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 THE CAVALIER DISMOUNTED: 
 
 A1ST ESSAY 
 
 ON THE ORIGIN OF THE FOUNDERS OF THE 
 
 THIRTEEN COLONIES. 
 
 " We are the gentlemen of this country." 
 
 ROBERT TOOMBS, in 1860. 
 
 "Our Plantations in America, New England excepted, have been generally 
 fettled, 1, by Malcontents with the Administrations from Time to Time; 2, by 
 fraudulent Debtors, as a refuge from their Creditors; and by Convicts or Crimi- 
 nal*, who chose Transportation rather than Death." 
 
 Dr. WILLIAM DOUGLASS, 1749. 
 
 MEMBER OP THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY, AMD OF THE 
 NEW-ESGLAHD HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 
 
 s .A. LIE IM: : 
 PUBLISHED BY G. M. WHIPPLE & A. A. SMITH. 
 
 1 864. 
 
 I <) 5
 
 IF ^ o IE . 
 
 This essay is an enlargement of an article which appeared in 
 the Continental Magazine for June, 1863. The additions are 
 mainly of authorities quoted, and though but a portion of the wri- 
 ter's collections are here printed, it is presumed that there are enough 
 to substantiate his assertions. Two points are intended to be dis- 
 cussed. The first is the proportion of native-born citizens in the Uni- 
 ted States, descended from the inhabitants in 1790. The second is 
 the origin of the ancestors of the colonists. 
 
 The result of investigations of the first point, differs widely 
 from the opinion of recent journalists. In the New York Shipping - 
 List for Sept. 24th, 1864. will be found a statement, that the natu- 
 ral increase of the colonists of 1790, would amount to only eight mil- 
 lions out of nearly thirty millions, now inhabiting the United States. 
 If there be no mistake in the table prepared from the official Census 
 of the United States, the reverse of this statement is the truth. 
 Twenty millions of our citizens were in 1860 descended from our orig- 
 inal colonists, and only six and one half millions were foreign-born 
 or descended from immigrants arriving here since 1790. 
 
 This question is one of too great importance to remain thus 
 doubtful. Our nationality is a stubborn fact ; and the question is to 
 be solved whether we are formed from a heterogenous collection of all 
 nationalities, or have in reality one predominant race which gives its 
 tone to the whole. The opinion herein expressed is, that the English 
 race predominates here, and that the reason of its influence is to be 
 found in the fact that New England was so intensely English. If 
 the figures be correct, New England has contributed one quarter or 
 one third of the population of the country, and this portion has con- 
 stantly allied itself to the English part of the remainder of our pop- 
 ulation. Hence the preponderance of the English language, laws 
 and national characteristics. 
 
 As to the second point, our investigations have been mainly di- 
 rected toward the correction of false statements made by the Kebel 
 emissaries and press. It is not a grateful task to be obliged to ex-
 
 pose any blemish in our origin as a nation. For many years it has 
 been customary to take the assertions of the Southerners as truth, be- 
 cause these statements were gratifying to our pride. We should even 
 have been most unwilling to commence an attack upon our South- 
 ern citizens on any point' of ancestral dignity ; but when the assault 
 has been from them, it is impossible to refrain from exposing the 
 weakness of their position. Their reckless assertions have compelled 
 us to vindicate our ancestors from an imaginary stain, and the pro- 
 cess has led us to examine the antecedents of our accusers. 
 
 Let no one so far misinterpret the object of this Essay as to im- 
 agine that an undue importance is attached to the claims of gentle 
 descent. We simply accept our opponents' opinion of the value of a 
 long and distinguished pedigree ; and we exhibit our genealogies on- 
 ly when we are told that we are disgraced by possessing none. 
 
 When the history of thi> war is written dispassionately, one of 
 the first problems to be discussed will l)e the cause of the diversity of 
 the social structure of the free and the slave states. Should the 
 facts here presented be then examined, it may prove that an oligarchy 
 was possible in the Southern states, tacause that there had never been 
 any true equality there, and because so great a proportion of their 
 inhabitants sprang from the ignorant and vicious portion of the Euro- 
 pean nations. It may also prove that the Northern states rose to the 
 necessities of their position as the forlorn hope of republicanism, be- 
 cause their citizens inherited the bold spirit of freedom from ances- 
 tors whose rights had been for centuries untrammelled ; because two 
 centuries of self-government, and freedom of thought and action had 
 enabled our portion of the English race to outstrip every other nation 
 in its perception of the truth, that " freedom is the birth-right of ev- 
 ery human being."
 
 CLAIMS OF THE SOUTHERNERS. 
 
 One of the most monstrous assertions of the leaders of 
 the rebellion, was that which arrogates to the inhabitants of 
 the seceding States a superiority over their Northern breth- 
 ren in respect to their ancestry. Not only did they claim to 
 be a nation peculiarly free from intermixture with foreign- 
 ers, but they claimed one and all to be of English Parent- 
 age, and deduced their pedigree exclusively from one class 
 of Englishmen, the gentry. The inhabitants of the Loyal 
 States were described not only as mongrel in race, but the 
 English portion of it was declared to be of the most igno- 
 ble extraction. I will not weary my readers by the details 
 of these accounts, yet fresh in their memories. It is per- 
 haps sufficient to say that the cry of " Cavalier and Puri- 
 tan" was again raised, and English sympathy was evoked in 
 behalf of the oppressed gentlemen. 
 
 I propose in this sketch to prove the utter falsity of 
 both assertions ; to prove that the South is not homogene- 
 ous and its English element is not of gentle origin ; to show 
 that New England is in the highest degree a purely English 
 community, and that its colonists were not of the lowest 
 rank. 
 
 I shall confine myself to authorities whose statements 
 were made long before the commencement of our civil war. 
 in order that no reproach of partiality may attach to them ; 
 and in most instances, I shall be able to use the words of 
 Southerners, writing of matters in which they had a strong 
 personal interest.
 
 TWs matter of purity of race is one of no trivial im- 
 portance. It would be contrary to the spirit of our institu- 
 tions for us to attempt to give to ancestral claims the impor- 
 tance which attach to them in monarchical countries ; and 
 yet this very rebellion teaches us that there are important 
 problems connected with the subject which even republicans 
 cannot ignore. 
 
