MEN, WOMEN & MANNERS IN COLONIAL TIMES SECOND EDITION I OTHER BOOKS BT MR. FISHER THE MAKING OF PENNSYLVANIA Second Edition. With an entirely new chapter izmo. Red buckram, $1.50 UNIFORM WITH THE ABOVE THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 12 mo. Red buckram, $1.50 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY Philadelphia PENNSYLVANIA: COLONY AND COMMON WEALTH i2mo. Red buckram, $1.50 MEN, WOMEN & MANNERS IN COLONIAL TIMES - - - BY SYDNEY GEO. FISHER ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAVURES AND WITH DECORATIONS BY EDWARD STRATTON HOLLOWAY VOL. I PHILADELPHIA fcf LONDON J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY i 898 COPYRIGHT, 1897 BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY AV Hertford , Coi\t\. PREFACE E charm of a journey through the colonies was its variety. In travelling from Massa chusetts to the Carolinas one passed through communities of such distinct individuality that they were almost like different nations. Each had been founded for a reason and purpose of its own. Each had a set of opinions and laws peculiar to itself, and it was not uncommon to find the laws and opinions of one a contradiction to those of another. They were a strange and picturesque collec tion of settlements on the extreme eastern verge of a vast continent ; a mere fringe along the sea- coast from Georgia to New Hampshire. Most of the people lived close to the shore, and all were within two hundred miles of it. Behind them stretched the great unknown continent, which for a thousand miles was nothing but trees, a vast forest that seemed to them inter- 5 Preface minable, for they did not know that beyond it were the open prairies with their long grass and herds of buffalo stretching to the Mississippi, and beyond that the plains, the desert, and the Rocky Mountains. The wild fowl that every autumn came to them in countless millions from Alaska could have told them all ; and now we know what the canvas-back and the mallard have always known. But we must be careful not to think ourselves on that account the superiors of the colonists. We have at our command more fafts and more mate rial wealth, but it is a question whether we are any wiser or better than the fathers ; and it is extremely doubtful whether we enjoy ourselves as much as they did, when, in their scarlet cloaks, yellow waistcoats, and abundant leisure and room, they ornamented the Atlantic sea board, with the continent behind them. Those were brave days when the judges on the bench wore scarlet robes faced with black ; when the tailor-shops, instead of the dull-col ored woollens which they now contain, adver tised, as in the New York Gazetteer of May 13, 1 773, " scarlet, buff, blue, green, crimson, white, skye blue, and other colored superfine cloths ;" when John Hancock, of penmanship fame, is described in his home in Boston with a red velvet skull-cap lined with linen which was turned over 6 Preface the edge of the velvet about three inches deep, a blue damask dressing-gown lined with silk, a white stock, with satin embroidered waistcoat, black satin breeches, white silk stockings to his knees, and red morocco slippers. It has been said that the minuet and other stately dances of colonial times were the natural result of the wonderful clothes the upper classes of the people wore. It would have been ex tremely difficult for a lady to waltz with her hair done up in a great pyramid of paste, with perhaps a turban or a large feather on it. She scarcely dared move her head, except very slowly. The man with his variety of wigs tie-wig, bob-wig, bag-wig, nightcap-wig, and riding-wig usually selected one for a ball on which he dared not put his hat, which, with its gold-lace trimming, was carried under his arm ; and the sword, which was the essential of full dress, would have been very much in the way in a modern waltz in a crowded ball-room. But all that we have and all that we are those colonists gave us, and this we are now beginning to realize. We are re-discovering the debt we owe to the colonies. We are turning to investi gate every detail of colonial life with a loving devotion which it is hoped may be a sign of stronger national feeling, or at least of an at tempt to have a true national feeling, and to 7 Preface give up the so-called cosmopolitanism and vulgar worship of everything foreign which so long has been our bane. Fifty years ago, or even twenty years ago, there was little or no interest in colonial his tory. It was regarded as a time of slavery. It seemed as if we had then been a different peo ple, unworthy of our present selves, and the bitter feelings of the Revolution were continued by the remembrance of the war of 1812. Whatever was written about the colonial period was so dull or so full of vague generalities that no one cared to read it. It was taken for granted that everything had begun suddenly at the time of the Revolution, and behind that there was nothing of impor tance. The slow growth of almost two hundred years which had led up to that event was ig nored. Many writers assumed that our national Constitution was made off-hand on the spur of the moment, or that we copied it from European models. One of the most remarkable proofs of the vital interest which the colonial times possess for us is the beautiful revival in our domestic architecture which has followed from the return to the types of those days which we once sup posed were only days of slavery. The Revo lution killed architecture. Any one familiar 8 Preface with old buildings knows the steady deteriora tion from the year 1780, until by the time of the civil war we were in a reign of horrors, with the scroll-saw of the carpenter triumphant. The Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876 aroused an unfortunate interest in Euro pean forms of building. Our people, having suddenly awakened to the thought that they had no architecture beyond the proportions of a dry-goods box, ran riot, and, under the name of Romanesque, disfigured the country with all manner of grotesqueness and individual conceit, in which Gothic, Classic, Queen Anne, and every other style were mingled. Then it was discovered that in our own land and in the line of our own development we had a pure and perfect type for inspiration and suggestion, a type which belonged to the nation and had been wrought out by more than a hundred years of natural effort and experience without hysterical imita tion of alien sources. It has accomplished great things for us already, and there is more in store. The present volumes complete a purpose I have long had in mind, to present the various aspefts and influences of colonial life in a way that would interest ordinary readers. A large part of these volumes was written some time ago ; but their progress was delayed when I found in the course of my investigations that 9 Preface Pennsylvania alone had a most curious and complicated history, almost totally negleded and unwritten, which deserved separate treatment. " The Making of Pennsylvania," which de scribes the elements of the very miscellaneous population of that province, was accordingly published first, and was followed by " Pennsyl vania : Colony and Commonwealth," as a sup plement, giving the narrative history. I have also written " The Evolution of the Constitu tion," which shows how the plan and principles of our national government were developed by a natural process of growth on our own soil during the two hundred years of the colonial period, instead of being imitated from European insti tutions, as the cosmopolites have vainly imagined. These volumes, with the present ones, disclose the important influences, social, moral, racial, political, and constitutional, which created the American Republic. I am indebted to Mr. Henry T. Coates, of Philadelphia, for the pifture of Shirley, and for the use of photographs from which the head- and tail-pieces of the first chapter were drawn. The Doughoregan manor-house and the decorations for the chapter on New Jersey have been newly drawn from illustrations in The Magazine of America?i History, by permission of Messrs. A. S. Barnes and Company, of New York. TABLE OF CONTENTS VOL. I CHAPTER I CAVALIERS AND TOBACCO 9 CHAPTER II FROM PURITANS AND WITCHES TO LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY 117 CHAPTER III THE LAND OF STEADY HABITS 243 CHAPTER IV THE ISLE OF ERRORS .... 303 CHAPTER V THE WHITE MOUNTAINS AND THE GREEN .... 324 CH A PTER VI QUAKER PROSPERITY 340 CHAPTER VII NOVA CJESAREA 377 II LIST OF PHOTOGRAVURES VOL. I SHIRLEY ................ Frontispiece James River, Virginia. Built 1760. KING HOOPER HOUSE ............ 190 Danvers, Massachusetts. Built 1754. MOUNT PLEASANT .............. 366 Philadelphia. Built 1762. PYNE HOUSE .............. . . 380 Princeton, New Jersey. CHAPTER I CAVALIERS AND TOBACCO pHE Commonwealth which could produce Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Madison, Marshall, Monroe, the Lees, the Randolphs, the Carters, the Harrisons, and a host of other emi nent men, which was called the Mother of Presi dents, and which exercised such a controlling in fluence in the Revolution and the formation of the Constitution, must have been a remarkable com munity ; for such distinguished men are the result of the conditions in which they live, and cannot spring up by accident or of their own will. We are still dominated by the ideas of these Virginians ; we follow their thoughts, obey the fundamental laws and principles they framed, without even a desire to change them. What was the secret of their life and their success ? When we wander through the land they lived 5 Cavaliers and Tobacco in we find the remains of handsome old brick churches which were evidently intended for a larger population than now lives upon the soil, and large mansion-houses with ornamentation and gardens implying a luxury and exuberance of life which their successors do not enjoy. From these houses we gather the remains of silverware and furniture which give us glimpses not only of their wealth, but of their taste and accom plishment in the arts of life, which we are glad to imitate. Fascinated with further research, we pore over records and manuscripts and histories only to find that they were a gay, happy people ; a race of sportsmen, cock-fighters and fox-hunters ; bright, humorous, and sociable ; in the saddle by day and feasting and dancing by night ; and we go away with the impression that the hounds were always baying in Virginia, that the sun shone all day long, and all night the fiddles scraped and the darkies sang. But these men were among the strongest in- telledls of their century. With no pretensions or show of book-learning, they seem to have pos sessed themselves of all the essential informa tion of their time. They had a soundness of judgment, a breadth of grasp, a lofty ambition, and a high-strung sense of honor which made them master-minds. 16 Cavaliers and Tobacco When in September, 1774, Washington, Henry, Randolph, Harrison, Bland, and Pendle- ton rode up, sunburnt, on their thoroughbreds to attend the first meeting of the Continental Congress at Philadelphia, they carried every thing before them. " Fine fellows," " very high," " not a milksop among them," are the descriptions we read in the diaries or letters of people who were in the town at that time ; and other delegates who succeeded them, such as the Lees and Carter Braxton, were equally efficient. Some subtle combination of climate, life, and thought produced this result, which, like all such things, becomes difficult in the last analysis ; and unfortunately the Virginians, while they were great makers of history, were not writers of it. Scraps, relics, and ruins are all that re main of their curious and interesting civilization, and for many phases of their life we have only the one-sided comments and criticisms on its excesses. The beginnings of Virginia by a handful of reckless, improvident men, who in 1607 settled on a little, swampy, malarious peninsula on the James River, were as humble, weak, and un promising as anything of the kind could be. But they were starting the great British colonial em pire, the vastness of which, stretching round the VOL. I.-2 \ Cavaliers and Tobacco world through Africa, Asia, America, and Aus tralia, is to-day the wonder among nations, and but for a mistake in policy might be larger by seventy millions of people and the whole terri tory of the United States. Up to that time England had done nothing in colonizing, although more than a hundred years had passed since Columbus had discovered South America, and meanwhile Spain had built up for herself a strong colonial power. In all that time England had been entitled to North America by the discovery of the Cabots in 1497; but the nation which in the end was to be the greatest colonizer was unable to move, and her first attempt must have seemed very ludicrous to those who knew what Spain had accomplished. The company of one hundred and five persons that began the colony at Jamestown in 1607 was not of the kind to conquer the wilderness or found a commonwealth, and no one would have ever suspected them of being the forerunners of a stupendous colonial power. More than half of them were poor gentlemen who were unaccus tomed to manual labor and despised it ; many were small tradesmen or servants ; some are de scribed as " Jewellers, gold refiners, and a per fumer ;" and they were nearly all odd sticks who had not been very successful at anything in England. 18 Cavaliers and Tobacco There was only one real man among them, a short, stout, vigorous little fellow with red hair and beard and a face flaming with energy, Captain John Smith by name. He was about twenty- seven years old, and, if his own account can be believed, had recently returned from most extra ordinary adventures among the Turks, where he had slain champions in single combat and broken the hearts of the most illustrious Turkish ladies. Idle and shiftless, Smith s companions often had to be driven by force to work, and some times would not work even to save their lives, and they dissipated their energy in continual dis putes and quarrels. On the voyage over they had suspeded the redoubtable little captain of aspiring to be " King of Virginia." They put him under arrest, and, as he says, had a gallows ready to execute him. They intended to go to Roanoke Island, a desolate sand-bank on the coast of North Caro lina, where some years before a colony sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh had perished. But a storm drove them northward into Chesapeake Bay, and they turned into Hampton Roads, where vessels have ever since sought refuge. They called the cape at the mouth of the river Point Comfort, in memory of the relief they felt when they reached it, and it still bears the name. Sailing about fifty miles up the river, which 19 Cavaliers and Tobacco they called the James in honor of the king, they selected a low, swampy peninsula on the north bank of it for their settlement, which they called Jamestown. It was a most unhealthy spot, and between their arrival in May, 1607, and the following Odlober half of them died of malarial fevers. But being a peninsula surrounded on three sides by the river, it was easy to fortify and defend, and they depended on the wild fowl and fish of the river for their food. If they had chosen a more wholesome spot in the interior among the pines, they might have starved to death or have been all killed by the Indians, and left no trace of their fate. The James River is surpassingly lovely in the month of May, and the soft climate, the flowers, the whispering pines, and the myriads of birds convinced them that they had surely reached the land of the idle man s delight. They were a strange contrast to the stern Puritans who afterwards founded Massachusetts. They were royalist in politics and Episcopal in religion. They were not flying from persecution. They had no grievance. They had nothing against either the English government or the English Church, and they brought both with them. So slight was their zeal that their object in coming to America has been disputed. Their motives were probably restlessness, the hope of finding 20 Cavaliers and Tobacco gold, and a conviftion that they could not be much worse off in America than they were in England. Their governing body consisted of a presi dent and council. Wingfield, their first presi dent, was utterly incapable, and so was his suc cessor, Ratcliffe, who was finally sent back to England for fear, as Smith said, that the colonists would kill him. When the hot months of sum mer came all were stricken with fever and lay groaning in their huts with scarcely enough energy left to bury the dead. Some were de termined to return to England, and Wingfield, the president, was concerned in two attempts to seize the pinnace for this purpose. In the sec ond attempt, Kendall, one of the ringleaders, was tried, convited, and shot. Another at tempt made by Ratcliffe was frustrated by Smith. For some time after landing Smith was still under arrest for his supposed design to be king. But he now demanded a trial, and on his ac quittal, being the only man possessed of brains or vigor, he became the leader of the colonists and saved them from destruction. He fought off the Indians, obtained supplies of corn and venison from them, and during a few weeks captivity was saved, as he relates, by Pocahontas. When the cool weather of autumn drove away 21 Cavaliers and Tobacco the fever he had only about forty men left. With this handful he not only maintained the existence of Jamestown, but made explorations in the surrounding country. It is extremely doubtful, however, if he could have carried his forty colonists through another summer of fever in the swamps of Jamestown. But in spring more ships and people arrived, and during the summer Smith made his famous exploration of Chesapeake Bay. He hoped, no doubt, to find the long-sought passage through the land to the South Sea, which was supposed to lead to the kingdom of the Grand Khan and other places of fabulous wealth. The colonists had been specially in structed to search carefully for this passage. Smith was disappointed in this search, but he made a most thorough examination of the Chesapeake in its entire length, and drew a map of it which remained the authority for the geography of that part of the continent for more than a hundred years. When Lord Balti more obtained his charter for Maryland, in 1632, and when William Penn obtained his charter for Pennsylvania, in 1681, they both relied on this map for the boundaries of their provinces. Smith s account of his exploration can still be read with interest and the places he de- 22 Cavaliers and Tobacco scribes recognized. He speaks of the red- winged blackbirds, which he calls blackbirds with a red shoulder. With his boat and men clad in armor he entered the mouth of the Susquehanna, and ended his exploration at the point where the bridge of the railroad between Philadelphia and Baltimore now spans the stream. He speaks of the high bluffs farther up the river which we now see from the bridge ; and it was here that he met the tribe of Indians called the Susquehannocks, remarkable, he says, for their lofty stature. Smith continued to be the ruler of the colony for two years, maintaining command among his turbulent people by courage and address and his known willingness to strike and kill when occa sion required. Arrivals from England increased his people to about five hundred, composed for the most part of rakes, broken tradesmen, and impoverished gentlemen. The bankrupt ele ment began now to appear, as afterwards in Carolina, but it never became so numerous. The beginnings of Virginia were, however, more disorderly and hopeless than those of South Carolina, and for many years the people had to be held down with a strong hand. There were continual fighting and treaty making and treaty breaking with the Indians ; and the colonists were kept together by the Indian hos- 23 Cavaliers and Tobacco tility like the early South Carolinians, and hardly dared at first to cultivate the land. Their property was all held in common for the general good, and there were scarcely any women among them. They built fifty or sixty wooden houses and a church on the swampy peninsula where they had established James town, and in the narrow neck which connected it with the mainland they had a fort. They lived on the game and fish they killed or pro cured from the Indians, with a few little patches of corn which they cultivated. Smith attempted to establish branch settle ments farther up the river, but the Indians were so hostile that fora long time very little could be done. The peninsula with water on three sides and a fort at the neck was the safest place, and there they huddled together for several years, the only white men on all the vast continent of forests and mountains which in time their race was to people from sea to sea. Smith, to whom belongs the honor of keeping alive this first company of Englishmen that had ever lived in North America, was a curious charac ter. By some writers he has been described as a " wonder of nature" and " a mirror of our time," and his own description of himself is never un complimentary. By others he is called a lying braggart, an adventurer, a Gascon, and a beggar. 24 Cavaliers and Tobacco In this country his own estimate was usually accepted and even enlarged upon until Mr. Charles Dudley Warner s careful biography of him sifted the evidence. That he had a most valuable faculty of commanding rough men, lead ing exploring expeditions, and preparing maps of wild countries which were as accurate as any of that time is unquestioned; and he seems to have been free from the vagabond vices of drink ing and gambling which were so rife among his followers. But his own estimate of himself and the descriptions of his wonderful adventures can hardly be accepted without a great deal of allowance. He was a boaster in the fullest sense of the word, and every page of his books and pam phlets is full of it. Everything he wrote, especially his adventures in Turkey, is in the inflated romantic style of lords, ladies, Tartars, Turks, swords, blood, and death. We can scarcely think of him without seeing the pistols in his belt and his sword slashing infidel heads. If he had not been such a thorough believer in civilization and progress he would have made an admirable pirate. He rouses suggestions of the gorgeousness of the East, the rich garments, the camels, and the blazing sun. He tries to give outlandish names to places. Cape Ann he wanted to call Cape 2 5 Cavaliers and Tobacco Tragabigzanda, which was the name of a Turk ish lady whose smiles he declared he had won and who had befriended him when he was a slave. She would, he assures us, feign herself sick and stay home from the bath and avoid all amusements in order to hear him relate the his tory of his achievements. Through all he says there runs a conscious effort to defend his reputation and a craving for notice and sympathy : his merits have been over looked ; his sacrifices have been in vain ; people, he thinks, do not sufficiently appreciate his glo rious life of adventure. It is now generally held by the best authorities that the story of his deliverance from death by Pocahontas was one of the efforts of his chivalric imagination. There undoubtedly was a playful little Indian maiden named Pocahontas, who, at the time of Smith s stay in Virginia, used to come to the fort at Jamestown and turn somer sets with the white boys, and at times her friendship was of assistance to the colonists ; for she appears to have liked the English better than her own people. She finally married an Englishman and was exhibited in London society as a curiosity, very much as we have known in our own time African chieftains or other oddities exhibited there. In his early writings about the colony, Smith never 26 Cavaliers and Tobacco mentions his obligation to her ; but when she had become famous by her marriage and exhi bition in England, he laid claim to the interesting episode. He always professed to have found favor with the fair and to have been assisted by them, and the romantic career of Pocahontas was a great opportunity and temptation. It seems probable that his ideals of life were founded on the extravagant stories of chivalry and knight-errantry which Don Quixote (which appeared about the time Smith came to Virginia) was written to satirize. His style of writing is ludicrously like the style of those romances, and, as Mr. Warner has pointed out, some of his adventures are most suspiciously like certain stock tales of the time. But Smith was not a Don Quixote in Vir ginia ; for when it came to practical affairs his common sense was always in the ascendant, and romance was forgotten until he sat down to write again. He had no faith in the gold mines so many expected to find, and when Captain Newport loaded a ship with a quantity of yellow earth he had found, Smith bluntly informed the people that he was " not enamored of their dirty skill to fraught such a drunken ship with so much gilded dirt ;" and he always declared that wealth could be obtained from America only by labor. 27 Cavaliers and Tobacco But the council of the colony in England failed to appreciate him. He found no gold, he was harsh, they said, to the Indians, he failed to find the passage to the South Sea, he sent back no ships freighted with produfts, he was rude and rough, and they were not growing rich by his administration. He was deposed and returned to England just after he had almost been assassinated when lying wounded and help less from an accidental explosion of some gun powder. In 1614 he made a voyage to the northern coast of America, explored New England, giving it its name, and made one of his excellent maps, which was the guide of navigators and geographers until far within the next century. He died in London in 163 1, after writing full descriptions of his explorations and adventures. That he had been a useful leader in Virginia seems to be proved by the depletion which be gan there as soon as he had gone. Crops, work, and fortifications were neglefted and disease and famine set in. These first Americans seem to have been utterly incapable of self-government, and some of them left the colony to become pirates in the West Indies. Six months after Smith s departure only sixty of the five hundred inhabitants were alive. After three years of effort, all that could be said of the Virginia colony 28 Cavaliers and Tobacco was that it consisted of about sixty persons and five hundred graves. The miserable remnant are said to have finally resorted to cannibalism to maintain themselves ; but as this charge rests on an assertion after wards made by Smith, and seems to be denied by other sources of information, its truth is doubtful. It is certain, however, that they were reduced to great straits ; and when two ships arrived with food for only fourteen days, the wretched colo nists refused to remain any longer in the country. They were taken aboard the vessels, which set sail for England, and Jamestown was abandoned. But they had scarcely reached the ocean when they were met by a new governor, with ships, food, and men, and Virginia was restored to life. Lord Delaware, the new governor, remained with the new colony only from June, 1610, until the following March, when a severe attack of ague sent him to England never to return. He was a courtly nobleman, and even there in the wilderness afTedled the state of a little monarch with his privy council, his lieutenant-general, and his admiral. He maintained his authority well, and during his short reign there was peace as well as plenty in Virginia. His successor, Sir Thomas Dale, was a rough soldier, who professed to be very religious and 29 Cavaliers and Tobacco to possess a great knowledge of divinity. He punished a conspiracy against himself by keeping one man chained to a tree with a bodkin thrust through his tongue until he died, and the others he disposed of by hanging, shooting, and break ing on the wheel. He asked Powhatan, the Indian chief, to give him his daughter in mar riage ; but the monarch of the woods declined. Dale s successor was Yeardley, a mild man, who was governor of Virginia several times. Of the other governors, Argall was a buccaneer who robbed and abused the colony, and when deposed, loaded a vessel with his plunder and sailed away. Sir John Harvey appropriated the fines and revenues to his own use and granted away the land of individuals until the council thrust him out. Such was Virginia s fortune, sometimes ruled by a mild and reasonable man, sometimes by a tyrant or a robber, until the year 1642, when Sir William Berkeley appeared and was twice governor for many years. Virginia lacked at first the two essentials of a colony : there were no women and there was no private ownership of land. The early settlers came without wives, and their form of govern ment was communism. Everything they raised from the soil or obtained from the Indians or took in hunting went into the common store and was equally divided. The colony seemed to be 30 Cavaliers and Tobacco constituted expressly for failure, for the climate made men lazy and there was no incentive to work. A man could not gain a future home for himself by clearing and cultivating land ; he had no family to inspire his exertions; he lived only for himself and for the present, and there fore he lived from hand to mouth and from day to day. The colony was nothing but a military camp, and could be maintained only by pouring fresh men into it from England, at great cost and with terrible loss of life. But in Dale s administration communism was abolished and the land given to individuals ; and in 1619 Sir Edwin Sandys, seeing the absolute necessity of women, shipped ninety maidens to Virginia, who were free to marry whomsoever they chose ; but the husband each one selected must pay for her outfit and voyage to the province. Arrangements were made for the support of those who should not happen to selecl: or be selected. But no difficulty was experienced on that point. Within a short time after their arrival they were all married and paid for. So well pleased were they with the result that they wrote letters to England which induced a shipment of sixty more. After the colonist got his wife and his land there was no longer any doubt about the success of Virginia. Immigration rapidly increased and Cavaliers and Tobacco the colony grew by its own vigor. In 1622 there were over four thousand inhabitants, in 1650 about fifteen thousand, and in 1670 about forty thousand. These later immigrants were mostly of the royalist party in England, cavaliers as they were called, a fine body of men, far superior to the disorderly crew whom Smith kept from famine. They completely changed the character of the colony and blotted out the disorderly, indolent past. They spread along both sides of the James, a broad, beautiful river, navigable for almost a hundred miles from its mouth. Then they occupied the York, which is the next river to the north, and afterwards the Rappahan- nock and the Potomac. At the time of the Revolution they had planted themselves on all these streams from their outlets in Chesapeake Bay to their sources in the Blue Ridge, where the hunter and the Indian fighter guarded the advance of civilization. But their success was entirely due to one produft, tobacco, which with the assistance of negro slavery built up a most curious and inter esting civilization, as rice afterwards did in Caro lina. The cultivation of tobacco began early, the demand for it rapidly increased, and great profits were made. The crop was one which required close attention and labor for only a 32 Cavaliers and Tobacco short period of the year, and Virginia held the monopoly of its production. It was a business which made a man rich and at the same time gave him a great deal of leisure. It created a tobacco aristocracy, and aristocracy, as time proved, was better suited to Virginia than de mocracy. Tobacco pervaded everything. It was for a long time the money of the colony. Salaries and wages were paid in it, taxes were levied in it, and criminals were fined so many pounds of tobacco. The Virginians were never seafaring, like the South Carolinians or the people of the Northern colonies. They neither built nor owned any ships except a few small coasting vessels, and they never engaged in manufacturing. They imported everything they used implements, clothes, tables, chairs, and even brooms and exported nothing but tobacco and a little wheat. They even had not mills to grind their own grain. They were less varied in their occupations than even the South Carolinians, and they had no towns. The South Carolinians, as we shall see, were driven by circumstances to concen trate their life in Charleston, and were stimu lated by the close association ; but the Vir ginians seem to have been stimulated by a life of individual isolation which in the end produced VOL. I. 3 33 Cavaliers and Tobacco better results than the close contadl of the Caro linians. But during the first seventy years of Vir ginia s existence, or from 1607 to Bacon s Re bellion in 1676, her progress was comparatively slow, and at the end of that time her population was only about thirty-eight thousand whites and two thousand slaves. The cause of this slowness seems to have been the continued Indian hostility, which repressed the people as it repressed the South Carolinians and pre vented their spreading out ; and there was one frightful massacre in 1622, the memory of which intimidated the people for many a year. In that time the planters lived in small wooden houses carefully palisaded, and though they are described by travellers as contented and having abundance of game and produces from their land, their life, like that of the early Carolinians, was one of continual guard duty. The large mansion houses of which we now see the re mains were not built in those days. The great period of Virginia, as of Massachusetts, did not begin until after 1700. They had, however, many advantages over the Carolinians. The climate was cooler and more healthy, the white man coujd hunt and work in both summer and winter, and although he had the fear of the Indian constantly before 34 Cavaliers and Tobacco his eyes, he had comparatively little fear of an insurrection among his slaves. In " A Perfect Pifture of Virginia," published in London in 1669, we meet with some of that enthusiasm of description which was so often applied to the Southern colonies. Virginia is an earthly paradise, the writer says, fertile and rich, full of trees and bees, rare colored par- roketoes, " and one bird we call the mock-bird, for he will imitate all other birds notes, even the owls and nightingales ;" a great contrast to New England, where, " Except a herring be put into the hole you set the corn or maize in, it will not come up." After the year 1700, the Indians being sub dued, the Virginians were able to spread out and occupy the broad rivers which flow into the west side of the Chesapeake. All the tobacco plantations were on these rivers, and the largest vessels could come up those deep streams and load at the private wharves of the plantations. Each plantation was a kingdom in itself, with its own mechanics, carpenters, coopers, and workmen of all sorts, even to a greater degree than the South Carolina plantations, which usu ally sent their rice and other products to the merchants at Charleston. But in Virginia each planter was his own merchant and shipper, and imported and exported at his own landing-place 35 Cavaliers and Tobacco as though he were an independent state. Both provinces were essentially river provinces ; but the Carolina rivers all led to Charleston and created a merchant class, while the Virginia rivers led direcl to England and dispensed with the provincial merchants and towns. In 1676, seventy years after Virginia had been founded, Jamestown, its capital, consisted of a state-house, a church, and only eighteen houses. It was even smaller than it had been in Captain Smith s time. One hundred years after wards, in 1776, Williamsburg, to which the seat of government had been removed, was a mere straggling village. Attempts were continually made to bring towns into existence by legisla tion. Statutes were passed establishing them at convenient cross-roads ; but they met with the fate which usually befalls attempts to change the essential nature of a community. The greatest size to which any of them attained was one or two small stores, and they became known as paper towns. Slavery was introduced into Virginia in 1619, when a Dutch ship landed twenty negroes. But the people were not particularly anxious for them. There were no rice swamps to be culti vated, as in Carolina. The climate was cooler, and white men could labor in the tobacco fields all the year round. In facl:, the people were at Cavaliers and Tobacco first rather opposed to slavery ; so that in 1670, fifty years after their introdu&ion, there were only two thousand slaves in the colony. But gradually they were found to be valuable both for work and for sale in other parts of the coun try. In 1756 there were one hundred and twenty thousand of them, and after the Revolu tion Virginia became a breeding-place for slaves to supply the rest of the Southern States. But the slaves never outnumbered the whites, and although there were one or two servile in surrections, there was less dread of them than in South Carolina. The black population was usually about forty per cent, of the whole. The laws against them on the statute book were severe and very much like those in Caro lina. A slave was punished for being found off his plantation without a certificate from his master ; he was not allowed to carry a club, gun, or other weapon and if he resisted when cor rected it was not a felony to kill him. If he gave false testimony he was to have one ear nailed to the pillory, stand for an hour, and then have the ear cut off. After that the other ear was to be served in like manner, and, in addition, he was to receive thirty-nine lashes well laid on. Meet ings and assemblies of negroes were forbidden, and incorrigible runaways could be killed at sight. 37 Cavaliers and Tobacco But these laws were seldom enforced, and the treatment of slaves in Virginia is generally ad mitted to have been mild and kindly, more so than anywhere else in the Southern colonies, and with the usual result that the slaves bred more rapidly and were more profitable to their masters. Indented servants, often called redemptioners, bound to labor for a term of years were numer ous, and were sold like the slaves from master to master. Some had bound themselves in this way to pay for their transportation, some were criminals or had been kidnapped in the streets of London, and some had been rebels, like the followers of the Duke of Monmouth. White and black slavery and the plantation system built up a landed aristocracy which was an aristocracy in the true sense of the word be cause it controlled the political power. It was supported also by a system of primogeniture and entail more thorough than that of England. The eldest son inherited the land, and it could be entailed on him and his descendants so as to be beyond the reach of creditors. Not only could the land be entailed, but the slaves neces sary to work it could be entailed so as to follow the land. In England, as early as 1473, entails could be broken by bringing an adlion in court ; but by an aft of the House of Burgesses the 38 Cavaliers and Tobacco barring and breaking of entails in Virginia were expressly forbidden, and this remained the law until, at the time of the Revolution, all entails were abolished by Jefferson and his democratic followers. The Virginia lord of his entailed land, with slaves to work it, independent of towns and merchants, making an easy living by the sale of tobacco, a royalist in politics and a member of the Church of England, was a most striking and curious character. Although his system was essentially an aristocracy, he enjoyed at the same time all the benefits of liberty and free government ; for the stockholders of the com pany in England which owned Virginia under the charter from the Crown had been a very miscellaneous and democratic body, composed of grocers, candle-makers, and artisans in com pany with knights, gentlemen, noblemen, and members of both houses of Parliament. Un successful in money-making in Virginia, the meetings of these stockholders became the scenes of political debate. It was a miniature parliament and, as the royalists thought, a very seditious one. Its debates seem to have attracted considerable attention, and its importance and influence are shown by the contempt with which the royalist writers speak of it, and its discussion of the 39 Cavaliers and Tobacco great questions of popular rights. The popular or democratic party in it seems to have been in the majority, and voted to give Virginia a repre sentative government elected by every freeman in the colony. In 1619, twelve years after the founding of the province, Governor Yeardley issued writs for the first American legislature. Virginian prosperity dates from that year. It is a curious fa6l that women, free government, universal suffrage, and negro slavery were all in troduced into Virginia at about the same time. The right to vote was after a time restricted to freeholders and housekeepers ; but neither the right to vote nor representative government, though sometimes injured and weakened, was ever seriously impaired. The Virginians steadily developed them and were developed by them. So Virginia elected her own legislature, which was called the House of Burgesses, and the governor and his council were appointed by the king. The burgesses were chosen, two from each county, and at first sat in the church at Jamestown with their hats on like the British House of Commons. Their laws were sent to the king for approval, but until he disapproved they remained in force. The governor s council was also the general court for the hearing of causes civil and ecclesi astical. Membership in the council was a great 40 Cavaliers and Tobacco honor, raised a man s social position, and was much coveted by Virginia families. Every member of the council was commissioned colo nel, and hence in all probability arose the custom in Virginia and the South of applying colonel as a complimentary title to prominent men. The commander of the militia of each county was also a colonel, and in the eyes of his neighbors occupied very much the same position as the lord lieutenant of a county in England. Within five years after the burgesses were established the king dissolved the company and annulled all the charters, and for the rest of the colonial period Virginia, like some of the other colonies, was under the direcl: government of the Crown. The excuse given for destroying the company was that it had mismanaged its affairs ; but there seems to have been very little evidence to sup port this charge. The company was at that time composed of about a thousand stockholders, and they had spent over one hundred and fifty thou sand pounds and sent out nine thousand colonists. The real reason was, probably, that their debates on free government were disliked by the royalists and it was determined to put a stop to them. But the representative government which they had given the province was allowed to stand Cavaliers and Tobacco unharmed, and within the next few years its position was greatly strengthened. In 1631 the burgesses enabled that the gov ernor should neither raise money nor levy war except by their consent. At the same time they were exempted, when in the performance of their duty, from arrest and judicial process. In 1635 the usurpations and tyranny of Governor Harvey became so unbearable that the House of Burgesses thrust him out of his government, as the ancient record has it, and appointed Cap tain John West to aft as governor until the king s pleasure should be known. Short of ac tual rebellion, there could not have been a more high-handed measure. To depose the king s duly appointed governor was the next thing to deposing the king himself. Charles I. was now on the throne, and he diredled that Governor Harvey should be re stored ; but the burgesses never suffered for their daring. They existed only by sufferance ; they had never been recognized or established by the king; and it must have been a tempting opportunity for annihilating them. But Charles I. was always extremely liberal with the colo nies, and in 1642 he formally recognized the burgesses. The cause of the people prospered in Eng land. Cromwell and the Roundheads came and 42 Cavaliers and Tobacco Charles I. was beheaded. When Cromwell had secured England, he sent a fleet across the sea to secure Virginia, where he knew the peo ple were royalists and opposed to him. The men-of-war appeared before Jamestown, prepa rations for defence were made, and everything looked like battle. Then negotiations were entered into and resulted in a treaty of peace which is a most remarkable document. It is skilfully drawn, and its tone is more like an agreement between independent nations than the surrender of a colony. Full indemnity is given for words and afts done or spoken against the Parliament of Eng land. The surrender is acknowledged to be a voluntary aft, not forced or constrained by a conquest. Free speech and free trade to all parts of the world are guaranteed to the colony. No customs or taxes are to be levied, and no forts or garrisons are to be maintained in Vir ginia without the consent of her House of Bur gesses. Thus more than a hundred years be fore the Revolution the principle of no taxation without representation was declared by Virginia and assented to by Great Britain. While Cromwell ruled England, Virginia, like all the other American colonies, was let alone, and she elefted her own governors. A dispute between one of these governors and the burgesses 43 Cavaliers and Tobacco shows the increasing power of the popular as sembly. The governor and his council were ac customed to have seats in the House of Burgesses, and when a law was passed excluding them, Matthews, who was then governor, declared the assembly dissolved. They remained in session, however, and passed a resolution to the effet that they were the representatives of the people and not dissolvable by any power in Virginia but their own. To show their strength, they deposed Governor Matthews and then re-ele6led him. He accepted the situation, received his office from their hands, and took the oath anew. The event, however, that best shows the temper of the Virginians is Bacon s rebellion. Nathaniel Bacon was born in England, and came to Virginia about four years before he took part in the rebellion. He was of good family and education, and had studied law at the inns of court. He was possessed of a moderate fortune, and lived with his wife on a plantation on the upper waters of the James River ; and it is interesting to note that his rebellion took place in 1676, exaftly a hundred years before the Revolution. Bacon had little or nothing to do with creating the rebellion. It arose from causes beyond his control ; but when the time for an outbreak ar rived he became its leader. The colonists had 44 Cavaliers and Tobacco for some time considered themselves oppressed and injured by the British government. Their first complaint was the navigation afts, which prohibited the colony from trading with any country but England and in any vessels but Eng lish vessels. Every hogshead of tobacco and every other export must go to England for sale and pay heavy duty. The Virginians, when they surrendered to Cromwell, had stipulated that they should be free to trade with all the world, and they claimed that this clause had relieved them from the obnoxious provisions of the navigation afts. During the Commonwealth times they had little to complain of, for Cromwell let them govern themselves. But when Charles II. was restored to the throne he re-ena6led the naviga tion afts and they were enforced. The Vir ginians tried to avoid them by smuggling, but the king s officers were vigilant, and prosecutions and penalties increased the discontent. The Virginians tried to increase the price of tobacco by diminishing the crop. They passed laws regulating the quantity of tobacco that should be planted, and secret parties were organ ized to go about and destroy the young plants. But these methods were of little avail. The price went lower and lower ; but no matter how low it went, the tobacco must go to England 45 Cavaliers and Tobacco and the duty be taken from the price. Vir ginia incomes were diminished, and this was undoubtedly one of the principal causes of the rebellion. Another grievance was the conduct of Charles II. in giving away the land. At one time he had given to some of his favorites the whole country between the Rappahannock and the Potomac. In 1673 he gave to Lord Arlington and Lord Culpeper the right for thirty-one years to all the quit-rents and lands escheated to the Crown. They were to receive the revenues of the colony, appoint the public officers, lay off new counties, and present to parishes. In effecl: they were to be the proprietors of Virginia. An excessive tax of one hundred pounds of tobacco on each inhabitant had to be levied to send commissioners to England to have this grant modified or to buy it back from the rapacious noblemen who held it. The colonists were naturally indignant at such treatment, and they had a further cause of complaint in the ereftion of expensive forts, which were no protection, because the Indians, by aid of the dense forests, easily passed round them. They also com plained of the recent restriction of the right of suffrage to householders. The restriction of the suffrage, however, was an a6l of their own legislature. 46 Cavaliers and Tobacco The truth was that the Virginians were ready to complain of anything. They had conquered the wilderness, were growing rich, and began to feel their independence. It was this con sciousness of wealth and success that was the most potent cause of the rebellion. They were in a state of feeling that easily took fire from oppression. They did not care to be governed at all, still less to be misgoverned. Sir William Berkeley was governor at this time. He was a polished, agreeable man, of the cavalier class, with all the arts of a courtier and a diplomat. He kept open house, lived profusely, spent a large part of his private for tune in improving the colony, and had the con fidence and to a great extent the affedlion of the people. But he was a haughty, arrogant old royalist, thoroughly convinced of his own im portance, and a most bigoted conservative. He was a king s man, and blind, unquestioning devo tion to royalty was part of his nature. Indian hostilities gave an occasion for the re bellion. A force was sent against them under the command of Sir Henry Chicheley, but just as Chicheley was about to march Governor Berkeley revoked his commission. It has been said that Berkeley feared that the expedition would interfere with his monopoly of the Indian trade in beaver skins, but this is very unlikely. 47 Cavaliers and Tobacco Berkeley was not a sordid man ; he had the wel fare of the colony at heart, and, so far as his own interests were concerned, they would be apt to suffer severely if the depredations of the Indians were left unchecked. There was something in his mind more im portant than beaver skins. He knew that the colony was in a seditious state and ripe for a revolt, and he feared that when Chicheley s men had been successful against the Indians they would be turned into a sort of parliamentary army and overthrow the power of the governor. His apprehension was justified by the event. There was an outburst of indignation among the people against the ruler who would not protect them from the savages. This was Bacon s op portunity. The Indian attacks continued until their viftims numbered hundreds. The people petitioned to be led against them under any com mander whom the governor would appoint, and as he would appoint no one, they elefted Bacon for their leader, but the governor refused to give him a commission. Then Bacon took the re sponsibility on himself, and, calling his volun teers together, promised them that when the Indians were disposed of he would attend to the questions of civil rights and taxes. He was successful against the Indians and won a victory over them at the battle of Bloody Run, Cavaliers and Tobacco not far from the present site of Richmond. But he had no sooner gone on this expedition than Berkeley declared him a rebel and started in pursuit. The pursuit was not far, however, for Jamestown and the lower counties joined the rebellion and Berkeley had to come back to quiet them. He quieted them by yielding. They de manded a new assembly of the burgesses and he gave it to them. The present one had re mained unchanged for fifteen years ; had been, in faft, another Long Parliament, was strongly cavalier in sentiment, and had passed the acl restricting the suffrage. Berkeley issued writs for a new assembly. Bacon became a member of it, and so little was the limitation on suffrage regarded that men who were not householders voted, and in some instances were elefted mem bers. The new burgesses repealed the limita tion on the suffrage and made some provisions against fraudulent tax levies and fraudulent elec tion returns by sheriffs ; but they were not a very revolutionary body, and their reforms were neither violent nor far-reaching. Bacon had been arrested the moment he ap peared to take his seat with the burgesses. Berkeley asked him if he was still a gentleman, and, on being assured that he was, paroled him. He was then persuaded to repent and read a VOL. I. 4 49 Cavaliers and Tobacco confession of his guilt. Whereupon Berkeley pardoned him, restored him to his seat in the council, a very politic aft to keep him out of the burgesses, and, in addition, promised him a commission as genera! to go against the Indians. ,t The commission was, of course, not granted, and Bacon stole out of Jamestown, collected about five hundred armed men, and, having stirred them with one of his eloquent harangues, marched them to the State-House. The aged governor came down, bared his breast before the multitude, and said he would rather be shot than grant a commission to such a rebel. He offered to settle the question by fighting Bacon in single combat, but Bacon declined. He wanted not, he said, the governor s blood, but only per mission to fight the heathen horde who were murdering his countrymen every day. Again Berkeley yielded. He not only gave the com mission, but, together with the burgesses and council, signed a paper to be sent to the king, extolling Bacon and commending his loyalty and patriotism, so that Bacon s triumph was com plete. He again started in pursuit of the Indians, and his success was greater than before. By a thor ough campaign he hunted them out of every thicket and swamp, and the colony was relieved from danger. Meanwhile Berkeley resorted to Cavaliers and Tobacco his old taclics, proclaimed him a rebel, and then summoned a convention of the people in Glouces ter County. But although he addressed the meeting in person, they declared before his face in favor of Bacon, and used the very natural argument that they could not call a man a rebel who was at that moment defending them from the Indians. Berkeley could not raise a suffi cient force to oppose Bacon, so he fled across Chesapeake Bay to the Eastern Shore, then called the Kingdom of Accomac. When Bacon heard that the governor had fled, he marched his men to a place called Middle Plantation, which afterwards became Williams- burg, the capital of the colony. While there he was advised by his friends to depose Berkeley and appoint Sir Henry Chicheley in his place. But Bacon had a plan of his own. He issued what he called a Remonstrance, setting forth the grievances of the people and calling for a mass-meeting. The men of Vir ginia assembled and Bacon completely con trolled them. He actually persuaded them to bind themselves by an oath that until the king could be communicated with they would not only rise in arms against Berkeley, but also against any force which should be sent from England to his aid. These daring Virginians, like the South Carolinians in their revolution of 1719, intended Cavaliers and Tobacco to fight the king s forces until they could get a message to the king showing him the real state of affairs. This whole movement was indeed very much like the South Carolina revolution which occurred nearly fifty years afterwards. Bacon issued writs for the election of a new House of Burgesses, and assumed full powers in himself on the theory that Berkeley, by his flight, had abdicated the government, and he argued to his followers that they were the loyal party and Berkeley the rebel and traitor. He made another successful expedition against the Indians and was beginning to settle himself in power when Berkeley returned from Accomac with a thousand men and seventeen vessels and entered Jamestown. Bacon immediately besieged the little town, and, throwing intrenchments across the narrow neck which connected it with the mainland, imprisoned Berkeley within it. To proteft his men while they were at work on the trenches, Bacon collected from the neighboring plantations some of the wives of prominent fol lowers of Berkeley and placed them between himself and the enemy. An assault was made by Berkeley on the trenches, but it was an unequal contest. His followers from Accomac were a rabble of fisher men and loose characters whose only motive was plunder. The .rebels were householders and 52 Cavaliers and Tobacco men of substance who were fighting for a prin ciple. They repulsed Berkeley, drove him back into the town and from the town to his ships, and then they burnt the town so that the Berkeleyites could harbor there no more. Berkeley retreated down the river, and Bacon was again successful. And now word was brought to him that he was threatened from the north. Colonel Brent was marching on him with a thousand men from the Potomac. Again he called together his soldiers and addressed them. They had become like the soldiers of Cromwell : success had given them a strong taste for fighting. They were eager for battle, but battle was denied them. Before they had come within striking distance of Brent his force melted away and most of his men went over to Bacon. A few hundred men in Gloucester County still considered themselves royalists. Bacon assem bled them in convention and explained the situ ation. They seemed, he said, to desire to be saved, and yet would do nothing to secure their salvation. He would have all or nothing ; they must be either wholly for him or wholly against him ; they must either take his oath or fight him. His armed veterans stood by as a grim background to this argument, and the oath was taken. Berkeley had again retreated to Accomac. 53 Cavaliers and Tobacco Bacon was determined to destroy the last vestige of opposition to the popular cause, and planned an expedition against him. But in the midst of his preparations he died. He had contracted a fever in the trenches before Jamestown, and some time in October, 1676, this soldier and ora tor and leader of the people passed away and was buried in secret by his friends. He began the rebellion in May and had finished it in O6tober. From comparative obscurity this youth steps into history, makes himself famous and successful for five months, and then dies. So soon as Bacon was gone the revolution collapsed. There was no one who could fill his place even for a moment. Berkeley returned from Accomac and almost without a struggle took possession of the colony. Then his vengeance began. He executed twenty-three of the promi nent rebels. He had them shot or hung in chains and left their bodies swinging from the gibbets as a warning. He reviled and taunted them before their death, and on one occasion basely insulted a woman who offered to die in place of her husband. The old man had a craze for blood, and dis gusted even his own party and the king whom he thought he was serving. He would have slaughtered half the country if the burgesses and a commission that had been sent out from Eng- 54 Cavaliers and Tobacco land to investigate the rebellion had not stopped him. All his agreeab le qualities seemed to have turned to bitterness, and the love the Virginians once bore him had certainly turned to hate. When they heard of his recall a few months after the rebellion, they celebrated the event with an illumination. On reaching England he sought the king, the king to whom he had de voted his life, and in whose divine power he believed. But Charles II., when asked if he would see him, said, " That old fool has hanged more men in that naked country than I have done for the murder of my father." He never granted Berkeley an audience, and the old man died of a broken heart. Bacon s rebellion destroyed many fine lives and apparently accomplished nothing. It was certainly a strange event, and implies an immense amount of independence and hardihood in these Virginians, who, without the aid of any other colony or nation, rushed recklessly against the whole British empire and committed ads which they knew were treason and would be punished as such. The whole population numbered at that time only about forty thousand ; and with this in mind we can the more easily understand the outbreak in the Revolution, when the popu lation of Virginia was more than three hundred thousand. 