, for commercial purposes. England, says Sabine, forbade the use of