 We have seen in one portion of our Union, a dominant 
 class, small in number, but allied in interest, successfully 
 leading astray multitudes whose true interests were diamet- 
 rically opposed to any revolt ; and we have seen in the oth- 
 er portion, vast communities holding firm allegiance to writ- 
 ten laws, yielding unswerving obedience to their duly ap- 
 pointed authorities, and, despite apparent diversities of ori- 
 gin and interests, maintaining themselves in the bonds of 
 an imperishable union. 
 
 The Southerners and their English allies have claimed 
 that their unanimity proceeded from their common origin 
 and gentle parentage; the unanimity of the North they have 
 long denied and can now regard only as inexplicable. We 
 hold on the contrary that the North is united because that 
 it is homogeneous, and that the apparent unanimity of the 
 South is only enforced by a vigorous tyranny, founded upon 
 centuries of oppression and possible only through the faulty 
 construction of its early institutions. 
 
 That there has been a wide diversity in the construc- 
 tion of society, North and South, from the commencement of 
 the colonies of Virginia and New England, is undisputable. 
 Accident has brought these original peculiarities in antago- 
 nism, but we must not be misled as to their true significance. 
 
 In the Southern Colonies, as will be proved, society r< - 
 ceived a form somewhat analogous to that of tin- England 
 of two centuries ago ; an aristocratic form, a base and spu- 
 rious imitation of a bad original, was imposed upon the in- 
 fant settlements. In England in 1630, the rank of the gen- 
 try was established, and it had a certain meaning and cause. 
 This modified form of feudalism had a reasonable founda- 
 tion. The great land-owners were a distinct class from
 
 their tenants and inferiors j they were the natural leaders 
 and rulers according to the rule of progression which had 
 elevated the entire community from the barbarism of the 
 feudal ages. The country gentleman, whose family had been 
 known and respected for four centuries, seemed a natural 
 chief to those whose ancestors had during that period owned 
 allegiance to the name. To this class had been confined 
 nearly all of the wealth, valor and culture of the nation. 
 
 When Virginia and the other Southern Atlantic colo- 
 nies were planted, however, the emigrants took with them 
 but the empty form of their native customs. As will be 
 proved, very few of them possessed any hereditary claim to 
 the rank of gentlemen, and even these were without the in- 
 dispensible body of hereditary retainers, in whom a rever- 
 ential submission was a matter of faith. 
 
 In a country where a man's daily food depended upon 
 his daily labor, where patents of land embraced leagues, and 
 where equality was a necessity, what chance was there even 
 for the best blood of England to establish an aristocracy? 
 
 In the true sense, in the signification yet attached to 
 the word in Europe, they never did establish an aristocra- 
 cy, yet they founded an imitation which has yearly become 
 more despicable. Instead of tenants, the new aristocrats 
 peopled their lands with black slaves, or white convicts 
 bound to them for a term of years. As a natural conse- 
 quence their aristocracy became composed not of those who 
 had hereditary rank, not of gentry in the English sense, 
 but of all those who could invest capital in flesh and blood. 
 In Virginia and the Carolinas, the slave-owners usurped the 
 name of gentlemen; they had a sufficient intermixture of 
 that class to serve as a screen, and there were none to ques- 
 tion their claims. 
 
 Yet it must be borne in mind that these absurd claims 
 have been pushed offensively only within the last few years. 
 We have yet to learn that during colonial times or the dark 
 period of the Revolution, any superiority was claimed by 
 the South over the North. It has only been since our na- 
 tional prosperity became so great, that these false aspersions
 
 have been indulged in, and a Cavalier has presumed to ar- 
 rogate a precedence over a Puritan. 
 
 To prove the inherent absurdity of the claims of the 
 South, I beg leave to present certain tables compiled from 
 the official Census returns. 
 
 I assume in the following table that the inhabitants of 
 the United States in 1790 were citizens by birth, and by de- 
 ducting at the end of each decade the number of immigrants 
 we have what may fairly be claimed as the percentage of nat- 
 ural increase. I have added the slight excess over the per- 
 centage to the column of native born, believing this advan- 
 tage at least belongs to them : 
 
 WHITE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 TABLE No. 1. INCKEASE AND IMMIGRATION. 
 
 1800 
 
 1810 
 
 1830 
 
 lf 
 
 i-S. 
 83.7 
 
 32.1 
 
 25.1 
 
 ToUl per 
 
 8,172,464 
 
 7,88*317 
 
 10.5(19,815 
 
 Nativt-i. 
 1760 
 
 Allen*. 
 1800 
 
 Allen*. 
 1810 
 
 Allen* 
 
 Allen*. 
 1880 
 
 Allen* 
 
 Allen*. 
 1850 
 
 Allen*. 
 1800 
 
 1890 
 
 1840 
 
 3,172,464 
 1,071,971 
 
 50,000 
 
 70,000 
 
 114.000 
 
 151.824 
 
 599.125 
 
 
 
 4,244,435 
 
 ir,,'ii 
 
 5.709,725 
 1,835,672 
 
 35. 
 
 70,000 
 22,470 
 
 2i424,228 
 
 87,450 
 28,071 
 
 92,470 114,000 
 29,781 36,594 
 
 MHyM 
 
 115,521 
 
 122.251 150.594 151,824 
 35,452 43,673 44,028 
 
 12.869.0fi9 
 
 149,022 
 
 157,703 194^67 195,852 .','.*, 125 
 
 16,107,768 186,425 197,286 243,028 245,009 749,505 1,713,251 
 
 44,456 47,151 58,083 58,557 179,131 409,467 2,598,214 
 
 20,706,425 19,976,762 230,881 244,437 301.111 
 
 2,122,718 2.598^14 
 
 This table shows us that in the States in 1860, out of 
 26,706,425 white inhabitants, 19,976,762 were the descend- 
 ants of the original citizens of 1790. I omit the territo- 
 ries, as the number of inhabitants cannot affect the result, 
 and it is difficult to decide upon their nationality. 
 
 In Table II, I propose to divide the inhabitants of 
 1790 into four classes, the first comprising New England ; 
 the second, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania ; the 
 third, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Geor- 
 gia; and the fourth, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and 
 Tennessee.
 
 Allowing to each class the same percentage of increase 
 as in the former table, we shall see how our nineteen mil- 
 lions of native-born citizens originated : 
 
 Date. 
 
 Per cent, of 
 Increase. 
 
 Total as per 
 " Native " 
 column, 
 Table No. 1. | 
 
 New Eng- 
 land. 
 
 New 
 York &c. 
 
 Virginia 
 4-c. 
 
 Delaware 
 &o. 
 
 1790 .... 
 