55 Cavaliers and Tobacco The story of Bacon s rebellion was for a long time lost to the world. The uprising had been completely crushed and for many years was a forbidden subject of conversation. By the time the eye-witnesses of it were dead, only a vague tradition survived, and that tradition was colored and distorted by the influence of royalists. It was generally believed that the rebellion had been a petty affair without adequate cause and without the least success, and the name of Bacon was held in infamy. It was not until more than a hundred years had passed that the subject was placed in its true light by a manuscript discovered in England by the American minister and made public by Thomas Jefferson. This document showed that the revolt was by no means unimportant and by no means without cause, and further investiga tions have made this view more certain. The occurrence of such a powerful rebellion shows that seventy years of tobacco raising and planta tion life had developed a remarkable community of people. No other American colony made such an open and desperate revolt before the time of the Revolution, and it was the only revolt accompanied by bloodshed. For some years after the rebellion Virginia suffered from very evil governors. Culpeper swindled the people by raising and lowering 56 Cavaliers and Tobacco the value of the coin, Lord Howard swindled by a new seal, and Sir Francis Nicholson and others contrived petty tyrannies or means of enriching themselves. There was none of the contentment and easy relations with the British government which prevailed in South Carolina. The commercial restraints and most of the troubles which had caused the rebellion con tinued. Instead of receiving bounties on its produfts, like South Carolina, Virginia s great staple, tobacco, was taxed, and in 1750 the an nual revenue to Great Britain from this tax was one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Virginia was managed by the mother country as a mere source of revenue, without regard to her welfare or discontent. We find one gov ernor recommending that an aft of Parliament should be passed forbidding the Virginians to make their own clothes. If the British mer chants complained of one of the colony s laws, it was promptly suspended. The disputes be tween the royal governors and the colonists in the next hundred years were petty but frequent. Discontent and complaint became the habit of the Virginian mind ; and there might, perhaps, have been another rebellion if there had been another Bacon to lead it. On the accession of William and Mary to the throne, the burgesses, by their agents in England, 57 Cavaliers and Tobacco asked many favors of their majesties, and among other things announced their familiar doctrine that no tax or imposition should be laid upon the colony, except by its consent. But they gained little or nothing from William and Mary s reign. When Anne came to the throne their political affairs were quieter ; the governors from that time were somewhat better ; and two of them Alexander Spotswood and William Gooch had long and prosperous administrations. It was in this hundred years that followed Bacon s rebellion that the real Virginia was developed. The population in that time increased from thirty-eight thousand whites and two thousand blacks to three hundred thousand whites and two hundred and fifty thousand negroes ; it often doubled itself every twenty-seven years ; and this increase was largely a natural one of native births, and was very little assisted by im migration, except of negroes. This large population of over half a million was scattered on plantations, and, as in the early days of the province, there were no towns of any size, except Norfolk, near Cape Henry, which contained some years before the Revo lution about seven thousand people. James town had dwindled to almost nothing, and the paper towns which the burgesses tried so hard to establish had not succeeded. 58 Cavaliers and Tobacco Williamsburg, which had become the capital, contained the College of William and Mary, about two hundred houses, and a dozen families of the gentry, who made it their home. There were few doctors deserving the name, and no lawyers, except a few pettifoggers and sharpers, for the litigation of the province was unimpor tant. Towards the time of the Revolution, how ever, the great increase of population and produces and the growth of wealth made business affairs more complicated, and at that time Mason, Wythe, Patrick Henry, and Jefferson became lawyers, and there were others of good repute. The only profession of importance was the clergy. The Church of England was established by law, was part of the governing machinery of the province, adherence to it was the pathway to social and political eminence, and it became more of a power than in Maryland and South Carolina, where it was also established. Dissenters were persecuted and driven out of the colony. In 1642, when Boston sent down a supply of Puritan ministers to take care of such dissenters as were already in Virginia, the bur gesses passed an act banishing them, and it was rigidly enforced. But after Bacon s rebellion the Presbyterians, Baptists, and Quakers seem to have quietly increased in numbers in spite of efforts to keep them out, until at the time of the Revolution 59 Cavaliers and Tobacco they included, according to Jefferson s estimate, two-thirds of the population. If this estimate is correft it shows an immense change, and in fact almost a complete reversal of the religious feeling of Virginia. One hundred years before, or even seventy five years before, if we can believe the accounts of travellers, the dissenting sefts were a mere handful and the in fluence of Episcopacy was overwhelming. The change was no doubt largely due to the great revival which was aroused in all the colonies by the preaching of the Wesleys and Whitefield about the middle of the eighteenth century. The dissenters in Virginia had always bitterly hated the established church, and after the Revo lution they had their day of vengeance. They not only disestablished it, but tore it out root and branch. Its property, glebe lands, church buildings, and sacred vessels were taken away from it and put to profane uses ; a baptismal font was in one instance, it is said, used as a horse-trough. When, in the beginning of the present century, Chief-Justice Marshall was asked to subscribe money towards the revival of the church, he gave the money, but said it was useless ; the church was dead. Jefferson, Madison, and many of the best men in Virginia took part in this disestablishment. They meant, however, to accomplish only dis- 60 Cavaliers and Tobacco establishment, and not robbery ; and their reason for disestablishment was the valid one that a state church was inconsistent with republican institutions. But the church had been so in tolerant, some of its clergy had led such loose lives, and so many of them had been tories in the Revolution, that the vengeance of the majority of the people could not be restrained. In colonial times the most inefficient clergy men were the ones who could be most easily induced to leave England and accept the hard ships of the wilderness. In some instances men who had been discarded by the church in Eng land obtained livings in the colony. These men, as a class, not only lacked zeal and spirit ual life, but many of them were addifted to open vice. Horse-racing, gambling, and drunken revels were among their sins. One of them was for many years president of a jockey club. They encouraged among the people the custom of celebrating the sacrament of baptism with fes tivities and dancing, in which the officiating clergyman often took a part, a custom which, by the way, shows some signs of returning in England. One of them is said to have called out to his church-warden during the communion, " Here, George, this bread is not fit for a dog." Another fought a duel in the grave-yard ; and 61 Cavaliers and Tobacco still another thrashed his vestry, as no doubt they deserved, for it is said that the vestries in Virginia exercised too much power, and the next day preached from the text, " And I con tended with them, and cursed them, and smote certain of them, and plucked off their hair." This liveliness of disposition was not so much of a scandal then as it would be now, because everybody was rather gay ; and, moreover, they were not all of this sort. Those who were natives of the colony and had been educated at the College of William and Mary are admitted to have been good men. The faults of those who were reckless and dissolute have been so much dwelt upon that many people have an impression that every parish in Virginia was presided over by a drunkard or a gambler ; but it is certain that there were earnest and useful men among them. Many of them were tutors for the children on the neighboring plantations, and not a few of the most prominent colonial Virginians, like Madison, Jefferson, and Marshall, received a fairly good education at their hands. Each one of them usually had a plantation or glebe, which he cultivated and lived upon, and it was entirely possible for some of them to indulge in fox-hunting and many of the sports of their neighbors and be more moral and useful men for it. Indeed, it is doubtful if they were, 62 Cavaliers and Tobacco on the whole, any worse than the clergy of that time in England, where a large part of the cor ruption which had caused the Reformation was still retained ; and it has never yet been satis factorily shown that the old-fashioned sporting parson was in any way inferior to his modern ritualistic successor. Religion was not as powerful an element in the formation of the community as it was in Massachusetts. The churchmanship of the Vir ginians would now be called very low. They often omitted the use of the prayer-book alto gether, and it is said that the surplice was un known in the colony for the first hundred years. Governor Spotswood describes the Virgin ians of his time as living " in a gentlemanly conformity with the Church of England," a phrase which is more expressive than volumes of writing. Gentleman was always a powerful word in Virginia. But the church, neverthe less, had a decided influence on them, and that quietude, good taste, refinement, and freedom from cant which marked Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Marshall, and the other prominent men of the colony were its results. There has always been much discussion among writers on Virginia as to the comparative in fluence on the province of the Puritan and the Episcopalian, the roundhead and the cavalier. 63 Cavaliers and Tobacco Some give all the influence to the cavalier and the Churchman. Others give all to the Puritan and the roundhead. That there was some Puritan influence, especially during the time of the com monwealth, when the governors of Virginia were Puritans, is undeniable. But on the whole the cavaliers were in the ascendant, and they poured into the colony by thousands even at the very time when it had Puritan governors. Grigsby, however, in a passage which has often been quoted, resents with indignation this stain on the honor of Virginia : " The cavalier was essentially a slave, a compound slave, a slave to the king and a slave to the church. I look with contempt on the miserable figment which seeks to trace the distinguishing points of the Virginia character to the influence of those butterflies of the British aris tocracy." But nearly all the great Virginians were de scended from cavaliers. Washington was the great-grandson of one of them, and Madison, Monroe, the Randolphs, Richard Henry Lee, Pendleton, and Mason were also descendants of royalists. These men were not butterflies ; and the followers of Bacon who fell into the hands of that arch-royalist Governor Berkeley would hardly have described him as a beautiful and harmless inseft. Equally futile is the charge sometimes made 64 Cavaliers and Tobacco against the Virginia people that they were the descendants of adventurers, bankrupts, and felons, and instead of being, as they claimed, accom plished gentlemen, were only accomplished jail birds. The early settlers were no doubt a shiftless set, and in after-years some convicted felons were sent over by the British government in spite of the earnest protests of the colonists. But the felon importation was stopped. They numbered altogether only about two thousand, and, like some of the early adventurers, being shiftless and improvident, seldom had families, and in time left few if any descendants. One of the other colonies, Maryland, received twenty thousand of these low characters and was greatly injured by them, but Virginia, like Massachusetts, suc ceeded in keeping them out. A considerable number of indented servants, or redemptioners as they were called, came to Virginia, but they were not an inferior class of men. They were numerous in all parts of the colonies except New England, where there were scarcely any of them. They were mostly people who sold their services for a term of years to pay for their passage to America. They were bound by law to serve the stipulated time, and seem now as if they had occupied the position of white slaves. VOL. l.- 5 65 Cavaliers and Tobacco But they were not so regarded, and there is not the slightest trace of any stigma being cast upon them. They were, as a rule, merely men without means, who had adopted a recognized method of the time to pay for a service rendered them. Many of them were founders of respect able families whose descendants are still in the country ; and there were instances of gentle men s sons who had got themselves in a scrape or lost property resorting to this method for a fresh start in life. When they had once bound themselves they could be sold from one person to another until their term expired, and in this respeft they were like slaves. There were also some of them who resembled slaves in having been kidnapped in the streets of London by ruffians, who sold them to the captains of vessels bound for the colonies, a nefarious traffic which the public opinion of the time could not suppress. Others were po litical prisoners, rebels who had assisted some of the pretenders to the English throne, and, instead of being executed or imprisoned, the government sold them as redemptioners to the captains or other speculators who traded with the colonies. Poverty or misfortune was gener ally the only crime of a redemptioner, and very often he was a useful man. There is no doubt that the vast majority of 66 Cavaliers and Tobacco the Virginians were of the very best blood of England. The cavaliers were among the best of their class, and the dissenters, although not so severe and capable as the Puritans of New England, made good colonists. There was a large Scotch-Irish immigration which went out on the frontier, where their descendants can still be found ; and there were also some Huguenots, from which such families as Maury, Dupuy, Cocke, Chastaine, Trabue, Fontaine, and Marye are descended. Although men who had been royalists in Eng land were the preponderating influence in Vir ginia, and the structure of society was that of a landed aristocracy, yet the spirit of the people was always strongly on the side of liberty. The large royalist migration a few years previous to the breaking out of Bacon s rebellion appears to have had little or no influence in checking that event. In fa6l, there is reason to believe that many of these royalists, after a short residence in the colony, became arrant rebels. Self-interest soon changes a man s political belief. The Virginians admired the king and the nobility, but they liked their own rights better. They looked back towards old England with fondness; they loved its ancient customs, the pride and pomp of its aristocracy, the dig nity and solemnity of the ritual of its church, 67 Cavaliers and Tobacco and they strove as far as possible to reproduce these things in the wilderness. But beyond that they would not go. When it came to the ques tion of losing money or property or a freeman s right, the king might count on them as enemies. Their devotion to royalty was merely a matter of taste. The conditions of life in Virginia were those which the political and social economists assure us can never lead to prosperity or make a people great. There were no manufacturing industries, no merchants or tradesmen, few mechanics, ex cept of the rudest sort, no money except tobacco, and all the methods of exchange and business were cumbersome and slow. The country was capable of producing iron, indigo, lumber, and beef, but these sources were never developed, and the artificial attempts to stimulate them and the cultivation of wine, silk, linen, and cotton came to naught. There were scarcely any schools, and the people all lived on large isolated tobacco plantations where they could have none of that association and conflict of mind which is said to be essential to intelligence. The logical result of these circumstances should have been a race of stupid, ignorant boors. But, instead of that, the Virginians be came the most high-spirited, intelligent, and capable men on the continent, the leaders of the 68 Cavaliers and Tobacco Revolution, the framers of the Constitution, and the creators of a large part of the political thought of the country. The Americans of to-day live largely in towns, and believe no other life pos sible for progress; but they live by the prin ciples of government of men whom they worship as demigods, and who not only did not live in towns, but had scarcely seen a town until they went to Philadelphia to pass the Declaration of Independence. What was the cause of the tobacco planter s success and how did he live ? Is it that the ability to live in the country without stupidity is one of the lost arts ? Have the vigor and inge nuity of mind and the independence of character which enabled a man to create an intellectual world of his own on a plantation passed away from the race ? Have we become so institu tionalized and specialized and interdependent that each individual of us pines and perishes when separated from the swarm ? What means the enormous list of subjects in lan guage, science, history, and philosophy through which the pale school-children are dragged only to meet in college another complicated curri culum which would have made the fathers of the republic gasp and stare? Which is the superior, the Virginia boy drilled in the simple rudiments of Latin, English, and mathematics by the fox- 69 Cavaliers and Tobacco hunting clergyman of the parish, or the modern graduate of stupendous knowledge, kept in life only by the utmost skill of specialists for his eyes, teeth, and nerves, and happy if he can but understand thoroughly the system of government and civilization which the Virginia boy created ? The tobacco planter, like the rice planter of Carolina, had undoubtedly a great advantage in slavery, for it saved him from absorbing labor and gave him leisure. It also stimulated his pride, gave him the habit of command and the desire for ascendancy, and these qualities were further stimulated by the aristocracy of which he was a part. In none of the other colonies were class dis tinctions so clearly marked and so thoroughly believed in. After the negroes came the indented servants and poor whites, with a distinct position from which few of them arose ; then the middle class of small planters, who were distinct but constantly rising into the class of the great land lords who were the rulers of the province, the creators of opinion, and always the most typical and representative men of Virginia. There was a constant effort to maintain position or to ac quire it, which was a safeguard against mental stagnation. As in South Carolina, politics and the theories and principles of government were the subject 70 Cavaliers and Tobacco of endless conversation. The people were proud of whatever freedom they enjoyed, and in their political campaigns and contests met each other freely, and there was ample opportunity to ex change ideas. In faft, their lives were isolated only in ap pearance. The plantations, like those in South Carolina, were little kingdoms in themselves, full of varied interests and requiring versatility in their management. The climate and life quickly gave the people of all classes great social facility and an ease of manner and intercourse which still often astonishes travellers from the North ; and it is not uncommon to find a Virginian who has been born with a natural politeness and social instincl: which the best people in other parts of America spend half a lifetime in acquiring. The Virginians loved amusements of all kinds, and there was continual visiting between planta tions. Fox-hunting, cock-fighting, horse-racing, wrestling-matches, and dancing parties, mingled with gambling and hard drinking, were their delight. In the early days before 1700 the cattle and horses had been allowed to wander in the woods, and many of them became wild. Hunting them became a popular sport, and dogs were trained to assist in it. The pursuit of the wild horses, Cavaliers and Tobacco which were hunted down and caught or shot, was very exciting, and it was a daring and skil ful rider and a strong horse that could follow them at full speed among the trunks and branches of the forest. Up to the year 1686 the Virginia horses were very small, the result of their wild, roaming life and the scant pasturage in the woods. But in that year a law was passed for improving the breed, and before long those excellent saddle- horses were produced which are still famous. Men and women passed a large part of their time on horseback, riding over their large plan tations or visiting their neighbors. The devotion of all the people to sports and amusements is now hard to realize, and never since has there been anything quite like it in America. It was merry England transported across the Atlantic, and more merry, light, and joyous than England had ever thought of being. * To eat and drink delicately and freely," says Campbell ; " to feast and dance and riot; to pamper cocks and horses; to observe the anxious, important, interesting event which of two horses can run fastest or which of two cocks can flutter and spur most dexterously 5 these are the grand affairs that almost engross the attention of some of our great men, and little, low-lived sinners imitate them to the utmost of their power." 72 Cavaliers and Tobacco In the town of Norfolk fairs were constantly held in the market-place, which are described as most uproarious, the people abandoning them selves to laughter, shouting, and fun beyond anything known in subsequent puritanic times. A gilt-laced hat was placed on top of a pole, well greased and soaped, and, as man after man climbed it only to slip down with a rush before he reached the prize, the crowd screamed with delight until some enduring one succeeded. Young men ran races with young women; pigs were turned loose and the whole crowd chased them among each other s legs to catch them by their greased tails. Some were sewn up in sacks and ran races, tumbling and rolling over each other. Others raced through sugar hogs heads placed end to end with the ends out, and as the great barrels got rolling to and fro the affair ended, it is said, in nothing but " noise and confusion." Then a man would appear with a pot of hot mush, and eaters with distorted faces and tearful eyes gobbled at it to see which was the fastest. At the close the women and children were hurried away and a bull-bait began. The Virginia Gazette of October, 1737, gives the sports in Hanover County for that month : " We have advice from Hanover County, that on St. Andrew s Day there are to be Horse Races and several 73 Cavaliers and Tobacco other Diversions, for the entertainment of the Gentlemen and Ladies, at the Old Field, near Captain John Bicker- ton s in that county (if permitted by the Hon. Wm. Byrd, Esquire, Proprietor of said land), the substance of which is as follows, viz : < It is proposed that 20 Horses or Mares do run round a three miles course for a prize of five pounds. " * That a hat of the value of 20 s. be cudgelled for, and that after the first challenge made the Drums are to beat every Quarter of an hour for three challenges round the Ring, and none to play with their Left hand. " That a Violin be played for by 20 Fiddlers; no person to have the liberty of playing unless he bring a fiddle with him. After the prize is won they are all to play together, and each a different tune, and to be treated by the Company. " That 12 Boys of 12 years of age do run 112 yards for a Hat of the cost of 12 shillings. " That a Flag be flying on said Day 30 feet high. " That a handsome entertainment be provided for the subscribers and their wives ; and such of them as are not so happy as to have wives may treat any other lady. " That Drums, Trumpets, Hautboys, &c., be provided to play at said entertainment. " That after dinner the Royal Health, His Honor the Governor s, &c., are to be drunk. " That a Quire of ballads be sung for by a number of Songsters, all of them to have liquor sufficient to clear their Wind Pipes. " That a pair of Silver Buckles be wrestled for by a number of brisk young men. " That a pair of handsome Shoes be danced for. " That a pair of handsome silk Stockings of one Pistole value be given to the handsomest young country 74 Cavaliers and Tobacco maid that appears in the Field. With many other Whim sical and Comical Diversions too numerous to mention. " And as this mirth is designed to be purely innocent and void of offence, all persons resorting there are desired to behave themselves with decency and sobriety ; the sub scribers being resolved to discountenance all immorality with the utmost rigor. " These sports were the hearty and rude ones which prevailed in England at that time among the cavaliers and the members of the established church, and were the horror of the strict Puri tans. The passion for card-playing and gambling which we read of in English books as so ex cessive among the upper classes in the mother country was reproduced among the Virginians. It prevailed in all the colonies wherever there were large towns, and Chastellux describes the upper classes of Boston at the time of the Revo lution as very fond of high play. But it is a mistake to infer, as some writers have done, that all this enjoyment was excessive or that it shows the Virginians to have been a rude and unedu cated people given over to mere animal pleasures. After the Revolution the American people passed into a puritanic state of mind in which the pleasures which had been the life of all of the colonies outside of New England were put under the ban and disappeared. In the rapid 75 Cavaliers and Tobacco development of the continent which has con tinued throughout nearly the whole of the nine teenth century entire devotion to business has been the test of manhood. The sports and amusements which were once followed by all ages and classes have been uniformly considered as degrading or immoral, and not allowable even to people of wealth and leisure who respefted the opinion of the community. We are only just emerging from this state of feeling, which has inspired many of the books which have been written about the Virginians, and their reputation has in consequence suffered. But much of what is written and has come down to us describes merely their excesses. They had vast leisure ; for the heavy work of tobacco culture was carried on by slaves, and close attention on the part of the master was required only during a few months of the year, and the master was not driven by the nervous intensity of modern life. When everybody had so many opportunities and was so much devoted to pleasure, there was necessarily excess, as there was excess at the same period in England, and the lower classes in Virginia were no doubt very rough in their sports. But there is every reason to believe that by far the greater part of these sports and amuse ments had a very wholesome influence, especially 76 Cavaliers and Tobacco among the middle and upper classes. In our own time the sullen and depressed state into which a large part of our farming population has fallen is largely due to the lack of amuse ments and the ban under which amusements have been placed. In some parts of the country where fox-hunting and other sports of colonial times have been retained a superior brightness, intelligence, and happiness can be observed, and where a farming population lives near the water and follows the sports of the water it always has a distinct advantage. In our crusade during the past century against all sports except billiards and drinking, we have forgotten that they have an educational value, that they develop some of the most practical and effective of the faculties, and that they are a safeguard against narrowness and weakness of character and against a great deal of positive im morality. The Duke of Wellington was not the only Englishman who learned to win a Waterloo on the cricket-fields of Eton. Washington was always a persistent fox-hunter ; his youth was devoted to these Virginia sports, and the results of his life do not seem to show that he was at all inferior to the men who have thought such pleasures degrading. Patrick Henry s youth is described as passed 77 Cavaliers and Tobacco in a rather excessive indulgence in the woods and fields and trout streams ; and he is said to have spent too many evenings at lively planta tion houses, where he played the fiddle and danced in apparent utter disregard of the mo mentous questions of the Revolution which he would soon be called upon to face. But how many men have there been who have faced those questions better than he, and how many could equal him in arousing the enlight ened sentiment of a continent ? When the time came Henry was found to have all the knowledge that was necessary, more wit and intellectual keenness than most, and he became one of the able lawyers of the country, as well as an important public man. The joyous even ings of the fiddle and the vigor of the pine forests and the mountains appear to have interfered as little with the development of a great career as the schooling received by Jefferson, Marshall, and Madison at the hands of those much-belied parish clergymen. The colonial Virginians are generally charged with being inveterate gamblers, but the Marquis de Chastellux describes two days which he spent at Offly, General Nelson s plantation, during which, although there were fifteen or twenty people in the house, kept in-doors by bad weather, cards and play were not even mentioned. He 78 Cavaliers and Tobacco comments on the circumstance because, as he says, in France, under the same conditions, there would have been no end of trictrac, whist, and lotto. Music, drawing, and public reading, he adds, were not sufficiently cultivated by the Virginia women, but on this occasion a Miss Taliaferro (Tolliver he spells it, which was the way it was pronounced) sang some songs. " A charming voice, and the artless simplicity of her singing were a substitute for taste if not taste itself." The Virginia women might, he thought, be come musicians if the fox-hounds would only stop baying for a little while each day. There were also, he says, sources of amusement in the house " in sdme good French and English authors," and in subsequent journeys he met with several Virginia ladies who sang and played on the harpsichord. Chastellux was very fond of music, and proud of the efficiency in it which his old regiment in France had possessed. He was a general in the French army who came over with our allies at the time of the Revolution, and being a distin guished and polished man of the world, familiar with the best society in France, the pleasure he found among the upper classes in Virginia is sure proof that they were not as rude as some have supposed. 79 Cavaliers and Tobacco There were many foreigners who wrote their impressions of the colonies, Abbe Robin, Bris- sot, Burnaby, Crevecceur, Smyth, Kalm, Roche foucauld, Blanchard, and Dankers ; but none of them were quite equal to Chastellux in ability and keenness of observation. He describes one of the Nelsons who had been secretary of the province before the Revo lution as an " old magistrate whose white locks, noble figure, and stature, which was above the common size, commanded respecl and venera tion ;" and, like all true Virginians, he was badjy afflicted with the gout. On the plantation where he lived he could within less than six hours assemble thirty of his children and grandchildren, besides nephews and nieces in the neighborhood, amounting in all to seventy. These enormous families which were to be found in colonial times in Virginia and New England, where the people were very homoge neous and united, always astonished the French men. It may be added that Chastellux found the word " honey," now so common in the South and indeed in all the United States, used in Virginia as a term of endearment ; and he ex plains that it is equivalent to the French man petit coeur. Washington may be taken as a fair type of 80 Cavaliers and Tobacco the usual result of Virginia life among the upper classes when it did not run to excesses. He was very fond of card-playing. We find the entry in his journal, " At home all day over cards ;" and his account-books show innumer able purchases of cards, usually a dozen packs at a time. He played for money and small stakes, espe cially when he was young, and his winnings and losings are recorded in the books he kept with out the slightest consciousness that there was anything that might be criticised ; and there was not, for he was merely following the universal custom of the time in which he lived. With his usual moderation of character, he did not play for large sums. Three pounds is the largest gain and nine pounds the largest loss we find recorded by him. In the same way he played billiards, betting on the games, and in the midst of these records we also find that he was reading Addison s Spectator. His greatest passion, as we all know, was for horses. He bred them carefully at Mount Ver- non, ran them in races, and won and lost bets on them. As for fox-hunting, he followed it persistently and devotedly in his youth and re turned to it again with as great relish as ever when he retired from public life and was settled at Mount Vernon. In fadl:, he kept it up until VOL. I. 6 8 1 Cavaliers and Tobacco a fall from his horse wrenched his back and he could hunt no more. The descriptions in his diary of the details of hunting are those of an enthusiast. His hounds were carefully trained, sometimes running so well together that the pack could be " covered by a blanket," and he had pet names for them like Mopsey, Trueman, Music, Bell Tongue, and Sweetlips. The stupid, wooden, sanctimonious character into which he has been manufactured to suit modern hypocrisy is not in accordance either with his own account of himself or with state ments of his contemporaries. Instead of being reserved and frigid, he was an extremely so ciable man, and he could not have lived in Vir ginia and been otherwise. He belonged to the clubs which in his day met at all the taverns and cross-roads. He spent days and nights, like Patrick Henry, as a visitor at plantations. When he came into possession of Mount Vernon, al though he was a bachelor, he describes himself as "having much company," which meant that within two months he had had people to dinner or to spend the night on twenty-nine days and had gone away to dine or visit on seven. His passion for dancing was almost as strong as his passion for horses. He complained when in the woods or on the frontier that there were no balls or assemblies to while away the time ; 82 Cavaliers and Tobacco and he would often ride ten miles from Mount Vernon to a dance. During the Revolution, although he was the commander-in chief, he never thought it beneath his dignity to dance at every opportunity, and he encouraged balls and dancing assemblies among the officers. On one of these occasions we find it recorded that " His Excellency and Mrs. Greene danced upwards of three hours without once sitting down." When we add to this his superb physical strength, which instantly im pressed every one who saw him, and that he habitually drank from half a pint to a pint of Madeira, besides punch and beer, we have a pifture of the sort of man the Virginia colonial life produced when at its best. Such being the broadening effeft of his pleas ures, what were the serious occupations of a great planter ? Each one of them ruled over a little world of his own, consisting of from one hundred to four or five hundred people. At Mount Vernon there were about three hundred, constituting a self-supporting community, and Washington gave orders to " buy nothing you can make within yourselves." There were a blacksmith shop, wood-burners to keep the house supplied with charcoal, brick- makers, masons, carpenters, a mill which ground flour for sale as well as for the family s use, S3 Cavaliers and Tobacco coopers to make barrels for it, and a schooner to carry all produce to market. Besides these there were a shoemaker, and weavers who in the year 1768 produced eight hundred and fifteen yards of linen, three hundred and sixty-five yards of woollen, one hundred and forty yards of linsey, and forty yards of cotton goods. There was an important fishery on the shore, and large herds of cattle, horses, and sheep, not to mention the great waving fields of grain, for Washington planted little or no tobacco. It was a large enterprise, somewhat resem bling in the ability required our modern manu facturing industries, but more varied. In facl, in colonial times the Southern plantations were the great business undertakings of the country, and more broadening in their effecT: on character than the petty trades and small farming that were followed in the North. The man who successfully ruled this property and its retainers and at the same time led the life of a sportsman and a gentleman, mingled with military service on the frontiers in the French and Indian wars, was receiving an educa tion which cannot be given in modern times by any university, city, or community in the United States. No amount of book-learning, no college curriculum imitated from plodding, mystical Germans, no cramming or examinations, and 84 Cavaliers and Tobacco no system of gymnastic exercises can be even a substitute for that Virginia life which inspired with vigor, freshness, and creative power the great men who formed the Union and the Con stitution. There is no mystery about it. There is no need that we should wonder that such men should come from a place we know is now in capable of producing them. As soon as we unravel the details of colonial life it is all plain enough. It was that same mingling of sport, scholarship, social intercourse, and knowledge of the world in country life which has made England the leader among nations ; and the Vir ginians had the advantage of a new country, easily acquired wealth, the freshness of the wil derness, and a climate which sharpened the intelleft. The test of genius and force of character is the effortlessness with which it performs its tasks. Washington went to the front by a nat ural ascendency, a subtle magnetism of character. Those who knew him could not pass him by or disregard him even when they tried. There is no evidence of the schemes and plans, the self- advertising, the intrigues and bitter heart-burn ings by which the second-rate crawl to power. The brow of the greatest American was, it is said, often thoughtful, but never disquieted. Cavaliers and Tobacco The critics analyze him. He was not this, they say ; he had not read that ; it would have been done better in this way ; and conclude by informing us that it was impossible he could have been what he was. But he did it. He was always there. Nothing could stop him, and he would not go away. As we read the life of Jefferson we meet with a similar difficulty. His recorded words and what is said of him seem inadequate to account for the stupendous influence he exercised, the political party he created, the ideas he estab lished, and the worship which follows him to this day. But it was the personality, the native force which he exercised unconsciously, which while he lived subdued the minds of men, and, now that it is dead with him, there is nothing to explain the result. Marshall, one of the most noble and charming of all the Virginians, trained in the typical Vir ginia manner by a parish clergyman and out-door athletic sports in which his long limbs were very proficient, has, however, left behind him a great deal to explain the power of his life. The thirty volumes of the Reports of the Supreme Court of the United States, which contain his decisions as Chief-Justice, are the foundations of American constitutional law. He handled the most difficult and momentous judicial questions 86 Cavaliers and Tobacco with giant ease, and no one has ever attempted to deny his wonderful intellectual power or its vast influence on the destinies of the American Union. Like Washington and Jefferson, he was a thor oughly natural and native product of Virginia life ; and when we reflect on what that life was we are led irresistibly to the conclusion that the highest forms of intellect are beyond the power of mere books and colleges to produce. They originate in physical vigor and are developed by association. As long as the old colonial life lingered, Vir ginia continued to produce such men ; not all so great as Marshall and Washington and Jefferson, but all with some measure of that instantly recognized leadership which carried them up without an effort. They wandered off into Kentucky and other States, and were as irre pressible there as in the Old Dominion. They filled Congress and all the offices of government, and far down into the present century it was the continual complaint that it was impossible to keep out the Virginians. A great deal that has been written about Vir ginia is by Northern writers inspired by the anti-slavery movement, which compelled them to see even in the colonial Virginian an ignorant, licentious, cruel brute. But Governor Spots- 87 Cavaliers and Tobacco wood, after ruling the colony for twelve years, was so pleased with it that he lived there the rest of his life ; and he tells us that there was " less swearing, less profanity, less drunkenness and debauchery, less uncharitable feuds and ani mosities, and less knavery and villany than in any other part of the world." The more we study the life in colonial days on the James and- the Potomac the brighter and better it appears. Travellers from England and France like Smyth or Rochefoucauld were in variably delighted with it. "A taste for read ing," says Rochefoucauld, " is more prevalent among gentlemen of the first class than in any other part of America ;" * and Smyth s testi mony is to the same effect : " The gentlemen are more respe&able and numerous than in any other province in America. These in general have had a liberal education, possess enlightened under standing and thorough knowledge of the world that fur nishes them with an ease and freedom of manners and conversation highly to their advantage . . . they being actually, according to my ideas, the most agreeable and best companions, friends, and neighbors that need be de sired." (Smyth s lt Travels in America," vol. i. p. 65.) Although there were no towns, the Virginia rivers during the tobacco season were full of * Vol. ii. p. 117. 88 Cavaliers and Tobacco ships coming and going to each plantation and leaving the luxuries of English manufacture which the wealth of the planters enabled them to buy. The investigations into the contents of old Virginia houses show that they were crammed from cellar to garret with all the articles of pleasure and convenience that were produced in England : Russia leather chairs, Turkey worked chairs, enormous quantities of damask napkins and table linen, silver- and pewter-ware, candle sticks of brass, silver, and pewter, flagons, dram cups, beakers, tankards, chafing dishes, Spanish tables, Dutch tables, valuable clocks, screens, and escritoires. Chastellux describes the Nelson house at York- town as very handsome, " from which neither European taste nor luxury were excluded ; a chimney-piece and some bas-reliefs of very fine marble exquisitely sculptured were particularly admired." He also tells us that " the chief magnificence of the Virginians consists in furniture, linen, and plate." This we shall find to be character istic of all the colonies, especially with regard to linen and silver-ware, of which the people had what often seem to be unnecessarily large quantities. The reason for the quantities of silver-ware may have been that, in the absence of savings banks and investment securities, the 89 Cavaliers and Tobacco people used their savings to buy silver, which they believed would always have a permanent value ; so that in the Northern colonies it was not uncommon to find ordinary farmers families with what seems a large supply of it. The people dressed extravagantly in the bright colors that were fashionable in Europe, and their garments are sometimes described as a little ludicrous in contrast with the wilderness around them and the slovenliness of the slaves. Silk stockings, beaver hats, red slippers, green scarfs, gold lace, and scarlet cloaks among the men and silk and flowered gowns, crimson taffetas, and pearl necklaces among the women became such a common indulgence that the legislature tried to suppress them. These extravagant costumes were usually given full display at church on Sunday, which was a weekly meeting for the people of all the neigh boring plantations. Those old brick churches must have looked very glorious within when the people were all seated according to social rank in their high-backed pews and their wonderful clothes ; and when the congregation poured out after service, the yellow and scarlet, the silk and satin, must have been a curious contrast against the dark green of the pine forest and the rough surroundings. Although leading a country life, the women 90 Cavaliers and Tobacco seem to have been able to go about a great deal to dancing parties and amusements. They rode on horseback, and long distances never deterred them. We read of no whining complaints of the impossibility of enjoying life in the country which are now so common. Without professing to be advanced or strong-minded, the colonial women of Virginia seem to have been able to create pleasure out of almost any sort of sur roundings, and in their homes young girls were full of gayety and mischief. We may smile at their simplicity; but it was the simplicity of health and vigor. " We took it into our heads to want to eat. Well, we had a large dish of bacon and beef, after that a bowl of sago cream, and after that an apple pye in bed. After this we took it into our heads to eat oysters. We got up, put on our rappers, and went down in the seller to get them. Do you think Mr. Washington did not follow us and scare us just to death ! We went up tho and ate our oysters." (Goodwin s " Dolly Madison," p. 8.) Burnaby says that the women were seldom accomplished and could not be relied upon for very interesting conversation. Burnaby was a learned doctor of divinity and set a rather high standard, to which comparatively few even now could conform in any part of the country. They were immoderately fond of dancing, but not graceful in it. When tired out with ordinary Cavaliers and Tobacco dances, they resorted to jigs which they had learned, he says, from the negroes. A man and a woman danced about the room, one retiring, the other pursuing in a fantastical manner until another woman got up, when the first must sit down, being cut out, as they called it ; and the men cut out one another in the same way. The fondness for extravagant dress among the women, of which we find so many instances in colonial times, was as prevalent in the woods of Virginia as elsewhere. Chastellux describes two young ladies arriving at a house " in huge gauze bonnets, covered with ribbands, and dressed in such a manner as formed a perfect contrast to the simplicity of the house in which they were ;" and his translator, an Englishman, George Grieve, who had also travelled in Virginia, gives his own experiences in a foot-note : " The rage for dress amongst the women in America, in the very height of the miseries of the war, was beyond all bounds j nor was it confined to the great towns, it pre vailed equally on the sea coasts, and in the woods and soli tudes of the vast extent of country from Florida to New Hampshire. In travelling into the interior parts of Vir ginia I spent a delicious day at an inn, at the ferry of Shenandoah, or the Catacton Mountains, with the most engaging, accomplished and voluptuous girls, the daugh ters of the landlord, a native of Boston transplanted thither 5 who with all the gifts of nature possessed the arts of dress not unworthy of Parisian milliners, and went 92 Cavaliers and Tobacco regularly three times a week to the distance of seven miles, to attend the lessons of one De Grace, a French dancing master, who was making a fortune in the country." (Chastellux, Travels, vol. ii. p. 115.) British men-of-war were constantly in the rivers. The easy access from the sea and the hospitality of the planters doubtless made the province seem a very convenient anchorage. The recollections of a lady who lived near Norfolk show some of the phases of this part of their life : " My father was very hospitable and used to entertain all the strangers of any note that came among us, and especially the captains and officers of the British Navy that used to visit our waters before the war. Among these I remember particularly Capt. Gill, a fine old man, afterwards Admiral Gill. He commanded at this time a fifty gun ship called the Lanneston ... He had thirty- two midshipmen on board, mostly boys and lads of good families and several of them sprigs of nobility. These used to come to my father s house at all hours and frequently dined with us. Sometimes, too, they would go into the kitchen to get a little something to stay their appetites, when old Quashabee would assert her authority, and threaten to pin a dish something to their young lord ships if they did not get out of the way. I remember particularly a young stripling by the name of Lord George Gordon, afterwards so famous as the leader of the riots in London, whom I have seen begging old Quashabee for a piece of the skin which she had just taken off the ham which she was about to send into the house for dinner, 93 Cavaliers and Tobacco and eating it with great relish. Of course I had many beaux who flattered me and danced with me, and one or two who loved me, and would have married me if I would have said yes. Among these was a young Mr. Smith, a lieutenant in the British Navy with a fine florid face and auburn hair, who came here in a merchant vessel on his way to join his ship in the West Indies, who would have given his eyes for me if I would have taken them." ("Lower Norfolk County Antiquary," No. 2, part i. p. 26.) Family life and family ties were strongly de veloped in Virginia. Every one wanted to found a family or extend and perpetuate the influence of the one he already had, and relationship was claimed to a degree which has made the term Virginia cousin a recognized method of ex pressing remote kinship. There was, of course, the same profusion and hospitality which was to be found on the Caro lina plantations : plenty of good horses, plenty of servants and slaves, and plenty to eat and drink, combined with a considerable disregard of appearances. The negroes were not neat and could not be made so. Elkanah Watson, a New Englander who travelled in Virginia at the time of the Revolution, was very much shocked at the nudity of the young negroes. Naked negro children sometimes waited at table, a custom which is said to have also prevailed in the West Indies. Attempts to have them well dressed 94 Cavaliers and Tobacco almost invariably failed, and those who wore livery were apt to make themselves ludicrous in it. The French travellers Brissot and Rochefou cauld complain that amidst the troops of slaves and beautiful horses and the masses of silver plate on the sideboards there was a touch of the barbaric. Silk stockings were worn with boots, window-panes were broken, and the coach-horses were not carefully matched. But the stables were kept in good condition. On the frontiers the smallness of the cabins, which were usually only one room, where the whole family lived, ate, and slept, led to curious habits, of which we shall have more to say in describing bundling in Massachusetts and Con necticut. " Being fatigued he presently desired them to show him where he was to sleep j accordingly they pointed to a bed in a corner of the room where they were sitting. The gentleman was a little embarrassed ; but being excessively weary he retired, half undressed himself, and got into bed. After some time the old gentlewoman came to bed to him, after her the old gentleman and last of all the young lady. This, in a country excluded from all civilized society, could only proceed from simplicity and innocence : and indeed it is a general and true observation that forms and observances become necessary and are attended to in proportion as man ners become corrupt, and it is found expedient to guard against vice." (Burnaby, Travels, in.) 95 Cavaliers and Tobacco Rude plenty combined at times with great toleration for heavy drinking was the life the people loved, and Thackeray has given a fair de scription of it in " The Virginians." A planter was never so happy as when his house was full of his neighbors and his stable full of their horses. An invitation to a neighboring family to come to dinner usually meant to come and spend the day. Men and women arrived in the morning on horseback, lounged about, strolled or slept at noon on the couches in the hall-way, carrying on with each other continual raillery and fun mingled with the ever-present politics, and feasting far into the night. Kennedy s " Swallow Barn," a book which had considerable reputation some years before the civil war, gives a pifture of Virginia life about fifty years after the Revolution, when some of the colonial ways still survived. Al though impaired by many faults of style, it is worth reading for the conditions which it de scribes. One of Kennedy s best characters is the law yer who was also fox-hunter and farmer, whose hounds often insisted on following him on the circuit of the county courts, and who never could be restrained from joining a hunt which came in his way. Less violent and aggressive than the South 96 Cavaliers and Tobacco Carolinians, the Virginians were nevertheless, like the Carolinians, ready to stand alone before the world, and always thought of themselves as an independent nation. The cloudless skies and genial air had changed the heavy, sombre Englishmen into the spirited, keen, vivacious beings who produced the Jeffersons, Madisons, Randolphs, and Lees. They were united and homogeneous, and, like the people of Massachusetts, firm believers in themselves, and this was one of the causes of their greatness. They admired everything of their own and exaggerated the merits of their prominent men. The man who had become the wonder of his county or parish they took for granted must be known to the whole con tinent. The lower classes and poor whites were very rough and disorderly in colonial times, and spent a large part of their time drinking, gam bling, and fighting at taverns and at elections. They were unfortunately very numerous com pared with the aristocratic planter class, and when that class lost its power and control in the Revolution, these lower orders became the ruin of all that was great and distinguished in Virginia. It was these lower-class people who indulged in the practice of " gouging." If they could VOL. i.- 7 97 Cavaliers and Tobacco get their adversary down, they seized a side-lock of his hair, and pressing their thumb against the eyeball, forced it from the socket unless he called out " king s cruse !" They were always anxious to swap horses or watches with a stranger, and if he declined might threaten " to try the strength of his eyestrings." Elkanah Watson had on several occasions in his travels sharp experience with some of this class : " In passing Hanover Court House, Virginia, we found the whole county assembled at election. The moment I alighted, a wretched pug-nosed fellow assailed me to swap watches. I had hardly shaken him off, when I was at tacked by a wild Irishman, who insisted on my swapping horses with him, and in a twinkling ran up the pedigree of his horse to the grand dam. Treating his importunity with little respect, I became near being involved in a boxing match, the Irishman swearing that I did not trate him like a jintleman. I had hardly escaped this dilemma when my attention was attracted by a fight between two very unwieldy fat men, foaming and puffing like to furies, until one, succeeding in twisting a forefinger in a side-lock of the other s hair, and in the act of thrusting by this purchase his thumb into the latter s eye, he bawled out king s cruse! equivalent in technical language to enough. " (Watson s " Men and Times of the Revo lution," p. 60.) The translator of Chastellux s Travels also had an experience : Cavaliers and Tobacco " The indolence and dissipation of the middling and lower classes of white inhabitants of Virginia are such as to give pain to every reflecting mind. Horse racing, cock fighting and boxing matches are standing amusements, for which they neglect all business, and in the latter of which they conduct themselves with a barbarity worthy of their savage neighbors. The ferocious practice of stage boxing in England is urbanity compared with the Virginian mode of fighting : In their combats, unless specially precluded, they are admitted (to use their own term) to bite, , and gouge, which operations, when the first onset with fists is over, consists in fastening on the nose or ears of their adversaries with their teeth, . . . and dexterously scooping out an eye; on which account it is no uncommon circumstance to meet men in the prime of youth deprived of one of those organs. " This is no traveller s exaggeration; I speak from knowl edge and observation. In the summer months it is very common to make a party on horseback to a limestone spring, near which there is usually some little hut with spirituous liquors, if the party are not themselves provided, where their debauch frequently terminates in a boxing match, a horse race, or perhaps both. During a day s residence at Leesburg I was myself accidentally drawn into one of these parties, where I soon experienced the strength of the liquor, which was concealed by the refreshing cool ness of the water. While we were seated round the spring, at the edge of a delightful wood, four or five countrymen arrived, headed by a veteran cyclops,the terror of the neighborhood, ready on every occasion to risk his remaining eye. We soon found ourselves under the necessity of relinquishing our posts and making our escape from these fellows, who evidently sought to provoke a quarrel. 