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 
 
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 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
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 PENNSYLVANIA: COLONY AND COMMON 
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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. 
 
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