 33.7 
 
 3,172,464 
 
 992,781 
 335,417 
 
 908,195 
 306,911 
 
 923,383 
 312,030 
 
 348,105 
 117,613 
 
 1800 .... 
 
 34.4 
 
 4,244,435 
 
 1,328,198 
 458,465 
 
 1,215,106 
 419,596 
 
 1,235,413 
 426,582 
 
 465,718 
 160,647 
 
 1810 .... 
 
 32.1 
 
 5,709,725 
 
 1,786,663 
 574,369 
 
 1,634,702 
 525,589 
 
 1,661,995 
 534,350 
 
 626,365 
 201,364 
 
 1820 .... 
 
 32.1 
 
 7,545,397 
 
 2,361,032 
 758,541 
 
 2,160,291 
 694,103 
 
 2,196,345 
 705,676 
 
 827,729 
 265,908 
 
 1830 .... 
 
 29 
 
 9,969,625 
 
 3,119,573 
 907,176 
 
 2,854,394 
 830,274 
 
 2,902,021 
 844,086 
 
 1,093,637 
 317,908 
 
 1840 .... 
 
 25.1 
 
 12,869,069 
 
 4,026,749 
 1,012,464 
 
 3,684,668 
 927,852 
 
 3,746,107 
 943,272 
 
 1,411,545 
 355,111 
 
 1850 .... 
 
 23.9 
 
 16,107,768 
 
 5,039,213 
 1,210,270 
 
 4,612,520 
 1,108,292 
 
 4,689,379 
 1,126,661 
 
 1,766,656 
 423,771 
 
 1860 .... 
 
 
 19,976,762 
 
 6,249,483 
 
 5,720,812 
 
 5,816,040 
 
 2,190,427 
 
 Here then we see that New England has contributed 
 nearly one third of the number, and nearly one quarter of 
 the entire population. 
 
 But I will endeavor further to analyze the constitution 
 of the different States which were added to the Union pre- 
 vious to 1860. The following table will show the numbers 
 at each decade : 
 
 FREE STATES. 
 
 SLAVE STATES. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Inhabitants 
 per Census. j Natives. 
 
 Immi- 
 grants. 
 
 Inhabitants 
 all Native. 
 
 Immi- 
 grants. 
 
 Immi- 
 grants. 
 
 1810 .... 
 
 3,653,219 
 
 3,421,365 
 
 231,854 
 
 2,19,706 
 
 95,654 
 
 
 1820 .... 
 
 5,030,371 
 
 4,521,323 
 
 509,048 
 
 2,808,946 
 
 215,048 
 
 
 1830 .... 
 
 6,874,302 
 
 5,973,967 
 
 900,335 
 
 3,635,513 
 
 360,145 
 
 
 1840 .... 
 
 9,560,165 I 7.711,417 
 
 1,848,748 
 
 4,604,873 
 
 552,779 
 
 
 1850 
 1860 .... 
 
 13,257,795 
 17,993,585 
 
 9,651,733 
 11,970,295 
 
 3,606,062 
 6,023,290 
 
 6,184,477 
 8,712,840 
 
 271,558 
 
 706,373 
 
 We have now certain data from which to argue, and I 
 will first investigate the alleged homogeneity of the South. 
 Conceding that every citizen of the two classes of Virginia, 
 etc., and Delaware, etc., in 1790, was indisputably the de- 
 scendant of an English cavalier, and that the increase of
 
 6 
 
 population found an outlet into the new Slave States, how 
 would the case stand ? 
 
 In 1860 these states contained 8,712,840; by Table H 
 we calculated they should contain 8,006,467 ; so that even 
 in this case there are some 700,000 foreigners. But a little 
 more research shows that the case is much more unfavor- 
 ble. 
 
 Up to 1840, the Southern States not only could have 
 furnished all the settlers in the Slave States, but must have 
 sent out colonists. In 1 840, they had 4,604,873 inhabitants ; 
 add to this the natural increase, 25.1 per cent, (1,155,823,) 
 and we have 5,760,696 native born, and 423,781 foreigners 
 required to make their total of 6,184,477 inhabitants. 
 
 But in the next decade, add to the 5,760,696 native 
 born their percentage of increase, 23.9 (1,376,806,) and we 
 have 7,137,502, requiring 1,575,338 foreigners, more tfianone 
 sixth, for their total of 8,712,840 white inhabitants. 
 
 Ily no conceivable chnncc can more than five sixths of 
 th" population of the South be descended from the English 
 cavaliers. 
 
 But if we concede to every Virginian, not only his in- 
 herent gentility, but his unswerving purpose never to emi- 
 grate out of Slave territory, and an intuitive presentiment 
 which pointed out which were to be the slave portions of 
 adjacent Territories, by these same perrrntuircs of increase 
 the 442,215 Virginian cavaliers of ITiM) could be the pro- 
 genitors of only 2,785,927 patricians to rally around the 
 model cavalier of 1860 Jefferson Davis. 
 
 Lastly, in an 'estimate published in 1848 by Mr. Jesse 
 Pickering, devoted entirely to the consideration of immigra- 
 tion as a national question, it is argued, with every appear- 
 ance of truth, that in 1 840 the foreign population of the 
 Slave States was 1,177,965. But these must have displaced 
 an equal number of the native born, and we should have on- 
 ly 3,426,908 of that class in 1840, 4,287,061 in 1850, and 
 5,311,668 in 1860, or in that case only five eights of the 
 population could be of native descent, provided that not one 
 emigrated. When we consider that the great immigration
 
 of all was between 1840 and 1860, we are forced to con- 
 clude that certainly not more than one half of the inhabi- 
 tants of the present Confederate States can present the 
 faintest claim to a descent from the citizens of 1790. 
 
 I think that few of my readers will now dispute that 
 there is a physical impossibility of an unity of race among 
 the Southerners, even had their emigrant forefathers been 
 all of one nation. But they were of divers races even at 
 the commencement. Let us examine each colony separate- 
 
 iy- 
 
 VIRGINIA. 
 
 Even Virginia was not entirely English. Barber's ac- 
 count of the State (p. 451) says of the valley of the Shen- 
 andoah : 
 
 " The eastern part of the valley being conveniently sit- 
 uated for emigrants from Pennsylvania, as well as from low- 
 er Virginia, the population there came to be a mixture of 
 English Virginians and Germans and Scotch-Irish Presby- 
 terians. The German Pennsylvanians, being passionate lov- 
 ers of fat lands, no sooner heard of the rich valleys of the 
 Shenando and its branches, than they began to join their 
 countrymen from Europe in pouring themselves forth over 
 the country above Winchester. Finding the main Shenan- 
 do mostly preoccupied, they followed up the north and south 
 branches on both sides of the Massanutten, or Peaked 
 Mountain, until they tilled up all the beautiful vales of the 
 country for the space of sixty miles. So completely did 
 they occupy the country, that the few stray English or Irish 
 settlers among them did not sensibly affect the homoge- 
 neousness of the population." 
 