99 Cavaliers and Tobacco " On our return home, whilst I was rejoicing at our good fortune and admiring the moderation of my company, we arrived at a plain spot of ground by a wood side, on which my horse no sooner set foot than, taking the bit between his teeth, off he went at full speed, attended by the hoops and hallooings f of my companions. An Englishman is not easily thrown off his guard on horseback ; but at the end of half a mile my horse stopped short, as if he had been shot, and threw me with considerable violence over his head ; my buckle, for I was without boots, entangled me in the stirrup, but fortunately broke into twenty pieces. The company rode up, delighted with the adventure $ and it was then, for the first time, I discovered that I had been purposely induced, by one of my own friends, to change horses with him for the afternoon 5 that his horse had been accustomed to similar exploits on the same race ground; that the whole of the business was neither more nor less than a Virginian piece of pleasantry." (Chastellux, Travels, vol. ii. p. 192.) As against this description of the translator we have Chastellux s account of a cock-fight he saw at one of the inns. The planters had collected from a distance of thirty or forty miles, bringing their cocks, money for betting, and also their own provisions, because the inn, or ordinary, as it was usually called at that time in Virginia, was small. So many arrived that they were obliged to sleep in blankets on the floor. But he mentions no roughness or ex cesses, except that the bets were very high. The sport did not interest him ; there was too much 100 Cavaliers and Tobicco : of the Anglo-Saxon in it to suit a French man ; and he was amused at a boy who kept leaping for joy and crying, " Oh, it is a charm ing diversion !" With that part of Virginia near Williams- burg, along the James River, where the oldest civilization of the colony was to be found, Chas- tellux was delighted. " We travelled," he says, "six and twenty miles without halting, in very hot weather, but by a very agreeable road, with magnificent houses in view at every instant ; for the banks of James River form the garden of Virginia." He stayed at Westover, where Mrs. Byrd, the widow of the famous colonel, received him with great hospitality, and he amused him self exploring the neighboring country-seats, ob serving the humming-birds, and also the stur geon, which at that time were so numerous in the river that on a summer s evening hundreds of them could be seen at a time leaping out of the water. The indolence of the masses of the people did not escape the observation of Chastellux, and he comments on it in many passages. He also noticed that in Virginia there were many poor and even poverty-stricken people living in misery and rags in wretched huts, which was a class he had not seen in the Northern colonies, where in colonial times there was scarcely any 101 i-ers and Tobacco poverty at all in the sense in which it is now known or as he had known it in Europe. These Virginia poor were of course what afterwards became known as the poor white trash, the re sult of indolence and the degradation of slave labor. His visit at Westover and wanderings in the neighborhood led him into many reflections, one of which is well worth noticing. It seemed to him that the cause of Virginia s success up to that time the prominent position she had taken in the Revolution, and the remarkable men she had already produced was that she had been ruled exclusively by the great planters, whom he, like all other travellers, found to be a very enlightened and unusual class of men. For the rest of the people he seems to have had a great contempt, and he certainly had no confidence in them. Their indolence and ignor ance, he said, had been an advantage in the Revo lution, because it obliged them to rely on the high-spirited and intelligent planters, who led them much farther than they would have gone without such guides and relying on their own dispositions. He prophesied that under the new order of things since the Revolution, by which the masses of the people were being given more and more influence and control, Virginia would gradually Cavaliers and Tobacco sink into insignificance, and that the change had already begun. His keen observation showed him that although the masses of the people were of an excellent race and stock, the natural conditions of climate, soil, and the presence of the negro (whose depressing influence, even if given his freedom, he clearly foresaw) would keep them in an indolent and unprogressive state. The conditions of tobacco planting com bined with slavery and intellectual influence from England which had built up the great planter class were merely temporary, and when they were gone that class would sink into the masses and the whole become medioc rity. Some of the Virginians of the upper classes went to England to complete their education ; but it is noteworthy that none of the distin guished men the colony produced were educated abroad. The great men of Virginia were all natural produces of their native soil. Most of them were graduates of William and Mary Col lege, which was founded in 1693, and is next after Harvard the oldest college in the country. It is significant of the position which Virginia and Massachusetts occupied that they were the first colonies to establish colleges. At the outbreak of the Revolution nearly all the students of William and Mary joined the Con- I0 3 Cavaliers and Tobacco tinental army. Among the graduates who dis tinguished themselves were Benjamin Harrison, Carter Braxton, Thomas Nelson, and George Wythe, all of whom signed the Declaration of Independence. Besides these, the college has produced among her alumni two attorney-gen erals, seventeen members of Congress, fifteen senators, seventeen governors, thirty-seven judges, a lieutenant-general, two commodores, seven cab inet officers, a chief-justice, and three Presidents of the United States. Peyton Randolph, President of the First American Congress, was an alumnus ; so was Edmund Randolph, Washington s attorney-gen eral, and afterwards Secretary of State. So was Thomas Jefferson, a stupendous influence, and to this day a living, aftive force. We have his own word that it was the instruction of Dr. Small at William and Mary which fixed the destinies of his life. James Madison was an other alumnus ; so also were James Monroe and John Tyler ; and last and greatest, John Marshall, the Chief-Justice. Marshall alone would have been enough to make a college famous, for our constitution, nationality, and indissoluble union are largely the work of his hands. When we examine more closely into details, we find that the roll of honor is even longer than 104 Cavaliers and Tobacco at first sight appears. Not only has the college produced conspicuously great men, whose names have become household words, but she has graduated a very large number of alumni who have been distinguished in a minor way. Not to mention General Winfield Scott, we find William C. Rives, at one time a very prominent man; also Bushrod Washington, James Brecken- ridge, James P. Preston, George M. Bibb, William H. Fitzhugh, H. St. George Tucker, and so on. In a list of graduates of this sort it is possible to count thirty names of men who, though by no means equal to Jefferson or Mar shall, were nevertheless in their day prominent and powerful leaders in the service of either the nation or the State. To this must be added a large number of in fluential Virginia families, many of whom were educated at the college. The catalogues of colo nial times bristle on almost every page with Carters, Pages, and Randolphs. Nor are the Harrisons, the Blands, the Nicholases, the Bur- wells, the Lewises, and the Carringtons without a goodly representation. It is very interesting sometimes to see the names of a whole family side by side, followed by their country-seat or county, and a statement telling whose sons they are. This is one branch of the Carter family : 105 Cavaliers and Tobacco Names. Residences. Remarks. John Carter, Corotoman, Son of Robert Carter, known as King Carter. Robert Carter, Sabine Hall, Son of Robert Carter, known as King Carter. George Carter, Nomini, Son of Robert Carter, known as King Carter. Landon Carter, Cleve, Son of Robert Carter, known as King Carter. Edward Carter, Blenheim, Son of Robert Carter, known as King Carter. It has sometimes been said that the instruc tion at William and Mary was probably very inferior, and hardly equal to that of an ordi nary academy. This may be true if we com pare it with modern institutions of learning which are obliged to furnish the excessively varied list of modern studies ; but, compared with colleges of its own time, William and Mary was as good as any. Chastellux, who cer tainly was competent to judge, examined it very carefully in the year 1782, and, although he may have been biassed by the degree of Doctor of Laws which it gave him, his extremely favorable opinion is worthy of respect. The college was situated in Williamsburg, the capital of the colony, and there the planters and their families often congregated in winter time, coming on horseback or driving in their great lumbering coaches, to attend the courts and the 106 Cavaliers and Tobacco sessions of the burgesses, talk politics, see their sons, nephews, and cousins at the college, and take part in the balls. It was to them a miniature Court of St. James, and, with that ludicrous pride which often infefts provincial people, they sometimes asserted that its receptions and festi vals were more brilliant than anything in Eng land. The college chapel and the old church-yard, where many eminent men of the province were buried, was a sort of Westminster Abbey. The college contained curious and rare books and manuscripts, the gifts of kings, archbishops, and governors. The governor s palace, as his large plain house was pretentiously called, was the scene of much festivity, for which every anniversary or important event in England or the colony served as an excuse. The " Apollo Room" of the Raleigh tavern was a famous place for assemblies, and it was there that Jeffer son danced with his sweethearts and the first afts of the Revolution were planned. The charge which has been so persistently repeated, that the colonial Virginians were igno rant and illiterate as compared with the New Englanders and other people in the Northern colonies, is not borne out by the fafts. The clever phrases of Governor Berkeley in his re port on the condition of the colony, which have 107 Cavaliers and Tobacco been so often quoted, largely account for the pre vailing impression : " I thank God," he said, " there are no free schools nor printing} and I hope we shall not have, these hundred years ; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and seels into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both." But this testy statement of the old royalist governor was made in the early days of the colony, before Bacon s rebellion, and before William and Mary was founded ; and even if true at the time, did not necessarily imply that the people were ignorant, for Berkeley himself explained in his report that each man educated his family in his own way by the parish clergy man or by the instruction of himself or tutors. They never had free schools, and there was never much printing done in the colony because they relied on England for their books, as for their tables and chairs and everything they used ; and private tutors, the parish clergyman, a very few schools, and a great deal of social intercourse were their means of education. The lower class of poor whites was undoubt edly uneducated, and in this respect inferior to the similar class in New England ; but the middle and upper classes were as well educated and ac complished as any other people in the country, 108 Cavaliers and Tobacco and in natural brightness and mother-wit there were very few that could equal them. The oc casional glimpses we get of plantation life not infrequently disclose an interest in culture and in other subjects besides politics. The works of Addison, Steele, Pope, Congreve, and Prior were common in the great plantation houses. Isham Randolph, a planter on the James with a hundred slaves, was interested in botany and corresponded on the subject with learned men. There were several other gentlemen in the province interested in the same science. That genial character Colonel William Byrd devoted his leisure to literature and the sciences, and his private library, said to have been the best in the colonies, contained three thousand six hundred and twenty-five volumes. John Ran dolph s library was almost as large, and some said larger. Madison, Jefferson, Mason, and other noted men had also good collections of books ; and in a note to the introduction to the volume of the Spotswood Letters there is an account of thirty families which seem to have had fairly good libraries, from which books often containing ar morial book-plates have come down to our time. If the upper-class Virginians had not been educated men it would certainly have been most extraordinary, for the ineffaceable mark they have left on history is one of intellect and not 109 Cavaliers and Tobacco of brute force. Judge the tree by its fruit. If Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, Mason, Henry, Pendleton, and Lee were the result of an ignorant and illiterate community, then let us have as much ignorance and as little education as possible. Tobacco-planting, like the rice-planting of Carolina, was a very speculative occupation, and added a dash of recklessness to the Virginian s character, tempting him to great risks and bold undertakings. The price varied so much at dif ferent periods that sometimes there was an enor mous profit and sometimes a heavy loss. This, combined with the inveterate propensity of both the men and women to gamble, made fortunes uncertain, and many, like Colonel Byrd s, were lost in this way, and many families had to begin life anew. It was a strange civilization, this tobacco aris tocracy of about two hundred years, dependent for its success on a single producl, not altogether a useful one, and supported by negro slavery, which the moral sense of the world has always considered a crime. But the system produced wealth, leisure, and the results of independence and intelligence ; and the long-leaved narcotic plant accomplished as much in creating the American Union as the rice of Carolina and the schooners and codfish of New England. no Cavaliers and Tobacco It of course had within it the seeds of its final overthrow. There was a rift in the lute, a rot tenness at the core, and in this respeft Virginia was inferior to Massachusetts, whose foundations were more stable. Slavery could not continue forever in face of the protests of the world, and tobacco-raising exhausted the soil. The usual method of culture was to plant tobacco in the same ground for five years in succession. At the end of that time, fertility being exhausted, the land was allowed to grow up in pines, and the primeval forest was cleared from some other traft for another five years cropping. So long as there was any virgin soil in Virginia this system was very profitable. Grain was cultivated in an equally wasteful manner. Corn and wheat were allowed to suc ceed each other on the same ground without the intervention of clover or any crop that would restore fertility, and there was no manuring. Virginia lived by moving from one virgin tradl to another, and she never restored any of the wealth she took from the earth. The slaves who passed the summer in harvesting the crops were employed all winter in cutting away the forests to supply fresh material for this spendthrift system of agriculture. Virginia was always living on her capital, and she came to the end of it at last. When there in Cavaliers and Tobacco was no more new soil for tobacco, and other countries had begun to compete in its culture, the great wealth of the Virginians was gone. After the Revolution the exhaustion of the soil and the competition in tobacco brought on a steady shrinkage of values, and the flame of Virginia s genius burnt lower and lower. One by one the distinguished families were reduced to poverty and oblivion, and among them none suffered more than Jefferson and Madison. The story of Jefferson s last years, when with failing fortunes he struggled to keep up on his planta tion the old life and hospitality, is most pathetic; and Mrs. Madison, after her husband s death, was assisted by charity. Virginia hospitality, which was so easy and generous, was intended for near neighbors, relatives, or the occasional traveller in a wild country. But in later times, when Jefferson and Madison had world-wide reputations, and all the means of travel had improved, they were beset by tourists and curiosity hunters who had heard of the Virginia hospitality and thought they would like to try it at a great man s house and save a tavern bill. Not realizing that times and conditions had changed, Jefferson felt bound in honor to him self, his family, and his State to receive all these people with the open heart and hand of old times. Cavaliers and Tobacco His overseer, Captain Bacon, describes his hope less efforts to prevent these so-called friends and admirers from eating his master out of house and home : " They were there all times of the year; but about the middle of June the travel would commence from the lower part of the State to the Springs, and then there was a per fect throng of visitors. They travelled in their own car riages and came in gangs, the whole family with carriage and riding horses and servants, sometimes three or four such gangs at a time. We had thirty-six stalls for horses, and only used ten of them for the stock we kept there. Very often all of the rest were full and I had to send horses off to another place. I have often sent a wagon- load of hay up to the stable, and the next morning there would not be enough left to make a bird s nest. I have killed a fine beef and it would be all eaten in a day or two." John Randolph of Roanoke, as he was called, shows the Virginia intellect in the beginning of its decay. He was born in 1773, and his forma tive period was passed after the Revolution, when the old life was changing and, as Chas- tellux would say, the ignorant and lax lower classes were beginning to overwhelm the high- strung spirit of the aristocracy. He was an odd character, dressed in the old-fashioned manner, and used to come into Congress with top-boots on, followed by two pointer dogs, which were constantly running in and out to the annoy ance of the members. He, however, always VOL. I. 8 11 Cavaliers and Tobacco rode a fine horse, and was accompanied by a negro body-servant mounted on an equally good one. He was very particular never to ride his servant s or allow the servant to ride his. He had undoubted ability, and dominated Con gress with a force and vehemence which were difficult to resist. Henry Clay was elected a member principally for the purpose of check ing him. But Randolph s leadership and power were of the bullying kind ; he did not win and convince forever, like the old Virginians. His triumphs were temporary and aroused vindiftive- ness and hatred. He was eccentric, vacillating, and inconsistent, marks of weakness which are looked for in vain in the school of Washington and Marshall. He was also undignified, a point in which his predecessors never failed ; and he was inclined to fierce inveftive and personal vio lence, caning and duelling, which sprang up among the Virginians and other Southerners after the Revolution. This sudden appearance of a fondness for per sonal violence, which afterwards developed to ridiculous excesses, is a strange phenomenon and difficult to account for, unless that after the Revolution the spirit of the gouging, fighting, and ignorant lower classes got possession of the whole community in consequence of the change to democratic government. 114 Cavaliers and Tobacco In Randolph s time, however, the fighting disposition had developed no farther than the duel. Revolvers, bowie knives, blackguarding, and street assassination were not yet known ; and Randolph had the honor of taking part in one of the last of the high-toned duels, as they were afterwards called. He had grossly insulted Henry Clay, imply ing that he was a blackleg and a forger. Clay s first shot cut the skirt of Randolph s coat. He fired again ; but Randolph, raising his pistol in the air, said, " I do not fire at you, Mr. Clay," stepped forward, and offered him his hand. This was his way of saying that he regretted the in sult, but after being challenged could not apolo gize for it. It required nearly half a century of gradual shrinkage to bring the inevitable end in Virginia, arid when it came, the people, incapable of manufacturing or commerce, turned their atten tion to ordinary unprofitable farming on ex hausted land and the breeding of negroes until the civil war stripped them of even this last re sort. The important life in Virginia is now centred in towns, as in other parts of the Union, and the old plantation and country life has com pletely disappeared. Whether the State will ever again be heard from and rise to superiority or ascendency as in "5 Cavaliers and Tobacco the past is an interesting but an extremely diffi cult question. The same race, the pure Anglo Saxon blood which was once capable of such eminence, is still there ; but it may remain sunk in the indolence of the climate and the terrible incubus of the free negro, with whom social equality is impossible and whose influence is degrading ; for, as Chastellux said, the colonial Virginians seem to have been inspired and raised from the enervating conditions by which they were surrounded only by the pride and stimulus of the old tobacco aristocracy which has passed away. In a community where the mass of the people is composed of negroes and indolent whites the degenerating influences can scarcely be held in check by any form of government short of an oligarchy. CHAPTER II PURITANS AND WITCHES TO LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY FROM we leave Virginia and begin to con sider Massachusetts and New England we are at once struck by the contrast. Instead of the soft climate, fertile soil, low sandy shores, and wide rivers of Chesapeake Bay, we have the rock-bound coast, the barren land, the fir-trees, and the harsh climate of pifturesque but stern New England. Instead of men " in gentlemanly conformity to the Church of England," pleasure loving and easy and indolent in manners, we must deal with stiff, solemn individuals, devoted to schools, colleges, and learning, to whom amuse ment was a crime, whose lives were completely 117 Puritans and Philosophy absorbed in religion, and who were among the most unrelenting fanatics the world has ever seen. Instead of a people who lived for and loved the outer world and its pleasures, we have men and women whose thoughts were turned inward on themselves, and who developed their faculties of introspection and self-analysis to the utmost extreme. Instead of the Virginia form of gov ernment, strangely compounded of aristocratic pride and Saxon liberty, we have a civil polity modelled on the Kingdom of Israel, with the words of the Old Testament for a code, and be lieved by its upholders to be the voice of God on earth. Instead of an agricultural population, without commerce or manufactures, widely dis persed on large estates, without towns or villages, and leading the lives of planters and sportsmen, we have a people living exclusively in small towns and devoted to fishing, ship-building, and trade. The early voyagers and settlers were always pleased with Virginia and the South. The mild air and the richness of the vegetation gave promise of comfort and wealth. But no one, except some enthusiast like Captain John Smith, could ever take much delight in his first ex perience of New England.* It might please * This description of New England would not have been relished by the Puritan Fathers, and it would not have 118 Puritans and Philosophy the lover of nature, but it hardly satisfied the pioneer in search of prosperity and peace. It was comparatively easy to tempt colonists to go to fertile Virginia, but it required religious zeal of the most uncompromising kind to plant a colony in New England. Massachusetts was settled by two colonies. First by the Plymouth colony, in 1620, and ten years afterwards by the colony of Massachusetts Bay. The first, or Plymouth colony, usually known as the Pilgrim Fathers, was composed of people who in religion were called Brownists, or Independents, and they established themselves on the coast at a place they named New Plymouth, opposite Cape Cod, about thirty miles south of Boston. The Massachusetts Bay people were Puritans, and settled on the shores of what is now Boston Harbor. The two colonies were quite distinct in char- after and opinions. The Independents of the Plymouth colony were dissenters who had en tirely separated themselves from the Church of England, and had been in consequence severely persecuted. Their opinions were very much the same as are now held by the Congre- been safe to have uttered it among them. They once haled a man before the General Court because he had said that New England was nothing but " rocks, sand, and salt marshes." (Winthrop, p. 173.) Puritans and Philosophy gationalists. They believed that each congre gation should govern itself, and that there should be no general and united church organization controlling all the parishes and congregations. They denied the necessity of regularly ordained clergymen deriving their authority from bishops who professed to be the legitimate successors of the apostles. Their worship was very simple, consisting of sermons and extemporaneous prayers without ceremony or ritual, and they of course repudiated all the doclrines which the Church of Rome had developed during the Middle Ages. The small company of them, numbering about a hundred, which landed at Plymouth Rock, were mostly natives of Lincolnshire, England, where they had been hunted down and perse cuted until they fled to Holland, where they lived first at Amsterdam, afterwards at Leyden for twelve years. They worked at various small trades, and helped one another like the Christians of the primitive Church. But they were wretch edly poor, and seeing no prospeft of any im provement in their condition, they obtained, through the assistance of some merchants, the means of reaching America. Crowded on board that immortal ship, the Mayflower, and guided by Captain John Smith s map, they reached the coast of Massachusetts in November, 1620. They intended to proceed 120 Puritans and Philosophy southward to the Hudson River, where they had obtained a grant of land from the Virginia Company ; but becoming involved in the shoals near Cape Cod, they landed on the extreme end of that cape, at what is now Provincetown, where vessels still seek shelter from the gales of the Atlantic, and after some weeks of exploration they established themselves at their final settle ment on the mainland. They were far superior in respeftability and education to the people who had founded the colony of Virginia thirteen years before, but they resembled them in knowing nothing of camp life and the difficulties of a wilderness. The Virginians had had the advantage of ar riving in the month of May, in a mild climate, with abundance of game, an advantage which was soon offset by the malarial fevers which de stroyed so many of them. But the Plymouth colonists arriving in November were obliged at once to face the cold and barrenness of the New England coast, which proved to be almost as destructive as the fevers of Virginia, for nearly half of them perished within six months. They were industrious and thrifty, and while they lacked skill as woodsmen and hunters, they made excellent soldiers. Miles Standish drilled and disciplined them, and their village was an armed camp rather than a colony. Isaac De 121 Puritans and Philosophy Rasiers, a Dutchman from New York, who visited them in 1627, describes their life: " Upon the hill they have a large square house, with a flat roof made of thick sawn planks, stayed with oak beams, upon the top of which they have six cannons, which shoot iron balls of four or five pounds, and com mand the surrounding country. The lower part they use for their church, where they preach on Sundays and the usual holidays. They assemble by beat of drum, each with his musket or fire-lock, in front of the captain s door j they have their cloaks on, and place themselves in order, three abreast, and are led by a sergeant without beat of drum. Behind comes the governor, in a long robe; beside him on the right hand comes the preacher with his cloak on, and on the left hand the captain with his side arms and cloak on, and a small cane in his hand ; and so they march in good order, and each sets his arms down near him." (Bradford s " Plymouth," p. 126.) This careful system of defence was forced on them by their small numbers and the danger from Indians. When their sentinel paced his rounds at night he had no waking companions on the vast continent of black forest save the Dutch guard two hundred miles away at Fort Amsterdam, on the Hudson, and the careless Virginian probably sleeping at his post at James town, on the Chesapeake. They were unable to spread out and occupy the country. They had to remain huddled together in their village, with its fort on the hill, and live by fishing and 122 Puritans and Philosophy trade with the Dutch or the English vessels that visited the coast. Their garden patches were kept close to the village, and it was with great caution and very gradually that they began to occupy outlying districts. At the end of ten years, with the assistance of new arrivals from England, they numbered only about two hundred and fifty. At the end of seventy years, in 1691, when they were ab sorbed by the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay, they numbered only about nine thousand. They were not a success as a colony, and they were not, as the orators would have us believe, the creators of New England and the United States. The dramatic incident of their first landing on Plymouth Rock has been used to exaggerate their merits and to credit them with all the good things that afterwards happened on the continent, and they are supposed to have estab lished liberty, republican government, and all that is valuable in American institutions. But, as a matter of faft, they were scarcely able to establish themselves, and they had none of that fierce energy for development which characterized the Puritans. They were excel lent people in many ways, and less intolerant and illiberal than the Puritans ; but they were completely overwhelmed by the Puritans, who were the real creators of New England, and who 123 Puritans and Philosophy numbered thirty thousand in 1691 when the Plymouth people were only nine thousand. Our historical literature is full of attempts to fix on some one point or set of men as the source of American liberty. Virginia has claimed the honor, so also Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massa chusetts, the Dutch of New York, and the Penn sylvania Germans. But all the claims are un founded, for there was no one set of people in England who in that time had a monopoly of the principles of free government. The Englishmen who settled the American colonies, whether Cavaliers, Quakers, or Round heads, were all familiar with the dodlrines of lib erty. The English revolution was beginning at that time, and such principles were the subject of intense discussion and were known to every one. Democratic ideas crept into America by Chesapeake Bay, by the Delaware, by the Hud son, by the Connecticut, by Narragansett Bay, and even the intolerant Puritans had democratic instinfts which showed themselves as soon as the old shell of Puritanism was worn away. The Puritans who formed the second colony at Massachusetts Bay were a party within the Church of England. They had not separated and become dissenters, like the Independents, but were working to change and, as they thought, purify the English church. They would not, 124 Puritans and Philosophy they said, overset the house ; but they wanted to sweep it. It was not enough for them that the English church had thrown off the authority of the Pope, abolished the sale of indulgences and other cor ruptions, and rejected the great mass of dogmas that had been developed in the Middle Ages. Other things must go, the prayers read from a book, the surplice, the sign of the cross in bap tism, the ring in marriage, the rite of confirma tion, bowing at the name of Jesus, and every thing appealing to the imagination, which they described as " marks of the beast and dregs of antichrist." They wanted to reduce Christianity to its most primitive form of four bare walls and the literal words of the Bible. They were also very much opposed to the authority of the bishops, and they had adopted the Calvinistic belief in predestination and election, which they wished to force on the English church as one of its doctrines. In church government they were somewhat divided. Some of them inclined to the independent plan ; but most of them were unwilling to go so far. They had no desire, to disorganize the English establishment and, as one of them put it, make every man s hat his church ; and in the end they established in Massachusetts a system which was midway between the free democracy of 125 Puritans and Philosophy the Independents and the more complicated republican form of synods and representative assemblies adopted by the Presbyterians. Their system has been called Massachusetts Congre gationalism because it was somewhat different from pure Congregationalism or independency. Unlike the Plymouth people, the Puritans were a great power in England, strong in num bers, unafflicled by poverty, and not compelled to hide or flee to Holland. In the early years of the reign of Charles I., before their party rose to power under Cromwell, many of them had become hopeless of reducing the Church of England to what they believed to be the true faith, and several expeditions went to the coast of Massachusetts in the neighborhood of Cape Ann to establish a settlement. They were unsuccessful at first ; but the in creasing despotism under King Charles aroused a greater anxiety to leave England, and the Dor chester company was founded in 1628 and sup ported by the most influential and wealthy of the Puritans. The next year this company was enlarged, and under the new name of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay, was incorporated by a royal charter and given a grant of the land lying between the Merrimac and Charles Rivers and extending westward to the Pacific Ocean, an extremely narrow strip 126 Puritans and Philosophy which did not include the Plymouth colony which lay south of it. The charter was most liberal in its pro visions. The members of the company were allowed to elecl: their governor and all other officers without any control from the king ; nor were they obliged to submit their laws to the crown for approval. In faft, it gave them virtual independence ; and the most probable explana tion of this extreme liberality is that no definite colonial policy had been formulated at that time, except that it was important to encourage col onists to go to America in the hope that they would check the expansion of the Dutch settle ments at New York and gain the continent for Great Britain. The Puritans were becoming very troublesome in politics as well as in religion, and it would be a relief to get rid of some of them. A few months after they obtained their charter they made a most judicious move, which they had prepared for at the outset of their enter prise. The charter said nothing about the loca tion of the governing body. The Virginia charter made England the head-quarters of the company. But the Massachusetts charter was silent on the subjeft. The company, therefore, passed a resolution removing the charter and the whole government of the colony to Massa chusetts. If the governing body had remained 127 Puritans and Philosophy in England, the distance would have prevented the colonists from becoming active members of it ; but if transferred to Massachusetts, the col onists would become its officers : the colony and the corporation would be one. Thus these pious souls snapped the last thread of home in fluence and, taking in their hands their govern ment as well as their goods, slipped off into the wilderness to become independent. On the eve of their departure they announced that they were still members of the Church of England, and in their farewell address declared that they were not to be thought of as loathing the milk wherewith they had been nourished, that they esteemed it an honor to call the church their dear mother, that any hope of salvation they possessed had been received in her bosom and sucked from her breasts, and they concluded by asking for her prayers. The address was all in the rather unftuous tone common among the Puritans, and has been somewhat unfairly described as a mere hypo critical cloak to cover their real intentions and check interference. They certainly had no sooner landed in Massachusetts than they gave up every vestige of the Church of England, banished two of their number who insisted on using the Book of Common Prayer, and organ ized their churches without either clergy or 128 Puritans and Philosophy bishops, who, in the language of the time, they regarded as " biting beasts and whelps of the Roman litter." When charged with separatism, they always denied it ; but when closely pressed replied that they were separating from corruptions and not from the church. They believed themselves to be the true Church of England, just as every political party believes itself to be the true government, and they clung to that idea for many years after they had developed the Massa chusetts system far beyond anything that was recognized by the mother-church in England. They were the most sturdy, virile, and ac complished men that had thus far attempted to establish a colony, and in these respects they have perhaps never been equalled by any body of English colonists. Large numbers of them were men of more or less means who came amply provided, and a very large proportion were men of excellent education, bred in the English universities, and thoroughly convinced that religion was a question which demanded the deepest learning and research and the keenest logic. They were on fire with the most determined enthusiasm to establish their own religion by this means and convince the whole world of its truth. Those who were so vicious or ignorant VOL. I. 9 129 Puritans and Philosophy as not to accept it as the truth were to be ban ished, or if wicked enough actively to resist it, should be put to death. They settled down in the wilderness as students and strong, determined men who in tended to enforce the result of their studies with the musket and the hangman s rope. Their ministers and leading men had their books, and connected with their houses many of them had their little library or study, to which they were devotedly attached. In some of their diaries we read that their greatest dread of death was that they would never again enter the room of their books, which had given them such delight. For ten years, from 1630 to 1640, they left England in increasing numbers, and at the close of that period fifteen thousand of them had settled in Massachusetts, far outnumbering the little Plymouth colony ; and indeed a large part of the small increase in numbers at Plymouth seems to have been due to the overflow from the Puritans in the neighborhood of Boston. After 1640 there was no more emigration to Massachusetts or the rest of New England, be cause the Puritans in England, under the leader ship of Cromwell, were rising into power and saw their opportunity to accomplish all they desired in religion and politics. If Cromwell s 130 Puritans and Philosophy party had not been successful, it is highly prob able that nearly all the Puritans would have come to New England. In facl, their leaders seem to have had this in view,. and they might have been able to establish such a powerful commonwealth that they could have declared and maintained complete independence. From 1640, New England received no immi grants until after 1820, when the modern immi gration of Irish and French Canadians began. In that period, from 1640 to 1820, her population, being of the same race and religion, became very homogeneous and united, and increased by the natural method of births at a more rapid rate than it has increased in modern times with the aid of all the foreigners that have been poured upon the country. In that period pre vious to 1820 the New Englanders not only rilled up their own limits and became the lead ing seftion of the Union, but also overflowed into New York and the West. The Puritans had no sooner established them selves at Boston and Cambridge, and spread along the shores of Massachusetts Bay, than they set about creating a religious oligarchy and making themselves as independent of England as pos sible. No one could become a freeman and have the privilege of voting unless he was a member of some church; and under the Puritan "3 1 Puritans and Philosophy system membership in a church meant that one had shown visible evidence of conversion and change of heart, and had been accepted by- some congregation. The examination into the religious experience of a candidate was very severe, and only a small part of the inhabitants could pass it ; so that the fundamental principle of the Puritan government disfranchised a large majority of the population. In 1634, wnen tne colony numbered about four thousand, there were only three hundred and fifty freemen ; and in 1670, when the popu lation numbered about twenty-five thousand, there were only about eleven hundred freemen. As a general rule, out of every four or five adult males only one was a freeman ; and this disfran chised majority, which included from three- fourths to four-fifths of the able-bodied men of the colony, had no more part or lot in the gov ernment than the women and children. This aristocracy of saints which had so little regard for the liberty of those who had not taken strongly to religion was, however, very careful of the liberties of the colony, and had determined, as far as possible, to make it inde pendent of England. They soon ceased to issue writs in the king s name. They dropped the English oath of allegiance and adopted a new oath, in which public officers and all the 132 Puritans and Philosophy inhabitants swore allegiance, not to England, but to Massachusetts. Any one who refused to take this oath was banished or disqualified from holding office. They also took upon themselves the sovereign attribute of coining their own money, and issued the famous pine-tree shillings. No appeals were allowed to the king or to the English courts ; it was treason even to speak of them. By their definition of treason, the king himself would have been guilty of it if he had attempted to interfere with Massachusetts. They hardly dared to adopt an ensign of their own ; but some of them, instigated as is supposed by Roger Williams, cut out of the English flag the cross of St. George, which they said was idolatrous. Soon after, when some captains threatened to report in England that no flag was displayed on the fort at Castle Island, the assistants, as the governor s council was called, debated the question at great length, discussing after the Puritan fashion the nature of emblems in general and all the principles involved, and finally told the captains that they had no English flag. A captain promptly offered to lend them one ; and when at last they had to put the idolatrous thing on the fort, they excused themselves by saying that as the fort belonged to the king he 133 Puritans and Philosophy had a right to have his flag there ; but the rest of the colony they seemed to think was their own. As early as 1646 the assistants actually de bated the question whether they owed allegiance to England. Their conclusion was that they could govern themselves as they pleased, and that their allegiance consisted only in paying to England one-fifth of all the gold and silver they mined and praying for her welfare. Besides the power of the assistants and of the freemen, there soon grew up a new power un known to the charter, composed of the minis ters of the different congregations ; and on the whole the ministers were the more powerful, for although the assistants and governor carried on the practical work of governing, yet they in variably took the advice of the ministers, and difficult questions were referred to them. Each minister was elefted by his flock, and his authority came solely from the vote of his con gregation. To all other churches except the one which elected him he was a layman. He could administer the communion only to his own congregation, and he became completely a lay man when he ceased to be a minister in any particular church. There was a great deal of work connected with a Puritan church, and at first each one had 134 Puritans and Philosophy a pastor whose duty it was to exhort, and a teacher who explained doftrine ; but gradually the distin&ion wore away and there were two pastors, who were often called the elders ; and besides these there were ruling elders and teach ing elders who had charge of the discipline, and deacons who managed the business affairs. A minister maintained his position by his talents and his ability to please the people, and those people were not easy to please. Religion was the most absorbing subject of their lives, and they expefted strong doftrine and strong reason. They came to church provided with note-books, they followed the whole argu ment of the sermon, and during the week held meetings to discuss it. They had the right to interrupt the preacher and ask him questions. The preacher had to uphold his authority among keen-minded men and women who were eager to cross-examine him, and whose training in religious controversy was in many cases equal to his own. If a minister was suspefted of unsoundness, written questions were presented to him and answers demanded. He dared not refuse. His answers were apt to draw forth replies ; ex planations and counter-statements followed ; the discussion would grow intense ; would some times spread to other churches and sometimes Puritans and Philosophy involve the whole community. Such a system produced able men, for a weak one could not exist in it ; and so by a very natural process the ministers became the most powerful part of the Puritan government. Each church governed itself to a great extent ; but no church could be formed without the consent of the assistants and the ministers ; and the assistants and the legislature as well as the churches could punish both individuals and churches for heresy and make laws for their gov ernment. The civil punishments for heresy were fines, banishment, imprisonment, whipping, and sometimes death, and the churches could excom municate, which was in effect to disfranchise the victim and make him an outcast. Church and state were one, and that one was the church. Every one s conduct was closely watched by the elders, and discipline administered for the most trifling offences. Robert Keane, a shop keeper in Boston, was brought before the court of assistants because he charged too high for his goods. They fined him a hundred pounds and were greatly horrified at his conduct. A minority of the court suggested that there was no law regulating profits, that it was common practice the world over to sell for as high a price as people would give, and that hundreds of others were as guilty as Keane. But it was of 136 Puritans and Philosophy no avail. When the court had finished with him he was turned over to the church. He knew that there was only one safe course for him, and before both the court and the church he confessed his sin and with many tears be wailed his covetous and corrupt heart. At every opportunity they raised some ques tion of religion and discussed it threadbare, and the more fine-spun and subtle it was the more it delighted them. Governor Winthrop s jour nal is full of such questions as whether there could be an indwelling of the Holy Ghost in a believer without a personal union ; whether it was lawful even to associate or have dealings with idolaters like the French ; whether women should wear veils. On the question of veils, Roger Williams was in favor of them ; but John Cotton one morning argued so powerfully on the other side that in the afternoon the women all came to church without them. On one occasion Governor Winthrop paid a visit of state to Bradford, the governor at Plymouth. The journey from Boston to Ply mouth can now be performed within two hours; but Winthrop spent two days on it, and was carried across the streams on the shoulders of Indians. Arrived at Plymouth, all repaired to church in the evening, and a religious question was started in honor of the distinguished guests. 137 Puritans and Philosophy Many of the congregation spoke to it, and then the visitors were asked to speak. The governors were usually preachers, and the judges preached and prayed with the crimi nals. And such sermons ! When a Puritan preached he threw his whole soul and mind and body into his subjeft. It was no uncommon thing for a man to preach for several hours in the morning and have his congregation return in the afternoon to hear the sermon finished. Sometimes the sermons were serial. The min ister would take up a subjeft and preach on it Sunday after Sunday until it was exhausted ; and an able and learned Puritan could exhaust any thing except the patience of his audience. Besides the sermons, there were at first four Ie6lures a week ; but it was found that people neglefted their affairs to attend the lectures, and they were reduced to two a week. Afterwards Thursday was lefture day for a great many years, and regarded almost as a second Sunday. Church meetings were so often prolonged far into the night that the assistants tried to have them break up early, so that people who lived at a distance could get home by daylight. In crossing the ocean to America the Puritans would set the watch with a psalm and a prayer ; and it is said that on board the Griffin there were three sermons a day. 133 Puritans and Philosophy Every form of amusement was of course for bidden, and even to have in one s possession a pack of cards or a set of dice was a criminal offence. They had no objection to wine ; and in later colonial times hard drinking was very common, even among the ministers; but they were very much opposed to health drinking, which was too jovial and pleasant to suit their gloomy principles. Through nearly all their journals and writ ings there runs a bitter, disappointed tone, mingled with a melancholy self-righteousness. One can almost hear their nasal drawl which in England was so disgusting to the Royalists and Cavaliers, who gave them the name malignants, which was in many respects an exact description. In the Puritan commonwealth there was, of course, no freedom of speech. Hugh Bewett was banished for maintaining that he was free from original sin, and that a true Christian could, after a time, live without committing sin. Philip Ratcliffe was whipped, fined forty pounds, banished, and lost his ears for uttering what were called scandalous speeches against the govern ment. A woman, named Oliver, maintained that the magistrates and ministers together had the power to ordain ministers ; that all who dwell in the same town and confess the same faith 139 Puritans and Philosophy should be received at the communion. She also defined excommunication in her own way. For these harmless beliefs she was imprisoned. She afterwards reproached the assistants and was whipped. Winthrop remarks that she stood without tying and bore her punishment with a masculine spirit. She also spoke evil of the ministers, and for that had a cleft stick put on her tongue for half an hour. Any one arriving in the colony and suspefted of false doftrine was examined, and, if found unsound, was banished ; and to prevent the secret presence of heretics there was a law for bidding any one to entertain strangers without permission from the assistants. Winthrop s Journal and the court records are full of ac counts of fines, imprisonments, and whippings for all sorts of trifling differences of opinion. And yet, in spite of all this precaution and severity, heresy increased. In 1637, only seven years after the arrival of the Puritans, a con vention held at Newtown found that there were in the colony eighty-two damnable errors. Their minds, from constantly working on their consciences and exaggerating every subtle thought, were filled with gloomy terror. They believed in devils, signs, and portents. An upturned boat, a chance expression in a sermon, a dream, or any trifling incident might drive them into 140 Puritans and Philosophy morbidness and depression. Winthrop tells of a man who cried out in the night, " Art thou come, Lord Jesus ?" sprang from the window and ran through the snow, falling on his knees and praying at intervals until he died. Other diaries relate the terrible inward strug gles of imaginary guilt, or fear of damnation, which many were fond of describing at length for their own and others edification. We often read in their diaries such passages as " Great dulness and deadness was in my heart. I am in despair of my salvation." A man seized with one of these feelings would often shut himself alone in his room and remain for days battling with the demon of his imagination, and per haps come out with the resolve that he would be a minister of the church. Sewall describes a large congregation who were so moved by the preaching of their min ister that they all cried out, unable to contain themselves ; and his description of the troubles of his daughter Betty reveals how this terrible religion often worked on the minds of the young : " A little while after dinner she burst out into an amazing cry, which caused all the family to cry too. Her mother asked the reason j she gave none. At last said she was afraid she should goe to Hell ; her sins were not pardoned. She was first wounded by my reading a sermon 141 Puritans and Philosophy of Mr. Norton s, Text, ye shall seek me and shall not find me. And those words in the sermon, ye shall seek me and die in your sins ran in her mind and terrified her greatly . . . told me she was afraid she should go to Hell, was like Spira not elected." Nathaniel Mather, when a mere boy, wrote in his diary, " Of the manifold sins which then I was guilty of none so sticks upon me as that being very young I was whitling on the Sabbath day; and for fear of being seen I did it be hind the door. A great reproach of Goa." This morbid youth, who in Virginia would have been hunting wild horses and foxes, is said to have prayed in his sleep, made long lists of sins and things forbidden, " chewed much on excellent sermons," read the Bible, and " obliged himself to fetch a note and prayer out of each verse ;" but he lived in the deepest despair, full of " blasphemous imaginations and horrible conceptions of God," and died at the age of nineteen. Living under such terrible repression, their human instin6ls sought pleasure in public con fessions of guilt and a morbid prying into one another s consciences, which supplied the place of amusements. Adulterers described in church before the congregation all the details of their offence in a way which no doubt brought a large audience ; and confessions of error in dodlrine, 142 Puritans and Philosophy made with tears and groanings of spirit, were also of great interest and satisfaction. A criminal condemned to execution was a choice opportunity that was never neglected. The poor wretch was visited in his cell in turn by the ministers, who probed his fears and con science with their tireless skill, and on Sunday he was placed in the front seat of the church and preached at for hours. His crime was en larged upon and explained and the dreadful tor ments that awaited him in hell foretold. At the scaffold, to which he was drawn limp and trembling in a cart, a great crowd of men and women was collected, there were more prayers and preaching, and the prisoner was ex pected to break down and confess in terror, while the women shrieked and fainted. We can easily sympathize with the women who in defiance of public sentiment sometimes leaped upon the cart to ride with the prisoner to his awful doom ; and it is gratifying to know that when the seven pirates were executed in Boston, one of them was proof against all the efforts of the ministers, refused to go to church, jumped into the cart with a bouquet in his but ton-hole, and was drawn to the gallows bowing and smiling at the crowd. The Puritans extraordinary system of govern ment was not established without protest. Many 143 Puritans and Philosophy of the disfranchised majority were dissatisfied with their position, and complaints of all sorts were sent to England. Robert Child and some others ventured to present a petition to the assembly asking to have the laws of England ad ministered, which was their guarded way of complaining that none but church members could vote, hold office, and sit on juries. They also complained that they were heavily taxed without being allowed a voice in the government, and could not establish churches of their own. Child and several of the petitioners were arrested and fined ; and when Child was about to leave for England, his papers were searched and one found which declared that the Puritans had forfeited their charter and were guilty of treason. For this he was again arrested to pre vent his return to England. A young man named Joy, who asked one of the marshals if his warrant was in the king s name, was put in irons. But he understood the saintly character, humbled himself, confessed sin, blessed God for the irons on his legs, and was discharged. The reason for this severity against Child and the other petitioners was that they were capable of arousing the disfranchised majority, which could have wrecked the Puritan commonwealth or have brought down on it the vengeance of the British crown, and this was also one of the 144 Puritans and Philosophy principal reasons for the banishment in 1636 of Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island. Williams was an out-and-out separatist, who made no pretence of being still within the Church of England. He belonged to the class of people who at that time were called seekers. They believed that all church organization and government had been utterly corrupted during the Middle Ages, and they were seeking or wait ing for a new and true dispensation. In the case of most people whose minds were set free by the Reformation we find that their ideas very soon crystallized again, and settled down into some hard-and-fast form. This was notably true of the New England Puritans. But Roger Williams was altogether different ; his ideas always remained in solution ; he seemed to be attempting to carry out every thought that came to him. He was one of a small body of ration alists who had succeeded in getting almost entirely free from dogmatism. He had had a university education, and was a man of some little knowledge in theology, an ardent lover of controversy, and a hard hitter, with a good vocabulary of inveftive. He rarely spoke without using some rough words. He feared neither the wilderness nor the Indians. He made most praiseworthy attempts to learn what he called the barbarous, rocky speech of VOL. I. 10 145 Puritans and Philosophy the savages and convert them ; and he tells us of the wearisome days and nights he passed in their filthy, smoky wigwams. On one occasion he went alone and unarmed among the Narra- gansett warriors when they were on the war path, and persuaded them not to join the Pequods against the Puritans who had banished him. His individuality was strong, and he could endure no rule or control but his own. Some of his opinions, especially those on religious liberty, were far in advance of his times, and the rest were mere eccentricities and hair-split tings. He was opposed to the oath of allegiance, because an oath, he said, was part of God s wor ship and establishment, and ought not to be ad ministered to any mortal, whether good or bad. He held also that a man ought not to pray with the unregenerate, even if they were his wife and children. The argument that was used to confute him on this point is a good illustration of the close way in which the Puritans reasoned about the smallest matters : " If it be unlawful to call an unregenerate person to pray, since it is an action of God s worship, then it is un lawful for your unregenerate child to pray for a blessing on his own meat. If it be unlawful for him to pray for a blessing upon his meat, it is unlawful for him to eat it, for it is sanctified by prayer, and without prayer, unsanclified. (i Tim. iv. 4, 5.) If it be unlawful for him to eat it, it 146 Puritans and Philosophy is unlawful for you to call upon him to eat it, for it is un lawful for you to call upon him to sin. Hereupon Mr. Williams chose to hold his peace rather than make any answer : Such the giddiness, the confusion, the autocracy of that sectarian spirit." (Magnalia, Book 7.) He complained of the charter because it de scribed King James as the first Christian prince who had discovered New England, and because it took the land from the Indians without paying them for it. The Puritans, he said, should all go back to England and begin over again, or else make a public acknowledgment of their repent ance, and he tried to have a letter signed and sent to the king admitting the wickedness of the charter. The Puritans, he said, should also make a public repentance of having been in communion with the Church of England. Their combined government of church and state was all wrong, and confused politics with religion. Compelling people to attend public worship was a law to en force hypocrisy. It was ridiculous to seleft pub lic officers solely from church members. Would you, he said, seleft your doctor or your pilot ac cording to his theology ? The captain of a ship demands no compulsory prayers from his crew, and yet he maintains order and follows his course through the seas. And, finally, he declared that it was wrong to punish for religious error. Puritans and Philosophy This was too much for the Puritans, and it is rather remarkable that they endured Williams long enough to argue with him, for his prin ciples struck at the foundation of their whole system. He was ordered out of the colony ; and remaining on one excuse or another, they were about to seize him and send him back to England ; but he fled away to Rhode Island through the winter snow. There has been much controversy as to the exadl reasons for banishing him, and some writers have denied that it was for his belief in religious liberty. The colony was at that time, they say, in danger of an Indian war, required unity among its people, and Williams was a dis turber of the peace. No doubt his arguments tended to arouse the disfranchised majority, and the ministers, fearing this, were the more anxious to banish him. It is not likely that he was banished for any one opinion, but for all of them, and his advocacy of religious liberty would have been in itself enough. There is no question that the Puritans were opposed to liberty of conscience. Their denial of it was the foundation of their system. It was preached against in Massachusetts as the cause of all immorality, and nearly every emi nent man has left his written protest against it. It was called an evil egg, Satan s plea, hypocrisy. 