 And again : 
 
 "The first settlements of this portion of the valley 
 were made by the Scotch Irish, with a few original Scotch 
 among them. They settled in the neighborhoods around 
 Martinsburg, in Berkely county, Winchester, and almost the 
 entire counties of Qmage and Guilford. The same race 
 went on into North Carolina, and settled in the counties of 
 Orange and Guilford, especially in the northern and middle 
 parts of the latter county." 
 
 Beverley writes, (p. 228 :) 
 
 " The French refugees sent in thither by the charitable 
 exhibition of his late majesty King William, are naturalized
 
 by a particular law for that purpose. In the year 1699 
 there went over about three hundred of these, and in the 
 year following about two hundred more, and so on, till there 
 arrived in all between seven and eight hundred men, wom- 
 en, and children, who had fled from France on account of 
 their religion.'' 
 
 Bishop Meade (ii. 75) writes: 
 
 "That twelve Protestant German families, consisting of 
 about fifty persons, arrived April 17th, in Virginia, and 
 were therein settled near the Rappahunnoek river. That 
 in 1717, seventeen Protestant German families, consisting 
 of about fourscore persons, came and set down near their 
 countrymen. And many more, both German and Swiss 
 families, are likely to come there and settle likewise." 
 
 This report was made in 1720. 
 
 NDKTH CAROLINA. 
 
 "The region south of Albermarle, as far down as Pain- 
 lico and Neu.->-, derived the larger part of its first settlers 
 
 from the counties between tin- Sound and Virginia As 
 
 early as 1690, Martin informs us that some of the French 
 Protestant refugees who had been sent by the royal benevo- 
 lence to colonize on James River in Virginia, had purchased 
 lands on Pamlico and planted themselves upon them. 
 
 In 1707 came a second body of French emigrants, con- 
 siderable in numbers, from the James River settlement in 
 Virginia. These had probably been allured by the repre- 
 sentations of their countrymen who preceded them in 1690 
 and settled in Pamlico. This second migration proceeded 
 beyond Pamlico, and made their home on Neuse and Trent 
 rivers, whence, afterwards, some of them and of their de- 
 scendants passed over into what are now Onslow and Car- 
 teret counties, where their names are still to be found. 
 These last French emigrants, all Protestants, brought with 
 them into Carolina their clergyman, Phillipe de Richebourg, 
 some of whose descendants are still living in our county 
 of Buncombe. After a time, he, with a portion of his peo- 
 ple, proceeded farther south, and they planted themselves 
 on the Santee River, where De Richebourg died. 
 
 Two or three years after this addition to the popula- 
 tion, in the latter part of 1710, a considerable accession 
 was made by the arrival of a large number of Germans 
 and Swiss."
 
 " The Germans were from Hiedelburg and its vicinity 
 on the Neckar, in the Grand Duchy of Baden, and had been 
 made the victims of religious persecution, because they 
 could not change their creed with each successive change 
 of their rulers." "It so happened that about the same time, 
 Christopher, Baron de Graffenreid, a Swiss nobleman from 
 Berne, was in England with a large number of his country- 
 men ; and they were anxious to emigrate to America." .... 
 "A negotiation therefore commenced between these com- 
 missioners, the Swiss leaders, and the lords proprietors. 
 The result was, that Graffenreid and Mitchell agreed to 
 transport one hundred families of the palatines (about six 
 hundred and fifty persons,) with their own Swiss colonists." 
 
 "In December, 1711, these German and Swiss landed 
 at the confluence of the Neuse and Trent Rivers, and the 
 town of New Berne was begun. There were now, there- 
 fore, about 1710, three classes of settlers in the state. 
 First, there were the English, on the northern side of the 
 Albemarle, gradually extending themselves westward be- 
 yond Chowan River. This was the most populous part of 
 the province. Some of these people on Albemarle were al- 
 so making their way southward toward Pamlico, and set- 
 tling about Bath, while some probably halted in the inter- 
 mediate region of Tyrrel. 
 
 Next there were the French Huguenots of the two 
 emigrations from Virginia in 1690 and 1707. The first 
 were on Pamlico, the last on Neuse, and chiefly on Trent 
 River, whence some of them have wandered into what are 
 Onslow and Carteret counties. 
 
 Lastly were the German palatines and Swiss. Of the 
 former we know the number, six hundred and fifty ; of the 
 latter there is no certain statement that we are aware of, 
 though they are said in some documents we have seen, to 
 have been fifteen hundred." 
 
 Hawks' North Carolina, ii, 849. 
 
 "A great number of French refugees were this year 
 (1690) sent, at the King's expense, to the province of Vir- 
 ginia, and settled themselves on James river : others pur- 
 chased land from the proprietors of Carolina and settled 
 on Pamlico arid Santee Rivers." Martin's History of 
 North Carolina (New Orleans 1829) p. 192. Martin also 
 mentions, p. 232-3, that French colonists from Virginia 
 came in 1708, and further states, "besides a great number of 
 palatines, fifteen hundred Swiss followed." In 1706 (p. 218) 
 
 (2)
 
 10 
 
 " The population of the colony was composed of individ- 
 uals of different nations, and consequently of various sects : 
 Scotch Presbyterians, Dutch Lutherans, French Calvinists, 
 Irish Catholics, English Churchmen, Quakers and Dissen- 
 ters ; emigrants from Bermuda and the West Indies, which 
 from their late settlement, could not be places remarkable 
 for the education of voung people in Christianity and mor- 
 ality." 
 
 In the appendix to his History is an account of the 
 Moravians who settled in North Carolina. 
 
 SOUTH CAROLINA. 
 