148 Puritans and Philosophy Nathaniel Ward called it hell above ground ; it was, he said, one of the things his heart de tested ; and the Puritan oligarchy believed that its enforcement would ruin them. The Puritans had by no means accepted all the ideas of the Reformation. They retained a large share of medievalism, and among other things the dogma of exclusive salvation. Like Luther and Calvin, they still clung to the belief of the Roman Church, that there must neces sarily be some one set of doctrines which would save all who accepted them and damn all who rejected them. After Roger Williams went to Rhode Island, John Cotton had a long contro versy with him on this question of toleration, and the arguments show how the men of that age were struggling with the subject. Williams cited the parable of the tares which were allowed to grow up with the wheat until the harvest, also the instance where Christ re buked his disciples for suggesting that he should call down fire from heaven to destroy the Samaritans who would not receive him, and several other passages from Scripture which ap parently imply a command not to persecute. He quoted the words of a number of famous princes and rulers who had announced them selves on the side of religious liberty, notably Stephen of Poland, who said, " I am king of 149 Puritans and Philosophy men, not of consciences ; a commander of bodies, not of souls." He also quoted passages from the fathers of the church, from Hilary, Tertullian, Jerome, Augustine, and several others, to the effect that Christianity should spread itself by the spirit and the word and not by the sword. The heathen, the Turks, and the Persians, said Williams, seldom persecute. He gave instances from ancient history and from the Old Testa ment where men have tolerated opposing re ligions ; and he reminded Cotton that although the Indians worshipped devils, the Puritans never persecuted them, but reserved their intol erance for their own brethren and fellow-coun trymen. Cotton astutely replied that what kings had said was no rule for the church of God, for kings often for the sake of policy tolerated heresies, and for every king Williams could name as in favor of religious liberty he could name a score who had put to death every heretic in their kingdoms. The commands of Christ to be gentle and tolerant were addressed only to the disciples, and the opinions of the fathers of the church referred to dealings with the heathen who had never enjoyed the light ; but such precepts could have no application to Christians who, knowing the truth, deliberately went astray. 150 Puritans and Philosophy The rulers of Massachusetts, Cotton said, never punished the Indians, who had been born in darkness and ignorance, for not accepting Christianity. They punished only those who, having been enlightened, sinned against what they knew to be true ; and they always warned them of their error before the punishment was inflifted. If, after fair warning, they still per sisted, their punishment could not be called persecution for conscience sake, but for sinning against conscience. These arguments of Cotton seem now absurd enough ; but at that time they were accepted not merely by the fanatical and cruel, but by tender women, magnanimous men, the senti mental and the timid as well as the strong. To the people of that age, living under the dominion of the doctrine of exclusive salvation, a man who would dare deny the truth of a sys tem which alone could save the soul, a man who would dare to lead others from that system and thus insure their everlasting torment in hell, could not be honest and sincere ; he was a pest, a danger which must be hunted down and stamped out as if he were a wolf or a snake. The belief in religious liberty advanced during the Reformation in exa6l proportion as the be lief in the doctrine of exclusive salvation was weakened, because men who really and thor- Puritans and Philosophy oughly believe in exclusive salvation must neces sarily persecute those who do not, and it is their evident duty to persecute them. We can scarcely realize now what the old belief in exclusive salvation really was; but in the Middle Ages men accepted it not only as a belief but as a faft, just as to-day we know that the sun will rise to-morrow and are willing to risk our lives or fortunes on that event. Wil liams, having lost faith in every form of religion of his age, and believing the ordinances of every church to be invalid, had necessarily no confi dence in the doftrine of exclusive salvation, and hence his belief in religious liberty. He had hardly been in banishment a year before the colony began to be troubled by the prominence of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson. She was the sort of woman who would now be very welcome and popular in Massachusetts ; but, unfortunately, she appeared about two hundred years before that good State was ready to receive her. She was a person of energy, force of character, and must have been possessed of con siderable accomplishment and charm ; but it is not probable that she was handsome, or it would have been mentioned in some of the writings of the time as one of the marks of Satan. Like Roger Williams and many others who annoyed the Puritans, she led a life of righteous- 152 Puritans and Philosophy ness and good deeds, and this her worst enemies have never denied or questioned. She exerted herself chiefly in caring for her own sex in sick ness and in childbirth ; and it is probable that she made use of these occasions for inculcating her religious opinions. She took advantage of the weekly meetings for discussion held by the men, and persuaded the women of Boston to hold similar meetings of their own, a praftice which they have not entirely forgotten. Mrs. Hutchinson s heresy consisted in a per version of the doftrine of justification by faith. She held that the fadl: of justification was known by an inward feeling and not by works. She was called an Antinomian, a very terrible word in those days, like infidel in later times. It described those who trusted to their own mind and intention and were more or less independent of regularly organized churches and works, as they were called, which among the Puritans in cluded sanctimonious speech, sour looks, groans and reproaches, and an austere routine of life. Good works, Mrs. Hutchinson said, were often the result of justification ; but the inward feeling of comfort and assurance was the es sential and only true proof, while forms and observances were not only unimportant but likely to mislead. In other words, she was drifting towards the doctrine of the inward 153 Puritans and Philosophy light afterwards adopted by the Quakers, and her reliance on individual feeling and intuition was very much like the foundation principle of the transcendental school of Emerson which two hundred years afterwards appeared in Boston. But the rulers of Massachusetts in the year 1637 did not want any light of this sort, for a person who relied on this inward feeling might come to believe anything. His conscience might some day tell him that it was wrong for the civil magistrate to punish for heresy, and that the Puritan combination of church and state was unsound. But in spite of Puritan opinion this woman s doftrine, which has in all ages fascinated and comforted millions, began to run riot in the colony. It started with the women, but soon spread to the men. She was a far more dan gerous heretic than Roger Williams. He had formed no party, and had had scarcely ten fol lowers. But the American Jezebel, as she was called, won to her side nearly every member of the church of Boston, young .Henry Vane, who was then governor of the colony, and many of the leading ministers. Massachusetts was divided into two parties, the party of the covenant of works and the party of the covenant of grace. The grace party were most numerous in Boston, where 154 Puritans and Philosophy Mrs. Hutchinson lived, but the smaller towns and the country at large held to the old belief. The controversy grew bitter and divided families ; the children in the streets took sides and quarrelled with one another ; people went about from church to church to listen to the ministers and report their leaning, and after the sermon was finished these inspectors would often rise up and ask questions. The men of Boston who had acquired the new light were so much in earnest that they refused to march against the Pequods because the chaplain of the expedition was tainted with a covenant of works. Wheelwright, the most prominent of the ministers on Mrs. Hutchinson s side, was tried and banished. Cotton was suspefted and was more than half guilty. Mrs. Hutchinson always expressed great admiration for him, and declared that she had followed him to the colony to be under his preaching. He managed, however, to twist himself out of the difficulty. He com plained that he had been grossly slandered, and that his enemies had drawn from his words in ferences which he never intended. It is hard to tell exaftly what he believed ; but he prob ably held that the inward feeling and the good works were both necessary, and this shade of difference saved him. 155 Puritans and Philosophy But it is useless to follow all the disputes and refinements of the excitement, for the ministers got Mrs. Hutchinson before them and began to badger and probe. She was singularly astute in evading them, and when they asked her if she was not a very seditious and unruly woman, promptly replied that if they had any charges to make against her they must prove them. Winthrop was finally driven to exclaim that they knew perfectly well what her opinions were, although they could not catch her in them, and one of the court expressed a fear that they would starve to death before they could finish with the lady. But at last, to their unspeakable delight, the viftim admitted in an unguarded moment that she had revelations and believed in them. Even this was rendered a little obscure by Cotton, who suggested that some revelations could be orthodox and according to the word. But the majority of the court understood her to mean that she had inspirations and an individual light independent of the churches ; and this was enough. Indi vidual revelations were a terrible heresy ; for, said the Puritans, they might lead a person any where. When the court had finished with her she was placed in charge of Welde for the winter. At his house she remained for three or four months, 156 Puritans and Philosophy resorted to by many of the people and carefully cross-examined by the ministers, who took notes of her answers. Finally, when spring was near at hand, the ministers announced that they had entangled her in twenty-nine errors, and these errors were made the basis of her trial by the church. She held her own so well in this trial that she was taken to Cotton s house, where she remained a week, again beset and pried into. This time they were successful, and she appeared at her second church trial completely broken down, admitted her errors, and made one of the regu lation confessions of sin. For a long time she had supplied the lack of theatre, ball-room, and horse-race, and the min isters had taken as great a satisfaction in her trial as the Virginians in a bull-baiting or a cock-fight. She was excommunicated and ban ished, and her followers banished or disfran chised, disarmed, and fined. This severity was necessary, for the Anti- nomians were so numerous that at one election they had almost got possession of the govern ment. But they were most thoroughly stamped out, some of the women among them accused of having given birth to monsters, and their reputa tions vilified. Mrs. Hutchinson went to Rhode Island and 157 Puritans and Philosophy afterwards moved near New York, where she and nearly her whole family were massacred by the Indians, the just vengeance of God, as Winthrop said, for her heresies. But one of her descendants lived to be the royal governor of Massachusetts at the time of the Revolution. Twenty years after the Antinomians had been disposed of the Puritans were compelled to face a still greater evil. The Quakers became a dis- tincl seel: about the year 1650, and soon after began to appear in Massachusetts. If there was anything that the aggressive, fighting, learned, intolerant Puritan detested it was a Quaker with his ways of peace, his devotion to religious liberty, and his indifference to learning as an essential of religion ; and yet the men of war who had withstood the Antinomians and Roger Williams and driven them from the province found themselves powerless against this new form of meekness. The first Quakers who arrived in Massachu setts were two women, who were imprisoned, starved, stripped naked and searched for witch- marks, and finally banished to the Barbadoes. Other arrivals were treated with similar se verity, and a fine of a hundred pounds was inflicted for bringing a Quaker within the juris diction. If a Quaker returned to the colony after having been banished, he should for the 158 Puritans and Philosophy first offence lose one of his ears, and for the second offence his other ear ; a woman was to be whipped for both offences ; and for a third offence the culprit, whether man or woman, was to have the tongue bored through with a red-hot iron. Under this law no one had his tongue bored, but three Quakers lost their ears ; and another law was soon passed which inflicled the penalty of death if a Quaker returned from banishment. Under this law four of the se6l were hung. One of them was a woman, Mary Dyer, who some years before had been a follower of Mrs. Hutchinson, and having settled in Rhode Island, had, like many of the Antinomians, become a Quaker. Returning to Boston as a preacher of her new faith, she was banished, and when she appeared again was led out with due formality to the gal lows and the halter put round her neck ; but at the last moment she was pardoned at the inter cession of her son. She went back to Rhode Island, but was dissatisfied. She felt that she had adled a weak part ; and, without the knowl edge of her husband, William Dyer, a very prominent man in the Rhode Island colony, she came again to Boston, and this time the saints succeeded in strangling her. These persecutions of the Quakers were in- 59 Puritans and Philosophy flifted by a minority of the colony. Even in the House of Deputies, where the feelings of the dominant party were very strong, the law punishing the Quakers with death was passed by a majority of only one vote. If Massachusetts had had universal suffrage, like Virginia, we should never have heard of the Quaker massacre. But the General Court, headed by Governor Endicott and the ministers under the lead of John Norton, held the power and did what they pleased. When the Quakers were executed, great pre cautions had to be taken to prevent an uprising of the community and a rescue. After the exe cution of Mary Dyer there was great indignation, with many threats of violence. The victims were always marched to the gallows surrounded by soldiers, and when they attempted to speak their voices were drowned by the beat of drums. Armed men were stationed in different parts of the town to guard against a surprise ; the church members were kept up to the killing mark by fiery sermons on the passages from the Old Testament that justified killing unbelievers, and the argument was freely used that as it would be lawful to slay a man who brought into the town a pestilence which destroyed the body, how much more for a pestilence that destroyed the soul ! 160 Puritans and Philosophy The hanging business was soon found to have been overdone, for the indignation against it became very great, and in place of it a law was passed by which Quakers were to be stripped to the waist and whipped at the cart s tail through every town until they reached the bor der. Thirty men and women were whipped under this law by sentence of the General Court, and a much larger number by sentence of the county courts. An Indian, to whose wigwam a banished Quaker fled, exclaimed, " What a God have the English !" The Antinomian difficulty had been disposed of within a year, but this contest with the Quakers was war to the death, and extended over a period of ten years. The Quakers be came very numerous, and a large part of them were converted Puritans. Whittier, the poet, was a descendant of one of these Puritans con verted to the way of peace. They were so fearless and persistent that they wore out the endurance of the ministers, and finally were let alone. They lived at peace side by side with their enemies, and that was the last of religious persecution in New England. The meek Quaker had triumphantly enforced his lesson of religious liberty, and the funda mental principle of the Puritan commonwealth was destroyed. VOL. I. u 161 Puritans and Philosophy Another blow soon followed. Massachusetts, as we have seen, was in effeft almost independent of Great Britain, and up to the time of the Quaker massacre the condition of things in Eng land was favorable to the colonists. From the founding of the second colony in 1630 until the restoration of Charles II. in 1660, England was struggling with her great revolution. The mo mentous events which occupied the attention of Charles I. and of Cromwell gave them no time to consider the affairs of a little colony three thousand miles away, and Cromwell, being him self a Puritan, was favorably inclined towards Massachusetts. But her independent attitude was well known, and repeated demands were made for the surrender of her liberal charter that it might be cancelled. At last the restora tion came, and when Charles II. mounted the throne the Puritans, foreseeing their doom, held days of fasting and prayer. Charles demanded that the Book of Common Prayer should be permitted to those who de sired it, that the religious test for the right to vote should be abolished, and that writs should run in the king s name. As the last require ment was a mere formality, the Puritans adopted it and disregarded all the others. Proceedings were begun to forfeit the charter, and, although they were delayed for many years, the end came 162 Puritans and Philosophy in 1684, when the charter was cancelled, and Massachusetts became a royal province under the direct rule of the king. Sir Edmund Andros, who came out as the royal governor, ruled the colony as he pleased, seized the Old South Church for Church of England services, compelled land-owners to take out new patents and pay new fees, and with the aid of his council levied taxes as he thought proper. After four years of this rule, when William of Orange landed in England to drive James II. from the throne, the Puritans seized the opportunity to rebel. They rose almost as one man, seized Andros and his officers, sent them back to England, and took possession of the colonial government for themselves. They sent agents to England to obtain a favorable charter from William ; but the charter he finally granted abolished the religious restraint on the suffrage, and gave the right to vote to every inhabitant who had property above a cer tain value. This alone was enough to destroy the Puritan oligarchy. But the charter went further, and abolished every principle that was dear to the Puritan heart. Liberty of conscience was given to all but Papists, appeals to England were allowed, and the oath of allegiance to Massachusetts was done away with and the English oath put in its place. 163 Puritans and Philosophy By this charter the Plymouth colony was ab sorbed into Massachusetts, and she was also given Maine and Nova Scotia as part of her territory. Each one of these districts was to be represented in the upper house of her legis lature very much as the States of the Union are now represented in the Senate.^ The governor was appointed by the king ; he could assemble the assistants at his pleasure, and could at his pleasure dissolve the General Court ; he had the right of veto on every law, and the king also had the right of veto at any time within three years after the passage of a law. From this time until the Revolution Massa chusetts was held down with an iron hand. The attempt to establish extreme Puritanism in a colony ruling itself without interference from England had been moderately successful for about fifty years, which forms the first period of Massachusetts history. In the next period, from about 1680 until the Revolu tion of 1776, we find the power of the min isters gradually declining, and Puritanism be coming less and less peculiar and intolerant. But in the beginning of this period occurred a last outburst of some of the most peculiar characteristics of Puritanism, and a frantic at- * Evolution of the Constitution, pp. 63, 125. 164 Puritans and Philosophy tempt of the ministers to regain their waning power, which is known as the Salem Witchcraft. The Puritans were extremely superstitious, and still held to the old mediaeval belief in devils and evil spirits. As their religion taught them to see in human nature only depravity and corruption, so in the outward nature by which they were surrounded they saw forewarnings and signs of doom and dread. Where the modern mind now refreshes itself in New England with the beauties of the sea-shore, the forest, and the sunset, the Puritan saw only threatenings of terror. The Greek gave every stream and mountain its graceful god or nymph who took a kindly interest in mankind, but the Puritan s imagination peopled every aspecl of nature with his deadly enemy the devil. Such people were in a state of mind to receive any strange delusion, and one of the worst delu sions of those days was a belief in witchcraft, which at that time had begun to be doubted ; but there was still enough of it in the air to infeft the Puritans. In former times no se6l of religion and no class of life had been free from it, more than four thousand books had been written about it, it had assailed the highest intellects as well as the lowest, and Sprenger estimates that in the fifteenth century one hundred thousand persons 165 Puritans and Philosophy were executed for it in Germany alone, and that during the Christian epoch nine million men and women had been put to death for this supposed crime. Those who doubted were reminded of the witch of Endor in the Old Tes tament and of the laws of Moses against witch craft. In the books of the Middle Ages it is asserted over and over again that to doubt the existence of witchcraft is to deny the Holy Scriptures and to refuse confidence in the gen eral belief of all mankind. The belief in witchcraft might have lain dor mant in Massachusetts, and not resulted in the killing of witches, but for Cotton Mather and the ministers, who saw an opportunity to regain their importance by arousing it. Cotton Mather was the son of Increase Mather, and on his mother s side was descended from John Cotton,* who had been the leading minister of the colony, long and minute in * When Cotton Mather was graduated at Harvard, President Oakes, in his Latin oration, said, " Mather is named Cotton Mather. What a name ! But, my hear ers, I confess I am wrong ; I should have said, What names ! I shall say nothing of his reverend father, since I dare not praise him to his face 5 but should he resemble and represent his venerable grandfathers, John Cotton and Richard Mather, in piety, learning, elegance of mind, solid judgment, prudence, and wisdom, he will bear away the palm." (Sparks, vi. p. 172.) 1 66 Puritans and Philosophy preaching, and humble in confessing his errors when the cross-examination of a n opponent or a congregation drove him to the wall. It was he who, when asked why he indulged in nocturnal studies, replied that before he went to sleep he liked to sweeten his mouth with a piece of Calvin, a rather hot morsel, as Dr. Holmes has said. One of his best-known books was called " Spiritual Milk for Babes, Drawn out of the Breasts of both Testaments, for their Souls Comfort and of Great Use for Children." Cotton Mather, the final result of these two generations of Puritanism, was himself even more than an epitome of Puritanism, for he was Puritanism gone mad. Ingenious and learned, with boundless industry, able to labor sixteen hours of the twenty-four ; the author of three hundred and eighty-two books, written with all the fulsomeness, unftion, and cant of his faith ; superstitious, vain, and arrogant, he was the most conspicuous figure of his time in New England. He fasted for days at a time ; he would lie flat on his face for hours on the floor of his study, praying and waiting for intimations and voices from heaven. In order to stimulate the belief in witchcraft he related instances of it which he professed to consider well authenticated. A woman with her husband going over the river in a canoe, 167 Puritans and Philosophy they saw the head of a man, and about three feet off the tail of a cat, swimming before the canoe, but no body to join them. A long staff danced up and down in the chimney, and after wards was hung by a line and swung to and fro. A chair flew about the room until it lit upon the table where the meat stood. A man was taken out of his bed and thrown under it, and all the knives in the house, one after another, stuck into his back, which the spectators pulled out; but one of them seemed to the spectators to come out of his mouth. In this way Mather and the ministers excited minds already terrorized by a belief in the con stant presence of the devil and his angels, which had been dinned into their ears in every imagi nable form from childhood. They were soon ready to see anything and believe anything : the yellow bird that lit on men s hats, the black man that whispered in their ears, the riding on sticks through the air, the written contracts with the devil, the signing of his book, and the feasts of the devil with the witches, where the sac raments of the church were blasphemously imi tated. The ministers soon had the opportunity they wanted. In the year 1688 two girls about thir teen years old began to mew like cats, bark like dogs, pretend to lose their hearing and sight, 1 68 Puritans and Philosophy scream when rebuked by their parents, and went through other performances of strange postures for which they should have been whipped. After a day of fasting and prayer they were pro nounced bewitched, and a poor washerwoman with whom they had quarrelled was hung. Cotton Mather took one of the girls to his home to study her at leisure, and she made a complete fool of him, stopped her ears when he prayed, refused to read the Bible or any Puritan book, but took great delight in a jest book, Popish books, and in the Church of Eng land Prayer-Book. She also cleverly told him that Satan dreaded him, and that when he prayed the devils made her kick and sing and yell. Mather and the other ministers now began to write and circulate pamphlets on the subject, and in about four years the minds of all the people were so wrought upon that the slaughter began. Informers swarmed. No one was safe ; the slightest peculiarity in manner, or an obscure chance remark that could be given a double meaning, was enough to secure a conviftion. Many who had lost some household article or cattle, or who had suffered a misfortune or sick ness, were allowed to relate their trouble before the court as evidence that one of their neigh bors had bewitched them. The evidence against 169 Puritans and Philosophy a minister named Burroughs was that he could lift up a barrel of molasses by the bung-hole, and hold a heavy gun at arm s length with his fingers in the muzzle. Even in this awful delusion the Puritan mind still worked by its close reasoning processes. The few who were opposed to punishing for witchcraft argued that it might be possible for a devil to get into a person and make a witch of him against his will. In punishing witchcraft there was therefore great danger of punishing the innocent. If an ordinary man, they said, does anything supernatural, it must be by aid of the devil. Those that are possessed are there fore bad witnesses, both against themselves and against others, because it is making a witness of the devil, who is well known to be a liar. If they testify as witches, all that they know must come from the devil, and if the root of their knowledge be the devil, what must their testi mony be ? But these arguments were of little avail. When a person was accused, his only hope of escape was in confession, and this process manu factured witches very fast. Children clung to their mother and begged her to confess and re turn to them ; wives besought their husbands to confess and not desolate their home. Many escaped by confessing, and years afterwards the 170 Puritans and Philosophy courts and the churches began to receive written retractions of these confessions which can be read to-day. Sad reading they are ; but along with them are papers which are sadder still ; these are the confessions of witnesses who by their lies and spite had caused the death of their neighbors. Giles Corey was at that time eighty years of age. When accused of witchcraft, he would neither confess nor plead to the indiftment. He knew himself to be innocent, and he despised a false confession. By the old English law a prisoner who refused to plead was pressed to death with weights. The Puritans were not much given to following the law of England ; but this law they thought exaftly suited Giles Corey s case, and accordingly the old man had rocks piled upon his stomach until he died. He begged his tormenters to increase the weight rapidly and end his misery, for there was, he assured them, no chance of changing his mind. When the weight forced his tongue from his mouth an attendant pushed it back with a cane. The killing time lasted about four months, from the first of June to the end of September, 1692, and then a reaftion came because the in formers began to strike at important persons, and named the wife of the governor. Twenty persons had been put to death, fifty had confessed 171 Puritans and Philosophy and escaped, one hundred and fifty were in prison waiting trial, and about two hundred more stood accused ; and if the delusion had lasted much longer, under the rules of evidence that were adopted, everybody in the colony except the magistrates and ministers would have been either hung or would have stood charged with witchcraft. In a short time all the people recovered from their madness, admitted their error, and laws were passed to prevent the recurrence of such a craze and to make some amends to the families of the victims. In 1697 the General Court ordered a day of fasting and prayer for what had been done amiss in " the late tragedy raised among us by Satan." Satan was the scapegoat, and nothing was said about the designs and motives of the ministers. Among the few who would not admit that they had been wrong were Cotton Mather, Parris, one of the ministers, and Stoughton, the chief- justice. Stoughton was so disgusted when he found that no more witches could be hung that he resigned from the court. Mather attempted to arouse the delusion again, and made public a story of a woman who could suspend herself in mid-air so that a strong man could not pull her down. But the time had passed, his reputation suffered, and he never again regained the respect 172 Puritans and Philosophy of the people. Parris, for a similar attempt, was dismissed by his congregation, and could never after obtain employment as a minister. After the witchcraft delusion had subsided, Puritanism steadily declined for the next hun dred years ; and Sewall, one of the judges who had taken part in many of the witchcraft trials, has left us a most voluminous diary which gives valuable glimpses of Puritan life about the year 1700. Sewall was very fond of going to funerals, to which people were invited in both England and some of the colonies by having a mourning scarf, a pair of gloves, or a ring sent to them. He was very proud of the rings and gloves he received in this way, and kept lists of them. When a funeral took place and no gloves or ring were received, he was much mortified ; but, on the whole, he seems to have been in demand for these truly Puritan entertainments, which in time were carried to such excess, and were accompanied by so much drinking, that a law had to be passed to check the extravagance. These funeral excesses seem to have pre vailed only in the colonies north of Maryland, and the Virginians and other Southerners, having abundance of other amusements, were exempt from the excess. In Massachusetts we read of one funeral costing six hundred pounds, which 173 Puritans and Philosophy was one-fifth of the man s estate. Families often had in their possession tankards and mugs full of rings which they had " made," as they ex pressed it, at funerals. One minister received in thirty-two years two thousand nine hundred and forty pairs of gloves, which he thriftily sold for six hundred pounds ; and Sewall in thirty- eight years had " made" fifty-seven rings. He had a great dislike for wigs, and was continually lecturing people for wearing them, using the most careful, close, and learned argu ments. But the most curious part of his diary is the account of his courtships. He had three wives. The first he lived with more than forty years, the second he married within two years after the death of the first, and he began to court a third within five months after the death of the second. This was characteristic of the Puritans. They married early and frequently. Families of twelve or thirteen children were not uncom mon ; and women unmarried at twenty-six or twenty-seven were considered irredeemable old maids. It was a natural state of society, in which marriage was the rule and children desired. Bachelors were carefully watched and treated almost as if they were incompetents or idiots. They were not allowed to live alone. Each one was assigned to a family, with whom he 174 Puritans and Philosophy lived and who were responsible for his keeping proper hours. When Sewall was courting for his third wife, he was sixty-eight years old. He and his son prayed together for success. This old beau gave his sweethearts books on theology, glazed almonds, meers cakes, and sometimes a quire of paper ; and he frequently mentions the exadl price of these presents. A lady who refused him gave as one of her reasons that she could not give up a course of leftures she was attending. He describes some of the details of his gallantry. "Asked her to acquit me of rudeness if I drew off her glove. Enquiring the reason, I told her twas great odds between handling a dead goat and a living lady. Got it off." In another passage he says, " Told her the reason why I came every other night was lest I should drink too deep draughts of Pleasure." When his suit became hopeless, he enters in his diary, " I did not bid her draw off her glove as some time I had done. Her dress was not so clean as sometime it had been, Jehovah Jireh !" The Puritans would not allow instrumental music in their churches, and sung the Psalms in a drawling tone to three or four old tunes, which on one occasion gave Sewall some diffi culty. 175 Puritans and Philosophy " Spake to me to set the tune : I intended Windsor and fell into High Dutch, and then essaying to set another tune went into a key much too high. So I prayed Mr. White to set it, which he did well, Litchf. Tune. The Lord humble me, that I should be occasion of any Interrup tion in the worship of God." (Sewall Papers, ii. p. 151.) The Psalms when sung were usually " lined," as it was called. The minister or clerk read a line, which was sung, and then the next line was read and sung. In this jerking way the drawling song proceeded through strange, dis torted verses into which they had translated the beautiful language of David : " Within their mouths doe thou their teeth break out o God most strong, doe thou Jehovah, the great teeth break, of the lions young." We have already described the religious mel ancholy so characteristic of the Puritans which seized SewalPs daughter Betty. It seems to have been brought about, however, without any pressure from her father. But on another of his children, a son, he worked and pried, ap pealing to the boy s natural fear of death until the poor child shrieked in terror. Strong people they must have been who even in youth could endure such strains upon their nerves. Sewall was, nevertheless, in many ways a kindly, good-hearted man in spite of his Puri- 176 Puritans and Philosophy tanism. But he was an extreme conservative, struggled hard to uphold ecclesiasticism, and looked back with longing to the old days of in tolerance. The presence of Quakers and Bap tists in the colony annoyed him, and he regretted that the innovation of modern ideas prevented their being dealt with. One Sunday morning he appeared in the Old South Church, handed a paper to the minister, and stood while it was read. The paper described the remorse he felt for the part he had taken in the Salem witch craft, and his conviftion that all the proceedings had been a dreadful mistake. Massachusetts life was altogether in towns, and the same system pervaded all the rest of New England. It grew out of the natural con ditions and the necessity of protection from the Indians.* The farms were small, and the farmers could easily live in a village and go out from it to till their fields. One of the old laws forbade any one to live more than a mile from the meeting house, and the reason for this law was probably partly religious and partly military. For the same reason, large trafts of wild land were at first seldom sold to individuals. A com pany would buy a traft, establish a village and * For the origin of the New England town system see " Evolution of the Constitution," p. 336. VOL. I. 12 177 Puritans and Philosophy township, and portion out the land. Every man had his town lot and his farm lot with certain rights in the common. Massachusetts developed and spread herself into the wilderness by means of these village communities, the very oppo site of the large plantation life of Virginia. The township and not the county was the unit of government. Each town was an instance of pure democracy, and the system increased the activity of mind and the united feeling of the people. The inhabitants of the town met together in a body, usually in their church building, eledled their treasurer and selectmen, arranged the assessment of taxes, voted appropriations, and the legislature of the prov ince was composed of representatives from these towns. John Dunton, in his " Letters from New England," gives us some of the punishments in Massachusetts in the year 1686. For cursing and swearing the tongue was bored through with a hot iron. Scolds were gagged and sat at their own doors for all comers and goers to gaze at. For kissing a woman in the street, though but in way of civil salute, whipping or a fine. A white woman who indulged herself in an In dian lover had the figure of an Indian cut out in red cloth sewed upon her right arm and was compelled to wear it a year. 178 Puritans and Philosophy In regard to kissing on the street, which was considered a great indecency, Burnaby, in his " Travels in America in 1759," relates that the captain of a British man-of-war, which was em ployed to cruise off the Massachusetts coast, left his wife in Boston. On one of his visits to the town she came down to the wharf to meet him, and was saluted by her husband as a true and loving sailor s wife deserved. But he was immediately brought before the magistrates, who ordered him to be whipped, and he was obliged to submit to the punishment. Whipping was not then the disgrace it is now ; the people seem to have thought as lightly of it as if they were English school-boys; and the captain soon be came quite popular in the town, attending ban quets and pleasure-parties, and entertained even by the very magistrates who had ordered him to be whipped. When the time of his departure arrived he gave a farewell entertainment on board his ship. Just as she was on the point of sailing, and after every one had shaken hands with him and was going over the side, the magistrates were seized by the crew and stripped to the waist. Each one was led to the gangway, where the boatswain gave him forty save one on his bare back, and then hustled him over into the boat amid the cheers of the whole ship s company. 179 Puritans and Philosophy When we read the writings of the leading Puritans we are led to infer that they were very strift moralists, and intended to allow of no irregularities among married or single people. Apparently their stri&ness was necessary but of course it is extremely difficult, especially in the absence of statistics, to know what was the real state of affairs. In nearly all the colonies there appear to have been violent efforts made by the religious bodies to put down incontinence among the unmarried. The records of the Quaker meetings in Pennsyl vania in colonial times are filled with instances of discipline administered to young people for this offence, and we find the same in Massachu setts among the Puritans. Dunton tells us that there hardly passed a court day but some were convifted, and although the punishment was fine and whipping, the crime was very frequent. For the same offence by a married person the punishment was death ; and it may be said that, as a general rule, in all the colonies married life was very safely guarded. Married women usually became prudes and retired from all amuse ments and pleasures, while a great deal of liberty was allowed to the unmarried girls. There was a method of courtship which pre vailed in Massachusetts among the lower orders of the people, which was called tarrying or 1 80 Puritans and Philosophy bundling, and it was certainly either very inno cent or very criminal. It was common in other parts of New England, in the valley of the Hudson, in New Jersey, and among the Ger mans of Pennsylvania, and is described with some detail in the Rev. Dr. Burnaby s " Travels in America." We shall have more to say of it when we come to Connecticut. Dunton has some further observations on Massachusetts manners in 1686, and expresses himself rather violently : " For lying and cheating they outveye Judas, and all the false other cheats in Hell. Nay they make sport of it : Looking upon cheating as a commendable piece of ingenuity, commending him that has the most skill to commit a piece of Roguery ; which in their dialed! (like those of our Yea-and-Nay-Friends in England) they call by the genteel name of Out- Witting a Man, and won t own it to be cheating." (" Letters from New England," Prince Society edition, 73.) This statement must, of course, have been a gross exaggeration. The Puritans were no doubt very sharp at a bargain, and bargaining was one of the amusements they allowed themselves. No doubt some of them had amused themselves in this way with Dunton. He was a phrase-maker and fond of strong sensational assertions. He afterwards qualified his statement by saying, " For amongst all this Dross there runs here 181 Puritans and Philosophy and there a vein of pure gold. And though the Generality are what I have described em, yet is there as sincere a pious and truly a Re ligious People among them, as is any where in the Whole World to be found." But although his first assertion is too strong, there seems to have been some ground for it. The mass of the Puritans were undoubtedly over-sharp, and John Adams himself complained of it. At the time of the Revolution, when on his way to the Continental Congress in Philadel phia, he met General Alexander McDougall in New York, and says of him in his diary, " He is a very sensible man and an open one. He has none of the mean cunning which disgraces so many of my countrymen." * There are many touches of" Puritan life in Dunton s letters. He was a bookseller, and seems to have done well in the business, for books and printing prospered in Boston from the beginning. He went about among the min isters, talking literature and encouraging them to buy. He went to drill with the militia, and as soon as they had come into the field he tells us " the captain called us all into close order, in order to go to prayer, and then prayed himself." He * Adams s Works, vol. ii. p. 345. 182 Puritans and Philosophy listened also to the terrible sermons which were preached to criminals, and took notes of them ; but a great deal of what he says reveals the brighter side of life. He professed to have had in Boston three very good friends among the women, a maid, whose name he does not give, but calls her the Damsel ; a wife, Mrs. Green ; and a widow, Mrs. Brick. There was also, he says, a Mrs. Toy, " parte per pale, as the lawyers say, that is, half wife, half widow, her husband, a cap tain, having been long at sea ;" and she was the most charming of all. " She has the bashful- ness and modesty of the Damsel ; the love and fidelity of Mrs. Green the wife ; and the piety and sweetness of the Widow Brick." He goes on describing these friends in the gallant, half-mocking way which was fashionable among smart English writers, enlarging much on the virgin state in speaking of the Damsel, of whom he finally says, " but once going to kiss her I thought she had blushed to death." He and his friend Mr. King were one day a whole hour persuading the Damsel to take a ramble with them and accept of a small treat ; " but on no other terms could we prevail but this, that she might have the company of Madam Brick and Mrs. Green and Mrs. Toy (of whom more anon) to go along with her." 183 Puritans and Philosophy So we discover that the Puritans were human after all, and, in the midst of heresy, witchcraft, and slaughter of Quakers, went on little picnics. The Damsel, being a Puritan, must needs be thorough in everything, and insisted on three chaperons ; and if we may judge of Dunton by his manner of writing, she was wise in her de cision. It is probable that the disfranchised majority were very human, and indulged in rambles and many other moderate amusements, but they have left no records from which we can know their life. Their tyrants and oppressors were the writers of the colony. We find Dunton describing another of these rambles. He saw Morgan, the murderer, hung after he had stood an hour on the gallows to be preached at, and had given a most edifying con fession to the surrounding crowd. From this scene, he says, " I rambled to the House of Feasting; for Mr. York, Mr. King, with Madam Brick, Mrs. Green, Mrs. Toy, the Damsel, and myself, took a Ramble to a place called Gover- nour s Island about a mile from Boston, to see a whole Hog roasted, as did several other Bos- tonians. We went all in a Boat ; and having treated the Fair Sex, returned in the Evening." Before the year 1700 the Puritans attempted to be severe in their dress, and laws were passed 184 Puritans and Philosophy to suppress " wicked apparel." But the things forbidden the lace, the gold and silver thread, slashed sleeves and embroideries imply an in dulgence in brightness and color which is not attempted under the liberty of modern times. There were orders of the General Court for bidding " short sleeves whereby the nakedness of the arms may be discovered." Women s sleeves were not to be more than half an ell wide. There were to be no " immoderate great sleeves, immoderate great breeches, knots of ryban, broad shoulder bands and rayles, silk ruses, double ruffles and cuffs." Long hair was prohibited as being not only " uncivil and un manly," but too much like ruffians, Indians, and women. The women were complained of be cause of their "wearing borders of hair and their cutting, curling, and immodest laying out of their hair." Later it appears that " wicked apparel" meant the attempt of persons of mean condition to ape " the garb of gentlemen by wearing of gold and silver lace or buttons or poynts at their knees, to walk in great bootes." Any tailor who should make clothes for children or servants more gorgeous than their parents or masters directed was to be fined. The poor must not appear with " naked breasts and arms ; or as it were pinioned with the addition of superstitious rib- 185 Puritans and Philosophy bons both on hair and apparel ;" and the seledl- men were to tax those who exceeded their rank and ability, especially in ribbons and great boots. Even those who appear to have thought that they restricted themselves were dressed in a rather lavish manner. When we read the very ascetic and repressive writings of some of the ministers, we are surprised, on looking at their portraits, to find men with high boots like a cavalryman s, broad collars, and a general air of having paid much attention to their varied attire. But after 1700 there was little or no effort at repression, and the bright colors, the silk, the velvet, the ruffles, the diamond shoe-buckles, and the powdered hair flourished in Massachusetts as in Europe. The women of Boston, who in the early days had debated whether it was wicked to come to church without a veil, had before the time of the Revolution expanded most extrava gantly in silks and brocades, with ostrich feathers and high head-dresses. The growth of wealth from the commerce and the thrifty habits of the people had its in evitable effecl. The officials connected with the royal government and the Church of England people encouraged gayety and set the example of fashion. These people had no traditions of ascet icism or severity, and the religion of the Eng lish church allowed amusements and pleasures. 186 Puritans and Philosophy Their head-quarters was King s Chapel, where the services of the English church were held, at first in a wooden building, afterwards in the simple but beautiful stone structure which we see to-day. A wickedness and abomination it was to all true Puritan eyes, dispensing, as they thought, the doftrine of devils and tyranny; and the frequent entries in its records for repairs to the windows have been supposed by some to point to practical exhibitions of hatred by the lower classes. The people who held the money, offices, and power of the government, who subscribed so liberally to King s Chapel, and represented in the colony the court of St. James, were an influence which could not be resisted. Their families, dependants, and followers took precedence in society and laid down rules of courtly conduct. The self-confidence and accomplishments of a courtier are in their way as strong as the zeal of a fanatic ; for all men yield their homage to him who obviously plays well a difficult part. Among the Wendells, Olivers, Amorys, Ap- thorps, Bollans, Chardons, and Shirleys who formed this circle was one whose presence was an act of poetical justice. Thomas Hutchinson, who, after filling many important offices, became the royal governor in 1771, was the grandson of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, who had been cruelly 187 Puritans and Philosophy banished from the colony for her liberal opinions. It was a most fitting revenge that he should rule them ; and in many ways he was an excellent official, returning good for evil, until the Revolu tion came, when for his tory principles his house was sacked and he himself was banished in accordance with what seemed to be the in evitable fate of his family. As the Quakers had taught the Puritans the lesson of religious liberty, so the Church of England people showed them the moral value of enjoyment, good taste, and a happy, easy life ; and many a stern Puritan family surrendered. The majority, of course, held back and stood by the ancient traditions ; but even these were softened and enlightened ; and as we read the change of habits towards the time of the Revolu tion, it is strange to see this golden gleam pene trating the gloom which all the previous history of Massachusetts has given us. The Abbe Robin, who visited Boston during the Revolution, tells us something of the scenes in the principal churches : " Deprived of all shows and public diversions whatever, the church is the grand theatre where they attend, to dis play their extravagance and finery. There they come dressed off in the finest silks, and over-shadowed with a profusion of the most superb plumes. The hair of the head is raised and supported upon cushions to an extrava- 1 88 Puritans and Philosophy gant height, somewhat resembling the manner in which the French ladies wore their hair some years ago." In the early days, especially in the country districts, there had not been so much display. The minister often had his musket by him in the pulpit, the congregation had their weapons in the pews, and armed sentinels watched outside. The church-going habits of the people, which placed nearly the whole population of a country side in one building, was a tempting opportunity to the Indians, and one or two tragedies com pelled the most watchful precautions. In the country the people came to church from long distances with their dinner ; husbands riding on horseback, with their wives on pillions, and the younger people walking. Hundreds of horses were often seen fastened round the meet ing-house ; and when the first service was over, dinner was eaten, and gossip and discussion followed until it was time for the afternoon sermon. Under the new influence of the royal govern ors and the general manner of dress of the age, Boston about the year 1765 was in some respefts a gayer, brighter place in outward ap pearance than it is now. The governor drove in his great coach with six horses well groomed, and resplendent with harness and liveried ser vants. The wealthy citizens often had coaches 189 Puritans and Philosophy with four horses, and they walked the streets in their cocked hats, and yellow, red, blue, or green coats and waistcoats according to their taste. Their houses were large, and full of handsome silverware, furniture, glass, china, and tapestry imported from England. They began to in dulge in riding, hunting, fishing, and skating as amusements. They took sleigh-rides in winter, with a supper and dance when they returned, and in summer they had picnics down the har bor and excursions into the country to drink tea. Some of them began to have country-seats. But they drew the line at theatres, and actors were not tolerated until after the Revolu tion. Chastellux, on his visit to Boston at the close of the Revolution, when the French fleet was there and there was a great deal of entertaining, speaks of " a ton of ease and freedom which is pretty general at Boston, and cannot fail of being pleasing to the French." But the Bos- tonians did not dance well. In facl, he says they were very awkward, especially in the minuet ; and the ladies, though well dressed, had " less elegance and refinement than at Phila delphia." He, however, mentions three ladies who were good dancers, Mrs. Jarvis, Miss Betsy Broom, and Mrs. Whitmore. 190 Puritans and Philosophy Many of the people were taking advantage of the presence of the fleet to learn French. As the Revolution was just over, every one was ex pressing a great dislike for everything English, and Chastellux says they were much mortified to think that they spoke the English language. Instead of saying, " Do you speak English ?" they would say, " Do you speak American ?" And then he tells of a characteristic Boston suggestion : * Nay, they have carried it even so far, as seriously to propose introducing a new language 5 and some persons were desirous, for the convenience of the public, that the Hebrew should be substituted for the English. The pro posal was, that it should be taught in the schools, and made use of in all public adls. We may imagine that this projedl went no farther." (Vol. ii. p. 264.) There were clubs then like those known in our own time, which met in turn at the houses of the members to dine and discuss questions of interest, and at some of these meetings songs were sung. Card playing Chastellux found very prevalent among the upper classes. Before the war it had been accompanied by a great deal of gambling for high stakes ; but by common con sent almost every one had agreed not to play for money until independence was secured. " It is fortunate, perhaps," he says, " that the war happened when it did, to moderate this passion, 191 Puritans and Philosophy which began to be attended with dangerous con sequences ;" and the translator explains in a note that there were frequent suicides. From diaries and other sources we have glimpses of an amount of festivity and gayety at this time which would not now he found in any town of only sixteen thousand inhabitants, which Boston then contained. Indeed, at the outbreak of the Revolution the people of all the colonies were in a most flourishing and happy state, leading a glorious life of enjoyment, which the conflict with England and the ideas of the French Revolution which were introduced cruelly broke up. We gained independence and de mocracy, but we lost a great deal which we have only recently begun to restore ; and the tories, who saw this loss and left the country in disgust, deserve a certain amount of sympathy. One of the most pleasing pictures of the pomp and circumstance of colonial life in Boston a few years before the Revolution is John Adams s description of the scene at the argument of the great question of writs of assistance in the council chamber of the old State-House : " The council chamber was as respectable an apartment as the House of Commons or the House of Lords in Great Britain, in proportion} or that in the State House in Phila delphia in which the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. In this chamber round a great fire were I 9 2 Puritans and Philosophy seated five judges with Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson at their head as chief justice, all arrayed in their new, fresh, rich robes of scarlet English broadcloth ; in their large cambric bands and immense judicial wigs. In this cham ber were seated at a long table all the barristers-af-law of Boston and of the neighboring county of Middlesex, in gowns, bands, and tie wigs. They were not seated on ivory chairs, but their dress was more solemn and more pompous than that of the Roman senate when the Gauls broke in upon them. Two portraits at more than full length, of King Charles the Second and of King James the Second in splendid golden frames, were hung up on the most con spicuous sides of the apartment. If my young eyes or old memory have not deceived me, these were as fine pictures as I ever saw j the colors of the royal ermines and long flowing robes were the most glowing, the figures the most noble and graceful, the features the most distinct and char acteristic, far superior to those of the king and queen of France in the senate chamber of Congress." Among these new people and manners which the royal governor and his courtly followers introduced, we have the interesting episode of Sir Harry Frankland, whose love-affair Dr. Holmes has celebrated in his poem " Agnes," and less skilful hands have at times made of it a novel or short story. His family was a very ancient one, and from time immemorial their seat had been Great Thirkleby Hall, at Thirsk, in Yorkshire. Through a female branch Sir Harry was descended from Cromwell ; but he had none of the Puritan ideas of this ancestor, and, VOL. I. 13 193 Puritans and Philosophy from entries in his diary, seems to have had no little contempt for the Great Protector. He was educated in the liberal manner of a young English nobleman of his time, and was intended, as many of them still are, for employ ment under the government. In 1741, at the age of twenty-five, he was made collector of the port of Boston, and immediately took his place as a handsome and accomplished man among the royalists of the government circle who kept up the manners of the English aristocracy. His fortune from his English estates was a good one, with prospects of increase, and his salary and perquisites as collector gave him quite a large income. His character was a rather curious mixture. He had the love of sport and oat-door life and the loose habits of drinking and carousing which were common among his class ; yet his face in his portrait is of a delicate cast, with an ex pression which seems to show great sweetness of temper. From his diary and other sources we gather that he was imaginative, nervous, somewhat inclined to ill health, and in the im portant public positions he occupied found that he must make considerable effort to keep him self cool and collected. He had with him a natural son whom he called Henry Cromwell. He was fond of literature and art, and botany 194 Puritans and Philosophy and landscape gardening were among the strong passions of his life. A year after his arrival he had occasion to visit Marblehead, or Marvil, as it was some times called, on public business, and at the tav ern where he stopped he saw a beautiful girl of about sixteen scrubbing the floor. She was barefooted and meanly dressed, but with jet- black hair and sparkling eyes. Calling her to him, no doubt with that gallant but patronizing air the men of fashion were wont to assume to wards women in her condition of life, he found that she answered his questions with remarkable brightness and intelligence, and he gave her a crown to buy a pair of shoes. Afterwards, when he was again at Marblehead, he saw Agnes Surriage still scrubbing the floors and without shoes. " Why have you not bought them ?" he said. " I have, indeed, sir, with the crown you gave me ; but I keep them to wear to meeting." Frankland was now completely captivated, and he obtained permission from her parents to take her to Boston, where she was given the best education the town could afford, and became the school-mate of the daughters of the most prom inent people. She grew to be an accomplished young woman, and it is said was carefully in- 195 Puritans and Philosophy strutted in religion under the Rev. Dr. Edward Holyoke, president of Harvard College. Meantime Frankland amused himself with fox-hunting and the other sports which the wilderness of Massachusetts afforded, pursued smugglers with diligence, and assisted the gov ernor and his followers to introduce more courtly manners among the Puritans. From the widowed mother of Agnes he bought a vast traft of wild land in Maine, between the Ken- nebec and St. Croix Rivers, for fifty pounds, evi dently only for the purpose of assisting her, for the land was of little value, and afterwards became involved in confused litigation, which had to be settled by an act of the legislature in 1 8 1 1 . He was also a prominent member of the congregation of King s Chapel, to which he gave liberally. Agnes had become a woman of twenty-three or four and of irresistible attraction ; but Frank- land s pride of family would not bend to the in dignity of marrying the person who had been a scrubbing girl, and in this he was merely fol lowing the accepted rule of his class. But, like others of that class, he was self-willed and im pulsive. He won Agnes s heart and took her to his house to live with him without a marriage ceremony and in spite of her religious instructor, the president of Harvard College. 196 Puritans and Philosophy " But who would dream our sober sires Had learned the Old World s ways, And warmed their hearths with lawless fires In Shirley s homespun days !" Then there was an outbreak in the high life of Boston. For half a century the governor and his royalist retainers had been slowly teach ing the Puritans the code of pleasure of the Cavaliers ; but this last precept was a little too much. Agnes s schoolmates were indignant and their families were all indignant, and there was such an excitement in the town that Agnes and her lover could no longer live there in peace. Boston had always been severe to those who, from Roger Williams to the Quakers, had un dertaken to teach her more than she cared to learn. So Frankland bought a traft of nearly five hundred acres in the town of Hopkinton, about twenty-five miles southwest of Boston, and there, on the slope of a great hill where John Eliot had had an Indian mission, he built a mansion- house and began that Virginia life which Eng lishmen of his sort so dearly loved. He had a few negro slaves ; he built a great barn and granary ; laid out orchards of apples, pears, plums, cherries, and peaches ; set out elm-trees ; planted shrubbery, lilacs, and haw thorns ; and had a garden surrounded with box. 197 Puritans and Philosophy Some years ago many of the trees he had planted were still standing, the box had grown ten feet high, and the trunks of the lilac bushes were eight inches in diameter. " The box is glistening huge and green ; Like trees the lilacs grow ; Three elms high arching still are seen, And one lies stretched below." The house was large, with a flower-garden in front ; the hall with fluted columns, hung with tapestry ; the chimney-pieces of Italian marble ; and here Frankland and the erring Agnes lived an ideal life. They directed the slaves, read their favorite authors, cultivated the flowers, and Agnes was very fond of music. People from Boston who had concluded not to be as indignant as some of the others came to stay with them, and there appear to have been fami lies in the neighborhood with whom they were familiar. There was many a wassail bout, at which Frankland is said to have used a wine-cup of double thickness, so that he could drink his com panions under the table and still keep his head, which in wine was not a strong one. He hunted the deer, which were numerous in the woods, and fished for the trout which filled the cool brooks. He had no doubt become familiar with Hopkinton in his shooting expeditions, and 198 Puritans and Philosophy chose it for a home because it was a natural game preserve. After about three years of this life Frankland and Agnes visited England ; but here there was a terrible break in their happiness. The family of her lover not only would not receive her, but treated her with the brutal scorn and con tempt which the English know so well how to administer. In Massachusetts she had had some friends, a party, a following ; but in England, in a strange land, she had none. The care and devotion of her lover and it is probable that few men could excel him in tenderness to women were no alleviation of her misery and melan choly. There was nothing that could be done but go away, be banished again as in Boston. After a year s travel on the Continent, they settled themselves at Lisbon, in Portugal, partly for pleasure and partly, probably, to look after some affairs of the British government with which Frankland had been intrusted. Lisbon was at that time one of the most lively, wealthy, and corrupt cities of Europe. It had a strong commercial connection with England, was full of English merchants, and Englishmen of all sorts came there for business, health, or amuse ment. It had been visited by George White- field, the preacher, and the novelist, Henry Fielding, who died there. 199 Puritans and Philosophy Agnes and Frankland took a furnished house and adopted a very courtly style of living, which was warranted by the increased wealth which had recently come to them from a favorable decision in the English courts. They became prominent in the gay and dissolute life which must have made the sports and entertainments of the country place at Hopkinton seem very tame and commonplace. But they had been there hardly a year when, on All Saints Day, at ten o clock in the morning, the churches crowded with people, and the gorgeous ritual just begun, the earth began to heave and roll like the waves of the ocean, and the next instant churches, pal aces, and humble houses came crashing down in massive piles, burying thirty thousand of the shrieking multitudes. For twenty minutes the earth rocked, the sun was darkened, the water of the Tagus River rolled back to the sea, leaving the vessels on the mud, and then came roaring in again in a great wave. The prisons were open and the crimi nals were loose on the town, which was soon on fire. Frankland was driving with a lady when the shock came, and was buried beneath the house he was passing. The horses were instantly killed, and the lady in her agony bit through the sleeve of his coat and tore a piece out of his 200 Puritans and Philosophy arm. Still alive, but crushed beneath the mass of the building, he reviewed his life, and, among many errors to be atoned for, made a solemn vow to God that if he was delivered he would make Agnes his lawful wife. The next instant she appeared. She had been rushing through the distracted town to find him, and, recognizing his voice beneath the ruins, offered large rewards for men who would dig him out. After an hour s labor he was dragged forth, wounded and bleeding. As soon as he recovered he was married to her by a Roman priest, for the ceremony was not allowed to be performed in Portugal by the minister of any other religion. They sailed for England, and, once on the ship and clear of Portuguese jurisdiction, he had the ceremony performed again by a clergyman of the Church of England. Agnes was now well received in England, and the beautiful scrubbing girl of Marblehead be came a familiar figure among the aristocracy of London. After another short visit to Lisbon, they returned to Boston, and, all reasons for exile being removed, they resolved to have a city as well as a country residence. They bought the Clarke mansion on Garden Street, a large house with twenty-six rooms, which they adorned with pictured panels, Italian marble and porce lain fireplaces in the most elaborate luxury. 201 Puritans and Philosophy The floor of one of the rooms, it is said, was laid in a tessellated pattern of more than three hundred different kinds of wood. In one of the rooms of the house at Hopkin- ton Frankland hung the coat he had worn on the day of the earthquake, with the hole in the arm where the lady had bitten through it, and also his rapier, bent by the falling stones. Every autumn, on All Saints Day, he went alone to the room to view these relics and ponder sol emnly on the event and his vows. Agnes Surriage, of Marblehead, was now Lady Frankland ; she had seen the best and the gayest as well as the worst life of her time, her repu tation and character were saved, and she no doubt was an authority on court manners among the people of the royal government who were laying the foundations of fashionable life at Boston. But she was not proud, they say, and received cordially at her house her relations from the little village where Frankland had first seen her at the tavern. He was appointed in 1757 consul-general at Lisbon, and again left Boston. He seems to have returned in 1763, and lived for a time at Hopkinton, to which he was sincerely attached, and would no doubt have spent the rest of his days there in the enjoyment of ease and the pleasures of books, trees, and sport, of which 202 Puritans and Philosophy he never wearied ; but his health was declining. He went to England and lived at Bath, where he died in 1768, in his fifty-second year. After his death Lady Frankland almost imme diately sailed for America, and went to live at Hopkinton with Harry Cromwell, her husband s natural son, of whom she seems to have been fond. She also took into her household her sister, with her children and some other rela tions, and the old life of her honeymoon was in part renewed. She managed the farm, planted and ornamented the grounds with shrubbery and flowers, rode on horseback, and indulged in her life-long love of music. She had many visitors, and seems to have made a point of entertaining the clergy of the English church. She is described as slender, with a dark, lus trous eye, rather majestic carriage, and a melo dious voice. An interesting woman she must have been, and her lover an attractive man ; but the details of her life are few, and her strange career had been almost forgotten until revived in the present century by the researches of Mr. Nason, who became the owner of her country- seat at Hopkinton. When the Revolution came in 1775 sne found herself a tory, and there was nothing for her to do but suffer exile again. She started for Boston to get through the lines of the armed Puritan 203 Puritans and Philosophy farmers, who were beginning to form the Con tinental army, and was soon stopped and put under arrest. Finally she was allowed to pass and take with her, as the order read, "6 trunks, I chest, 3 beds and bedding, 6 wethers, 2 pigs, i small keg of pickled tongues, some hay, 3 bags of corn, * which seems a strange detail in such a romantic career. The British officers in Boston received her with much kindness, especially Burgoyne, whom she had known in Portugal, and from the win dows of her house in Garden Street she saw the battle of Bunker Hill. She sailed for England, and lived with the Franklands. Seven years after, at the age of fifty-six, she broke the spell of her romance and married John Drew, a rich banker ; but she received the fate she deserved for such an aft, and died within a year. The changes in Puritan manners which such men as Frankland and the royal governors intro duced were not accepted without protest. In 1740 the dancing assembly was making its way with difficulty, and the ladies who resorted to it were described by some as with but little regard for their reputation. In 1773, under the influ ence of the British officers in the town, a drum or rout given by the admiral on Saturday night lasted until two or three o clock on Sunday morning, causing a great scandal ; but after the 204 Puritans and Philosophy officers had disappeared such performances were impossible. The people were still Puritans. The new life was merely an outward varnish. They were stiff, formal, and reserved ; and even among those who were accounted worldly and gay there was a simplicity of thought and con- duel which still lingers in Boston, and will in all probability be a characteristic for many years to come. The old inquisitorial habits clung to them, and they pried into people s history and business in a way that was very offensive to strangers and travellers, a habit which has since been known as Yankee inquisitiveness. A Virginian who had been much in New England in colonial times used to relate that as soon as he arrived at an inn he always summoned the master and mistress, the servants and all the strangers who were about, made a brief statement of his life and occupation, and having assured everybody that they could know no more, asked for his supper; and Franklin, when travelling in New England, was obliged to adopt the same plan. As a class the Puritans of Massachusetts were a humorous, witty people. Their early writ ings, even when very religious, often show a disposition to pun, and in some of their books describing the lives of pious ministers and godly 205 Puritans and Philosophy churches statements are occasionally made in epigrammatic little verses. They had such a keen sense of the ridiculous that it is rather strange that they were not sooner delivered from their religious excesses. Their ordinary inter course with one another seems to have been always characterized by sarcastic chaffing and a dry, sharp sort of humor, which, with shelling nuts round the fire and telling stories, was one of the few pleasures they allowed themselves in the early days. This same humor and love of puns and epi grams have survived in a refined, elevated, and keener form in the poems of Lowell and Holmes, and there is often a touch of it in Hawthorne and Emerson, as well as in other Massachusetts writers. The " Biglow Papers" are largely a reproduction of this humor as it existed among the common people in Lowell s time. Indeed, there is no part of America where all the early traits of the people come down in such direct lines to the present. The grim humor in which the original Puritan thought it no sin to indulge has proved to be a most copious source of the literature of Massa chusetts. In the smaller towns outside of Boston the royal governors and their ideas had, of course, less influence. The people were suspicious of 206 Puritans and Philosophy pleasures ; and the handsome velvet suits and silverware which we are surprised to find so many of them had were often stored away and descended in the family as heirlooms which were never used. They resented any tendency in their preachers to expound comforting or pleasant doctrine in place of the old damnation and ter rors. They did not want religion made easy ; and there is a curious complaint against a certain minister because he had set forth " too many dainties." Although the community was full of energy, power, and ability, it was all hard, economical, and repressed, and there was none of the generous and expansive hospitality of the Vir ginia planter. There was a certain accurate kindness and politeness ; for prosperity was uni versal, beggars and paupers were almost un known, and everybody felt that his respectability imposed duties which must be performed. Chastellux is reported to have said that in sev eral instances where he brought letters of intro duction to people by whom he was pleasantly entertained, he was handed a bill for the trouble and expense, as if he had been at a tavern. An examination of his book does not reveal any such statement. The inns in New England were often overcrowded, and when that hap pened travellers were sent to respectable families 207 Puritans and Philosophy near by who were willing to take them, and in such cases they always expected to be paid for their trouble. In some respefts there may be said to have been a decided aristocracy in Massachusetts. It was not a landed aristocracy like that of Virginia, although there were some large estates. Its members had not such absolute control of po litical power as the Southern planters, and yet they had control. It consisted more of a recog nition of social distinctions, a deference paid to families of wealth, long-established position, and ability in public service ; and it was a settled rule that men of such families were to be elefted to public office. In all the churches the pews were assigned in accordance with social rank, or, as it was some times expressed, in accordance with " authority, age, wealth, and house lots," a custom which caused endless bickerings and heart-burnings, and gave the deacons in charge of the matter a very thankless task. At Harvard College the fresh men were arranged every year in a list according to the social rank of their parents, and each student was compelled to retain throughout his course the rank that was thus assigned him. The English distinctions of the time among gentlemen, yeomen, merchants, and mechanics were sharply drawn ; and the ministers, of course, 208 Puritans and Philosophy were ranked at the top, and often had the hand somest houses in the community. Indeed, the congregations usually took great pride in the houses they gave their ministers. Many of the prominent people near Boston and the important towns like Salem and Marble- head had houses which might almost be described as magnificent. The Lee house at Marblehead is said to have cost ten thousand pounds, a sum which was the equivalent of nearly two hundred thousand dollars in modern times. Similar houses were scattered about, often built of stone, wainscoted in hard woods and mahogany, with carved mantel-pieces, pictures set in panels, and walls hung with tapestry. The remnant of the old life which proved to be most enduring was the observance of the Sabbath, a name which has come into ill repute with many religious people because it was the favorite Puritan name for Sunday. But they often used the more touching expression, the Lord s Day. The Sabbath began with the Puritans at six o clock on Saturday evening and lasted until sunset on Sunday. No one could work, or amuse himself, or even be shaved by a barber. No travelling was allowed, and the inns were all closed. The story is told of Robert Pike that, having to go upon a journey, he waited VOL. I. 14 209 Puritans and Philosophy patiently until the sun sank into the western clouds on Sunday evening and then mounted his horse. But he had gone only a short distance when the last rays gleamed through a break in the clouds, and the next day he was brought before the court and fined. This striftness was observed until the Revo lution and a long time afterwards, and many are still living who can remember the remains of this Sunday severity. Respectable people were not supposed to be seen on the street unless going to or returning from church. They could not stroll to the water s edge, and a group who stopped to talk would soon be dispersed by the constable. A young French officer, at the time of the Revolution, who tried to dispel the tedium of the dismal day by playing on his flute soon found an angry mob collected in front of the house, and was obliged by his landlord to desist. Domestic affections and enjoyments were not supposed to be indulged in on Sunday. Some of the ministers, as Charles Francis Adams tells us in his excellent paper on Puritan church discipline, refused to baptize children born on Sunday, because there was a belief that such children must have been conceived on Sunday. But one of the ministers who was most severe in this rule was finally broken from it when 210 Puritans and Philosophy his own wife on the Sabbath gave birth to twins.^ The people had a great dislike of foreigners and all outside influence. They were very original and ingenious, but it was always with their own material. They did their own thinking and their own work, and that other people or other nations had adopted an idea or a method was never in their eyes a recommendation. It was a most wholesome feeling and a strong incentive to nationality and greatness. They were ex tremely proud of their pure English blood, and this condition continued until fifty years after the Revolution, when the influx of foreigners and alien ideas began to break up their homoge- neousness and destroyed that self-centred spirit which had given them their characteristic great ness and power. When Massachusetts began to debate whether she should adopt the German system of educa tion at Harvard, and when she yielded to the policy of the nation in encouraging alien immi grants of every race and nation, the end of those peculiar qualities which had given her such an ascendency in the intellectual and literary world was near at hand. * Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. vi. p. 494. 211 Puritans and Philosophy The indented servants who were so numerous in many of the colonies were very rare in Mas sachusetts and the rest of New England, and there were none of the convifts and bankrupts whom Great Britain forced on some of the other provinces. Both Virginia and New England resisted the convict and pauper system which ruined Maryland and other commonwealths so far as concerned that high excellence and dis tinction of ability and character which form the greatest glory of a community. It is a noteworthy faft in our history that during the Revolution and for sixty years after wards the best and greatest men of the country were produced in two commonwealths, Virginia and Massachusetts ; and these were the two which were more homogeneous than any of the others in race, religion, and general ideas, and had kept themselves clean of convifts, paupers, and inferior nationalities. They were also the most prosperous in material affairs, and increased their population very rapidly. Their overflow spread out westward, building up and increasing the peoples of communities of less unity and vigor. Their increase by the natural process of births was more rapid than it has since been with the assistance of enormous immigration. The opinion which has prevailed of recent years that the people of beaten and inferior 212 Puritans and Philosophy nationalities, the failures and incompetents of Europe, are good enough material with which to build up an American civilization which will carry on the high standard of intelligence, lib erty, and republican government which Massa chusetts and Virginia did so much to create, is unfortunately not supported by the fadls of his tory. The Cavaliers and the Puritans were picked men, and they were wise enough to value their purity and save it from contami nation. They represented the two great oppos ing parties of England, and they were the best of those parties, which, though conflicting, were yet in essentials very much alike. It was fortu nate that the two commonwealths which they founded preserved their purity long enough for us to secure some of its results. After the year 1700 the real development of Massachusetts began. Before that time the rule of the ecclesiastical oligarchy disfranchising the majority of the people, murdering Quakers and witches, and banishing the most high- spirited and enlightened men and women had not been representative of the people of the province. In fa6l, we can hardly consider it as even a fair exhibition of Puritanism, for it repre sented merely a few extremists who were in control of the government. But after 1700, with the power of the ministers reduced, with 213 Puritans and Philosophy excesses in doctrine and superstition steadily declining, and with the opinions and feelings of the majority allowed fair expression, the colo nists became as united, orderly, thrifty, and in telligent a body of men as could be found in the world. They reasoned as keenly as ever on questions of religion, listened to their endless sermons and lectures with the same devoted attention, practised austerities and abstained from pleasures. They had lost their independence, but they never for a moment gave up their right to it. Nothing but the impossibility of resistance kept them quiet. They regarded the country as their own and not the king s. They believed that they had a perfeft right to independence, and that they were kept from it only by superior force, and everything done by the British gov ernment tended to intensify this feeling. Manufacturing in the colonies was discouraged by the British government, and Massachusetts at that time did very little of it. Her chief busi ness was the building and navigation of ships and the trade in fish. She had some trade in furs and timber and a slight trade in grain and cattle; but the produces of the ground were few and the soil was comparatively barren. The sea, however, was for the Puritans a fer tile field, and out of it they made their fortunes. 214 Puritans and Philosophy There have seldom been better ship-builders, and their descendants are still among the best sailors in the world. It was on the shores of Massa chusetts that the form of vessel known as the schooner was invented, and from the same source are many of the modern improvements in the rigging and shape of hulls. They began to build ships and catch fish as soon as they arrived. Governor Winthrop, within a year after the colony was founded, built a vessel of thirty tons and called her the Blessing of the Bay. According to a report of the Board of Trade, made in 1721, Massa chusetts built every year about one hundred and fifty vessels. Most of them were sold abroad, and about one hundred and ninety sail were owned in the colony. These employed eleven hundred sailors, and were engaged in the general carrying trade all over the world. Besides these the colony possessed about one hundred and fifty small vessels, which employed about six hundred men and were engaged in catching the fish which filled the waters from Cape Cod to the banks of Newfoundland. Chastellux in travelling through Massachu setts noticed that the sailors were also farmers. The Puritan sailors, instead of being the des perate, reckless class of European countries, closely allied to criminals and knowing no other 215 Puritans and Philosophy art but that of the sea, were usually respeftable men who whefi ashore followed some handicraft or occupation. Very many of them owned farms which they cultivated part of the year, always ready to follow some captain, their neighbor, to the fisheries. The captain himself was frequently a mechanic or a farmer, and it was not uncommon to find a crew of excellent sailors with a most enlightened knowledge of their duties, not one of whom could be called a seamati by profession. A farmer often owned a sloop or a schooner which he had perhaps assisted in building, and which lay anchored in sight of his barn. It is impossible to read the literature of Massa chusetts, or to look through the materials of her history, without being impressed with the mari time instinfts of her people. Everything savors of the salt sea. There are parts of Winthrop s journal which read like a log-book. Mingled with his accounts of wonderful conversions and miracles, and of the arrival in the colony of cows and mares, as well as of learned ministers, we find descriptions of voyages, and the latitude and longitude to which vessels were driven by storms ; notes on the wind and tide, and on the price of salt and fish and other articles of com merce. Even Judge Sewall, though a landsman, uses technical language to describe the move- 216 Puritans and Philosophy ments of vessels, and mentions several instances when he was invited, as a mark of honor, to drive a treenail into a new ship. Coming down into the present century, when the great literary activity of Massachusetts began, we find books of ocean adventure and poems of the ocean, and we find that nearly all the fami lies of wealth and refinement in Eastern Massa chusetts are connected in some way with the shipping interest, and have recollections and memorials of India and China. We find mem bers of these families going as captains of vessels. Small villages on the coast sometimes contain the homes of ten or fifteen captains of foreign- going ships. A careful observer cannot now spend a summer holiday on any part of the New England coast without constantly finding memo ries and suggestions of a great maritime life which has for the most part passed away. Within six years after they landed the Puritans founded Harvard College. No faft of their his tory, no trait of their character, is more promi nent than their zeal for learning. It has often been said that where the land was too stony to raise corn they planted school-houses to raise men. Education was encouraged in every possible way. Every township of fifty families was directed by law to have a teacher, and when 217 Puritans and Philosophy it numbered one hundred families it was to have a grammar-school to prepare boys for Harvard. For a long time this law was irregu larly enforced, and it is not true, as has been sometimes said, that illiteracy was unknown in Massachusetts. There was a good deal of it, especially in early times. General Putnam, who was born at Salem, had scarcely any school ing, and was an illiterate man all his life ; and there are numerous other instances of boys who seem to have been out of range of the school- house. But the Puritan mind was trained in many ways besides schools and colleges. The habit of taking notes of sermons, the week-day meet ings to discuss sermons, the lectures, and the frequent religious controversies were stimulating to mental growth. The Puritan was trained by these things as the Virginian by sports, social intercourse, and political discussions. Puritan life, like Virginia life, was in itself an educa tion. Nowhere was the printing-press more suc cessful. In 1719 Boston had five printing estab lishments and only about ten thousand inhab itants. In 1750 it had five newspapers, the oldest of which had begun its career in 1704. The famous Eliot Indian Bible was printed in Boston, and those who examine any of the few 218 Puritans and Philosophy remaining copies of it are always surprised to find it such a beautiful specimen of the book maker s art. Booksellers often made fortunes. Every man who had a new idea rushed into print with it. There was a fierce pamphlet war over the ques tion of inoculation for the small-pox, another, of course, over the witchcraft proceedings, and every new opinion in theology had its pamphlet literature. Sewall mentions a little pamphlet describing a case of witchcraft, and relates that a thousand copies of it were sold and a new edition demanded. This constant attrition of opinions had its natural result. The people not only acquired knowledge, but, what was more important, their power of reasoning and expressing themselves was highly developed. The excellence of New England schools and colleges has never been doubted, and the secret of their success lies not in the information they impart, but in the old Puritan love of logic and their habit of severe mental discipline. The gradual decline of Puritanism until, after the Revolution, it drifted into liberalism and Unitarianism is difficult to trace, because it was so slow and imperceptible that no definite date or turning-point can be fixed for it. The year 1800 is in a general way near enough, and it is 219 Puritans and Philosophy significant that it was not until about that time that aftors dared show themselves in Boston. The laws punishing heresy with death re mained on the statute book for a long time. Even in very late times there were severe laws for the regulation of the Sabbath and against smoking in the streets, and men are still living who can remember when it was not considered respeftable to be out of the house on Sunday afternoon. But these obsolete laws and few surviving customs were merely pieces of the old shell ; the spirit and essential part of Puritanism had disappeared long before. So long as that terrible incubus of Puritanism lay upon her it was impossible for Massachu setts to rise to the higher flights of which she was capable. In the Revolution she took a leading and most earnest part, which every school-boy knows. Independence was the ruling passion of her life, for she had enjoyed it once herself and knew its sweets by having been deprived of them. But at that period she did not produce as many great men as Virginia, and she never has produced military geniuses. Her great liter ary activity and eminence, as well as her great wealth and influence, were developed some years after 1800, when Virginia was declining. The outburst of literature in Massachusetts, lasting only for about a generation, is one of the 220 Puritans and Philosophy strangest phenomena in history. It was con temporary with the growth of Unitarianism and closely connected with it. The seeds of Unitarianism and transcendentalism were always in existence in Puritanism, and often showed a tendency to sprout and grow. Mrs. Hutchinson, when she announced that the inward feeling of each individual was the proof and test of his justification, touched the thought that was so powerfully developed on broader lines by Chan- ning, Emerson, Parker, and Lowell. Franklin, when a mere youth in Boston, a few years after 1700, belonged to a little coterie of deists who were in flagrant opposition to the prevailing opinion of the community, but too few and weak to accomplish anything. He could never have existed in the Boston atmos phere of that time, for his leaning towards liberalism and science was abhorrent to the people, and even his boyish attacks on the theology of the province got both himself and his brother into trouble. He fled to Philadel phia, where, although thought was not so in tense and keen, yet every opinion was freely tolerated. Both Franklin and Mrs. Hutchinson have had their revenge; for after the year 1800 the ideas of Massachusetts became the very reverse of what they had been a hundred years before. 221 Puritans and Philosophy The most intolerant colony became the most liberal State ; the home of bigotry became the home of free thought. From Cotton Mather to Ralph Waldo Emerson was a long journey, but it was the path that Massachusetts travelled. What a change ! If John Cotton, or Increase Mather, or Cotton Mather could have known the gentle, all-tolerant Emerson, they would surely have called him a brand from hell. Various reasons have been assigned for the rise of Unitarianism out of Puritanism ; but the only probable explanation seems to be that as time passed and the severity of the Puritan discipline relaxed, and superstition and the terrors of hold ing heretical doftrine died out, the principle of individual judgment in religious matters which a century before had animated Mrs. Hutchinson and her followers began to spread again. Mrs. Hutchinson s party had been very numerous ; indeed, had almost controlled an election ; and although they were formally suppressed, many of them, no doubt, continued to believe the heresy without obtruding it on the rest of the people in a way that would get them into difficulties. We know as a matter of faft that in Franklin s time, and afterwards, there were a few more or less avowed Unitari ans in the province. All that was needed was to have certain re- 222 Puritans and Philosophy straints removed ; for the minds of the Puritans tended naturally towards the heresy they had stamped upon. They were reasoners and phi losophers ; they loved logic and loved to search for causes. They had built up Puritanism as a hard-headed logical system based on a belief in devils and evil spirits and the doctrines of pre destination and eledlion. In time, however, it became too narrow a field for them. They could walk all round it in a day ; they had thrashed it over and over until they were tired of it, and the superstitious parts of it were crumbling away. But Mrs. Hutchinson s philosophy of intuition the phi losophy which ignored all testimony to spiritual truth except that of individual consciousness ; the philosophy which allows full scope to reason and piles up ideas and subtleties in infinite variety ; the philosophy which inspired Plato, Descartes, and Berkeley, as well as Coleridge, Carlyle, and Emerson, and which is capable of giving more comfort, satisfaction, and happiness than any other philosophy the world has ever known was for the Puritans of Massachusetts a magnificent, new, and unexplored domain. Step by step, cautiously, with fear and trem bling, they entered this paradise where every thing seemed so free and pleasant that they thought it surely must be sin. But they moved 223 Puritans and Philosophy in so slowly that most of them were unaware of the process, until by 1780 the churches in the neighborhood of Boston were often preaching the new doclrine without accusing one another of heresy. Before many years, however, the break came. The conservatives realized what was being done, and called a halt. The usual bitter controversies followed, dividing friend from friend ; the usual disputes for the possession of church property ; then the new separated from the old, and the thing was done. But there was no oligarchy in possession of the government which could banish the new to New Hampshire or Rhode Island. They were very numerous, and they stayed and leavened the whole community, so that the conservatives from whom they had separated often differed from them only in matters of form. In fail, the new had set them all free ; and when they found that no terrible signs and portents fol lowed, that the sun still shone, the birds chirped, and the waves still beat the rocky shores, they broke out into an exuberance of joy and an in tellectual debauch which can best be described by saying that it was the renaissance of Massa chusetts. The skilful and sarcastic pens of Emerson and Lowell have given us some of the details of 224 Puritans and Philosophy this outburst when the Puritan mind first discov ered that it could use the stored-up keenness and subtlety of centuries on any subject it pleased. From the streets and alleys of Boston, from the hill-side towns, and from the villages of Cape Cod came forth a host of sects, reformers, and extraordinary creatures, maintaining every imagi nable doctrine and absurdity. All the ills of life would be abolished if every one would take to farming ; the use of money is the cardinal evil, and no one should buy or sell ; we must eat pure wheat instead of bread ; the whole difficulty lies in stimulating manures for crops instead of relying on the natural soil. Besides these there were the non-resistance societies, the societies of " come-outers," and the man who established a society for the pro tection of worms, slugs, and mosquitoes, and to prevent the use of horses ; and all this was followed in later years by a frantic interest in spiritualism, Buddhism, mesmerism, and phre nology. When we read of these things, and especially of the man who would abolish buying and sell ing, we are reminded of Sewall s crusade against wigs, of the long arguments against drinking healths, and of the sermon John Cotton preached to prove that it was wicked for a tradesman to buy cheap and sell dear. Was the attempt of VOL. I. 15 225 Puritans and Philosophy the Puritans to establish an errorless church and state very much different from the attempt of the Brook Farm people to establish a community in which every man and woman should be a farm laborer for three hours of the day and a poet or philosopher for the rest ? One was of the seventeenth century, the other of the nine teenth. That same intense activity of mind, that same habit of sifting everything to the bottom, that same earnestness of purpose, traits which in small minds run to trifles or absurdities and in large minds produce the abolitionists, a Parker, a Channing, an Emerson, or a Lowell, were still characteristics of Massachusetts, just as they had been two hundred years before. One of the most strange results of the re naissance was Thoreau, who carried almost to insanity his love of the woods and fields, in which the Puritan imagination had seen only signs of terror, and which they had peopled with devils and witches. He reacted so far that he got drunk with nature, and he is a curious connecting link between the really great poetical minds like Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, and Hawthorne, who were always thoroughly sound and sane, and the unbalanced freaks and oddities which the renaissance produced. He was midway between them, and the beau- 226 Puritans and Philosophy t : ful and immortal passages in his books are mingled with the crudest absurdities of a mind that had just cast off its shackles. His fol lowers in the same peculiar school of the wor ship of nature, Burroughs, Bolles, and others, have restored the methods of the school to sanity ; but there is still, in spite of his crudi ties, a great deal of attraction in Thoreau him self, and his fame is increasing. At the time of this renaissance, which may be said to have begun about the year 1830, the people of Massachusetts had been a compact, intensely centralized, and united community for two hundred years. They had received no immigration since 1640, and being of the same race and religion, they had become more homo geneous in thought and feeling than any other body of people on the continent. They had become a numerous people, filling their own province and overflowing into the West, and by 1830 there was a large class which had wealth, leisure, and refinement. Generation after generation had been trained in the enthusiasm for knowledge and education and in the keen, subtle methods of thought which made the literary art easily learned. They had always been able to express them selves well. Their sermons showed it ; and in the numerous writings of Cotton Mather were 227 Puritans and Philosophy to be found a power of statement which at times was almost literary genius. Franklin took him for the model of his own matchless style. Anne Bradstreet had attempted some ambitious poems, and not a few of the Puritan writers indulged themselves at times in verse. Although none of these productions rose to the level of poetry, they were usually well con structed and clever ; while in the other colonies similar efforts were, with a few exceptions, un mitigated trash. Under these conditions, as soon as their minds were free, they broke out on all sides and began to write the literature of Europe as well as of their own country. Prescott wrote immortal works on the history of the Spanish people and their conquests in Mexico and Peru ; Motley, the history of the Netherlands ; and these books became classics for the whole world. Bancroft took the United States for his theme, and Park- man the contest between England and France for the possession of the North American con tinent. The range of thought and power in the works of these four men alone is very significant and impressive. In Longfellow we see the same breadth and force. A large number of his best poems deal with the history and episodes of New England and America, but many reach out across the 228 Puritans and Philosophy Atlantic to Germany, England, and Italy, and he made one of the best translations of Dante. Lowell and Hawthorne also show the same characteristics. Massachusetts literature, like her ships of that time, was never content until it had sailed the seven seas. Her newly awakened power found another theme ready to its hand which was perhaps even more congenial than literature. The great question of slavery, and whether it should be extended or restricted, was looming up in its most dangerous aspefts and threatening to wreck the Union. The South was for extending it into the Western territories and making it a national institution ; the North was for confining it to the South. But even the North did not wish to go beyond the question of restriction or extension. The total abolition of slavery was a forbidden subject, and the mobs in every city were ready to kill the man who advocated it, and burn the building in which he spoke. But the thorough-going Puritan who had believed in extirpating root and branch the most innocent heresies could not rest satisfied with such a weak compromise, especially of a ques tion which involved moral right and wrong. The abolitionists the Garrisons, the Phillipses, and the Whittiers were merely the Cottons, the Mathers, the Endicotts, and the Winthrops trans- 229 Puritans and Philosophy formed by the changes of a hundred and fifty years ; and they never had had before such an opportunity to use their ancient power. As we read the history of their onset, we are reminded of a trained pugilist wading into a crowd of ordinary men and striking right and left his terrible blows. Every stroke crushes a viftim to the earth, and the rest melt away with fear. The men of Massachusetts who could torture a heretic into confession by weeks and months of questioning now turned to look the whole American people in the face and stretch their conscience on the rack. There never have been such piercing inquisitors ; for the inquisitors of the Church of Rome infli&ed their torture on the outward body and often left the mind triumphant in its error ; but the intellect of the abolitionist reached within and gripped the soul with a power that converted the heretic into a fighting proselyte for the new faith. One of the most remarkable features of the Massachusetts literature was its completeness. Although it lasted only for a generation, it was complete in all the departments of poetry, ro mance, oratory, philosophy, history, and theol ogy, like the national literature of France, Eng land or any country which is in the fullest sense of the word a nation, and by a long-continued 230 Puritans and Philosophy homogeneousness of population has settled into a distinct type of people who think and aft together as a unit. Another striking characteristic besides its orig inality and force was the early age at which its writers matured and produced their best works. Even the historians, whose tasks, depending on re search, usually require a longer time, were very forward in their fame. Prescott finished " Fer dinand and Isabella" in his forty-first year, and Motley "The Dutch Republic" in his forty- second. The fame of Longfellow and Bryant was made before they were forty. Their great est poems were written before that age. Bryant s " Thanatopsis" was written when he was eigh teen. Everett was drawing large audiences at nineteen. Lowell wrote the " Biglow Papers" at twenty-eight, and Holmes his poem on " Old Ironsides" at twenty-one. The forces that in spired them were evidently strong, rapid, and complete. Why was it that a literature of so much power and genius, so complete in all its forms, could not last like the literature of England, in which we find a steady and continuous pro duction of literary men of a high order for several hundred years, every decade producing several of them with remarkable regularity ? The literary men of Massachusetts were all 231 Puritans and Philosophy born between the years 1780 and 1823,* anc ^ they are now all dead, without leaving a single successor worthy to represent them. In the long perspective of Massachusetts history they are a mere isolated patch, and the period of their aftivity and influence is completely covered by fifty years. Was it that this outburst was caused merely by the artificial stimulant of the sudden change from total repression to absolute freedom which attended the rise of Unitarianism acting on a people long accustomed to a love of knowledge and to the exercise of their minds in subtle ex pressions and delicate distinctions similar to the methods of the highest literature ? This is the explanation which naturally first occurs to one, but it is not altogether satisfactory. Unitarianism still exists and apparently all the other conditions. The people have grown richer, and developed their industries and enter prises ; culture is more generally diffused ; and all this one should suppose would be an assist ance to literature. England has grown richer * Charming, 1780; Everett, 1794; Bryant, 1794; Pres- cott, 1796; Bancroft, 18005 Emerson, 18035 Hawthorne, 1804; Longfellow, 1807 5 Whittier, 1807 ; Holmes, 1809; Parker, 1810; Sumner, 1811; Phillips, 1811; Motley, 1814; Lowell, 18195 Parkman, 1823. 232 Puritans and Philosophy and developed her industries, and has been doing so for several hundred years, and all the time her literature has been going on. Indeed, it is generally supposed that the de velopment of wealth and ease is beneficial to the fine arts. Education is as thorough to-day in Massachusetts as it was before 1825. In faft, it is believed to be more thorough, more gen erally diffused, and more liberal and enlightened. There are no signs of stupidity around Boston Harbor. The people read and appreciate good books as much as ever, and have plenty of money to buy them. All the conditions seem favorable to literature of a high order, and it is difficult to believe that the mere change, the sudden access of freedom, was the sole cause, and that a literature so powerful and complete in all its departments passed away because the novelty of the change wore off. It is easy to understand that the sudden free dom was the occasion and the opportunity which gave the natural powers of the Puritans a chance to spread out into literature. But after the freshness of the change had passed, those natural powers must have still existed. The freaks and oddities may have owed all their vitality to the mere change ; but can we believe that such substantial genius as that of Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Hawthorne, and Emerson was merely 233 Puritans and Philosophy the result of an hysterical excitement, without other or deeper causes ? What may be the real fundamental causes of the growth of literature in a nation is of course hard to discover, and it is not unlikely that they will forever defy the power of human analysis. But we may fairly infer that, whatever the usual fundamental causes may be, they were the ones that produced the Massachusetts literature, be cause in its quality, power, and variety it was like the best literature of the greatest nations. The attempt to explain its cessation by saying that in the last fifty years all the best minds of Massachusetts have emigrated to the Western States is of no avail, for this same emigration was going on at the time the literature was produced. Massachusetts was overflowing her boundaries in the fifty years after the Revolution as much as, if not more than, she has done since ; and the enormous emigration out of England to her colonies has been contemporaneous with England s greatest literary activity. In faft, the population of Massachusetts increased more rap idly and gave her more overflow in her great literary period than it has since. Nor does it afford an explanation to say that the men who would have continued Massachu setts literature were all killed in the civil war. The men born between 1848 and 1861 were 234 Puritans and Philosophy too young to go to the war. These men are now nearly all past forty years old ; and if a man has literary genius in him, he usually shows it before his fortieth year. The great literary men of Massachusetts made their reputations before they were forty. Moreover, the men who went to the war were not all killed. Thousands of them returned stronger and abler in every way for the expe rience ; and it would indeed be extraordinary if the war had killed every one who had the liter ary instinct among a class who, as a rule, are not inclined to become soldiers. The only explanation which seems broad and deep enough to fill the situation is that the great influx of foreign immigrants, Irish, Germans, and French, who since the year 1825 have poured into Massachusetts in an increasing stream until fifty per cent, of her population is foreign, has broken up the continuity and homogeneousness of her population and destroyed the nation ality and unity of feeling which inspired her literature. At the time her literary men were produced Massachusetts was a nation, and, though small, had all the distinctive features of nationality and a settled type of thought and feeling like England or France. This condition had been produced by a steady, uninterrupted develop- 235 Puritans and Philosophy ment of two hundred years among a people of the same race and religion, who resented every outside interference and influence. After the year 1640, when immigration to Massachusetts ceased, her development was en tirely a native growth, and her native feeling was reinforced by the peculiarities of her reli gion and government. She not only rejected foreigners who were not of her people s race, but she rejected even Englishmen who were not of her way of thinking, and banished Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson and persecuted the Quakers. Whatever may have been her faults in this direction, her people grew up united, pureblooded, and homogeneous, and when the year 1780 arrived they had been homogeneous for a hundred and fifty years, and formed the most intensely native and individu alized commonwealth in America. So far as can be discovered, it is this national ized condition which produces literature of genius, rounded and complete in all its depart ments like that of Massachusetts. Such litera ture is not merely the expression of the man who writes it ; it is the expression of the deep, united feeling of his people. The great schools of art and literature have all been national schools, the work of homogeneous peoples. The great ideas we have inherited from the 236 Puritans and Philosophy past indeed, all of value that we have inherited from it are the result of nationality. The two nations of antiquity to which we owe most are the Jews and the Greeks. Our noblest inspira tions in religion, morals, philosophy, literature, art, and government come from them, and they were of all peoples the most thoroughly homo geneous. If we pass down through history to collect instances of genius, we find them only in communities intensely nationalized and homo geneous, like England or France. The things that are worth preserving through the ages, the immortal things, cannot be pro duced by a man who is isolated from his fellows or unsupported by them, or lacks their sym pathy ; and the greatest things usually come from men who have a nation behind them. The supremely great man is the produ6l of the people among whom he was born and lived. A whole host of dramatists lead up to Shakespeare and surround him. They are all like him : all are on the same lines and of the same tone, but none so great. He and they spoke the thoughts and interpreted the feelings of the thousands of Englishmen among whom they lived ; and he spoke best. Every investigation into the origin of the great ideas and movements of the past, whether they have been shown in the life of one man or in the lives of ten men, reveals a 237 Puritans and Philosophy deep substratum of support among the people, going back in most instances for many gener ations. One of the most important and strongest ele ments in the Massachusetts literature was the humor which pervaded a large part of it, a humor which is more classical and more closely allied to wit than the modern humor of Mark Twain and others. It was the outgrowth into literature of the natural humor of the masses of the people which, as already shown, had been characteristic of them from the early colonial times. It had grown and developed until it had become a national and typical trait, sharpened and intensified without the slightest interference from foreign sources by two hundred years of use, and then it took the form of genius. Low ell seized upon it for the " Biglow Papers," in many respedls the most original production of Massachusetts literature ; it inspired Holmes, and in greater or less degree many of the others except Longfellow, whom it scarcely touched. Why should it and the rest of the literary instinct have perished so suddenly, unless the swarms of Irish and other aliens broke its con tinuity and destroyed the united feeling of the people who had created and were continuing it ? In a horseback journey through New England some years ago one soon learned to tell at a 238 Puritans and Philosophy glance the house where an Irishman or other for eigner lived by the dirt and degradation which surrounded it, in striking contrast to the immacu late neatness of the natives ; and the foreigners have poured mud into the pure stream of genius which was Massachusetts greatest glory. The literary men of Massachusetts were all born and passed through their impressionable age during a period of forty years in which the people of Massachusetts were more homo geneous than they were in any other forty years, either before or since. It is certainly rather significant that no man born since 1825 and brought up in the surroundings created by the immigrants has been able to reach anything approaching to the literary eminence which was reached by a dozen men born during the pre vious thirty years. The time has been ample. Men born between 1830 and 1840 would now be fifty or sixty years old. If we look at English 1 iterature we find that twelve or thirteen distinguished characters have been born and raised to greatness since 1825: George Meredith (1828), Rossefti (1828), Ingelow (1830), McCarthy (1830), Farrar (1831), "Owen Meredith" (1831), Edwin Arnold (1832), William Morris (1834), Swin burne (1837), Green (1837), Lecky (1838), Morley (1838), Besant (1838), Black (1841), 239 Puritans and Philosophy Buchanan (1841), Stevenson (1850), not to mention many others of minor and doubtful power. In other words, English literature has moved on in its regular course under the influence of general causes. But the literature of Massachu setts has stopped. The old line of greatness is not continued. It is impossible to find for it any competent successor. Massachusetts has brought forth no man since that time who has written a poem equal to Morris s tf Earthly Paradise," or Rossetti s " Blessed Damosel," or Edwin Arnold s " Light of Asia," or who has made such an impression on his time as Swin burne or even Jean Ingelow. Nor has Massa chusetts brought forth an historian like Lecky, Green, or McCarthy, or a novelist like Stevenson or Besant. On the other hand, the old order compared very favorably with their contemporaries in England. Longfellow, Lowell, Hawthorne, and Holmes are read and admired to-day in England as much as, if not more than, in America ; and Longfellow is credited with being more generally popular in England than Tennyson. But their successors, even in the United States at large, are weak and puny, and their faces in the pictures we have of them are a strange contrast to the vigorous lines in the features of the old order of 240 Puritans and Philosophy Massachusetts. They are simpering, superficial, and super-refined ; devoted to mere dialect stories or strained descriptions of ephemeral or local phases. A deep, strong passion or a bold grasp at the eternal verities frightens them out of their wits. The broad, deep sympathy of Longfellow, the keen wit of Holmes, the uncontrollable humor of Lowell, the tender, exquisite sentiment of Hawthorne, as well as the virile imagination of Stevenson, the wild fancy of Haggard, or Kipling s lust for nature, they seem to think not quite correft. They prefer needles and pins to broadswords. In his recent book on emigration and immigra tion, Mr. R. M. Smith fixes the period of native increase in America from 1783 to 1820.* It was in one sense longer than that, and should be extended back for some years in most of the colonies, and in Massachusetts back to 1640. But there is no doubt that the period he has fixed was the period of the most nearly exclu sively native growth and of the intensest native feeling, the time when the native feeling of pre vious years culminated, especially in Massachu setts. In fixing this period Mr. Smith was not thinking of the literature of the country, for he * Smith s " Emigration and Immigration," p. 37. VOL. I.