 Mr. Pickett, whose history of Alabama was published at 
 Charleston, S. C., in 1851, adds, "a company of forty 
 Jews, acting under the broad principle of the charter, 
 which gave freedom to all religions, save that of the Rom- 
 ish Church, landed at Savannah. Much dissatisfaction, both 
 in England and America, arose in consequence of these Is- 
 raelites, and Oglethorpe was solicited to send them imme- 
 diately from the colony. He, however, generously permit- 
 ted them to remain, which was one of the wisest acts of 
 his life, for they and their descendants were highly instru- 
 mental in developing the commercial resources of this wild 
 land." "The colony of Georgia had prospered under the 
 wise guidance of Oglethorpe. The colonists, being from 
 different nations, were various in their characters and reli- 
 gious creeds. Vandois, Swiss, Piedmontese, Germans, Mora- 
 vians, Jews from Portugal, Highlanders, English, and Ital- 
 ians were thrown together in this fine climate, new world, 
 and new home." 
 
 "Round heads and cavaliers alike sought refuge in Car- 
 olina, which, for a long time, remained a pet province of 
 the proprietors." *** "In 1674, when Nova Belgia, now 
 New York, was conquered by the English, a number of tlm 
 Dutch from that place sought refuge in Carolina. The 
 proprietors facilitated their desire, and provided the ships 
 which conveyed them to Charlestown. They were assigned 
 lands on the southwest side of Ashley river, drew lots for 
 their property, and founded a town which they called James- 
 town, but which they afterwards deserted and spread them- 
 selves throughout the country, where they were joined by 
 greater numbers from ancient Belgia. 
 
 Two vessels filled with foreign, perhaps French, prot- 
 estants, were transported to Carolina, at the expense of
 
 11 
 
 Charles II, in 1679 ; and the revocation of the edict of 
 Nantz, a few years afterwards, by which the Huguenots 
 were deprived of the only securities of life, liberty and for- 
 tune which their previous struggles had left them, contribu- 
 ted still more largely to the infant settlement, and provi- 
 ded Carolina with some of the noblest portions of her 
 growing population." The History of South Carolina, by 
 William Gilmore Simms. Charleston : 1840, pp. 58-9. 
 
 "Emigrants followed, though slowly, from Switzerland, 
 Germany, and Holland ; and the Santee, the Congaree, the 
 Wateree, and Edisto, now listened to the strange voices of 
 neveral nations, who, in the old world, had hardly known 
 each other except as foes." Ibid, p. 60. 
 
 About 1731, "a colony of Swiss settled on the Savan- 
 nah and established the town of Purrysburgh. Eleven 
 townships were marked out on various rivers." Ibid, p. 
 206. 
 
 "From this period (1761) we may date the true begin- 
 ning not only of the prosperity, but the independence of 
 Carolina Never did any colony flourish in a more sur- 
 prising degree than South Carolina, as soon as the Chero- 
 kees were overcome, and the French and Spaniards driven 
 from her borders. Multitudes of emigrants, from all parts 
 of Europe, flocked to the interior, and pursuing the devious 
 progress of the streams, sought out their sources, and 
 planted their little colonies on the sides of lofty hills, or in 
 the bosom of lovely vallies. 
 
 Six hundred poor German settlers arrived in one body ; 
 Ireland poured forth such numbers from her northern coun- 
 ties as almost threatened the depopulation of the kingdom. 
 Scarce a ship sailed for any of the plantations that was 
 not crowded with men, women and children, seeking the 
 warm and fertile region of Carolina, of which such glowing 
 tidings had reached their ears, and where the land was 
 proffered in bounties to all new comers. Nor did the col- 
 ony receive these accessions from Europe only. In the 
 .space of a single year, more than a thousand families with 
 their effects, their cattle, hogs, and horses, crossed the Alle- 
 ghanies from the eastern settlements and pitched their 
 tents upon the Carolinean frontiers." Ibid, p. 121. 
 
 In Carroll's History of South Carolina (New York, 
 1836,) will be found a reprint of Dr. Hewit's Historical 
 Account published in 1779. From it we make the follow- 
 ing quotations :
 
 12 
 
 P. 87. "The next acquisition America gained, was 
 from the revocation of the edict of Nantz ; in conse- 
 quence of which the flames of persecution broke out in 
 France, and drove many of its best subjects out of that 
 kingdom. These Protestant refugees were beneficial in 
 many respects to England and Holland, and served greatly 
 to promote the trade and manufactures of these nations. 
 Among the other colonies in America which reaped advan- 
 tage from this impolitic measure of France, Carolina had a 
 larger share. Many of the Protestant refugees, having pur- 
 chased lands from the proprietors, embarked with their fam- 
 ilies for that colony, and proved some of its best and most 
 industrious inhabitants." P. 205. In 1715, "the Yenias- 
 sees being expelled from Indian Land, the assembly passed 
 two acts to appropriate those lands gained by conquest, for 
 the use and encouragement of such of his majesty's subjects 
 as should come over and settle upon them. Extracts of these 
 acts being sent to England and Ireland and published among 
 the people, five hundred men from Ireland transported them- 
 selves to Carolina, to take the benefit of them." 
 
 P. 295. In 1732, John Peter Perry, a native of Neuf- 
 chatel in Switzerland, ''having while in Carolina furnished 
 himself with a flattering account of the soil and climate, and 
 of the excellence and freedom of the provincial government, 
 returned to Switzerland and published it among the people. 
 Immediately one hundred and seventy poor Switzers a- 
 gived to follow him, and were transported to the fertile and 
 delightful province as he described it ; and not long after- 
 wards two hundred more came over and joined them." 
 
 1*. 324. "By this time (1735) an account of the great 
 privileges and indulgences granted by the crown for the en- 
 couragement of emigrants to Carolina, had been published 
 through Britain and Ireland, and many industrious people in 
 different parts had resolved to take the benefit of his majes- 
 ty's bounty. Multitudes of labourers and husbandmen in 
 Ireland, oppressed by landlords and bishops, and unable by 
 their utmost diligence to procure a comfortable subsistence 
 for their families, embarked for Carolina. The first colony 
 of Irish people had lauds granted them near San tee river, 
 and formed the settlement called Williainsburg township." 
 
 P. 376. "The plan of settling townships, especially 
 as it came accompanied with the royal bounty, had proved 
 beneficial in many respects. It encouraged multitudes of 
 poor oppressed people in Ireland, Holland and Germany to
 
 13 
 
 emigrate, by which means the province received a number 
 of frugal and industrious settlers." 
 
 P. 485-7. In 1763, "one Stumpel, who had been an offi- 
 cer in the King of Prussia's service, being reduced at the 
 peace, applied to the British ministry for a tract of land in 
 America, and having got some encouragement, returned to 
 Germany, where, by deceitful promises, he seduced between 
 five and six hundred ignorant people from their native coun- 
 country." He abandoned them in England, and having 
 been supported by charity for a time, "his majesty, sensi- 
 ble that his colony of South Carolina had not its propor- 
 tion of white inhabitants, and having expressed a particular 
 attachment to it, signified his desire of transporting them 
 to that province." Accordingly preparations were made, 
 ships were furnished, and they landed at Charleston, in 
 April, 1764. 
 