-i6 241 Puritans and Philosophy says nothing about it ; and it is important to observe that his period almost exaftly covers the births of the men who made our only national and complete literature. CHAPTER III THE LAND OF STEADY HABITS /CONNECTICUT, like Massachusetts, was made up of two colonies, and at first con sisted only of a settlement of people in the neighborhood of Hartford. Afterwards there was another colony called New Haven estab lished at the place of that name. The two were somewhat different in opinions, like the two colonies of Massachusetts, but were united in 1662 into one colony, to which the name Connecticut was given. The colony at Hartford was founded by some Massachusetts Puritans who were very much opposed to the tyrannical ecclesiastical oligarchy which disfranchised the majority of the people, 243 The Land of Steady Habits and if they had not gone away voluntarily they would probably have soon been banished. Hooker, their leader, was an able man, but not so pugnacious and intolerant as the Massachu setts ministers, and he believed in a Puritan democracy as the proper form of government. John Cotton, on the other hand, had said, " De mocracy I do not conceive that God did ordain as a fit government either for church or com monwealth." So Hooker, Haynes, Ludlow, and other re- fraftory and democratic spirits led a number of those who were like-minded through the woods to the Connecticut River in the year 1636, driving their cattle before them. Soon after reaching the place that became Hartford, Hooker preached a sermon in which he maintained that the free consent of the people was the source of all authority, and this was certainly the form of government he and his followers estab lished. This migration was composed of three com plete Massachusetts town organizations, Dor chester, Watertown, and Newtown, which was afterwards called Cambridge. When trans planted within a few miles of each other on the banks of the Connecticut, they became Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield. The Puritans, as we have already observed, advanced 244 The Land of Steady Habits into the wilderness not by isolated individual effort but by towns. Not only three organized towns but three organized churches went with Hooker and his men into the woods. Hooker was a man of great stature and most powerful voice, which he used to its full compass in preaching. He was a popular orator of the pulpit, and whenever he visited Boston, crowds, which were no doubt largely composed of the disfranchised, went to hear him. We know little of his individu ality ; his life at Hartford was an unbroken record of taft, mild government, and strong influence. Haynes, like so many of the Puritans, had been a man of fortune and position in England, where he was said to have had an estate worth a thousand pounds a year. He had also been governor of Massachusetts, and was the first governor of Connecticut. Little is known of him or of Ludlow, who was a lawyer, rather erratic and troublesome, and who finally went to Virginia. The dominant party in Massachusetts ex pressed great regret at the departure of these people they liked not, they said, to see the colony so much weakened, and they reminded the emigrants that the removal of a candlestick was a great judgment. But nothing could stop 245 The Land of Steady Habits the movement. Efforts to accomplish it began to be made in 1634 an< ^ were completed in 1637, when about eight hundred Puritans had settled near Hartford. The three towns were praftically three inde pendent States, and they joined together to create a general government over themselves. Each town elected two men whom they called magistrates, and the body of six thus formed was the General Court, which at first met in turn at the towns. Each town decided for itself which of its citizens should have the right to vote. The privilege was given to all who had been ad mitted as inhabitants, and was never confined to members of the church. Like the General Court* in Massachusetts, the magistrates per formed the double function of a legislature and a court of law. Very shortly, however, this General Court met permanently at Hartford, and the charafter of the government was somewhat changed, each town electing three deputies, who met and elected the six magistrates. The towns created the general government of the colony very much as the States of the Union created the general government of the United States ; and curiously enough the system raised the question of town rights in very much the same way that the government made by the 246 The Land of Steady Habits people of the thirteen* original States raised the question of State rights. In 1639 f ^ e c l n y drew up for itself a written constitution, the first written consti tution that had ever been prepared on American soil, most strikingly liberal in its provisions and establishing the free suffrage and democracy which Hooker admired. There was no men tion of the king or of allegiance to him, and the only oath of allegiance was one of allegiance to the colony. But although the people were thorough be lievers in democratic government, and had no laws designed to create an ecclesiastical despot ism like that of Massachusetts from which they had fled, yet in Connecticut church and state were in a certain sense one. They were one not so much by law as by tacit consent, and for the reason that the large majority of the voters were members of the church, and were at first very much in accord with each other in religious matters. The Connecticut ministers were al ways consulted in civil affairs, and the same men settled both civil and ecclesiastical questions in the same public meeting. The dominant party had, however, little or none of that hard, intolerant, and prying spirit which made the history of Massachusetts. They were less intense, and though of deter- 247 The Land of Steady Habits mined and steadfast purpose, less learned and aggressive than the people of the colony from which they migrated ; for whatever we may think of the cruelty and bigotry of Massa chusetts, her system was a school of training which, when the bigoted part of it passed away, produced greater results and greater men than are to be found in Connecticut. The Puritans who founded New Haven came direft from England. They touched at Boston, but resisted all persuasions to remain, and under their leaders, Davenport and Eaton, passed on to New Haven. So far as their sympathies and opinions were concerned, they might very well have stayed in Boston, for they were of pre cisely the same sort as the Boston Puritans, and they made of New Haven a little Massachusetts. They first established a church, and then the church created the state. They relied on a passage of Scripture which speaks of wisdom having built her house and having hewn out her seven pillars, from which they inferred that church and state should rest on seven godly men. Like the Massachusetts Puritans, one of their first enactments limited to church members the holding of office and the right to vote. The word of God, they declared, was to be the only guide of public officers and judges. They had 248 The Land of Steady Habits no system of trial by jury ; they could find, they said, no mention of it in the Old Testament. Such was the town of New Haven, resting on seven Puritan pillars, who combined in themselves the legislature, the governor, and the court of law, and were fully persuaded that the rule of the many is not a good thing. The neighboring towns, Milford and Guilford, were in the same way composed of seven pillars, and followed closely New Haven as their model. But in none of these governments was the King of England named. Like the people of Connecticut, the New Haven colonists quietly assumed all the attributes of independence. They also resembled Connecticut in having no title whatever to the land they occupied. They took the best they could find, and trusted to the future and good luck to secure all their rights. New Haven began her existence in 1639. Five years afterwards Milford, Guilford, and Stamford formed with New Haven a confederacy of towns, and in a few years Branford and Southhold were added. This union, known thereafter as the colony of New Haven, had a constitution, a governor, deputy governor, and three magistrates, and each town sent two deputies. The disfranchised, who were a majority in New Haven and not quite so many 249 The Land of Steady Habits in the other towns, were kindly allowed the right to inherit property and the right to engage in trade. The dominant party in New Haven had the meddlesome inquisitorial spirit which charafter- ized Massachusetts and was so conspicuously absent at Hartford. These were the two kinds of Puritans. The General Court at New Haven felt that they had an oversight of everybody s business, and could investigate their inmost thoughts, especially if those thoughts were sup posed to be corrupt. Men and women were brought before the court to be punished for in delicate remarks made in private, for repeating an absurd request made in a prayer which had been overheard, and for improper kissing. The nearest approach to anything of this sort in Hartford was the punishment of Peter Bussa- ker for saying that he expedled to meet some members of the church in hell, and hoped he should. The General Court at New Haven of course undertook to suppress heresy by violence, and tried their hand at punishing the Quakers. But their attempts were weak and trifling compared with the tragic episodes of Massachusetts. The Quakers, who sought death and suffering in the cause of their faith as most men seek pleasure, hardly considered New Haven worthy of their 250 The Land of Steady Habits attention, for the chances in Massachusetts were very much more abundant. The peculiar proceedings of parental control over everybody which the magistrates of New Haven exercised are the source of all that has been said about the so-called Blue Laws with which Connecticut has been reproached for the last hundred years. If the reproach applied anywhere, it was to the New Haven colony alone. But it is unfair that even New Haven should bear the whole weight of the odium of blueness ; for if by blue be meant that which is fanatical and absurd, the blueness of Massachu setts was far greater than the blueness of New Haven. For the name Blue Laws, and for a great deal of the controversy about them, Connecticut has to thank a tory clergyman of the Church of England named Peters, who, having been driven from the country at the time of the Revolution, revenged himself by writing a history of Con- neclicut. Besides the supposed blue laws for bidding people to make mince-pies and kiss their children on Sunday, his book contains most amusing stories about bull-frogs invading a town and roaring so that the inhabitants fled to the woods, thinking that they were attacked by the French and Indians. He tells of a place where the Connecticut River runs through a 251 The Land of Steady Habits passage only five yards wide, with rocks on either hand which intercept the clouds. The water, he says, in going through this passage is so consolidated that an iron crow-bar cannot be forced into it. The blue laws of New Haven which were aclually in existence were the usual ones of the extreme Puritans, laws to prevent traders mak ing more than a certain profit, laws to regulate wages, laws to compel every bachelor to live with some family, and laws against idleness and smoking. No one could begin the practice of smoking until he had obtained a license from the court, and even then could not smoke on the street. Massachusetts had similar blue laws, and such laws were enforced wherever extreme Puritanism had a strong foothold. The two little colonies, the one at Hartford devoted to freedom, and the other at New Haven devoted to bigotry, prospered moderately for some twenty years, regulating their trade, providing for militia drill, the branding of horses, and the ringing of swine, until they were united by a charter from Charles II. in 1662. This charter was obtained by Connecticut, and greatly to the surprise of New Haven. Young Winthrop, who was governor of Con necticut and son of the Winthrop who was so often governor of Massachusetts, went to Eng- 252 The Land of Steady Habits land to procure a charter for the colony. Both Connecticut and New Haven had flourished for twenty years without charters, and in all that time, so far as official afts and records are con cerned, they appear to have forgotten that there was such a person as the King of England, or such a country as Great Britain. Those were the days of Cromwell, the Commonwealth, and Puritan supremacy, and the colonies were let alone. But in 1660 Charles II. returned to his own, and Connecticut deemed it wise to go and ask for what she knew would soon be forced upon her. Connecticut is nothing unless shrewd. She was determined to be beforehand and have an early influence in what was sure to be done, and she certainly secured for herself one of the most liberal charters ever given to an American colony. The fawning address which accompanied the request for the charter is not creditable to colo nial sincerity. If its statements can be believed, the people of Hartford had, during the civil wars, not only been royalists and loyal, but they had been depressed and broken-hearted, and had been hiding in the woods and mountains until the returning beams of his gracious majesty s sovereignty should cross the great deep and light them once more to happiness. 2 53 The Land of Steady Habits By what means Winthrop secured such an unusually good charter is still somewhat of a mystery. The five hundred pounds furnished him by the colony over and above his salary is supposed to have had an influence at that care less and corrupt court, where both women and men made incomes by assisting suitors in ob taining favors from the king. It has been sug gested that Lord Clarendon, the minister, was favorable to Connecticut because he was anxious to build up a strong colony which might quarrel with and weaken the unruly sectarians of Massa chusetts Bay. There is also a pretty story told that Winthrop had a ring which had been given to his father by the father of Charles, and that this was very effective. But we are inclined to lose confidence in these causes when we find that, fifteen months after the sealing of the Connecticut charter, Rhode Island got a charter which was still more liberal and free, and that it was obtained by John Clark, a Baptist minister, who made no pretensions to the diplomatic skill of Winthrop, and who had no money for courtiers and no ancestral ring. It is useless to assign any reasons for the adlions of Charles II., except his reckless and fickle temper. He was then flushed with vic tory and inclined to give anything a mistress or favorite asked. Within two years after granting 254 The Land of Steady Habits this charter to Connecticut he gave half of the land covered by it to his brother, the Duke of York, and we have already seen how he lavished on favorites the land of Virginia. The charter was so free and general in its terms that after the Revolution Connecticut lived under it as an American constitution until the year 1818. The governor was to be eledled by the people, and not appointed by the king, the towns were to decide the qualifications of those who should vote, and the laws of the assembly were not to be submitted to the king for his approval. When this charter was brought home and opened, behold, the boundaries given to Con necticut embraced New Haven. The second colony was swallowed up and lost ; the little in dependent republic of New Haven had become a county of Connecticut. Before Winthrop set out for England he had been questioned by Davenport about this very matter, and had answered that he had no intention of absorbing New Haven, and that if the king should include her in the charter, she should be at liberty to join or not. Afterwards, when the charter was shown, he asked the General Court to respecl: and carry out his promise. But the charter, once given, was law, and as law it was entirely beyond the control of Winthrop or of the General Court. 255 The Land of Steady Habits There is some evidence that Leete, the governor of New Haven, specially requested Winthrop to procure a union. Many of the leading men in New Haven were anxious for a union. Their spiritual despotism was dropping to pieces. The disfranchised majority were becoming unruly, and the persecution of the Quakers which occurred at this time made them worse. They became indignant at the cruelties inflifted, and thus the Quakers assisted in over throwing ecclesiasticism in New Haven in very much the same way as in Massachusetts. The disfranchised had everything to gain by a union and nothing to lose. Union meant an extended suffrage and larger liberty. When they heard of the provision for union in the charter they became unmanageable ; refused to obey the laws of New Haven, and were con tinually asking the sheriffs and marshals whether their authority was from King Charles. Two years and a half passed before New Haven, after many fastings and prayers and in numerable meetings of committees, finally ac cepted her fate. The long delay avoided any appearance of a tame submission and allowed the extremists time to reconcile themselves to the change, which was hastened when it was learned that Charles II. had in a careless moment given to the Duke of York a grant of land which 256 The Land of Steady Habits included New Haven. Union with Hartford might not be desirable, but submission to the duke was worse. If New Haven remained out side of the union her land belonged to the duke; but if she joined with Hartford she had some chance of resisting his claims. Connecticut had obtained her very liberal charter from Charles II. when he was fresh upon the throne and in the easy humor which soon afterwards gave to his brother part of the same land he had given to the colony ; and when, on the death of Charles, that brother came to the throne as James II., he took Connecticut under his direft control, without regard to her charter, after the same plan he followed with the other northern colonies, ex cept Pennsylvania, which he left in the hands of his friend William Penn. Massachusetts charter was cancelled by legal proceedings, the only way in which the validity of a charter could be destroyed. But a char ter could be temporarily abrogated by the king taking possession of the province and ruling it according to his pleasure by virtue of that vague power called the royal prerogative. In such cases he set the charter aside for the time being, and when he restored the province, or ceased his direft rule over it, the charter was again in force. William III. took possession of VOL. i.-i 7 257 The Land of Steady Habits both Maryland and Pennsylvania in this way. Pennsylvania was restored within two years ; but Maryland was held for twenty-five years. The Connecticut charter was never annulled by legal proceedings. Andros came and took possession of the colony in the name of the king, and seems to have demanded that the document itself should be surrendered to him. The people, it is said, spoke him very fair, and argued and pleaded with him for a long time. Then the charter was brought in and laid on the table. Suddenly the candles were put out, and when they were relit the charter was gone; for Captain Wadsworth had carried it off and hid it in an oak the site of which in Hartford is now marked by a stone. This is the pretty story which we are taught in all our school-book histories ; but it is not supported by good authority. There appear to have been several copies of the charter. One of these, which was in all probability the origi nal instrument, Andros secured, and the dupli cate Wadsworth got possession of and kept, but whether in an oak or in his own house is not known. In May, 1715, the General Court granted Wadsworth the sum of twenty shillings for certain services, " especially in securing the duplicate charter, in a very troublesome season, when our constitution was struck at, and in 258 The Land of Steady Habits safely keeping and preserving the same ever since unto this day."* No contemporary writers tell the story of the candles and the oak ; and in after-years when the story was told we find the details of it vary ing so much that no faith can be placed in it. According to one account, Nathaniel Stanley took one copy and John Talcot the other when the lights were blown out ; and Chalmers says it was an elm in which it was concealed. Still another account has it that the charter was surrendered to Andros and afterwards stolen from his room.f In the dearth of romantic episodes in colonial history there has always been great temptation to uphold the myth of the charter oak. Histori cally it is of no importance ; for so long as the charter was not annulled by legal proceedings, its validity could not be permanently destroyed by Andros. When his rule ceased the people still had one or two of the duplicates to read, and the old government under it was restored. With the single exception of Andros, Con- nedYicut never had a royal governor. She elefted her own chief magistrate annually, usually re- elefting the same one year after year, and was * Palfrey s " New England," vol. iii. p. 543. f Brodhead s " New York," vol. ii. p. 473. 259 The Land of Steady Habits in effeft an independent colony from the begin ning to the end of her history. Her people were of the Massachusetts type, but in a milder form. Her laws were largely copied from those of the colony of Massachu setts Bay, and in some instances taken word for word. The public school system was the same and the township system the same, and there was also a general similarity in manners. It was sometimes reproachfully said of Connecticut that she was too much inclined to trot after the Bay Horse. The Abbe Robin, after coming from Massa chusetts, was much impressed with the mildness and moderation of the Connecticut people. He describes them as leading an easy life without any necessity for hard labor, and says that even the dogs and horses were unusually gentle. In material prosperity there was considerable difference between Massachusetts and Connecti cut. Massachusetts grew rich by ship-building and commerce ; but Connecticut, though pos sessed of several fine harbors, had fewer ships. The soil, however, especially in the valley of the Connecticut River, was rather fertile, and con siderable farm produce was raised and sent for sale to Boston. Horses and mules were bred and sold in the Southern colonies and in the West Indies. The trade in mules was quite 260 The Land of Steady Habits large, and lasted down into the present cen tury. There is a good story told of John Randolph, of Virginia, who, seeing a drove of mules pass ing through Washington on their way to the South, said to Marcy, of Connecticut, (( There go some of your constituents." " Yes," said Marcy, "going to Virginia to teach school." Tobacco was raised in Connecticut in colonial times very much as it has been in recent years, and there was some slight business in lumber and staves ; but in comparison with the popu lation there was very little foreign trade. The population of Connecticut increased slowly in comparison with the population of Massachusetts, chiefly because the colony could not support many people. They believed in large families as fully as the people of Massa chusetts, and there were plenty of children born ; but Connecticut could not supply them all with a livelihood, so they spread out into other parts of the continent. A large number of them moved to the Susquehanna Valley in Pennsyl vania, where their descendants are to be found to this day, and the struggle for this valley is the most romantic episode in Connecticut s history. * Eastern Long Island and Northern New Jer- * See "The Making of Pennsylvania," p. 237. 261 The Land of Steady Habits sey were settled by them, and so were Western Massachusetts and Western Vermont. The middle and western parts of New York were developed chiefly by Connecticut pioneers ; and finally, that part of Ohio known as the Western Reserve has acquired its characteristics of thrift, good government, and high intelligence from the Connecticut families who founded it. There is no State in the Union which has been so well represented outside of itself. When ever the members of any important body are arranged according to their nativity, it is very often found that the natives of Connecticut are more numerous than those of any other State. In the Constitutional Convention of New York, held in 1821, out of a total of one hundred and twenty-six members, thirty-two were natives of Connecticut. Only nine were natives of Massa chusetts, which, according to the ratio of popu lation, should have had seventy. At one time one-fifth of the members of both houses of Congress had been born in Con necticut. Calhoun is reported to have said that he could remember the day when the natives of Connecticut, together with the graduates of Yale, lacked only five of being a majority of Congress.* * Litchfield County alone is said to have produced thirteen United States senators, twenty-two representa- 262 The Land of Steady Habits This migratory spirit has been very aftive during a large part of the nineteenth century, and has exerted itself in peopling what we call the Great West. It is largely the wanderer from Connecticut who, as a settler or a peddler of wooden clocks and hardware, or as an in ventor and machinist, has made the peculiari ties of the Yankee so well known throughout the world. In the time of the Revolution, when the col onies were ranked according to the number of men they sent into the army in proportion to their population, Connecticut stood second. She went to war with the same steady thorough ness she showed in peace ; and it is said that in one Connecticut brigade there were seven minis ters as captains in command of men from their own congregations. Yale University is as significant in Connect icut as Harvard is in Massachusetts. To the Puritan mind education of the highest kind was a necessity. The New Haven colony set apart land for a college in the ninth year after their arrival. Yale, however, was not actually founded till 1701, when it was established at Saybrook, tives in Congress from New York, fifteen Supreme Court judges, nine presidents of colleges, and eleven governors and lieutenant-governors. 263 The Land of Steady Habits at the mouth of the Connecticut River. Some years afterwards it was moved to New Haven, and New Haven, it will be remembered, was, like Cambridge and Boston, the abode of the most intolerant and extreme kind of Puritanism. It is perhaps significant that our two most famous institutions of learning grew up in the places where Puritanism was most bigoted and extreme. The mild, liberal democrats at Hart ford seem not to have been so intensely devoted to learning. In fact, extreme Puritanism was so complex and subtle that it required the most ex haustive efforts of the mind to maintain it. Even in its worst complexity and subtleness it always openly professed to be founded on reason and knowledge, and if it could not be main tained by those means was willing to fall. The doctrine of intolerance, for example, was always maintained by the Puritan preachers of Massachusetts with great ingenuity of language and show of knowledge. The more extreme the Puritan became the more need he had for intellectual training ; and his system of belief was so constructed that every part of it called for much mental activity and the labors of the scholar. But the general tone of Connecticut Puritanism outside of New Haven was comparatively mild, and softened the excesses of the New Haven 264 The Land of Steady Habits citizens. Early in the history of the colony, about the year 1662, this mildness produced a controversy which resulted in what was called the Half- Way Covenant. Democracy and ecclesiasticism under Hooker and his followers had gone along smoothly side by side and seldom interfered with one another ; but the tax law, which assessed all, whether members of the church or not, for the benefit of the churches, soon gave trouble. Those who were not church members, those who could not appear before the ministers and show a satisfactory conviftion of sin and religious experience, were in the position of paying taxes for the support of a church in which they had neither voice nor vote. This was not a very terrible tyranny, and, compared with what the disfranchised majority in Massachusetts suffered, it was no tyranny at all ; but still it was some thing to complain of, and after a most volumi nous controversy it brought about the Half- Way Covenant. The Half-Way Covenant was adopted by a synod of all the New England churches, ac cepted and admired by some who thought them selves progressive and were called Large Con- gregationalists, and denounced, rejected, and bewailed as part of the degeneracy of the age by those who wished to stand in the old paths. 265 The Land of Steady Habits The synod had no power to force the system on the churches : it was merely an advisory body ; but its decision was quite largely accepted and afted upon in Connecticut and, to some extent, in Massachusetts for many years. It provided that the churches must accept as members all who had been baptized, if they were of years of discretion, not scandalous in life, and understood the fundamentals of religion. The children of persons so admitted must also be baptized whenever presented for it. Thus the severe examination into religious feeling and knowledge was abolished, and the simple formality of baptism became the only qualifica tion for the right to an ecclesiastical vote. This compromise quieted the democratic ele ment in Conneclicut until the year 1818. Up to that time the taxes for the support of the church continued to be levied, and were col lected by the civil officers. For many years before the adoption of the new constitution in 1818 these taxes were paid by Episcopalians and members of other religious bodies whose belief would never permit them to become members of the Congregational churches. The Half- Way Covenant was in effedl a yield ing of the church to the clamors of the masses who wished to get within it, and when within they are generally believed to have done the 266 The Land of Steady Habits church no good. The severe examination into religious experience was one of the most ener gizing principles of Puritanism, and after it was lost in the Half- Way Covenant the churches are said to have been invaded by a decay of religious feeling which was not restored until after many years and many revivals. But the comparative mildness of Connecticut Puritanism preserved it from change. There was no reaction, no renaissance, as in Massa chusetts, because there was less from which to react ; and Unitarianism, which has almost super seded the old faith of Massachusetts, has left Connecticut untouched. The Connecticut Con gregationalism of to-day seems to be the nearest approach we now have to the Puritanism of colonial times. The Connecticut Puritans who changed their religion usually became Episcopalians. After the Revolution, when the American branch of the English Church renewed itself, Connecticut became one of its most important strongholds, and was the first community in the country to secure a bishop. The early settlers of Connecticut are said to have been of excellent English ancestry, the de scendants of knights and gentlemen. Four-fifths of the landed proprietors of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield belonged to families that had 267 The Land of Steady Habits had coats of arms granted to them in Great Britain. They had come to a wilderness from the stress of the times, as the Cavaliers went to Virginia, willing to begin life anew, labor with their hands, live in small cabins, and be laid to rest in obscure graves above which were raised no monuments emblazoned with heraldic em blems. Certain it is that their names, like those of the settlers of Massachusetts, are of the purest Anglo-Saxon. The Ludlows, Winthrops, Wol- cotts, Wyllyses, Trumbulls, Chittendens, Allyns, Ingersolls, Pitkins, Lymans, Olmsteads, and Treadwells are of no uncertain sound. We can read through lists containing hundreds of these names without finding a single one of alien origin, which is a refreshment to all believers in the importance of race after the modern lists of Irish and Germans, mixed with Italians, Huns, and Russians. Their life and beginnings were very like the early Massachusetts life, but on a smaller scale, and not so immediately prosperous. The people who began Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield lived at first in wretched huts. Afterwards log cabins were built, followed by frame houses, the ministers usually having the largest and hand somest. Occasionally a large stone house was built, like the Rev. Henry Whitfield s house at 268 The Land of Steady Habits Guilford, of the year 1640, so massive that it was used as a fort. The houses of Governor Eaton and of Davenport in New Haven were also large ; and Davenport s house is said to have had thirteen fireplaces in it. The ordinary wooden house differed consider ably from the modern one. It was constructed almost entirely of oak, even the clap-boards being made of oak, split from the tree and laboriously reduced with a shaving knife. The floors were also of oak, and the windows were leaden frames set with little diamond-shaped panes, swinging on hinges. Some pictures of these early houses represent them with the second story overhanging the first, and globular ornaments, no doubt also carved out of oak, hang ing from the edges and eaves. The outer doors were made of double oaken planks, fastened by wrought nails and spikes until they were like a solid mass, and were secured within by heavy wooden bars, a pro tection, probably, against an attack of Indians, who, though not so troublesome as in Massa chusetts, were nevertheless a constant source of danger. The early laws of the colony com pelled one member of every family to bring his arms to church. The rooms were only about seven feet high. There were the same large fireplaces as in other 269 The Land of Steady Habits parts of the country, where prodigious quanti ties of wood were burnt on the andirons. Even in summer these fires were lighted in the even ing, and the family sat round them, telling stories, listening to the cries of the frogs and the whip- poorwill, or startled by the gleam of a meteor seen through the diamond-shaped panes or open door, or the cry of a screech-owl when a cloud passed over the moon, both of which were believed to be of evil portent. Swords were worn by the better class of people when in full dress, as in all the colonies, cocked hats, broad-brim hats, and as a luxury a sort of hat called a black beaverette. The coat was long, straight, coming below the knee, with a low collar showing the white neck-cloth fastened with a silver buckle behind. The small clothes, as they were called, now used only for playing games, were universal, and were tied with ribbons, at first above the knee and in later years below it. They were often made of buck skin, and bright red was a favorite color for the long stockings. The shoes were square-toed with enormous buckles, sometimes of silver. The lower classes wore knit yarn caps of bright colors with a heavy tassel. As in Massachusetts, we find that high boots, usually very wide at the top, were considered an ornament, and worn to church. A handsome 270 The Land of Steady Habits pair of them was supposed to last almost a life time. The women of all classes were very fond of bright scarlet cloaks, which they wore on all occasions, and they must have been a striking contrast against the dark foliage of the pine forests. There was the same hoarding of great quantities of linen which we find in the other colonies. Everybody seems to have had abundance to wear, and we read of a Connedli- cut girl sent to boarding-school with twelve silk gowns, and a thirteenth afterwards ordered because she had not enough. The men had wrestling, leaping, and running matches, shot at a mark, played ball, and bar gaining for all sorts of trifles was a recognized amusement. Apparently there were more amusements than in Massachusetts. In winter, which was the time of leisure, there were sleigh ing parties. Dancing and balls ware common, and whenever a minister was ordained there was an ordination ball, which became a settled Con necticut custom ; but it was always regarded as more or less of a scandal, and finally became so elaborate and hilarious that the more sedate people stopped it. In the country districts the people went to church on foot and on horseback by roads or paths. " Many a time," says the Rev. Levi Nelson, of Norwich, " while passing over to the 271 The Land of Steady Habits society, has my attention been arrested to notice paths now given up where they used to make their rugged way to the house of God almost as surely as the holy Sabbath returned. . . . To this day I love to think of their appearance in the house of God, of the seats they occupied, and of their significant motions to express their approbation of the truth." Until 1750 there were no carriages. Every body rode a horse or walked; and the same condition prevailed almost everywhere in New England, except near large towns like Boston. For over a century the New Englanders lived in the saddle like the Virginians, and yet there was no very great love of horses developed, nor a fine breed of them for saddle use. They were usually taught to pace, which was the gait re garded as easiest and best for a long distance. A good pacer could, it is said, without difficulty make fifty or sixty miles a day. Even after 1750 there were very few carriages until the Revolution was over, and the first that appeared were two-wheeled, called chaises or gigs. They were not allowed to be used on Sunday, for the rumbling of their wheels was an irreverent disturbance of worship in the meeting-houses. When Governor Trumbull used to visit Norwich, at the time of the Revo lution, in his chaise, the people crowded to the 272 The Land of Steady Habits doors to see it pass, and there was no end of bowing and courtesying as the wonderful vehicle rolled by. Flax was an important crop on most farms in all the Northern colonies; and, besides the planting of it, the rotting, breaking, dressing, spinning, weaving, and bleaching involved a great deal of labor. The women in all the colonies were industrious spinners, and those of Connecticut were in no way inferior to their sisters. A spinning-wheel was usually the most conspicuous part of a bride s outfit when she left her father s house. Girls who could annu ally add many skeins of linen yarn and sheets and towels to the supply they were amassing for the great event of their lives were sure of suitors. Spinning nearly all day long was a common occupation of the women. Sometimes a brother would carry the small wheel over to a neigh bor s, where his sister could spin and gossip with a friend. As they spun, the women often hummed old English ballads or Puritan psalms, and mingled with the whir of the wheel it made pleasant music, which, coming through the open windows in summer, caused many a traveller to pause and listen. It has been said that spinning was very healthy exercise for women, and, unlike ordinary house- VOL. I.-i8 273 The Land of Steady Habits hold drudgery, made them cheerful and added grace to their movements. In both Connecticut and New Hampshire there are traditions that the women among the masses of the people were much more vigorous and handsome in colonial times than after the Revolution, when domestic spinning and weaving had ceased. A manuscript diary in the possession of the Connecticut Historical Society, written by a young girl, Abigail Foote, of Colchester, in the year 1775, confirms what we gather from other sources. She was the daughter of plain people apparently, but more intelligent and more in clined to books and education than people of her sort outside of New England. She was extremely busy, knitting, spinning, weaving, cooking, teaching neighbors children, helping her brother mend harness, riding horses, going to school, reading sermons and poetry, weeding in the garden, with a great deal of visiting among people of her own age. In fadl, we often find evidence that the colonists were a very busy, active people with all their time employed, but taking delight in ordinary duties instead of being worried and discontented over them. There was no city life to set an absurd standard, and the work which Abigail Foote thought so honorable and pleasant as to deserve recording in a diary has been now so long per- 274 The Land of Steady Habits formed by low-class foreigners that it is sup posed to be necessarily degrading. " Fix d Gown for Prude Just to clear my teeth, Mend Mother s Riding hood Ague in my face Ellen was spark d last night Mother spun short thread Fix d two Gowns for Welch s girls Carded tow spun linen worked on Cheese Basket Hatchel d Flax with Hannah and we did 5 lib a piece Pleated and ironed Read a ser mon of Dooridges Spooled a piece milked the cows spun linen and did 50 knots made a broom of Guinea wheat straw Spun thread to whiten Went to Mr. Otis s and made them a swinging visit Israel said I might ride his jade (horse) Set a red Dye Prude stay d at home and learned Eve s Dream by heart Had two scholars from Mrs Taylor s I carded two pounds of whole wool and felt Nationly Spun harness twine Scoured the Pewter." Wednesday was lefture day in Connecticut as Thursday was in Massachusetts. Thursday in Connecticut was usually training day for the militia and a sort of holiday. As the week wore on work relaxed, and Friday was often de voted to fishing, wolf- hunting, or easy occupa tions. On Saturday clothes were mended, and there was a general cleaning up for the solemn Sabbath, which began Saturday evening ; and on Sunday the people seem to have been some times summoned to church by beat of drum, as in the old days at Plymouth. Child, in his "Old New England Town," which was Fairfield, says that when young 275 The Land of Steady Habits people were courting and compelled to sit in the same room with the girl s parents, they often spoke to one another through a long reed tube called a whispering rod. Methods of court ship were very peculiar, as we shall see. In the opinion of the magistrates, young men were to be protected from the fascination of women. In New Haven, in 1660, Jacob Mui- line went into a room where Sarah Tuttle was, seized her gloves, and then kissed her. The court asked Sarah if Jacob had " inveigled her affections," and, like the spirited girl she was, she said "No." So they fined Sarah rather than Jacob, and called her a " Bould Virgin." To which she replied " that she hoped God would enable her to carry it better for time to come." It seems that at one time some of the women of Boston began to paint their faces, a fashion which is always coming and going. It was feared that it might spread to the country dis tricts, especially in Connecticut, and one of the ministers who preached against it said that " at the resurrection of the just there will no such sight be met as the Angels carrying painted Ladies in their arms." Children were expected to wear solemn faces and not laugh in the presence of a minister. They stood aside when any respectable person 276 The Land of Steady Habits or stranger passed them in the street ; the boys bowed and pulled off their caps and the girls courtesied. When playing together outside of the school house they would sometimes arrange themselves in a row to do their manners, as it was called, to some elderly person who ap proached. These pretty customs were not un common in some of the other colonies. Many of the farms had a shop where ox yokes and bows were made, also tool handles, and even some kinds of furniture. This Yankee facility in the use of tools was common all over New England, where farmers were usually traders and mechanics, and, if they lived near the water, boat-builders and sailors. Connecticut vessels usually traded to the West Indies, and every farmer within reach of the water was apt to intrust the skipper with a small venture of poultry, a horse or two, or a small quantity of vegetables or grain. The vessels were usually small, varying from thirty to one hundred tons, and those of one hundred tons were often rigged with three masts and yards like a ship. The sloop-rigged vessels must have been larger than those of that description in modern times, for some of them carried thirty or forty horses. The pursuit of whales began in Connecticut about the same time as in Nantucket in Massa- 277 The Land of Steady Habits chusetts. At first whales could be captured in Long Island Sound, or just outside of it. They were pursued in large row-boats and brought ashore to be cut up. Many Indians were em ployed in this occupation, which, being full of excitement and very much like hunting, did not seem so degrading as most of the white man s work. They made excellent harpooners, and would even labor for days at the oars. Soon the whalers began to use sloops, which went as far as the Grand Banks ; then larger vessels, which cruised to the Azores and the West Indies; and after 1750 whaling was a great industry of New England. The ships visited Davis Straits, Baffin s Bay, and the coast of Africa, and before the Revolution were to be found in almost every sea. Nantucket alone had one hundred and fifty whaling vessels, employing two thousand sailors ; and the won derful energy and skill shown in this calling were, in the opinion of Burke, proofs that the colonists could never be conquered. The sharp humor, wit, and sarcasm which were so prevalent among all classes in Massa chusetts were not, it seems, so common in Con necticut. A story, however, has come down to us, which is said to have been told at many colonial firesides, of a woman who, while cross ing Windsor Plains from the Smoking Tree to 278 The Land of Steady Habits Pickett s horse-shed, was overtaken by a ter rible storm. Urging her horse to his utmost speed, she was able to keep ahead of it, while the torrents poured down just behind her ; but her little dog, unable to keep up, was obliged to swim all the way. Bride-stealing was a peculiar amusement in which the young people sometimes indulged. Those who were not invited to the wedding and felt affronted would watch their chance after the ceremony was performed, seize the bride and, placing her on a horse behind one of their number, gallop to a neighboring tavern where they had ordered supper. If they could reach LUC tavern without being overtaken by the wedding-party .h night was spent there in feasting and dancing, anJ <-he bridegroom was in honor bound to foot the bills. In one instance the wedding-party, expecting the trick, had dressed a man as a bride, and as he stood about in a conspicuous position he was seized and carried off. The wedding-party fol lowed leisurely to the tavern, where they found the kidnappers just making the mortifying dis covery that their bride wore boots ; and this time the kidnappers paid the bill. In a journey he made from Rhode Island to Hartford the Marquis de Chastellux stopped for a time in Voluntown, Connecticut, where an in- 279 The Land of Steady Habits cident occurred which raises an interesting question of morals in colonial times, especially in New England. Chastellux stayed in Volun- town at a tavern, and was very much pleased with the family who kept it, describing them as charming, and the two daughters " as hand some as angels." One of these daughters was confined to her room, and Chastellux tells us that he learned that she had been deceived by a young man, who after promising to marry her had deserted. Chagrin and the consequences that were to fol low had thrown her into a state of languor. She never came down-stairs ; but the greatest care was taken of her ; somebody alwavs !:pL her company ; and her parent" seem to have had no hesitation in telling her story to Chas tellux and other travellers. When the first edition of his travels appeared *Ti France the marquis was very roundly abused for heartless indelicacy in describing this girl s misfortune and giving her name. But in the English edition the translator, who had travelled all over America, defended him in a note, in which he maintained that as the girl s parents had had no hesitation in telling her story, and as it was the custom of the country to regard such accidents not as irretrievable ruin, but as mis fortunes which could be remedied, the marquis 280 The Land of Steady Habits was merely giving an instance of American manners. The translator further went on to explain that young women who were guilty of slips of this kind lost none of their rights in society; their mistake was lamented rather than con demned ; and they could afterwards marry and take as good a position as ever, although their story was neither unknown nor attempted to be concealed. Morals, in America, he said, were in their infancy, in the sense that people had a very simple way of regarding these things which no right-minded person would attempt to ridi cule ; and he has some sharp words for French infidelities among married people, from which the Americans were quite free. It turned out that the young woman s lover returned, and both Chastellux and the translator afterwards saw her perfectly happy with her child passing from her knees to those of its grandmother. " The translator, who has been at Voluntown, and en joyed the society and witnessed the happiness of this amiable family, is likewise acquainted with the whole of this story. He is so well satisfied with the justness of the liberal-minded author s reasoning on American manners in this particular, that he has not scrupled to give the name of this worthy family at length, not apprehending that their characters would suffer the smallest injury, where alone 281 The Land of Steady Habits the imputation is of any consequence ; nor does he fear opposing the virtue of this family and of these manners to European chastity, prudery, and refinement. The cir cumstances of this story were related to the translator . . . with the same sensibility and the same innocence with which they appear to have told them to the Marquis de Chastellux." Some time afterwards, during another journey in Connecticut, the marquis found another in stance of very much the same sort near Farm- ington, in which he was again impressed with the entire openness and innocence of all the people concerned, and their willingness to sup port and care for a young woman who had made such a mistake. He and the translator comment at length on the circumstance, and the fairness and justice of not making the mother an outcast and a criminal for a lapse for which the father goes unpunished. The marquis suggests a possible explanation of the custom by saying that the acquisition of a citizen in a new country is so precious that a girl by bringing up her child seems to expiate the wickedness which brought it into existence. The translator adds that he hopes it will be very long before " the barbarous prejudices and punishments of polished Europe shall be intro duced into this happy country ;" and he says that in his experience in America nothing was more 282 The Land of Steady Habits common than such slips among very young people nor less frequent than a repetition of the same weakness. The remains of this condition of affairs have been found in quite recent times in wild parts of some of the Southern States, where no severe social penalties are inflicted on a woman for her first child born out of wedlock, although a sec ond offence outlaws her. In these places travel lers have talked with women who, without the least hesitation or embarrassment, have described their child as a first child or have distinguished it by that name from others of their flock. In New England and the other colonies the young unmarried w T omen had a great deal of liberty allowed them, probably because the villages and neighborhoods were at first com posed of very few people all well known to one another, and it seemed absurd, and was in fa6l impossible, to bring up girls in the seclu sion which was imposed upon them in Europe. This was no doubt the foundation of the liberty still allowed to unmarried women in all ranks of life in America, and which is now universally regarded as proper and of most beneficial effect in the development of their minds and characters. The crudeness and simplicity or innocence, as the marquis and his translator called it which sometimes attended this custom in colonial times 283 The Land of Steady Habits with rather unfortunate results soon wore away after the Revolution, and more precautions were taken. Among the Connecticut people there was also the practice of courtship by bundling, which has been already referred to as prevailing in Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey. It has usually, however, like the blue laws, been treated under the heading of Connecticut, a commonwealth which seems destined to bear so much of the burden of everything peculiar or irregular which happened in New England. Bundling, in all probability, originated in a habit which prevailed very widely in early times in America, especially on the frontier, where the cabins were often composed of only one room and a loft. In the lower room the whole family, father, mother, sons, and daugh ters, ate and slept, or sometimes they all slept in the loft above, which was seldom divided. In winter the extreme cold and in summer the heat made the lower room much to be preferred. When a chance traveller stopped for a night s lodging he could not be refused and told to go sleep on the ground in the woods. He was taken in, and slept in the same room with the rest of the family, and often in the same bed. We have already given an instance in Virginia, related by the Rev. Dr. Burnaby, in which 284 The Land of Steady Habits mother, father, daughter, and traveller all got into the same bed. Such incidents were com mon, are described in numerous books re lating to the frontiers, and may still be met with in some of the wild regions on the borders of Kentucky and Tennessee. The Abbe Robin, who was in Connecticut in 1781, says in his Travels,- " The Americans of these parts are very hospitable ; they have commonly but one bed in the house, and the chaste spouse, altho she were alone, would divide it with her guest, without hesitation or fear. What history relates of the virtues of the young Lacedemonian women is far less extraordinary. There is such a confidence in the pub lic virtue that, from Boston to Providence, I have often met young women travelling alone on horseback, or in small riding chairs, through the woods, even when the day was far upon the decline." In homes of this sort, especially in wild places, when a young man came to court one of the daughters of the family, he was compelled to sit with her in the room that was common to all if it was winter. He had worked all day, as every man was compelled to do in those places. The evening was the only time for seeing the young woman of his fancy, and he had perhaps walked five miles or more to reach her house. It was natural to give him as good accommo dation as was given to the stray traveller. The 285 The Land of Steady Habits parents for the sake of keeping warm retired to bed early, or lay down on the floor of the cabin and covered themselves with blankets or skins, and the young woman and her friend covered themselves in the same way near by them to carry on their conversation. The custom gradu ally spread until it was universally accepted and believed to be entirely innocent. One reason always given in justification was that it saved fuel and lights and prevented suffer ing from cold ; and when other countries are investigated, we find similar customs growing out of the same necessity and supported by similar reasons. In many parts of Great Britain, and especially in Wales, courtship by bundling has prevailed down to quite recent times, and seems to have originated in the same habits which are said to have been the cause of it in America. " At night a bed of rushes was laid down along one side of the room, covered with a coarse kind of cloth, made in the country, called bryc/tan^and all the household lay down on this bed in common, without changing their dresses. The fire was kept burning through the night, and the sleepers maintained their warmth by lying closely." (Stiles, <l Bundling in America," 23.) The customs of rude people are often very shocking to the civilized, and sometimes the civ ilized have peculiar fashions. In France dis tinguished ladies used to lie in bed while their 286 The Land of Steady Habits guests, both men and women, sat about the room and talked to them. In Holland bundling pre vailed among some classes, and was there called queesting. It is said to have been sanctioned by the " most circumspect parents," and the origin of it traced to the economy of the people, who wished to save fuel and candles in the long winter evenings. Switzerland was also troubled with it. In the early times in New England we are assured by numerous authorities that the praftice was attended with very few unfortunate results ; not so many, the advocates of the custom main tained, as happened in the higher ranks of life, where the methods of courtship were different. It was never countenanced by some of the people ; but it prevailed in spite of them, and is supposed to have become rather general about the year 1750. After that the French and In dian wars began, and the young men returning from the camp and army, where they had learned loose vices and recklessness, are supposed to have made sad changes in the simple ways of the colonists. Drunkenness and corruption are said to have greatly increased, and bundling was de prived of any innocence it possessed. The evil effels became so apparent that a decided movement was made against it. Jonathan Ed wards denounced it from the pulpit, and one by 287 The Land of Steady Habits one the ministers who had allowed it to pass un noticed joined in its suppression. Curious and startling results were sometimes produced when a minister suddenly preached on this delicate subject to a congregation a large number of whom, men and women, were bun- dlers or had been such in their youth. Written confessions of sin were common at that time when a person became a member of a church, and when there was no long written confession filed, short entries were often made in the records. Some of these which related to bun dling were in later and more self-conscious days destroyed ; but enough remain to furnish some queer revelations. In one church one hundred and twenty-four people were admitted to full membership in a period of fourteen years, and of these fourteen acknowledged having bundled. In the same period two hundred became partial or baptismal members, and of these sixty-six pleaded guilty. But bundling continued all through the cen tury, and is supposed not to have entirely ceased as an allowable practice until about 1790 or 1800, when changing circumstances, education, and the continued attacks of the reformers accom plished its end. It had its defenders even among elderly persons, and their arguments as collected in Dr. Stiles s book are very amusing. 288 The Land of Steady Habits As late as the year 1775 tne custom seems to have been regarded with the most perfect inno cence in some places. Miss Foote in her diary speaks of her sister Ellen bundling with a young man " till sun about 3 hours high," as if it was a matter of course, and a few weeks afterwards they were "cried" and married. In 1784 we find Mrs. John Adams referring to it in a letter, in a joking way, as still flourishing and well known. ^ The people of Cape Cod, it is said, held out longest against the efforts of the icono clasts. The final blow the custom received is believed to have been in 1785, when the reformers pub lished some verses on the subject written in the homely way that was most likely to influence the lower classes. They were shrewd enough to have them published in an almanac, which was the surest and indeed the only method at that time of reaching great numbers of such people. This made them self-conscious about the matter ; they began to think that they were looked down upon for it, which was a feeling they had never had before. Counter-verses appeared in defence containing arguments, and all that were written on both * Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. vi, p. 508. VOL. I. 19 289 The Land of Steady Habits sides are curious, as showing a state of affairs and point of view which have entirely passed away. " It shan t be so, they rage and storm, And country girls in clusters swarm, And fly and buzz, like angry bees, And vow they ll bundle when they please. Some mothers, too, will plead their cause, And give their daughters great applause, And tell them, tis no sin nor shame, For we your mothers did the same." * * * * * * * " If I won t take my sparks to bed A laughing-stock I shall be made." " But where s the man that fire can Into his bosom take, Or go through coals on his foot soles, And not a blister make ?" ****##*# " But last of all, up speaks romp Moll And pleads to be excused, For how can she e er married be If bundling be refused ?" With the exception of Jonathan Edwards, and possibly Benedict Arnold, Connecticut pro duced during the colonial period no very re markable men. Aaron Burr, however, though born in New Jersey, was of Connecticut origin on both his father s and his mother s side. His mother was a daughter of Jonathan Edwards. 