 P. 488. "Besides foreign Protestants, several persons 
 from England and Scotland resorted to Carolina after the 
 peace. But of all ot/ier countries none has furnished the prov- 
 ince with so many inhabitants as Ireland. In the northern 
 counties of that kingdom the spirit of emigration seized 
 the people to such a degree, that it threatened almost a to- 
 tal depopulation. Such multitudes of husbandmen, labour- 
 ers and manufacturers flocked over the Atlantic, that the 
 landlords began to be alarmed, and concert ways and means 
 for preventing the growing evil. Scarce a ship sailed for 
 any of the plantations that was not crowded with men, wo- 
 men, and children. But the bounty allowed new settlers in 
 Carolina proved a great encouragement, and induced num- 
 bers of these people, notwithstanding the severity of the 
 climate, to resort to that province. The merchants, finding 
 this bounty equivalent to the expenses of the passage, from 
 avaricious motives persuaded the people to embark for Car- 
 olina, and often crammed such numbers of them into their 
 ships that they were in danger of being stifled during the 
 passage, and sometimes were landed in such a starved and 
 sickly condition, that numbers of them died before they left 
 Charleston. 
 
 Many causes may be assigned for this spirit of emigration 
 that prevailed so much in Ireland : some, no doubt, emigra- 
 ted from a natural restlessness of temper, and a desire of 
 roving abroad, without any fixed object in view. Others 
 were enticed over by flattering promises from their friends 
 and relations, who had gone before them. But of other
 
 14 
 
 causes of emigration, oppression at home was the most pow- 
 erful and prevalent. Most men have a natural fondness 
 and partiality for their native country, and leave it with re- 
 luctance while they are able to earn a comfortable liveli- 
 hood in it. That spot where they first drew the breath of 
 life, that society in which they spent the gay season of youth, 
 the religion, the manners and customs of those among 
 whom they were educated, all conspire to aflect the heart, 
 and endear their native country to them. But poverty and 
 oppression will break through every natural tie and endear- 
 ment, and compel men to rove abroad in search of some 
 asylum against domestic hardships. Hence it happens that 
 many poor people forsook their native land, and preferred 
 the burning sky and unwholesome climate of Carolina, to 
 the temperate and mild air of their mother country. The 
 success that attended some friends who had gone before 
 them being also industriously published in Ireland, and 
 with all the exaggerations of travellers, gave vigor to the 
 spirit of adventure, and induced multitudes to follow their 
 countrymen, and run all ha/ards abroad, rather than starve 
 at home. Government winked at those emigrations, and 
 every year brought fiesh strength to Carolina, inscmuth 
 that the lands in Ireland were in danger of lying waste for 
 want of labourers, and the manufactures of dwindling into 
 nothing." 
 
 GEORGIA. 
 
 The records of the colonization of this state are more 
 imperfect than those of the Carolinas. It was emphatically 
 a pauper settlement. Its charter, dated in 1732, states that 
 "whereas we are credibly informed that many of our poor 
 subjects are through misfortunes and want of employment 
 reduced to great necessity, insomuch as by their labour they 
 are not able to provide a maintenance for themselves and 
 families ; and if they had means to defray their charges of 
 passage, and other expenses incident to new settlements, 
 they would be glad to settle in any of our provinces in 
 America ;" therefore certain lands were granted to u Cor- 
 poration. 
 
 In a tract published in 1741, and reprinted in the Geor- 
 gia Historical Collections, ii, 305, it is shown that in eight 
 years ending 9th June, 1740, 1,521 persons had been sent
 
 15 
 
 over on the charity, whereof 915 were British and 606 for- 
 eign. The same tract, ii, 308, says about twenty miles fur- 
 ther up the river is the town of Ebenezer, where the Sals- 
 burgers are settled, with two ministers, one of whom com- 
 puted that the number of his congregation in June 1738 
 consisted of one hundred aud forty six. ... At their desire 
 another embarkation of their countrymen, who are willing to 
 go from Germany and join them, is designed to be sent for 
 with all convenient speed. 
 
 "In the southern part of the province is the town of 
 New Inverness, where the Highlanders are settled." 
 
 A letter from Thomas Coram, dated 1734, (Georgia 
 Hist. Coll. ii, 971,) says, "But I beg leave to say something 
 of the Jews, who to the number of between forty and fifty 
 have procured themselves to be already settled there con- 
 trary to the will, and without the consent of the trustees, 
 and there are more of their nation now going over to them. 
 I humbly conceive these shocking matters require your most 
 serious attention ; for unless you speedily take some vigor- 
 ous resolutions to suppress effectually the two great evils 
 aforesaid, Georgia will soon become a Jewish colony." 
 
 Hewitt's account, already cited, ( Carroll's History of S. 
 Carolina i, 310,) says, " But after the representation and me- 
 morial from the legislature of Carolina reached Britain, the 
 nation considerd Georgia to be of the utmost importance to 
 the British settlements in America, and began to make still 
 more vigorous efforts for its speedy population. The first 
 embarkations of poor people from England, being collected 
 from towns and cities, were found equally idle and useless 
 members of society abroad, as they had been at home. A 
 hardy and bold race of men, inured to rural labour and fa- 
 tigue, they were persuaded would be much better adapted 
 both for cultivation and defence. To find men possessed of 
 these qualifications, the trustees turned their eyes to Ger- 
 many and the Highlands of Scotland, and resolved to send 
 over a number of Scotch and German labourers to their in- 
 fant province. When they published their terms at Inver- 
 ness, a hundred and thirty Highlanders immediately accept- 
 ed them, and were transported to Georgia. A township on 
 the river Altamaha, which was considered as the boundary 
 between the British and Spanish territories, was allotted for 
 the Highlanders, on which dangerous situation they settled, 
 and built a town which they called New Inverness. About
 
 16 
 
 the same time a hundred and seventy Germans embarked 
 with James Oglethorpe and were fixed in another quarter, 
 so that in the space of three years, Georgia received above 
 four hundred British subjects, and about one hundred and 
 seventy foreigners. Afterwards several adventurers, both 
 from Scotland and Germany, followed their countrymen, and 
 added further strength to the province, and the trustees flat- 
 tered themselves with the hopes of soon seeing it in a prom- 
 ising condition." 
 
 In White's Historical Collections of Georgia, (New 
 York, 1855,) p. 37, is a list of grants of land from 1741 
 1754. Without attempting an exact analysis, it is evident 
 that not one fourth can be considered English names. The 
 German and Scotch names constitute by fur the greater por- 
 tion. 
 
 White's Statistics of Georgia, (Savannah, 1849) mentions. 
 p. 96, the arrival of the Germans in 1733 and their settle- 
 ment at Ebenezer, and page 101, the settlement of Jews at 
 Savannah. 
 
 Such an array of authorities ought to be conclusive 
 against any idea that Phigland ha? been the fountain head, 
 even of that portion which may be considered as descended 
 from the early colonists. Even Africa has a certain undeni. 
 able claim. 
 
 In 1853, a memoir of James Fontaine was published, ac- 
 companied by letters from members of his family. He was 
 a Huguenot, who had settled in Virginia, and his descendants 
 have been among the most distinguished of her citizens. 
 
 The letters of his sons to relatives in England are very 
 instructive. I quote from one from Peter Fontaine, dated 
 March 2, 1756, in which he regrets that the English had not 
 intermarried with the Indians : 
 
 "But here methinks I can hear you observe, 'What! 
 Englishmen intermarry with Indians?' But I can convince 
 you that they are guilty of much more heinous practices, 
 more unjustifiable in the sight of God and man (if that in- 
 deed may be called a bad practice;) for many base wretches 
 among us take up with negro women, by which means the 
 country swarms with mulatto bastards ; and these mulattoes, 
 if but three generations removed from the black father or
 
 17 
 
 mother, may, by the indulgence of the laws of the country, 
 intermarry with the white people, and actually do every day 
 so marry" 
 
 This is the testimony of a Virginian gentleman, made 
 a century ago ; I do not care to more than point to the pos- 
 sible infusion of other than English blood into the veins of 
 the gentlemen who desire to adopt the Cavalier as their 
 national device. 
 
 Farther than this, we read in Wirt's life of Patrick 
 Henry, (ed. 1818 p. 241,) that in 1784 Patrick Henry pro- 
 posed a bill which passed through two readings, entitled 
 "a Bill for the encouragement of marriages with the In- 
 dians," which proposed a bounty to every free white male 
 who would marry an Indian female of lawful age, or any 
 free female who would marry with any male Indian of law- 
 ful age, and enacting "that the offspring of the intermar- 
 riages aforesaid shall be entitled, in all respects, to the same 
 rights and privileges, under the laws of this commonwealth, 
 as if they had proceeded from intermarriages among free 
 white inhabitants thereof." 
 
 It is not necessary to inquire what percentage of In- 
 dian or Negro blood may be found in the free population of 
 the Southern States ; it is evident that the purity of lineage 
 so essential to a race of gentlemen, has been often imperill- 
 ed since the first colonists landed here. 
 
 SOCIAL STATUS OF THE ENGLISH COLONISTS. 
 
 We now proceed to examine the social position, prior 
 to the emigration, of those Englishmen who did in a certain 
 degree colonize the present Slave States, and in a much 
 greater degree colonize New England. I must confess hav- 
 ing long wondered at the persistent statement of English- 
 men that the citizens of the United States were the offspring 
 of the vagabonds and felons of Europe. Having examined 
 the history of the families of New England with much inter- 
 est, and finding therein no confirmation of this idea, I had 
 held it but the outbreak of prejudice and ignorance. Yet 
 since the present rebellion has caused so much inquiry into 
 the antecedents of the Southerners, I find that the assertion 
 
 (3)
 
 18 
 
 is well fou.ided, but that it concerns those who have hither- 
 to been loudest in their claims to a distinguished ancestry. 
 The citations may perhaps be best examined by arrang- 
 ing them under the names of the several colonies. 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA. 
 
 "There was also a third class of labourers whom our 
 records show to have been in the colony. These were white 
 men, English convicts transported to America for their 
 crimes. . . . Exile was first introduced as a punishment in 
 English law, in the reign of Eli/aheth. anno 1596. It was 
 tin -n enacted that "such rogues as were dangerous to the 
 interior people, should be banished the realm. James I vir- 
 tually converted this into an act for transportation to Amer- 
 ica, without any aid from parliament, and, by the mere ex- 
 ercise of his own will. He wrote a letter, in 1619, to the 
 treasurer and council of Virginia. < residing in London,) 
 commanding them "to send a hundred dissolute persons to 
 Virginia, which the Knight Marshal would deliver to them 
 for that purpose." The first English Statute which uses 
 the word " transport," was passed in 18 Charles II (1666.) 
 This gives a power to the judges at their discretion either 
 "to execute or t ran -port to America for life the moss-troop- 
 ers of Cumberland and Northumberland. Until the reign 
 of George I, this mode of punishment was but little used. 
 By statutes passed in the fourth and sixth years of that King 
 (1718 and 1720,) the courts were authorized to order any 
 felons who were entitled to their clergy, on conviction, to 
 be transported to the American plantations ; and after these 
 enactments the practice became common enough. The col- 
 onies to which they were sent were New York, New Jersey, 
 Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North and 
 South Carolina, and after 1733, to Georgia. The whole 
 number sent is estimated by Lang (in his History of Trans- 
 portation, ) at fifty thousand. But this emptying of the jails 
 of England upon America did not pas- without remonstrance 
 from the colonies, and formed one of the serums complaints 
 set forth in the enumeration of our grievances at the time 
 of the Revolution ; for England never discontinued the prac- 
 tice until we had achieved our independence." 
 
 "The plan of transportation was this : Owners and cap- 
 tains of vessels conracted to carry the convicts; and as re- 
 muneration for the service, agreed, on their arrival, to sell 
 them to the planters for the time? named in their respective
 
 19 
 
 sentences. Lang tells us that these transported felons, male 
 and female, were bought by the planters for the terms spec- 
 ified in their respective warrants, and worked with the ne- 
 gro slaves under the lash of an overseer." 
 