290 The Land of Steady Habits General Putnam, who is usually assigned to Connecticut, was born in Massachusetts, and lived in Connecticut after his twentieth year. He was a popular officer and greatly trusted by Washington ; but he never developed beyond the rough-and-ready type. There were few officers in the Continental army more competent to hold a position or lead an attack ; but he was never given a large command, nor did he ever conduft a complicated campaign, or any of the parts of the art of war which require high Intel- left. The most vigorous years of Putnam s life were passed in the French and Indian wars, and he was rather too old to become very emi nent in the Revolution, which, like the civil war, demanded for its foremost military leaders men of less than fifty years. He was a rough, heavy man, with a broad, good-humored, florid face, rather unlike the typical New Englander, and overflowing with energy and exuberant life. The famous story of the wolf s den is char acteristic of his whole career. Having, in com pany with his neighbors, chased a she wolf into a cave, he was let down into it with a rope tied to his legs. He shot her, and when he had made sure she was dead, laid hold of her by the ears and gave the signal. He was hauled into 291 The Land of Steady Habits daylight by the neighbors, dragging the prey after him and tearing his skin and clothes on the sides of the cavern. He became a ranger in the French wars, learned to follow footsteps in the woods, to cut off outposts, and to creep into the enemy s camp at night for information. Desperate emergencies and daring expeditions were the situations in which he delighted. On one occasion, with only fifty men, he ambuscaded five hundred French and Indians, and killed and wounded nearly half of them. He captured a vessel on Lake Champlain by creeping up to her at night and wedging her rudder. He was not troubled with aristocratic preten sions. Just before the battle of Lexington, though high in military rank and a man of prominence in the colony, he rode to Boston, driving before him a flock of one hundred and thirty sheep to relieve the distressed inhabitants. Important people in both Connecticut and Rhode Island seem to have had no scruples about work of this sort, and would haul wood and perform other manual labor without loss of dignity. No sooner had he arrived than he was entertained by the British officers, many of whom he had known intimately in the French wars, and with whom he was always a popular character. Af terwards, at the siege of Boston, he sent a present 292 The Land of Steady Habits of some fine mutton through the lines to the wife of the British commander. In his younger days he had been challenged to a duel by one of them, and having the choice of weapons, decided on a keg of powder with a slow match in it, both of them to sit together on the keg until it exploded. The Englishman soon left Putnam alone on the keg, and was ever after the butt of ridicule, for the keg contained nothing but onions. Perhaps the most characteristic pifture we have of him is just after the affair at Noddle s Island. He had waded with his men across the flats to attack the enemy s schooner, and, return ing to his quarters at Cambridge, met General Ward and General Warren. He was exhilarated by his efforts and covered to the waist with marsh mud. " I wish," he said, " we could have something like this every day." At Bunker Hill he commanded the fifteen hundred raw militia who took part in the en gagement, and their heroic resistance against three or four thousand British regulars, of whom they killed and wounded between twelve and fifteen hundred, was doubtless largely due to his energy and leadership. At the time of the battle of Bunker Hill, and for many years afterwards, no one appears to have had any doubt that " Old Put" was the 2 93 The Land of Steady Habits commanding officer; but when a hundred years had passed and Massachusetts orators and writers began to look back for the purpose of glorifying that event, it seemed impossible that a Con necticut officer could have commanded Massa chusetts men on Massachusetts soil and in a Massachusetts battle. An attempt was accordingly made to give the credit to Colonel Prescott, who was a Massa chusetts man and commanded that part of the line which was at the redoubt on Breed s Hill. He behaved well on that occasion, and held the redoubt until driven from it by superior force ; but he exercised no authority over the rest of the line, which extended across Bunker Hill. Putnam, on the other hand, not only had a large share in planning the battle, but went up and down the line encouraging and threatening, and on his old white horse rode to the rear, in the intervals of the firing, trying in vain to bring up reinforcements. When the retreat be gan, he put himself between the enemy and his own men to lead them back. He was a general and outranked Prescott, who was only a colonel. Prescott had served in the French war, but had by no means the experience and reputation of Putnam, and he rose to no great distinction afterwards. There is no evidence that any of his contemporaries believed him to have been 294 The Land of Steady Habits the commander at Bunker Hill, or that they awarded to him alone the honors of that day. Benedift Arnold was a native of Connecticut, and before his treachery to the American cause was usually regarded as one of the most brilliant generals of the Continental army. His father was originally a cooper at Norwich, and after wards, like many others in New England, en gaged in commerce with the West Indies. He was successful, but generally believed to be dis honest, took to drink, and died in poverty and contempt. Young Benedict had greater ability and greater corruption. His moral nature was rotten to the core. From youth to age he was perfectly consistent, and he showed the same depravity in his youth at Norwich that he after wards displayed as a man at West Point. His physical courage was perfeft. When a boy he liked to astonish his playmates by cling ing to the arms of a mill-wheel and passing under the water with it. He was cruel and found pleasure in torturing birds. He became a navigator and a merchant, fought a duel, beat a sailor, seized a wild bull by the nose in the streets of New Haven, was reckless, turbulent, defiant of public opinion, and ended his mercan tile career by a bankruptcy which left a stain on his integrity. Jonathan Edwards deserves particular mention 295 The Land of Steady Habits because he was one of the very few men in the colonies who had much of a reputation in Europe. Very extravagant language has been used in his praise by the descendants of Puritans and Calvinists in both England and America, and he has been called the greatest of the sons of men. As a metaphysician and an astute reasoner on the subtle problems of free-will and predestina tion his fame still endures, and is probably des tined to last a long time. But his position in New England was in a great measure that of a reactionist. Gentle and benevolent, with all the liberal and tolerant ideas of Connecticut and none of the bigotry of Massachusetts, he at tempted to retain a sort of enlightened extreme Puritanism based on pure reason and logic and freed from all superstition. He was born in 1703, and his youth and early manhood were passed in Connecticut, but his mature years were spent at Stockbridge, Massa chusetts ; and in 1758 he was made president of Princeton College, New Jersey, where he died shortly afterwards from inoculation of the small-pox. He was a combination of both Massachusetts and Connecticut feeling, and was one of the few who could be called a New England man and representative of its general religious thought; 296 The Land of Steady Habits and he was also broadly representative of Cal vinism. Long before he was twenty years old we find in him that intense earnestness which invariably marks the Puritan. Among the many reso lutions he drew up, one was significant: "To live with all my might while I do live." His self-examination was very severe and, as often happened with Puritans, ran at times into mor bidness. But his was too serene a nature to go very far in that direftion. He was touched by the milder tone of Connecticut, and he was born when the excesses of the Cottons and Mathers were passing away. He loved to walk in the woods and fields, and he took delight in nature, which for him was not peopled with terrors. His face in the portraits we have of him is gentle, serene, and almost beautiful, in striking contrast to the portraits of the older Puritan leaders. His first controversy was in his parish at Northampton, which was in some respects a centre of opinion, and where the Half-Way Covenant prevailed in its greatest extreme. Not only were all baptized and respeftable persons regarded as church members and given the right to vote in church affairs, but they were admitted to the communion, which was regarded as a means of conversion and not as a privilege of 297 The Land of Steady Habits the eleft. His predecessor in the parish, Dr. Stoddard, had been the leader of these extreme opinions, and they were often called by his name. Edwards endured this situation for a time, and then in obedience to his instintfts turned to re sist it and stand back in the old ways. After the usual learned contest and trial he was com pelled to retire, and moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, then a mission station for the conversion of the Indians, but now better known as a summer resort. Here he continued his metaphysical studies and his contest against the Half- Way Covenant, which he detested, and he would submit to no compromise. He went more and more back to the ancient doftrines of Calvinism, predestination and elec tion, which were becoming obsolete. At first he had been shocked by them. He could not believe them. He thought it horrible and absurd that God should at his mere pleasure choose a few to eternal bliss and send the rest to everlasting torment. But gradually, he knew not by what means, he was brought back to these doftrines, and, to use his own language, found them exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet. He took endless delight, he tells us, in ascribing this absolute sovereignty to God. St. Augustine, Calvin, and other upholders of 298 The Land of Steady Habits predestination and ele&ion had proved these doftrines from the Scriptures. But as time passed such proofs had ceased to arFe6l men s minds ; and Edwards, while not denying the Scripture arguments, set out to prove them by pure reason ing outside of authority and Scripture. He passed out of the strift domain of divinity, and joined the philosophers and metaphysicians. Edwards s great fame rests principally on his essay on the freedom of the will. It is a short produclion, covering scarcely two hundred pages, but so closely and exhaustively reasoned that no one who has not mastered it can pretend to any thoroughness in metaphysics. Although it deals with a dry subject, no intelligent mind can fail to be interested. One is led on and on by the ingenious and powerful reasoning, and some are convinced in spite of themselves. Every effeft, he says, must have a cause ; and if the cause of our afting in a given way is a power of choice within ourselves, then that power of choice must have a cause, and that cause another cause, until we reach God, the original cause of all things, who has foreordained every aftion, thought, and choice of man from the foundation of the world. All admit that God is omniscient and knows all things beforehand. If he knows all things beforehand, he either approves them all or he 299 The Land of Steady Habits disapproves them all ; he is either willing that they should be or he is not willing that they should be ; but with a being of infinite power to be willing that they should be is to decree them. No one is absolutely happy unless every thing is happening in accordance with his wishes. God is a being infinitely happy, therefore noth ing is happening contrary to his wishes ; there fore he has decreed all things that happen, the evil as well as the good. In heaven, according to Edwards, the chief occupation of the blessed who inhabit that abode is in listening to the shrieks of misery from hell. In one of his sermons he describes parents ap proving in heaven of the condemnation of their children, and rejoicing, " with holy joy upon their countenances," in the torment of their little ones. He also describes a faithful pastor who has gone to heaven and spends his time in witnessing against the unregenerate of his flock as they appear for judgment ; how he reviles and denounces them, and the delight he exhibits when they are condemned. Edwards s effort has been very properly de scribed as an attempt to stiffen Puritanism or Calvinism and to restore its bones and frame work. It was also an attempt to restore the old belief by the aid of the process which was destroying it, the subjective process of Mrs. 300 The Land of Steady Habits Hutchinson of relying on the inward conscious ness of each individual, which was producing Unitarianism in Massachusetts. The difference between Mrs. Hutchinson and Edwards was, that while Mrs. Hutchinson relied on a somewhat vague and mystic inward feeling, Edwards relied more exclusively on the intellect. But this last heroic stand to stop the over whelming tide was a failure, although Edwards had many assistants, both in America and Eng land, showing different phases of the contest. They might as well have tried to stop a snow storm or check the rotation of the earth. Edwards made of himself a famous metaphy sician, but his metaphysics did not accomplish what he intended or expected for his faith. By carrying predestination and election to their extreme logical limits he revealed their weak nesses and destroyed them. He showed that the freedom of the will was a mere metaphysical puzzle which could never be solved. The Calvinistic sels of modern times usually ignore it or accept it as a mystery, and their belief in it is apt to be stated by saying that pre destination is taught in the Scriptures, is reason able, and should be believed ; free-will is also taught in the Scriptures, is undeniable, and should be believed. It is impossible by human reason to reconcile these two beliefs, for they are abso- The Land of Steady Habits lutely contradictory of each other ; but, doubt less, in the mind of God they are consistent. In his efforts against the Half-Way Cove nant Edwards was more successful ; and, strange to say, this man who was so much absorbed in efforts of pure intellect was a revivalist. Several years before Whitefield and the Wesleys started the Great Awakening of 1740 Edwards had con ducted revivals of his own, in which, according to his extraordinary descriptions, even thoughtless boys and girls were carried away by religion. This, combined with his reaction against the Half- Way Covenant, is supposed to have saved the Connecticut churches from following those of Massachusetts into Unitarianism. CHAPTER IV THE ISLE OF ERRORS 1 A HE Isle of Errors and the Religious Sink of New England were the names given in colonial times to Rhode Island, because it was the refuge of Roger Williams, Mrs. Hutchinson and her Antinomian followers, Gortonites, Bap tists, and various eccentrics and outcasts who were uncongenial to the orthodoxy of Massa chusetts and Connecticut. It was a place for odds and ends and miscellaneous theology ; and Cotton Mather used to say that if any one lost his religion he would be sure to find it in Rhode Island. Roger Williams and Gorton were the most prominent characters among these confused and discordant elements, and Williams was by far the more sane and sensible. After his banish ment from Massachusetts in 1636 he helped to settle and build up Providence at the head of 303 The Isle of Errors Narragansett Bay ; and Mrs. Hutchinson and her followers performed the same service for Portsmouth and Newport at the mouth of the bay. As finally constituted Rhode Island was made up of four different colonies, Providence at the head of the bay, Portsmouth and Newport on the large island in the mouth called Rhode Island, and Warwick on the west shore, a few miles south of Providence. Rhode was a cor ruption of Roode or red, a name given to the island by the Dutch explorers from New York. Newport was founded largely by settlers from Portsmouth, and Warwick by dissatisfied per sons from the other three towns. The ruling spirit at Warwick was Gorton, a rough, pugnacious, honest-hearted mystic, who had arrived in Boston at the time of the Anti- nomian difficulties. He spent a short time at Plymouth, where his wife s servant got into trouble for smiling in church and was about to be driven from the town as a common vagabond. Gorton defended her, and this, combined with his heresies, caused his banishment. He was a strange creature who had caught up some of the ideas of the Reformation and had begun to work out religion for himself. He had freed himself, like Roger Williams, from every kind of dogma, formalism, and church 34 The Isle of Errors organization. Sermons, he said, were lies and tales, churches divided platforms, and baptism a vanity. When he first went to Rhode Island he refused to submit himself to the civil authority, because it was self-constituted and without recog nition from England and had been altered from what it had been at first. These queer opinions and his unbearable insolence to the magistrates were too much even for the liberals of Ports mouth, and they banished him. He went to Providence, and abused all the ministers and denied the necessity of any ordi nances of church or state, until poor Roger Williams was almost distrafted ; for Williams was practical at the exadl point where Gorton was unbalanced, and although he denied the validity of every form of religion, admitted that an organization of some sort, at least for the state, was absolutely essential. Gorton s followers became so numerous and violent in their attacks on law and govern ment that some of the people appealed to Massa chusetts for advice, which gave the Puritans the sort of opportunity they were always glad to have. Without the least show of right they laid claim to all the land at Providence and also at Gorton s home, Warwick, in the hope of en ticing him to Boston, where they could have a theological excitement with his queer opinions. VOL. 1-20 305 The Isle of Errors Failing to entice him, they sent an armed force, which captured him with a number of his friends, destroyed a large part of their goods, and appropriated about eighty head of their cattle. When the prisoners reached the first town in Massachusetts the chaplain of the expedition offered prayer in the streets, and proclaimed that everything had been done in a " holy manner and in the name of the Lord." At Dorchester and Boston they were received with great rejoicing, a volley of musketry was fired over their heads, and the governor asked God to bless and prosper the soldiers who had brought them in. They were taken to church and preached at by Cotton ; and after the sermon Gorton rose up and answered him. Several trials appear to have been held with out securing a conviftion, and meanwhile the ministers visited the prisoners and indulged themselves to the full in cross-questions. They were for putting all the prisoners to death ; but some of the General Court dissented, and accord ing to Gorton the motion for death was lost by only two votes. They were, however, put to work in chains, and had been distributed to the towns for this purpose, when the indignation of the disfranchised majority became so great that they were set free and ordered to leave the colony within fourteen days, which was reduced 306 The Isle of Errors to two hours when it was discovered that they were making friends among the people. Williams s career was less eventful than it had been in Massachusetts. He was in strange un certainty on all questions of religion, but held firmly to his belief in liberty of conscience. He lived in expectation of a new revelation which should give a new and pure commission to ad minister the sacraments and organize churches ; and he talked about a " great slaughtering of the witnessess" and a general upheaval of society, which was to bring a new dispensation. Until that time should come, he said, there was no authorized ministry or church, and all men should have liberty to maintain such minis try and worship as they pleased. At first he inclined to the seel of the Baptists, became con vinced that his infant baptism had been invalid, and had himself re-baptized by immersion. But within three or four months he lost confidence in this second baptism and left the se6l entirely. He labored hard to persuade the people round him that liberty was not license ; but most of his time seems to have been occupied in trying to convert the Indians ; and among his published papers is a touching letter to his wife, written when he was among the savages, and sent to her with a bunch of wild flowers. He probably understood the Indian character 37 The Isle of Errors as well as any man in New England, and pre pared a grammar of their language which can still be read with interest ; but he describes the difficulties of the language as almost insurmount able, and says that even Eliot, the famous Mas sachusetts missionary, who had translated the whole Bible for the Indians, was often unable to make them understand him. There is a story told of Eliot, that when, in translating the Old Testament, he came to the passage in the fifth chapter of the book of Judges, which says that the mother of Sisera looked out at a window and cried through the lattice, he was at a loss for an Indian word that meant lattice. He went to some of the Indians and described a lattice to them, and they gave him a word which he put into his translation. Some time afterwards, when he knew more of the language, he discovered that the word they had given him meant an eel-pot, which was made something like a basket, and was the only sort of lattice work the Indians knew of. Williams had a great dislike for the Quakers, who were very numerous in Rhode Island ; and he relaxed from his liberal principles so far as to want to have them punished for using " thee" and " thou" to superiors. When quite an old man he rowed himself in a boat thirty miles down Narragansett Bay to have a debate and contro- 308 The Isle of Errors versy with them at Newport, where, for two or three days, he labored to convince them of their errors, calling them, in the language of the time, " bundles of ignorance," and " a tongue set on fire from the hell of lies and fury." One of his best-known books was called " George Fox Digged out of his Burrows," which was intended to be a double joke, for Burrows was a promi nent Quaker in the province. Rhode Island was a strange New England colony, made up of Gortonites, Antinomians, Quakers, Baptists, and all sorts of nondescripts, who were wandering without a guide in the new found liberty of the Reformation, and after cen turies of restraint trying to think for themselves. Some declared that there should be no governors or officers or punishments, because all were equal in Christ, that it was murder and contrary to the Gospel to execute a criminal, and that no man was bound by a law that he could declare to be contrary to his conscience. There were tumults and riots as a consequence of these opin ions and several trials for high treason. Roger Williams rose to the emergency, and showed his good sense and strength of character by laying down the dividing line between liberty and law exactly as it is understood to-day, and in very much the same language in which it would be now expressed. All the liberty of 309 The Isle of Errors conscience, he said, that he had ever contended for was that Protestants, Papists, Jews, and Turks should not be forced to any prayers but their own ; beyond that they must obey the civil law. He used the happy illustration of the ship, which was afterwards often repeated. The crew and passengers, he said, are not compelled to follow the captain s religion ; they may say any prayers they please ; but they must all obey the captain s orders in discipline and navigation. He had a fierce controversy with a certain William Harris, who wrote a book to prove that all kinds of taxation, laws, and magistrates ought to be abolished, and he had Harris indidled for treason. We have the record of a curious debate in Providence, in which the wife of one Verin in sisted on going to hear the sermons of Roger Williams and her husband insisted on restraining her. It was gravely argued on one side that liberty of conscience could never be allowed to extend to a breach of an ordinance of God, such as the subjection of wives to their husbands ; that Verin was as conscientious in restraining his wife as she was conscientious in going ; that they had all fled from Massachusetts rather than break a law of God to please men, and would they now break a law of God to please a woman ? But Mrs. Verin triumphed in the end, and her hus- 310 The Isle of Errors band was restrained from the liberty of voting for having attempted to restrain the liberty of his wife. All these difficulties experienced in prac tically administering the principle of liberty were very gratifying to the Puritans ; for they had always declared that liberty of conscience would lead to lawlessness, immorality, and atheism. The liberty and the strange variety of opinion in Rhode Island developed an extreme indi vidualism and an extreme independence among the towns ; and this is the key-note of the colony s history for two hundred years. Each town was a separate sovereignty, and nearly every one of them had at times entertained the notion of getting from the crown a charter for itself as a colony without regard to the others. By the exertions of Williams a charter was obtained in 1643 for all the towns, but nearly three years passed away before they could be persuaded to unite under it. The charter was very short, and was the freest ever given. It simply said that the towns of Providence, Ports mouth, and Newport might unite together and make any form of government the majority should think best, and it gave them the corpo rate name of Providence Plantations. When at last the towns decided to accept this charter the government they framed under it showed a most jealous regard for their inde- 3" The Isle of Errors pendence. They created a president of the colony, with one assistant from each town, but these assistants had no legislative power. Any laws that were to be made were first proposed and passed by one of the towns and then sent about to the other towns for acceptance. When a proposed law had run the gauntlet of all the towns it was handed to a committee com posed of six men, one from each town, called the General Court ; and if this committee de cided that the law had been concurred in by a majority of the colony, it stood as law until the next General Assembly of all the people, who finally decided whether it should continue. There has seldom been a more elaborate system of self-defence against the supposed dangers of centralization. The towns retained all their rights of local government, and their union under the charter was simply a league. So loose was the union of the towns under the charter that at one time Portsmouth and Newport attempted to detach themselves from the others and join the New England confed eracy. Failing in this, Codington, one of their leading men, went to England and procured a commission incorporating them as a separate colony. For three years there were two gov ernments, one at Providence and the other at Newport, holding separate assemblies for mak- 312 The Isle of Errors ing laws, the cause of much strife and bitterness and great delight to the Puritans. In 1663 a charter was obtained from the crown which made a close union of the towns, and was very much like the Connecticut charter which Winthrop had obtained the year before. It established religious liberty, allowed the people to eleft their own governors and make their own laws as they pleased, and was so lib eral in every way that it was not considered necessary to alter it in the Revolution, and the people lived under it until 1842. After Charles II. came to the throne and Massachusetts lost her charter, Rhode Island was as lucky as Connecticut in retaining hers. There was no romantic episode of an oak ; but when Andros came to Rhode Island for the charter it was quietly put out of sight. He never obtained it, and when William and Mary ascended the throne the charter was brought forth and the old government restored under it, as in Connecticut. In the interval while the charter was in hid ing Rhode Island showed a tendency to split up into fragments. The town of Providence sent an address to the king resigning its charter, asking to be annexed to the general government of New England, and disowning the address sent by the Rhode Island Assembly. Similar ad- 313 The Isle of Errors dresses were sent by the Quakers and by various voluntary associations of citizens. Indifference towards the rest of the world and a lack of cohesion among themselves were for a long time the prominent traits of the people, traits which might perhaps show them selves even now if an occasion should arise. Rhode Island was the last State to accept the National Constitution and join the Union. For many months after the other States had given in their consent and the general government had been organized and put in operation Rhode Island continued to retain her autonomy, and stood alone as an independent country in the midst of the American Union. When at last the little one condescended to join the company of the giants, the resolution accepting the Con stitution was passed by a majority of only two votes. As late as the year 1842 there was a formi dable rebellion in Rhode Island. Many of the people had long been dissatisfied with the old charter granted by Charles II. and with the law which restricted the right of voting to free holders. They formed voluntary associations in different places, and these associations called a convention to frame a constitution, and this without any authority from the government under the old charter and without the least The Isle of Errors regard for it. The new constitution was put to the vote of the people, and when its upholders believed that it had been adopted by a majority, they organized a government with regularly ap pointed officers. An individual named Dorr was eledted governor, and the affair is now known as the Dorr Rebellion. Rhode Island was once more under two con flifting governments. The charter government, however, had no idea of submitting to such a situation. They declared martial law, suppressed Dorr and his followers by force, and prepared a new constitution of their own, which, having been accepted by the people, has ever since re mained the constitution of Rhode Island. The extreme views on the subject of liberty prevented that unity and compactness of organi zation which gave Connecticut and Massachu setts their success as colonies. The discordant sefts always tended to disintegrate the commu nity ; and they were so much opposed to ecclesias- ticism and religious organization of any kind that their ministers were inferior. Their churches were not supported by taxation, and the people were too poor or too much afraid of encouraging ministerial tyranny to subscribe. The ministers were usually farmers, without salary or any means of support except their own labor. They had no leisure for study and little interest in it. The Isle of Errors As a consequence education was neglected ; there was no system of schools like those of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and the public school system was not adopted until 1828. In faft, an attempt in Providence in 1768 to estab lish free schools showed that the lower classes of the people were decidedly opposed to them. Private schools were few and inferior ; but the Baptists made some very creditable exertions, and in 1764 founded the college which is now Brown University. It has often been observed that every settle ment in Massachusetts and Connecticut grew up round a meeting-house and a graveyard. But it was very different in Rhode Island. Religious meetings were for a long time held in the fields or in private houses. The town of Providence was nearly a century old before it had a steepled church. There was not even a meeting-house until the year 1700, and the one then erected was shaped like a hay-cap, with a fireplace in the middle, the smoke escaping through a hole in the roof. Individualism showed itself even in death. There were no common burying-places ; fami lies and sels had their own ; and in later years there was often a difficulty experienced in laying out the streets of a town so as to avoid some Rhode Islander s last stand for independence. 316 The Isle of Errors For the first fifty or sixty years Rhode Island struggled for bare existence, and at the end of that time her people numbered only ten thou sand. They were scattered in small settlements clinging round the shores of Narragansett Bay, hemmed in on three sides by the powerful and jealous colonies of Massachusetts and Connefti- cut. Their boundaries were always in dispute, and were not finally settled until the year 1883. Several times in the history of the colony she seemed on the point of being dismembered and divided among her neighbors. So strong were the fears and the ill feeling that for many years the people would build no highways to connect with the other colonies. Massachusetts and Connecticut had no love for the Isle of Errors, and would not admit her to the New England confederacy of 1643. At one time the Plymouth colony claimed all the way to the bay on the eastern side, and also the island on which stood Portsmouth and New port. Massachusetts claimed the rest of the eastern side and down the western side as far as Warwick, where lived the irrepressible Gorton. Connecticut claimed what was left of the west ern shore. If the Rhode Island people had admitted the claims of their enemies they would have had to live in the water. 3 7 The Isle of Errors Rhode Island was not fairly started till 1700, and did not begin to flourish until after the Revolution. Her people produced nothing that was of any great value in the markets of the world. They had no great staple for export like the tobacco of Virginia or the fish of Massachusetts. Their harbors were as good as those of Massachusetts, but they had not the Puritan aptitude for commerce and ship building. In 1680, in answer to the questions of the Board of Trade, they said that they had no ships, only a few sloops ; that their only ex ports were horses and provisions ; that they had no fishing trade and no merchants ; that the people lived chiefly by improving and cultivat ing the wilderness land. This statement must be taken with some allowance, for the colonists were always careful in their answers to the British government not to boast of their wealth and success, and they were apt to understate their population. After the year 1700 a slight improvement be gan. Ships were owned in the colony, and Newport became a seat of commerce. In the year 1763 one hundred and eighty-four foreign- going vessels and three hundred and fifty-two coasters cleared from the custom-house of the little town, which is now chiefly known as a The Isle of Errors fashionable watering-place. Two-thirds of these vessels are said to have been owned in Newport, and together with the fishing-boats employed twenty-two hundred sailors. The profits of the slave-trade were also considerable, and many vessels were engaged in it. The colony produced one remarkable man, General Greene, who was brought up a Quaker, and in the Revolution was usually regarded as the ablest soldier of the Continental army after Washington. When the French army came to assist the patriot cause in the summer of 1780 they landed at Newport, and there the French officers re ceived their first impressions of the strange New World of which they had heard so much. Some of the descriptions they have left are interesting. Claude Blanchard, who was the commissary of supplies, preferred Providence to Newport. Providence was, he said, more lively and had more commerce. But he describes the wooden houses of Newport as very pretty. He visited a school where the children were all neatly clad, the room very clean, and the master an excellent man. " I saw the writing of these children, it appeared to me to be handsome, among others that of a young girl nine or ten years old, very pretty and very modest, and such as I would like my own daughter to be when she is as old} she 319 The Isle of Errors was called Abigail Earl as I perceived upon her copy-book, on which her name was written. I wrote it myself, add ing to it * very pretty. " He saw a great deal of the country between Providence and Boston. The men were tall and affable and wore good clothes ; the women fair-skinned and good-looking. They lived easy lives, cultivating small farms which they owned, and in winter seemed to have nothing much to do but sit by the fire with their wives and eat a great many meals. They drank cider and Madeira mixed with water. He found wall-papers, some of them quite handsome, in use instead of tapestry, and he was surprised to find carpets common, for they were then only just coming into use. They even used them, he says, on the stairs. There was a great deal of good furniture, especially among the better classes, and they were very choice in their cups, vases, and decanters. Everywhere, including Boston, he found what he describes as "immaculate cleanliness," and he comments on this quite often. He had some difficulty with English ; but found two persons who could converse with him in Latin, one a Hessian dragoon, who had deserted from the British, and the other a native New Englander. Some of the manners of the people puzzled him. 320 The Isle of Errors " I dined at the house of a young American lady where M. de Capellis lodged. ... It is a great contrast to our manners to see a young lady (she was twenty at the most) lodging and entertaining a young man. I shall certainly have occasion to explain the causes of this singularity." Chastellux on his arrival with the fleet was very busy with his military duties, and has nothing to say of Newport. He was anxious to get away as quickly as possible to explore and study all the colonies, and was soon on the road to Connecticut ; but he stopped for a time in Providence, with which he was very much pleased, commenting on the neatness and good arrangement of the houses, and he breakfasted with Colonel Peck. "This little establishment where comfort and simplicity reign gave an idea of that sweet and serene state of happi ness which appears to have taken refuge in the New World, after compounding it with pleasure, to which it has left the Old." The Abbe Robin, who visited Rhode Island the next year, says that before the arrival of the fleet and army the Americans had a great dislike for the French. " They looked upon them as a people bowed down beneath the yoke of despotism, given up to superstition, slavery, and prejudice, mere idolaters in their public worship, and, in short, a kind of light nimble machines, deformed to the last degree, incapable of anything solid or consistent ; entirely taken up with the dressing of their hair and paint- VOL. I. 21 321 The Isle of Errors ing their faces ; without delicacy or fidelity, and paying no respeft even to the most sacred obligations." This was, of course, the prejudice which all Englishmen had at that time for their ancient enemy across the channel. It was so strong that on the arrival of the fleet at Newport the people deserted the town. To overcome their fears and dislike the French officers established the strictest discipline and took advantage of every occasion to show politeness and kind feel ing. They were very successful in this, as the Abbe tells us, and before long the most pleasant relations were established. Part of their endeavor to encourage friendli ness was abstaining from flirtations, and both the Abbe and Chastellux comment on this in true French fashion. When the fleet was afterwards at Boston, Chastellux tells us that " though the officers were admitted by the ladies of Boston to the greatest familiarity, not a single indiscretion, not even the most distant attempt at impertinence, ever disturbed the confidence or innocent har mony of this pleasing intercourse." The Abbe, however, after a sort of half com plaint that the French nation had long been upbraided " for paying no regard to the most sacred of all connexions when their gallantry is concerned," admits that Newport had af forded several examples. One instance he re- The Isle of Errors lates of a French officer who won the affedlions of a young woman whose husband seems to have been equal to the occasion. " He became more assiduous and complaisant to her than ever; with sorrow and despair in his soul, he showed a countenance serene and satisfied. He received at his house with attention and civility the very officer who was the author of his misfortune ; but by the assistance of a friend so contrived matters as to hinder him from any private interviews with her whatever. These repeated disappoint ments appeared to the Frenchman to be mere effects of chance ; he, however, grew sullen and peevish upon it, and consequently became less amiable in the eyes of the lady, and her husband more so than ever ; and thus that virtue which had not lost all its claims to her seduced heart soon recalled it to its duty. Such a procedure as this in so deli cate an affair discovers great knowledge of the human heart, and still more of dominion over itself." CHAPTER V THE WHITE MOUNTAINS AND THE GREEN XTEW HAMPSHIRE, like Connefticut and Rhode Island, was an offshoot from Massa chusetts, and out of New Hampshire arose Ver mont. In the colonial period New Hampshire can hardly be said to have had a separate history ; for a large part of the time she was under the dire6l government of Massachusetts and always under Massachusetts influence. Stray adventurers had founded Portsmouth and Dover as early as 1623. In 1638 Exeter was settled by Wheelwright and a number of Anti- nomians who had been banished from Massachu setts during the difficulties with Mrs. Hutchin- son. Hampden was founded in the same year by Puritans from England and Massachusetts. The men who settled Portsmouth and Dover had been sent out by two enterprising individ uals, Mason and Gorges, who had obtained 324 The White Mountains and the Green enormous grants of land from the Plymouth Company. Gorges was a naval officer, a friend and companion of Sir Walter Raleigh. Mason was a merchant and at one time governor of Newfoundland. In 1629 these two men divided their property. Gorges took Maine and Mason took New Hampshire. Maine never became a separate colony, but remained under the jurisdic tion of Massachusetts until 1819. Mason had very grand ideas about New Hampshire, his vast estate of rocks and pine- trees. He looked forward to renting it out to tenants, like an English manor, he himself to grow rich on the proceeds, and, like William Penn and Lord Baltimore, become famous as the founder of an empire. But it was never anything but a dream. Men who had to contend with the savages, the long winters, and the barren soil of New Hampshire were not the sort who had rent to pay or who were willing to pay it to an absentee landlord. He sunk his fortune in the venture ; his heirs sunk a large part of theirs ; they finally lost their title, and their claims were a source of annoyance to the colony for nearly a hundred years. Each of the four little towns, Portsmouth, Dover, Exeter, and Hampden, was of the usual New England type, an independent republic built up round a church. They quarrelled with 325 The White Mountains and the Green each other continually, and their progress was slow. After twenty years of existence .the popu lation of the colony had not reached a thousand. In 1641, tired of their separate unprotected state and unable to agree on any general plan of government, they were, by their own request, taken under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. The law which allowed only church members to vote was relaxed in their favor, and they consti tuted a part of Massachusetts until, when Mason s heirs attempted to recover their rights, the court of King s Bench in England decided that neither the Masons nor Massachusetts should have them, and in 1680 they were put under the direcl government of the king. The growth of New Hampshire was very slow, and in 1730, after a hundred years ex istence, there were only about twelve thousand people. But at the time of the Revolution there were supposed to be about eighty thousand. Laws, customs, and opinions were taken from Massachusetts, and fishing and trade with the Indians were the principal means of livelihood. The most curious occupation in New Hamp shire was masting. Officers of the crown went through the forests and marked G. R. on the tallest and best pines, and. severe penalties were inflifted on any one who cut one of these trees which were thus reserved for masts for the royal 326 The White Mountains and the Green navy. In winter they were cut down under the direction of a mast-master, and the labor of hauling them to the nearest stream which in spring would float them to the sea began. From fifty to eighty yoke of oxen were hitched to a single tree to drag it over the snow, the end of the tree nearest the oxen being raised on a strong sled. A long time was always required to get the patient beasts started ; but when once " raised," as it was called, they never slopped till they reached the water. Two tailmen walked by the hind yoke, and when the tongue of the sled, in passing over a hollow place, ran up so high as to lift up the hind yoke by their necks, the tailmen seized their tails and drew them outward, so that in coming down the tongue would not strike them. So many of the people were Scotch-Irish that in the woods and country districts the Scotch dialect was constantly heard, and the people by their firesides told tales of the siege of Lon donderry mingled with their recent adventures with the Indians. And such fireplaces ! They were the largest of any in the colonies, eight feet long, and so very deep that the children had blocks on which they sat far within, and the child farthest in was the coldest and could see the stars up the chimney. In daytime, it is said, one could see to read inside of these fireplaces. 327 The White Mountains and the Green There were no cranes in them, but a green stick called a lug-pole stretched across high above the flame, with iron trammels hanging down on which to suspend the pots. Wooden plates and dishes were largely in use, and the women disliked earthen-ware because it dulled the knives. These women called their children bairns, were strong and hardy, worked in the grain-fields and broke up the ground for sowing. The modern woman when in a hurry to kin dle a fire takes a can of coal-oil, with the con sequences of which we so often hear. But in New Hampshire she often took her husband s powder-horn. One whose name has become historic thought one day that she could quickly stop the stream of powder with her thumb, as she had often done before. But the flame followed up the stream into the horn, which flew from her hand up the chimney ; and for years after people would say "as quick as Mother Hoit s powder-horn." The elderly people went to church, as in Mas sachusetts, on horseback, and the young walked. In summer the young men walked barefooted, with their shoes in their hands, and the girls walked in coarse shoes, carrying a better pair to change before entering the meeting-house. At Concord it is said those coming from the west- 328 The White Mountains and the Green ward stopped at a large pine-tree, where the shoes were put on, and the women left their heavy shoes under the tree until they returned, having no fear that any one would disturb them on the Sabbath. In the " History of Barnstead" some curious court records are found. In 1649 Josiah Pais- towe, for stealing four baskets of corn from the Indians, is ordered to be fined five pounds and hereafter to be called Josias and not Mr. as formerly. Captain Stone, for abusing Mr. Lud- low, who seems to have been a justice of the peace, and calling him Just-ass is fined one hun dred pounds. We find the men as carefully protected as in Connecticut from those allurements which we all know are hard to resist. Margery Ruggs, for enticing and alluring George Palmer, is ordered to be severely whipped, while George, who confessed that he had been unable to resist the enticement, was only set in the pillory. The town histories have many accounts of fights with bears, which were very numerous and were often killed with axes. One man found a bear plunging his nose into a wasp s nest to rob it, and squealing and grunting as he was stung. Watching a chance when he was fully occupied, the hunter finished him with a blow of the axe. 329 The White Mountains and the Green There were suspicions of witchcraft, and charmed crows which could be shot only with a silver button. One old dame who had all the usual signs and symptoms wore away to a mere skeleton before her death. But the shoulders of the strong men who carried her to the grave were bruised black and blue, crushed by the weight of sin. Being the most exposed to the French and Indians of all of the New England colonies, the province could make no progress until repeated wars had reduced the power of the Indians and their white allies. Block-houses and garrisons were maintained all along the frontier, and scouting-parties were kept moving through the woods every day. The Indians crept up to the settlements like wild animals and lay hid in the bushes, and even in the grain-fields and potato-patches. There was no safety unless these resorts were beaten up from week to week, for if the red men were allowed to colledl in that way for any length of time they could rise up on a signal and massacre the whole community. A settler s family might go about their ordinary duties for several days and then suddenly discover by depressions in the grass or dusky forms disappearing among the trees that for all that time they had been watched by their enemies. 330 The White Mountains and the Green The Indians used light charges of powder, waited till their viftims were scattered, and then went up close and shot from behind a tree. Such surroundings turned every able-bodied man into a Leatherstocking. The rangers of New Hampshire, many of whom were Scotch-Irish men, became famous, and their services were eagerly sought in the French wars. For follow ing a trail and righting from log to log they were unequalled in the colonies. In the famous fight at Lovewell s Pond in 1725 the rangers saw an Indian standing on a point on the shore of a lake. They left their packs on the ground, crept to him, and soon had his scalp ; but while they were gone after this decoy the Indians hid themselves near the packs, and when the rangers returned they re ceived a volley which killed nine of them. The fight continued from behind trees. John Chamberlain fought the chief Paugus, and when their guns became too foul to use they mutually agreed to go together to the stream to wash them. The others on both sides, understanding the arrangement, watched them without inter ference. When they returned to their places the Indian could load faster than Chamberlain, whose bullets could with difficulty be rammed down the barrel. The White Mountains and the Green " Now me kill you," said the chief, finding he was first to get his gun primed. Chamberlain s gun wa-s very open at the touch- hole. Giving it a smart blow on the stock, it primed itself, and his ball passed through Pau- gus. The Indians grew weary of the contest and retired with the scalps they had secured. The remnant of the rangers escaped, but had to leave their wounded on the field, Lieutenant Robbins begging to keep his gun for a last shot before he died. Hunting was a very profitable occupation when the Indians could be avoided. In an expedition to Baker s River in 1752 Stark and three com panions collected within two months furs to the value of five hundred and sixty pounds sterling. But they never pocketed the profits of their suc cess, for the Indians captured them and took them with their property to Canada, where the two who remained alive had to be ransomed. Stark was a Scotch-Irishman, pugnacious, rest less, and independent. He passed from the pro fession of hunter to that of guide, and from that to be a soldier and an officer in the French and Indian wars. He served under Lord Howe and other distinguished generals, and at the out break of the Revolution had had a military ex perience fully equal to that of Washington, 332 The White Mountains and the Green Putnam, or any other American in the Continen tal army. When he heard the news of Lexington he started at once for Boston, and after the manner of a ranger called- on all the people as he passed to follow him. He was at Bunker Hill and the siege of Boston. But his only distinguished service was the battle of Bennington, in which he cut off Burgoyne s foraging-party and so seriously checked his advance that Gates had ample opportunity to collect the army which defeated him at Saratoga. General Sullivan, a conspicuous soldier of the Revolution, was born in Maine, but has usually been credited to New Hampshire, where he lived from his early youth ; and Ethan Allen was the leading character of that part of New Hampshire which became Vermont. The grant of land given by Charles II. to the Duke of York, which, as we have seen, gave so much trouble to Connecticut, included the whole of New England west of the Connecticut River. The colony of New York was thus brought eastward to that river, which runs north and south through the middle of New England. The original charters of both Connecticut and Massachusetts gave them jurisdiction westward all the way to the Pacific Ocean, and they resisted the claims of New York, until finally as a com- 333 The White Mountains and the Green promise Connecticut had her western boundary settled where it now is, twenty miles east of the Hudson River ; and using this as a precedent, Massachusetts succeeded in having her boundary settled in the same way. But the western boundary of New Hampshire was not brought into dispute until some years later, and its settle ment was more difficult. The New Hampshire lands which lay be tween the Connecticut River and Lake Cham- plain were, up to the outbreak of the French war in 1755, a complete wilderness, into which only the hunter and the Indian cared to venture. A few years previous to the outbreak of the war Governor Wentworth, of New Hampshire, had issued patents for lands in this section without regard to the grant to the duke or the claims of New York ; and he announced that the west ern limit of his colony was, like that of Con necticut and Massachusetts, a line twenty miles east of the Hudson River. The war, however, put an end to all attempts at settlement, for these New Hampshire Grants, as they were called, became the marauding ground of the French and their red allies. But no sooner was the war over and Canada given to the control of the English than settlers began to pour into the Grants, and within four years Governor Wentworth found that he had organ- 334 The White Mountains and the Green ized in them one hundred and thirty-eight town ships. The settlers took title to their farms from New Hampshire. The majority of them were from Connecticut, and the rest from Massachusetts and New Hampshire. They were hardy and ambitious, the flower of the colonial yeomanry, men whose love of independence and daring enterprise had been stimulated by their cam paigns against the French. They cleared away the forests, planted, improved, and prospered ; they believed that their labor and success gave them a perfect title to their land, superior to parchment or patent from either Wentworth or the governor of New York. The New York colony, however, had ob tained in 1764 a decree from the king in council confining the jurisdiction of New Hampshire to the eastern side of the Connecticut River. At first all parties appeared to be satisfied. The settlers themselves were indifferent. They thought that they were as likely to be pros perous under the government of New York as under that of New Hampshire. The decree seemed to them a purely political matter, with out effeft on the growth of crops or their indi vidual rights of ownership ; and the change of political authority should certainly have left all private rights of property unimpaired. 335 The White Mountains and the Green But the government of New York, urged on by a clique of land speculators, announced that all titles in the grants west of the Connecticut River were invalidated, and must be repurchased from the new authority. The settlers, confident in the justice of their position, would not respond to this demand, refused to repurchase their lands, and when the three months had expired New York issued warrants to the land specula tors. These warrants included lands with orchards and houses which had been in the possession of the occupants for years, and had been redeemed from the wilderness and brought to a high state of cultivation. A more complete and deliberate piece of robbery can hardly be conceived. The settlers sent an agent to England, who very quickly obtained an order from the king forbidding New York to issue any more patents. But nothing was said about the patents already granted, and under these the speculators began to take out writs of ejectment. The settlers were determined to exhaust all peaceable methods, and under the leadership of Ethan Allen they employed counsel to argue the ejectment suits at Albany. But almost every member of the New York government, including some of the judges, was interested in the land-jobbing, and the trial was a farce. The White Mountains and the Green Allen was advised to yield to the decision, and was reminded by the New York attorney- general that might often prevailed against right. To which in his grandiloquent way he replied, "The gods of the valleys are not the gods of the hills." He retired to his Green Mountains, and his followers allowed all the ejectment suits to go against them by default. But it was no easy matter for New York to execute the judgments obtained against the people in the Grants and force them out of their homes. Allen organized a systematic resistance, and the New York officers succeeded in ejecting farmers in only one or two instances. Even in these cases the viftims were immediately restored to their property by Allen s men. The New York sheriffs were often roughly handled, and a favorite mode of punishment was called " chas tisement with the twigs of the wilderness," a phrase which sounds like Allen. For ten years, from 1765 until the outbreak of the Revolution, this quarrel continued. The governor of New York issued proclamations declaring Allen and his lieutenants outlaws and offering a bounty for their capture. Allen re plied by issuing a proclamation offering a bounty for the capture of the New York attorney- general. At one time New York passed a law by which if Allen and some others should not VOL. I. 22 337 The White Mountains and the Green within a certain time surrender themselves they should be deemed convifted, and should suffer death as if indifted for a criminal offence, and the Supreme Court was authorized to award execution as if they had been tried, found guilty, and sentenced. But the Green Mountain boys held their farms, and when the Revolution brought a lull in the quarrel not a single land- jobber had been successful. Allen took part in the Revolution, and made himself famous at the outset by taking Fort Ticonderoga. At the head of eighty-three men he marched into the fort in the dead of night, and when the astonished captain asked him by what authority he demanded a surrender he ex claimed, " In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." This was Allen s only exploit in the war. He joined Montgomery on his expedition into Canada, and was taken prisoner in the attack on Montreal. He remained in confinement two years, and the narrative of his experiences re veals a condition of suffering among the Ameri can prisoners almost equal to Libby and Ander- sonville in the civil war. When he was exchanged and returned to the New Hampshire Grants he found that his friends had taken advantage of the Revolution to declare themselves an independent State under the name 338 The White Mountains and the Green of Vermont, had adopted a constitution, and elected the necessary officers of government. He immediately retired from the Revolution and devoted himself to securing the existence of his new-born commonwealth. He kept up a secret correspondence with the British for the rest of the war, which led them to suppose that Vermont might come over to them at any moment. At the same time he occasionally disclosed this correspondence to Congress, and by showing how easily they might lose Vermont compelled them to respeft her independence. The backwoods diplomat continued his policy for many years after the Revolution was over. Vermont took no part in the formation of the national Constitution, but kept threatening to join Canada unless she were set free from her old enemy, New York, and Congress finally recognized her as a State in 1791. La.njdon Kv Portr^movtK . N - H CHAPTER VI QUAKER PROSPERITY PENNSYLVANIA, of which Delaware was a part, was before the arrival of Penn and the Quakers under the nominal control of the Dutch at New York. But they regarded the Delaware River merely as an avenue of trade, and made no attempt to settle the country round it. The few Dutchmen who were on the river confined themselves to the one or two forts which they had established, and were engaged almost exclusively in the fur trade and in the whale fishery at the mouth of the bay. The Swedes entered the river in 1638, and being quite numerous may be said to have held possession for seventeen years, to the exclusion of the Dutch. In 1655 Stuyvesant conquered them in a battle, which Irving in his " Knicker- 340 Quaker Prosperity bocker s History of New York" has described in the mock-heroic manner. But this conquest was of very little importance, for the Swedes, being the more numerous and also better col onists, cultivated and held the open meadow lands and marshes, and the Dutch control was nominal. The Swedes were very contented and pros perous. Their way of living and their con tests with the Dutch for the fur-trade have been described in " The Making of Pennsylvania," which also gives a full account of the Quakers, Germans, Welsh, and Scotch-Irish, with their peculiar customs and religious beliefs. In an other volume, " Pennsylvania: Colony and Com monwealth," the general history of the province is given. Pennsylvania was made up of so many na tionalities and religions and there was so much contest in it that it is extremely difficult to sum marize its history in a single chapter, which is usually amply sufficient for the other colonies. Not only were the elements of the population numerous and diverse, but a large part of the French and Indian wars was fought out within its borders. It was more severely and danger ously invaded in those wars than any of the other colonies; its position in the Revolution was peculiar and has been much misunderstood ; 34i Quaker Prosperity and this, added to the conflict of parties, has made its history very confused and elaborate. It will be possible here only to refer in a gen eral way to some of its characteristics as con trasted with the other provinces, and to touch upon a few points not included in the two volumes which have been mentioned. The central figure of Pennsylvania was Wil liam Penn, who in 1681 received a grant of the province from the crown, and the next year led to it the Quakers, who soon absorbed the Swedes. Like Lord Baltimore in Maryland, he was pro prietor of all the land and the people were his tenants, paying him a small quit-rent for every acre they held of him. Like Lord Baltimore, he established religious liberty, but as a principle in which he believed, not as a policy to which he was driven ; and religious liberty always pre vailed in Pennsylvania without any of the over throws or disturbances which it suffered in Maryland. The two men and their people who owned the only successful proprietary colonies repre sented the extremes of religious thought at that time. The Quakers were the last important se6l produced by the Reformation, and carried the doftrines and principles of that movement to their utmost verge. The Roman Church re presented the belief in the innumerable dogmas, 342 Quaker Prosperity sacraments, and traditions of the Middle Ages, and the Quakers were as far removed as it was possible for Christians to be from that system. The Roman Church had seven sacraments; the Quakers had none, not even baptism and of the numerous dogmas and doftrines they retained only the inspiration of the Scriptures and the divinity of Christ. The doftrine of the Trinity they explained in a simple way of their own, which was not accepted at that time even by the other Protestant churches. The other Protestants who came to America the Church of England people, the Puritans, Independents, Presbyterians, and others usually had two sacraments, and clung more or less tenaciously to some of the old dogmas. The Puritans of Massachusetts, as we have seen, were very conservative and retained even the belief in the lawfulness of persecution for religious error, so that Pennsylvania under the rule of the Quakers was the most advanced of all the colo nies. Having cleared their minds of all the ancient dogmas, the Quakers naturally adopted religious liberty as a principle, just as we find the Anti- nomian followers of Mrs. Hutchinson and Roger Williams, who settled Rhode Island, adopting that principle. But the Quakers, being later in time, more numerous, better regulated and or- 343 Quaker Prosperity ganized, and going to a more fertile country than Rhode Island, built up a more prosperous colony. There were in Germany a number of se6ls, Mennonites, Tunkers, Schwenkfelders, and oth ers, who held very much the same views as the Quakers. They were part of a great movement of thought, sometimes called Quietism, which towards the close of the Reformation had spread all over Europe, producing the Quakers in Eng land, a whole host of sects like them in Ger- N many, and even afFecling to some extent the / people of Italy and France. William Penn had travelled and preached among the Quaker sefts in Germany, and he and his followers invited them to come to Pennsylvania. They came in great numbers, and were fol lowed soon after by German Lutherans and members of the German Reformed Church. Penn and the Quakers had not intended to bring the Lutherans and the Reformed. But the immigration movement once started could not be checked, and soon the German peasantry without regard to religion began to swarm into Pennsylvania. This migration continued for almost a hundred years, or from the foundation of the colony until the Revolution, and the re sult was that in colonial times one-third of the population of the province was German, or 344- Quaker Prosperity Pennsylvania Dutch, as they were called, and this proportion is still maintained. Pennsylvania and New York were thus the only colonies that had in them any considerable alien population. The people of the other provinces were all of English stock, with here and there a few foreigners, like the French Huguenots, but not enough to make any serious difference. Virginia and New England were exceptionally pure Anglo-Saxon, and remained so until some time after the Revolution. In New York the alien element had been first in the field, controlled the government, and their influence was strongly felt after the English conquest. But in Pennsylvania the English Quakers held the government and were the controlling element until the Revolution. The Germans nearly all went out on the frontier and left Philadelphia in complete control of the Quakers. Pennsylvania became a great colony, composed of a number of smaller colonies. The Quakers and the Church of England people had exclusive possession of Philadelphia and the neighboring counties, and lived and ruled in their own way. The Germans held Lancaster, Berks, Mont gomery, and Lehigh Counties, retaining the lan guage and customs of their native country and living to themselves. They developed a dialecl: .345 Quaker Prosperity of debased German and English, which is still spoken in the districts they first occupied, and to this day they retain a large part of their origi nal German characteristics. In the Cumberland Valley, near the Susque- hanna and close to the Maryland line, the Scotch- Irish formed another almost separate colony. These settlers could not be called in any sense aliens. They were people of English stock, most of whom had lived in the Scotch Lowlands and migrated thence to Ireland, where they took up the confiscated lands of the native Irish rebels. They began coming to America in large numbers soon after the year 1700, when the long leases on which they held the Irish lands began to expire, and they spread them selves on the frontiers from Maine to Georgia; but most of them entered Pennsylvania and Vir ginia, where they were attracted by the fertile land. Although they were not foreigners like the Germans, their life in Ireland, where they had been in continual conflict with the native Irish, had developed in them distinct characteristics. They were a hardy, excitable, aggressive people, and established customs and ways of their own on the Pennsylvania frontier without regard to the Quakers in Philadelphia or any of the other inhabitants of the province. 346 Quaker Prosperity The Welsh Quakers, who came out in consid erable numbers, had at first a colony of their own just west of Philadelphia on the Welsh Barony, as the tracl: of land was called which had been given them by Penn. They spoke Welsh to the exclusion of English, and attempted to have a peculiar form of government in which county and township affairs were managed through the Quaker meetings ; but their sepa rate existence and separate language did not last long, and before fifty years had passed they were completely absorbed. The northern half of the province was claimed by Connecticut under her charter, which, like that of Massachusetts, gave her the land west ward to the Pacific Ocean. This claim was stoutly resisted by William Penn s heirs ; but they never could raise a sufficient force to resist the Connecticut people, who entered and settled the Wyoming Valley, forming another distinct community, which for many years maintained a petty civil war against the proprietary govern ment at Philadelphia. The struggle for the Wyoming Valley is the most romantic episode in the history of the province, and its details, together with the curious customs of the Scotch- Irish, Germans, and Welsh, have been given in " The Making of Pennsylvania." It will be seen at once from this brief review 347 Quaker Prosperity / that Pennsylvania was totally unlike her sister provinces. The two most important, Virginia and Massachusetts, were each composed of a homogeneous united people, of one religion, ex tremely conservative, driving out heretics and dissenters, and resenting all alien influences. Connecticut was very much like Massachusetts ; and Maryland, New Jersey, Georgia, and the Carolinas, although they had some slight inter mixture, were not so decidedly mixed in popu lation as Pennsylvania. New York had a large alien population of Dutch and some mixture of nationalities in New York City, and approached more nearly to the condition of Pennsylvania ; while Rhode Island, though composed of various religions, was peopled almost exclusively by Englishmen. But neither in New York, Rhode Island, nor any of the other provinces were the people split up into distinct divisions, living by themselves in almost separate colonies, as in Pennsylvania. Two conspicuous results followed from the conditions in Pennsylvania, one from the nature of the religion professed by most of the people and the other from their divided, disunited state. The religion of the Quakers and of a large part of the Germans, having rejected nearly all the ancient dogmas, allowed great liberty of thought. Penn and the Quakers enacted most liberal laws. 3.48 Quaker Prosperity Hospitals and charitable institutions naturally followed, and soon scientific research appeared. Franklin, finding the conservative atmosphere of Boston uncongenial, fled to Pennsylvania, where he soon became one of the leading men of science of the age, and discovered that light ning and the aurora borealis were forms of elec tricity. Medical science was rapidly developed. The first medical school, the first hospital, and the first dispensary ever known in America were established in Philadelphia, which in colonial times and long afterwards was the centre of study for botany, astronomy, natural history, and all the sciences that were pursued in that age. The general opinion had usually fixed upon Virginia and the Carolinas as the most fertile portions of America and the land from which wealth could be most easily gained. In a cer tain sense this was true, but not in the way that was expected. It was supposed that those countries would produce a great variety of produces, wheat, cattle, hemp, flax, as well as wine, silk, and drugs. But all these were fail ures in the Carolinas, and rice and indigo, from which nothing had been expefted, became the important crops ; and in Virginia tobacco ab sorbed all the efforts and devotion of the people. Pennsylvania was the only province where there could be a really varied production under 349 Quaker Prosperity the conditions then prevailing. This, however, was not discovered until all the other colonies had been founded except Georgia. Although beginning less than a hundred years before the Revolution and half a century after Virginia, New England, New York, and Maryland had been established, Pennsylvania at the time of the Revolution stood third in population and importance, coming immediately after Virginia and Massachusetts. Philadelphia increased still more rapidly. For more than a hundred years from the beginning of the colonial period Boston was the largest city in the colonies; but about 1750 Phila delphia was even with her in the race, and soon far surpassed her, remaining the metropolis of the country until excelled by New York in the first half of the nineteenth century. This remarkable progress, which was prima rily caused by the capacity of the province to engage in a varied agriculture combined with lumber, commerce, and manufacturing, was un doubtedly stimulated by the liberal laws, and still more by a circumstance which has not been often noticed. The other colonies, especially the prominent ones, were held back during the early periods of their existence by the hostility of the Indians. The Virginians for more than fifty years lived Quaker Prosperity under arms in palisadoed plantation houses. In Carolina the people for a long time dared not have a plantation far from the walls of Charles ton, and during the seventeenth century the red man kept the New Englanders very closely confined to their trade and fishing on the coast. But William Penn s famous treaty with the Indians, and the fidelity with which it was always observed, secured for Pennsylvania a long peace of seventy years, which was not broken until the French and Indian wars, which began in 1755.* Instead, therefore, of the massacres, contests, and continual watchfulness which fill the early history of Virginia and New England, the Pennsylvanians were from the beginning perfectly free to develop the interior resources of their province as they pleased. The Indians never caused them a moment s un easiness ; there were no forts or armies, and when the French and Indian invasions began in 1755 it was found that many of the farmers in the interior had no weapons and none of them knew anything of Indian warfare. The rapid material prosperity which Pennsyl vania enjoyed was deprived of its full fruition * See "Pennsylvania: Colony and Commonwealth," chap. vii. p. 98. 351 Quaker Prosperity by the divided condition of the people, the effefts of which are still felt. The western part of the province, peopled largely by Scotch- Irish, felt itself to be a separate community; and at the time of the Whiskey Rebellion in 1791 there were serious thoughts of attempt ing to make it a separate State. Its people, with Pittsburg for their capital, still speak of themselves as Western Pennsylvanians. The Scotch-Irish always detested the Quakers and their government at Philadelphia, and this feel ing survives in a hostility always shown by the country districts towards the city, which often surprises strangers who are unfamiliar with the history of the State. Instead of being regarded as the metropolis of which they can be proud, Philadelphia is looked upon as a rival to be dis liked and injured. The descendants of the Connecticut invaders in the Wyoming Valley in the northeastern part of the State have similar feelings, and also at one time entertained the idea of a separate State ; and the Germans are still in many respefts a separate community. This lack of unity and homogeneousness deprived Pennsylvania of that high distinction and ascendency which were enjoyed by Vir ginia and Massachusetts. The province pro duced no political leaders of such vital force 352 Quaker Prosperity as the great Virginians and no literary men like those of Massachusetts. John Dickinson was a Pennsylvanian in the sense that he was born and brought up in Dela ware, which in colonial times was part of the province, and came to Philadelphia when a young man to pradtise law. He had a vast in fluence in shaping the early course of the Revo lution. His * Letters of a Farmer" first aroused the people of the whole continent to an intel ligent resistance against the stamp acts and tea acts ; and they were the strongest statement of the legal relations between the colonies and the mother-country that was made. From that time until the Declaration of Inde pendence he draughted every important national document and was recognized as one of the most important leaders of the movement. But he re fused to vote for the Declaration of Indepen dence because he thought it premature. He wished to postpone it until our arms had met with some success which would induce an alli ance with France. This lost him his popularity and power. Pennsylvania turned against him with that un fortunate disunited habit she has always had of attacking her own important men. He was in effeft banished ; went to live in Delaware, be came a common soldier in the Continental army, VOL. I.-23 353 Quaker Prosperity and did not appear again in national public life until he was sent by Delaware to the convention of 1787 which framed the Constitution. Of the other prominent men, Robert Morris was born in England, Franklin in Boston, James Wilson in Scotland, and in later times Albert Gallatin in Switzerland. The prosperity of the State, and especially the advancement and liberal ity of Philadelphia, attracted able men from other places ; but the mixed, confused population could not produce remarkable characters of its own, like the pure and united stocks of Virginia and Massachusetts. For the same reason Pennsylvania, like New York, was slow in entering the Revolution ; but once in, her people were earnest and persevering in the contest. But the extreme aggressiveness which conceived the idea of independence and forced it through originated in Massachusetts and Virginia, where the race was purest and most united. William Penn, whose enthusiasm created the province of Pennsylvania and brought together in it the most incongruous elements of popula tion that were to be found in any of the British colonies, was a very remarkable man. His character was almost as mixed and various as the population of his colony. He was born in 1644, the son of Admiral 354 Quaker Prosperity Perm, who conquered Jamaica before he was thirty, and passed a life of distinguished service on the seas. After Blake he was the greatest naval officer of the century in England. Between his twenty-third and thirty-first years he passed through the ranks of Rear-Admiral of Ireland, Vice-Admiral of Ireland, Admiral of the Straits, and Vice-Admiral of England. He had accu mulated before the close of his life a valuable estate, represented for a time the town of Weymouth in Parliament, and held several of those offices of honor and profit which in that age were so liberally bestowed on the favorites of the crown. He was determined to rise in his profession, no matter what political party was in power. He served with equal zeal under Cromwell and under Charles II. At the outbreak of the revo lution he rightly judged that the popular party would have the best of it, and he joined them. But in 1655 Cromwell sent him in command of a fleet to capture Hispaniola and Jamaica. By that time he had made up his mind that Crom well s cause was failing, and so soon as he got his fleet together he secretly offered it to Charles, then in exile on the Continent. Charles thanked him, said he had no place to keep a fleet, but that he would remember the offer. Penn went on with his expedition for Crom- 355 Quaker Prosperity well, and conquered Jamaica; but from that time he took part in the plots for the restoration of Charles, and was largely instrumental in their final success. Neither Charles nor his brother James II. ever forgot these services, and their gratitude played an important part in the career of the admiral and also in the career of his son. Indeed, without this gratitude the son could hardly have secured such an enormous domain in America as Pennsylvania and Delaware, or held it against so much opposition. If the admiral had any sincere political opin ions at all, they were royalist, and arose from his extravagant respeft for the aristocracy and his love of the excitements of a courtier s career. When ashore he spent a large part of his time at court, and his position there and in the navy gave him, as he thought, an unusual advantage for advancing his son. He educated him with that intent, and tried to press him on towards preferment. We have a portrait of young Penn when he was about twenty-two, which has often been re produced in engravings, and shows a face of most uncommon beauty and attractiveness. But there is about it a gentle, serious cast and a far-away look in the large eyes rather inconsistent with the father s schemes. What was the horror of that father when he discovered that while at Oxford 356 Quaker Prosperity his son had turned religious, and wanted to preach and groan in spirit, and despised the glorious art of war ! Young Penn had been at Christ Church Col lege, where he had shown considerable taste and ability for athletic sports, but he had also attended the preaching of the Quakers and caught the infedlion. He had not then be come a Quaker, but there was enough of it in him to alarm the admiral, and thenceforth the struggle between father and son reads like a comedy. The boy was whipped, and several times disowned and dismissed from the parental roof without a penny except what his mother gave him secretly, and as a last resort he was sent with some of the gay people of that age to travel in France, in the hope that he would pick up something besides fanaticism. The scheme was partly successful, for, al though Penn retained his religion, he added to it some of the qualities his father wished. Pepys describes him, on his return from France, as a " most modish person grown quite a fine gentle man," affefting French speech, gait, and clothes. He had become what we would now call a Franco-maniac. He had succeeded in combining in himself the characters of religious enthusiast and courtier, and was perfectly sincere in both. He fought 357 Quaker Prosperity with a man in the streets of Paris, disarmed him, and then gave him his life. Soon after his re turn to England, when Pepys noted the remark able change in his manners, he was again seized with the religious feeling and his father became alarmed. The remedy that had been successful once was tried again, and the young man was sent to Ireland, where the Lord-Lieutenant at that time kept a court of no little splendor and gayety. For the third time Penn s feelings underwent a change. His melancholy disap peared, he began to take an interest in military affairs, and made himself so useful in quelling a mutiny among the troops that the lord-lieu tenant wanted to make him a captain, and Penn came very near accepting. It was at this time that he had his portrait painted, and it is rather curious that the only picture taken from life that we have of the great Quaker is one in which he is clad in armor and wears the long hair of a cavalier. But the old feeling soon got the better of him. He went to hear a Quaker preach, and this time the doftrine struck home and he never vacillated again. He formally joined the seel: and was once more disowned by his father. It would require a volume to tell the suffer ings and struggles he endured in the early part of his religious career. The Church of Eng- 358 Quaker Prosperity land was determined to suppress Quakerism. Penn was often under arrest and often in prison, and he became almost as familiar with the in terior of English jails as George Fox or Bunyan. He was from that time a recognized leader and preacher and the author of numerous theo logical works. At the same time he passed a large part of his days at court, would dress handsomely on occasions, could be gay and witty, and took part in politics and other things somewhat inconsistent with what is supposed to be Quaker doctrine. So much was this side of his character developed that in spite of his great abilities his seel: was at times a little inclined to dispense with his services. All his life long he showed this double nature, and it was at the same time both his weakness and his strength. His father had been double in politics, belonging first to the roundheads and then to the royalists as suited his plans for advancement. The son belonged both to the world and to religion ; not to one after the other, but to both at the same time, and seems to have been perfectly sincere in both. This ability to combine the religious man with the man of the world to be, in other words, that apparently impossible combination of qualities, a Quaker courtier was the key note of Penn s life and the cause of much ad- 359 Quaker Prosperity vantage to his set. By his presence, skill, and influence at court he was able to extend the principles of religious liberty and protect the Quakers as well as others who suffered from persecution. He released hundreds of his people from prison. He prevented thousands more from being imprisoned and suffering other in dignities. He enlarged the liberty and strength ened the position of the Quakers in every way. Nor did he confine his exertions to his own sect, but spread the wing of his protection over other dissenters, and obtained pardons for politi cal offenders of every sort. He devoted himself to the whole cause of civil and religious liberty. He wrote pamphlets on it. He could scarcely write a letter without mentioning it. He even went so far as to main tain that it was an advantage to have a multi tude of sects ; that those nations were most prosperous that allowed the greatest liberty in religious opinions, and he gave Holland as a re markable instance. Though probably in his heart believing that defensive warfare was ex cusable, he advocated the settling of all inter national difficulties by arbitration. He believed in peace congresses which would create an un armed United States of Europe ; and in this he was far in advance of his time. These principles, it is true, were also part of 360 Quaker Prosperity the doftrine of his seft ; but he was the only man of his seel: who could advocate them in the midst of their enemies at court. That he could advance such opinions, and at the same time re tain not only his influence, but the respecl, con fidence, and even affecYion of royalists and bigots, is a striking proof of his courage and force of character. He was continually writing books and pam phlets on the questions of his day. His pub lished works fill two large volumes, and range through all the political and religious subjects of that time. Many of them were written in prison, and the three which have been longest re membered " The Sandy Foundation Shaken," tf Innocency with Her Open Face," and " No Cross, No Crown" were written when he was only twenty-four years old. " The Sandy Foundation" was an attack on the doftrine of the Trinity as formulated in the subtle metaphysics of the schoolmen. When he was imprisoned for it because he was under stood to deny the divinity of Christ, he wrote "Innocency with Her Open Face," in which he explained the Quaker position of denying the metaphysical subtleties of the doftrine of the Trinity without denying the divinity of the Saviour. " No Cross, No Crown," which was written Quaker Prosperity in prison about the same time, may be called his one stroke of genius. A deeply religious book, appealing to the religious sentiment of humanity without regard to creed, it seems to have expressed all that was best in the newly awakened feelings of the young cavalier. It has been translated into several languages, and new editions of it are still published. As governor and proprietor of Pennsylvania he was very liberal and just, and the laws of the province expressed quite fully the advanced ideas which had brought into existence the Quakers. Penn wished to establish a community where government could exist without military force, justice be administered without oaths, and religion sustained without salaried ministers. An expression he used in one of his frames of government was so happy that it is still often quoted. He said that any government was free where the laws ruled and the people were parties to the laws. He not only permitted religious liberty, but made it a penal offence to deride or annoy any one for a difference in religion. His punish ments for crime were unusually mild. Death was inflicted only for murder and treason. This was remarkable when we consider that in Eng land there were over two hundred offences for which death was the punishment, in the colony 362 Quaker Prosperity of New York the same number, and in Massa chusetts and South Carolina over twenty. Every county, he said, must contain a prison, and every one of these prisons must be a workhouse and reformatory. He provided that punishments should be graded according to the enormity of the offence, which was a great advance ; for it was the opinion of that time that what deserved to be punished at all deserved to be punished severely. There was a feeling that every crime, even the smallest, could be extirpated by thoroughness, and the most thorough methods that could be discovered were torture and death. These ideas of prison discipline and graded punishments, now so wide-spread but then altogether new, were suggested and advocated by the Quakers at a time when Beccaria and Montesquieu, usually considered the great ex ponents of them, had not been born. Penn also dispensed with the old laws by which the estates of murderers and suicides were taken from their families and given to the state, and he abolished primogeniture. But it is rather curious that it did not occur to him to abolish imprisonment for debt. Neither did he attempt to abolish slavery ; he apparently thought it a permissible evil. But he made efforts to improve the condition of the negroes and attempted to have a bill passed in the 363 Quaker Prosperity provincial council to introduce marriage among them instead of the promiscuous intercourse which was supposed to be more profitable to their owners. He expressed excellent ideas on the subject of public education, but they were never carried out. Yet he accomplished so much that we should hunt the world over in vain to find another instance of one man putting into aclual practice such a high ideal of a com monwealth. He arranged Pennsylvania to suit himself, mapped it out into manors, counties, and cities, gave names, and directed the lines of future growth. No other colony was so completely the work of one man. He gave instructions that all highways should be straight lines from point to point, and Philadelphia was accordingly laid out on the checker-board plan with narrow streets all at right angles to each other. This unfortunate arrangement has caused great incon venience in modern times and thwarted many attempts to improve the appearance of the city. He received altogether a large amount of money from his colony ; but during his life time there was no net profit to him. He mort gaged or sold all his estates in England and Ireland, and even mortgaged Pennsylvania itself in order to start the colony and carry it through its critical years of infancy. Inspired and en- 364 Quaker Prosperity thusiastic with the vastness of his undertaking, he spared nothing, and reduced himself to such straits that he was at one time imprisoned for debt, and died in comparative poverty. But his heirs reaped a rich harvest and were more shrewd in money matters than their ancestor. Not so reckless and exuberant as in Virginia, nor so repressed and restrained as in New Eng land, the life of the Philadelphia people was full of enjoyment and substantial comfort. The houses were well built, usually of brick, with broad porches, projecting roofs, often with sun dials set in the walls, and many of them were surrounded with gardens. The streets were planted with trees, following the original in tention of Penn, who wished to have a " green country town" like those with which he was familiar in England. Posts a few feet apart marked the sidewalks, and there were pumps with lamps on them every thirty or forty yards. Outside of the town a pretty, undulating country spread away to the north and west, covered with farms and innumerable country- seats. Every family of any means had a town- house and a country-house for summer. There was no part of the colonies where this country- seat life flourished as it did near Philadelphia. Some of these country-houses are still stand ing, the Woodlands, Mount Pleasant, Stenton, 365 Quaker Prosperity Cliveden ; but twenty-seven of them were de stroyed by the British army when they occupied Philadelphia, and the rest have disappeared under the changes of modern times. They were usually built of stone or brick, in the best forms of the colonial architecture taken from the types of Sir Christopher Wren s school, which was flourishing at that time in England. They had ample grounds round them, often a hundred acres or more, which were cultivated as a farm. But close to the house the landscape gardening and the arrangement of the trees, shrubbery, and walks were in the best English style, and far excelled anything of the sort in other colonies. These establishments had none of the varied life and rough plenty of the Virginia and Mary land plantation-houses or of the New York manors, and were generally occupied only in summer, like modern country-seats ; but there was much entertaining in them, more elegant and formal than in the Southern houses, and some of them, like the Woodlands and Stenton, had fine libraries, works of art, and collections. Everything about them implied considerable wealth and leisure in their owners, and they were a step nearer modern life than the other colonial mansions. There was less of a distinct aristocratic class than in the South, and less even than in New Quaker Prosperity England. What was called the aristocracy was more like the upper classes of modern times, composed of the respectable, successful, or rich. To these the rest of the people paid a sort of deference, more from the habit which had be come fixed in all European minds than from any power the upper classes possessed. Philadelphia had many other characteristics which showed that the freedom of thought which prevailed in the province had advanced it into ways more like those to which the whole country is now accustomed. The first fire companies were started there, the first circu lating library, the first company for insurance against fire, the first legal periodical, and the first bank. There were many good private libraries, and some important publishing houses, which issued editions of Blackstone s " Com mentaries," Robertson s " Charles V.," and Fer guson s " Essays," larger enterprises of the kind than were undertaken in the other colonial cities. A general postal service was also at tempted, which was extended by Franklin to cover all the colonies, and the Philadelphians often showed a touch of the modern impatience for early news. Probably in no other place on the continent was the love of bright colors and extravagance in dress carried to such an extreme. Large num- 367 \ Quaker Prosperity bers of the Quakers yielded to it, and even the very stricl ones carried gold-headed canes, gold snuff-boxes, and wore great silver buttons on their drab coats and handsome buckles on their shoes. Nowhere were the woman so resplen dent in silks, satins, velvets, and brocades, and they piled up their hair mountains high. It often required hours for the public dresser to arrange one of these head-dresses, built up with all manner of stiffening substances and worked into extraordinary shapes. When he was in great demand just before a ball, the ladies whom he first served were obliged to sit up all the previ ous night and move carefully all day, lest the towering mass should be disturbed. The markets of Philadelphia were excellent from the beginning, as they still are. There was an immense supply of provisions of all kinds in great variety and of the best quality, meats, poultry, vegetables, fruits, and the foreign delicacies which the aftive commerce of the city with all parts of the world supplied. Feasting and gormandizing to the verge of gluttony were the order of every day. There were private dinner-parties and entertainments without end, and all manner of clubs which were merely ex cuses for epicureanism. The descriptions of the banquets and feasts, with twenty, thirty, and even a hundred differ- Quaker Prosperity ent dishes, washed down by floods of Madeira, ale, and punch, are appalling, and at first incline one to the belief that the physical character of the people must have totally changed. But the same sort of thing was going on in England at that time, and in a less degree in other large American towns. The people led an out-door life, and were not in the nervous, depleted con dition produced by the strain of modern life. Gout was very common, and Dickinson, who drove his coach-and-four and made money rap idly, seems to have had severe attacks of it when comparatively a young man. John Adams, when he came to Philadelphia to the Continental Con gress in 1774, fresh from Boston, stood aghast at this life into which he was suddenly thrown, and thought it must be sin. But he rose to the occasion, and, after describing in his diary some of the "mighty feasts" and "sinful feasts" which he attended, says that he drank Madeira " at a great rate" and found no " inconvenience." Chastellux, our good friend who has given us so many glimpses of colonial life, complained that the breakfasts were very heavy. Loins of veal, legs of mutton, and other substantial dishes at an early hour in the morning were rather staggering to a Frenchman who was accustomed to a cup of coffee and a roll. One of these breakfasts, he says, lasted an hour and a half. VOL. I. -24 3 6 9 Quaker Prosperity The drinking habits were also trying to him. They had, he said, the barbarous British prac tice of drinking each others healths at a din ner party, calling out names from one end of the table to the other, so that it was difficult to eat or converse while you had to inquire the names or catch the eyes of five and twenty or thirty persons, being incessantly called to on the right and left, or pulled by the sleeve by chari table neighbors, who were so kind as to acquaint you with the politeness you were receiving. Some would call out four or five names at once. " The bottle is then passed to you, and you must look your enemy in the face, for I can give no other name to the man who exercises such an empire over my will : you wait till he likewise has poured out his wine and taken his glass ; you then drink mournfully with him, as a recruit imitates the corporal in his exercise." At a ball at the French minister s, which he describes, he says it was the custom for a lady to dance with her partner the whole evening, a severe rule, as he thought, which, however, oc casionally admitted of exceptions. The hand somest women were given to the strangers. The Comte de Darnes had Mrs. Bingham for his partner, and the Vicomte de Noailles Miss Shippen ; and, to the honor of France, they out danced Mr. Pendleton, who was a chief-justice, Quaker Prosperity and two members of Congress, one of whom, Mr. Duane, was supposed to be " more lively than all the other dancers." There was a supper at midnight, and on pass ing into the room the French minister gave his hand to Mrs. Morris, a precedence which Chas- tellux says was usually accorded her as the rich est woman of the town. The ball continued till two in the morning, but the marquis did not stay to the end. He had been examining the battle-fields round Philadelphia the day before, and had learnt, he says, " to make a timely retreat." The French minister was certainly a valuable addition to society in Philadelphia, and on July 15, 1782, to celebrate the birthday of the dau phin of France, he gave a grand fte, of which we have an excellent description by Dr. Rush. A wooden dancing-room sixty feet long and forty feet deep was erected in the minister s grounds, open all round for the sake of coolness, the ceiling decorated with emblematic paint ings, the garden cut into beautiful walks and divided by cedar and pine branches into arti ficial groves, seats placed everywhere, and thirty cooks obtained from the French army. For ten days beforehand nothing was talked of but this ball. The shops were crowded ; hair-dressers, tailors, milliners, and mantua- Quaker Prosperity makers were to be seen, covered with sweat and out of breath, in every street. So great was the demand for the gentlemen of the comb that some ladies were obliged to have their hair dressed between four and six in the morning. Half-past seven in the evening was the hour fixed for the entertainment, and as the time approached carriages thronged the streets, every window was filled with spectators, and nearly ten thousand of them gathered round the minis ter s house. Filled with French ideas of liberty and equality, and enthusiastic over the happy close of the American Revolution, the minister was not unmindful of this crowd. He had arranged the fence so that they could all look through it, and he would have distributed among them two pipes of Madeira and six hundred dollars in small change if some of the prominent people, fearing a riot, had not dissuaded him ; so the money was given to the prisoners in the jail and the patients in the hospital. As he entered the pavilion with his family, Dr. Rush found seven hundred people in the most brilliant and varied dresses, all ranks, par ties, professions, and officers of government ; the most learned mingled with those " who knew not whether Cicero pleaded in Greek or Latin, or whether Horace was a Roman or a Scotch man." Merchants and gentlemen, tradesmen 372 Quaker Prosperity and lawyers, Whigs and those who formerly had been Tories, governors, generals, congress men, judges, ministers of finance with their suites and secretaries, made up the incongruous mix ture, which nevertheless was in perfect har mony, because, as the doftor assures us, it was truly republican, and pride and ill nature were forgotten. He saw Washington and Dickinson conversing with each other, and Dickinson and Morris frequently reclined against the same pillar. The war was the great subject of reminiscence and discussion, and men who had taken part in every stage of it were there. Rutledge and Walton from the South hobnobbed with Lincoln and Duane from the North, and Tom Paine wandered about analyzing his thoughts and en joying the repast of his own ideas. Mifflin and Reed accosted each other as if they had always been friends. An Indian chief in his savage dress and war-paint stood beside Count Rochambeau in his splendid uniform, and talked with him as if they had been the subjecls of the same government. The heat was so intense on that July night that few were willing to dance ; but there were fireworks, refreshments of cake, fruits, and drinks continually served, and at midnight a grand supper under three large tents. The 373 Quaker Prosperity minister, the Chevalier de la Luzerne, passed about, addressing himself to every lady ; and so careful was he of every one s pleasure that he had provided a private room, where through a gauze curtain the stria Quaker ladies could see without indulging in the entertainment. It seems to have been a principle with the chevalier that true republicanism included tem perance and extreme decorum and good breed ing. So far was this carried that Dr. Rush mentions it as marring the occasion, for the Philadelphians of that day were not accustomed to such a lack of " convivial noise." They complained that the people behaved more as if they were worshipping than eating. Every body, it was said, felt pleasure, but it was of too tranquil a nature. Several people had pre pared odes and songs, but there was no encour agement to produce them. When the aftual righting of the Revolution began, and prices rose, giving opportunities for speculation of all sorts, the extravagance and recklessness in Philadelphia reached extraordi nary heights. Afterwards, when the town became the seat of government, and Washington with his officials and the diplomats were living there, the luxury and display impressed Frenchmen like Rochefoucauld as very remarkable. In colonial times the hour for fashionable 374 Quaker Prosperity dinner-parties seems to have varied from noon until six o clock, which is significant of the leisure and easy life the people must have en joyed. The famous dinner given by Chief- Justice Chew, which Adams describes, was at four. Chastellux describes the fashionable hour as at five ; and he says that calls and visits were paid in the morning. But there seem to have been also afternoon visits with much tea-drink ing. In the evening the suppers began among the men ; and they were heavy meals, almost banquets, at the taverns and clubs, with hard drinking and informal talk and discussion. In previous years there had been another chance at funerals, which, as in New England, implied eating and drinking, with the distribu tion of scarfs and rings. It was the fashion for enormous numbers of people to attend funerals, in some instances, it is said, several thousand, and a long procession, mostly on horseback, followed the body to the grave. These extrava gances were stopped in 1764 in all the Northern colonies by what would now be called a reform movement. A wedding was another occasion which could not be allowed to pass unimproved, and even the Quakers indulged in great festivity. The banns were twice pronounced, and after each proc lamation there was often a reception ; and the 375 Quaker Prosperity wedding entertainment itself sometimes lasted two days, during which the parents of the bride kept open house. In the midst of all this there was a great deal that was provincial and also simple in the best sense of the word. In summer, in Philadelphia, the young ladies appeared in full dress in the evenings and sat on the front door-steps, while the young men passed about, paying visits. A similar custom prevailed in Baltimore until long after the civil war. Although there were carpets in some of the houses, sanded floors were very common. Many of the people resisted the in troduction of carpets, because they gathered dust and could not be easily and often cleaned. A bare floor scrubbed every day and sprinkled with fresh sand was best, they said, for all respectable people. CHAPTER VII NOVA C^ESAREA TN New Jersey, which the Indians called Scheyichbi, and the Dutch Achter Kol, we find faint and faded impressions of the colonies which were near by. Her people were a mixture of those who had created Pennsylvania, New York, and New England. But no one element of the population acquired exclusive control, as the Quakers did in Pennsylvania. The province, mountainous in the north, and with a great deal of land which was evidently fertile, sloped off towards the east and south, with level sandy plains covered with a dense growth and interspersed with cedar swamps. Some of this southern land was valuable, es pecially for fruit and vegetables, but this use of it was not then fully available. The province had the most obvious natural boundaries of any of the colonies. The At lantic Ocean and the Hudson River on the east, 377 Nova Csesarea and the Delaware River and Bay on the west and south, left only one artificial line to be drawn for the northern boundary from the upper part of the Delaware to the Hudson. But New Jersey was not believed to contain any large quantity of fertile land, nor to be capable of furnishing gold, timber, fur, or any of the things that were eagerly sought by the worldly, and it so happened that no seel: of re ligious enthusiasts chose it for a refuge. The Dutch at New York took no interest in it, although it was within what they called New Netherland. They confined themselves to fol lowing up the valley of the Hudson towards the source of the fur supply, which was the chief object of their ambition. A few of them occupied Pavonia, on the present site of Jersey City ; but they left few descendants there, and were not an important element of the population. The Swedes who trespassed on the dominions of the Dutch on the Delaware usually preferred the Pennsylvania side of the river; but a few of them settled on the marshes and meadow lands of the Jersey side from Salem up almost oppo site to Philadelphia, especially at Raccoon Creek, near the present village of Bridgeport, opposite to Chester. Nothing more in the way of settlement was accomplished until Charles II., in order to have 378 Nova Csesarea an excuse for seizing New York from the Dutch, in 1664 granted to his brother the Duke of York all the land between the Connecticut River and the Delaware. The duke kept the Hudson for himself, and gave to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret the country between the Delaware and the ocean, " hereafter to be called," as the grant said, "by the name or names of Nova Caesarea or New Jersey." A few years afterwards, in 1676, Berkeley and Carteret divided the province between them by a line beginning at Little Egg Harbor, at the lower end of Barnegat Bay, and crossing diago nally to the northern waters of the Delaware a few miles below Milford. This made two colonies ; East Jersey, on the New York side of the line, belonging to Carteret, and West Jersey, on the Pennsylvania side, belonging to Berkeley. But before this dividing line was finally decided upon, the two proprietors seem to have agreed that Carteret should have the part near New York and Berkeley the part on the Delaware. Carteret was soon successful in getting people to settle in the neighborhood of Newark Bay. There were already Dutchmen there and a few Danes, and by these Danes the name Bergen, from a town of Norway, is said to have been given to the country ; but why the Danes should have given a Norwegian name is not apparent. 379 Nova Caesarea These Danes, so called, may have been Nor wegians. Denmark and Norway were united at that time, and Denmark being the more impor tant, it may have been the custom to speak of all the people as Danes. The name still survives in one of the counties, the town of Bergen, and Bergen Point. These Dutch and Danes were living in small villages, from which they went out to cultivate their fields, and the reason was the same which compelled the early New Englanders to this sort of life, namely, fear of the Indians, who were very hostile in that neighborhood. Puritans from Long Island established them selves at what is now Elizabeth just about the time of the grant to Berkeley and Carteret, and after the grant many more came in, some from Long Island and the rest from various parts of New England, establishing the New England town system. Scotch were added and also immigrants direcl: from England, until there were flourishing little villages, Elizabeth, Newark, Middletown, and Shrewsbury. Carteret appointed a relative, Philip Carteret, to be governor, who came out and lived at Eliza beth, sending agents into New England to en courage settlers to come to him. He remained at Elizabeth from 1665 until his death in 1682, governing by means of a council and a general 380 Nova Caesarea assembly elefted by the people, and having con siderable trouble with his people, who were dis united and unruly. Andros, who ruled New York, disputing his authority on one occasion, sent armed men to Elizabeth, who seized him and brought him a prisoner to Manhattan. Lord Berkeley, who had West Jersey for his share, soon sold it to John Fenwick in trust for Edward Byllmge. Fenwick came out in 1675, and settled a few families at what is now Salem, on the Delaware. Byllinge, the real owner, was bankrupt, and turned over West Jersey to his creditors, appointing William Penn and some others to hold it in trust for them. This was Penn s first experience in American affairs, and a few years afterwards he received the grant of Pennsylvania. He and his co-trustees arranged with Carteret in 1676 the dividing line which has been mentioned. They also sold a number of shares in West Jersey, and the purchasers prepared to establish settlements. Most of them were Quakers, and the story is told that as they lay at anchor in the Thames waiting to start, Charles II. came by in his barge, stopped alongside to look at them, and being told that they were Quakers, gave them his blessing. But whether he intended it as a courtly joke or whether they valued the blessing of such a man we are not told. Nova Caesarea They reached the Delaware and proceeded up it to Raccoon Creek, on the Jersey side, about a dozen miles below the present site of Philadel phia, and landed among the Swedes, who took care of them in their barns and out-houses, where they were obliged to live for a time with snakes under the floors. They purchased from the In dians the land from Old Man s Creek, a little below Raccoon Creek, where they landed, up to Timber Creek, near the present Gloucester; from there to Rancocas Creek, and thence to Assunpink, where Trenton now stands. Their final settlement was made at a place they first called New Beverley, then Bridlington ; after wards they gave it its present name, Burlington. They found that fruit of all kinds would grow in the greatest profusion. In Smith s History some of the letters which these early colonists wrote home are preserved, and they describe the peaches and apples breaking down the limbs with their weight, wild berries and nuts, with great abundance of game. They had discovered the cranberries which are still so plentiful in the Jersey swamps, and were already making cran berry sauce for wild turkey and venison. Other immigrants arrived, some going to the colony at Salem which Fenwick had established, and some to Burlington, and these two towns composed the province of West Jersey. 382 Nova Csesarea For many years game and the wild fruits seem to have been the principal source of food, and in winter those who had no gun or had run out of ammunition were often in danger of starving. The family of John Hollingshead, on Rancocas Creek, being in great distress in the winter of 1682, their son, a lad of thirteen, killed two wild turkeys with a stick. Soon after the dogs chased a buck, which, attempting to cross on the ice of the creek, could not keep its footing with its smooth hoofs. When it fell on its side, young Hollingshead mounted its back, and kept his seat through its struggles until he killed it with his knife. In 1687 the crops failed and the people were in great want. Some lived entirely on fish, and others, who were not near the water, on herbs. Fortunately, a vessel laden with grain arrived in the river from England. Finding a good market, vessels afterwards came with similar cargoes every year, and we hear no more of famine. The proprietor of East Jersey, Sir George Carteret, died in 1679, an< ^ by his will left direc tions that his province should be sold, and Wil liam Penn and eleven others became the pur chasers. They published an account of the country and succeeded in increasing the number of settlers, obtaining many from Scotland,, who established themselves in the neighborhood of 333 Nova Csesarea Perth Amboy, named from the Scottish Earl of Perth and an Indian word which meant a point. The new proprietors were Quakers, and they appointed Robert Barclay to be governor for life. He was the author of the famous book known as Barclay s " Apology," which has usually been regarded as the ablest of all the statements of Quaker doftrine. He remained in England and appointed deputies to go out and govern the colony. He seems to have ruled the colony in this way until his death, eight years afterwards. East Jersey in the year 1682 contained about three thousand five hundred people. Most of them were collected about Newark Bay, with some scattered in the direction of the Shrews bury River and Sandy Hook. Bergen, the oldest town, was inhabited principally by Dutch, who had come from New York many years before, and it was strongly fortified against the Indians. The people lived on fish and oysters, and had small farms. The oysters they found growing wild on all the coast from Newark round to Cape May. Fish were also abundant, and in a letter of the time we read that " Bar- negat or Burning Hole is said to be a very good place for fishing." But they could be taken anywhere with the greatest ease in all the East Jersey waters, and the people commonly fished 384 Nova Csesarea < with long sieves or long nets, and will catch with a sieve sometimes two barrels a day of good fish." There seems to have been none of the danger of famine in winter time which we read of in West Jersey. The East Jersey people seem to have been a little free with their weapons about the year 1686, or else their peace-loving Quaker rulers were disposed to be strict with them. People, it is said, were put in great fear from quarrels and challenges, and a law was passed forbidding any one, under penalty of fine and imprison ment, to challenge, or wear pocket-pistols, skeins, stilladers, daggers, or dirks. The numerous proprietors of both the Jerseys were a source of great confusion in the govern ment of those provinces. Each promoted his own schemes and interests, and parties and cliques among them were constantly interfering with one another. It was difficult for them to agree on a governor ; and when it was attempted to have both sets of proprietors agree on one governor for both provinces, the difficulties were increased. The remedy suggested was for the proprietors to surrender their governmental rights to the Crown, and make the two provinces into one under a royal governor. This was accom plished in 1702, just after Queen Anne had as cended the throne. VOL. I.-25 3 8 5 Nova Csesarea Lord Cornbury was immediately appointed the royal governor, with a council to assist him and an assembly elefted by the people to make laws. This assembly was to meet alternately at Perth Amboy and at Burlington. The proprietors had surrendered to the Crown only their right to govern, and still retained their ownership of the land, and the people always maintained that they also were entitled to the enjoyment of the rights and privileges they had had before the surrender. These two questions of the rights retained by the propri etors and the rights retained by the people be came the subject of much contention, both proprietors and people struggling for the pres ervation of their privileges against the en croachments of the governor. Cornbury, who was also governor of New York, was a violent, self-willed, injudicious man. He had the right to adjourn the assembly whenever he pleased, and he made free use of it. In the very beginning of his government he kept adjourning the assembly till one was elefted which suited him and passed the laws he wanted. But it was seldom he could have an assembly of this sort. Most of them were hostile, and protested against his rule, his long absences in New York, and his negledl of the affairs of the province. Convifted murderers, it is said, were 386 Nova Csesarea allowed to go unpunished and wander about at large. He compelled the people from all parts of the province to go to Burlington to probate wills and transact all other business of the gov ernment. He granted monopolies, established arbitrary fees, and prohibited the proprietors agents from selling land in West Jersey. He had also taken upon himself to pass upon the qualifications of members of the assembly, and had refused to allow three who had been duly elefted to be sworn ; and finally he was charged with having been bribed by interested persons to dissolve the assembly. At the same time that the assembly was pro testing the proprietors appealed to the Lords of Trade in England against Cornbury s arbitrary administration, and Cornbury, through his coun cil, appealed to the queen against the disloyal, factious, and turbulent people, as he called them. But he was soon recalled, to the great relief of every one, after a most unfortunate administration of six years. Lord Lovelace, his successor, was popular, and seemed to be undoing all the evil of Corn- bury ; but he died in about a year. The prov ince, however, enjoyed quieter times, although there was always plenty of wrangling and dis putes with governors, and in 1738 the people obtained a governor of their own instead of 387 Nova Caesarea sharing with New York. In 1763 William Franklin, an illegitimate son of Benjamin Frank lin, became governor, and held the office until the Revolution. Jersey had no frontier near the French and hostile Indians. She was completely shut in by Pennsylvania and New York, and, like Rhode Island, she felt none of the sharp experience of* those long wars which were such a discipline and training for the other provinces. Her people who lived near New York par took largely of the Dutch ways. Their houses had the Dutch stoops or porches with seats, where the family and their visitors sat on sum mer evenings to smoke and gossip, while the cows with their tinkling bells wandered about the streets. Long Dutch spouts extended out from the eaves to discharge the rain-water into the street. In some villages there was a touch of New England life, and small towns can still be found in some parts of the State with neat white houses and broad shaded streets like their prototypes in Massachusetts and Connecticut. In West Jersey, along the Delaware, Quaker habits and methods were conspicuous. The colony had no seats of commerce of her own. Her trade in wheat and provisions all went out by way of New York and Philadel phia. Her long line of sea-coast with danger- 388 Nova Csesarea ous inlets and bars offered no good harbors, and the places where there were good harbors on New York Bay or on the Delaware were close to the important marts of other colonies. The people were engaged almost exclusively in farming. Each farmer s family raised almost everything they needed their provisions, fruit, and tobacco and wove their own clothes. The towns and villages were few and small. The aristocratic class, which was always more or less vigorous in the other colonies, was of very little importance in New Jersey. There were some gentlemen farmers who were recog nized as a sort of aristocracy, but class distinc tions were not sharply marked. There were not many indented servants, but there were a considerable number of slaves, and these slaves were very much dreaded. Several insurrections were attempted by them, and the laws against them were as severe as in the Southern colonies. For murder they were burned at the stake, in the presence of as many of their race as could be collected to witness the spectacle. One instance is recorded of a slave condemned to be hung, who first had his right hand cut off and burnt before his eyes.* In an old account-book of Essex County there * Meliclc s " Old Farm," p. 225. 389 Nova Caesarea are several entries of the cost of wood for burn ing slaves, as, for example : " June 4 1741 Daniel Harrison sent in his account of wood carted for burning two negroes. Allowed cur y O.II.o." (Hatfield s "History of Elizabeth," p. 364.) The colonial custom in all the Northern colonies of entertaining expensively at funerals prevailed in New Jersey, and we find in the history of Elizabeth some details of the general movement which checked the excess and ex travagance in 1764. Fifty heads of prominent families agreed among themselves to cut down the expense. Thomas Clark, a judge, who died in 1765, was buried in the new manner, and the newspapers reported, as a matter worthy of notice, that there was no drinking at his funeral. The religious tone of the colony, except in West Jersey, which was largely Quaker, was controlled by the Scotch Presbyterians and New England Congregationalists, and they, of course, were strongly inclined to prohibit amuse ments. The province was always disunited, and lacked the marked individuality which was so conspicuous in the others. The part near the Hudson was like New York, and the part near the Delaware like Pennsylvania. Princeton 39 Nova Cjesarea College, which was established in 1746, was the result of a movement among the Presbyte rians at large, in New York as well as in East Jersey, and was not in the full sense a Jersey institution growing out of the natural inclina tions of the people, like Harvard in Massachu setts or William and Mary in Virginia. New Jersey is still divided, but the line is not the same as the old one which the proprietors agreed upon. The divisions are now North and South Jersey, and the Pennsylvania Railroad from Trenton to Jersey City is supposed to mark the division quite accurately. North of the railroad is the hill country, and south of it the flat or tide-water distrift, as it is sometimes called ; and the people of the two divisions are quite unlike, socially, economically, and intellec tually. Close to the line the different types merge, and Trenton contains both. N. J END OF VOL. I. 20563