 We have seen in the chapter on laws, the extent of 
 the master's powers and the convict's privileges. So com- 
 mon and well understood was the practice of selling con- 
 victs into colonial slavery, that one of the most remarkable 
 of England's writers of fiction, who lived at the time, availed 
 himself of the existing custom to build on it one of the 
 most startling incidents of his story ; and the " Moll Flan- 
 ders" of Defoe presents a picture of convicts -transported 
 to Virginia, which, drawn from events around him, is sketched, 
 according to his custom, with minute accuracy of detail, and 
 wants no additional touch to improve its verisimilitude. 
 As to the criminals themselves, their condition was varied 
 according to circumstances. If they or their relations were 
 possessed of wealth, they had but to offer the captain a high- 
 er price for themselves than he could get when he reached 
 America, and exposed them in market overt, and then they 
 never went into bondage nor were ever made the subject 
 of a bid. Sometimes too, when they were poor, and conse- 
 quently sold, they found a stimulus to seek the improvement 
 of their condition, and emerged from their degraded position. 
 
 An old writer, in speaking of Virginia, thus describes 
 them : 'They go there poor, and come back rich; there they 
 plant, trade, thrive and increase ; even your transported fel- 
 ons, sent to Virginia instead of Tyburn, thousands of them, 
 if we are not misinformed, have, by turning their hands to 
 industry and improvement, and, which is best of all, to hon- 
 esty, become rich, substantial planters and merchants, set- 
 tled large families and been famous in the country ; nay, we 
 have seen many of them made magistrates, officers of mili- 
 tia, captains of good ships, and masters of good estates.* 
 
 But sometimes the owners and masters of ships did 
 
 * Posthethwayte's Diet, of Commerce, voi. ii, p. 319. The Herald's office, 
 which (it is well known) preserves with great care the genuine aristocracy of Ameri- 
 ca, can doubtless furnish a list of these felons thus converted into gentlemen. They 
 must by no' means be confounded with the "first families" of the country, who 
 never thus stole into notoriety. Dr. Hau-ks' note.
 
 20 
 
 not wait for the sentence of the law to furnish them with a 
 cargo. The picture of society in the ports of England at 
 that day brings to our notice, and especially in London, the 
 habit of kidnapping those convicted of no crime, but who, 
 found perchance in a moment of drunkenness, or overcome, 
 if sober, by brute force, were hurried on board the vessel 
 ready to depart, and presently found themselves exposed to 
 sale as slaves in some one of the American plantations. 
 Children were stolen and sent over. 
 
 The planter was much too discreet to ask troublesome 
 questions, and the captain, of course, told what lies he 
 pleased. Another, but small class of temporary white 
 bondmen was to be found in those who were bound as ap- 
 prentices, both in England and in the provinces ; these, how- 
 ever, were mostly employed as house-servants, or trained to 
 mechanical arts, and had but little employment in agricul- 
 ture. The purchased convicts and negro slaves encountered 
 the harder toil of clearing and cultivating the lands." 
 
 Hawks' Hist, of North Carolina, (Fayettevillc, N. C., 1858J ii, 230. 
 
 "We fear that our previous chapters will not have ac- 
 complished one of the purposes for which they were writ- 
 ten, if they have not enabled the reader, before reaching 
 this page, to form for himself a tolerably accurate picture 
 of the general manners of the different classes that compose 
 the society of the proprietary times. 
 
 We say different classes, because the artificial distinc- 
 tions of society were prominent enough. There were edu- 
 cated men in the province, some of whom were natives, 
 who had been sent in early life for training in English 
 schools and universities. They had returned about the pe- 
 riod of incipient manhood, and brought with them the re- 
 finements and habits belonging to the class of educated 
 gentry in England, with which they had so long associate*!. 
 There were also those who, not native, had come in maturer 
 age with similiar tastes and corresponding cultivation. 
 Some of these were allied also to families of rank in Eng- 
 land, and added pride of blood to the courtesies of gentle 
 breeding. There was material therefore for a quasi aristoc- 
 racy, which however was not numerous. 
 
 Martin's History of North Carolina, i, 279 aud ii, 48-9, treats very fully both 
 of the foreigners and convicts.
 
 21 
 
 Next there was a class which by shrewdness, thrift 
 and superior intelligence, had contrived to become rich, 
 while the masses remained poor ; and who, rising gradually 
 as their accumulation increased, had become large landed 
 proprietors, in possession of some of the best bodies of 
 land in the country, the future value of which they had the 
 sagacity to foresee when they came to the province in its 
 infancy It was out of this class that the lord pro- 
 prietors usually selected their deputies, thus making them 
 members of the council, and elevating them to a level with 
 those who constituted the pseudo-aristocracy to which we 
 have referred. 
 
 The next class who were freemen, was composed of 
 the ordinary and uninstructed, who, in England, would have 
 belonged to the peasantry or agricultural laborers, some of 
 whom had voluntarily emigrated, and were employed on the 
 farms where they labored for wages. There were, howev- 
 er, others among this class whose crimes had reduced them 
 to a temporary slavery : these were the transported con- 
 victs, male and female, who had been brought in and sold 
 
 to the planters This bondage possessed, however, 
 
 one redeeming feature the slavery was temporary ; and 
 at its close, the emancipated bondsman was furnished with 
 both lands and tools, and might become the founder of a 
 new family and a new character. 
 
 If his conduct as a servant were marked by submission 
 and fidelity, his burdens were somewhat lightened in his 
 progress to freedom, and the sympathies of a generous and 
 pitying master were sometimes enlisted in his encourage- 
 ment and aid, when he began the hard, but not hopeless task 
 of obtaining a new name, and acquiring property on which 
 he could look without the humiliating consciousness that he 
 had obtained it by crime. 
 
 It is of little consequence to inquire what families now 
 deservedly respectable, in the old provinces where convicts 
 were most numerous, had an origin as humble as this. 
 That some did, is certain." 
 
 Hawks' North Carolina, ii, 572-3. 
 
 1703. "Among the first emigrants, some sense of re- 
 ligion had been for a while preserved, but the next genera- 
 tion, reared in a wilderness where divine service was hard- 
 ly ever performed, and where private devotions cannot be 
 supposed to have been much attended to, were rather re-
 
 22 
 
 markable for loose, licentious principles, and the fundamen- 
 tal principles of the Christian religion were often treated 
 with the ridicule and contempt of professed infidelity. The 
 population of the colony was composed of individuals of 
 different nations, and consequently of various sects : Scotch 
 Presbyterians, Dutch Lutherans, French Calvinists, Irish 
 Catholics, English Churchmen, Quakers and Dissenters; 
 emigrants from Bermuda and the West Indies, which, from 
 their late settlements, could not be places remarkable for 
 the education of young people, in Chri.-tiauity and moralty.'' 
 Martins' Historv of North Carolina (New Orleans: 
 1829) i, 218. 
 
 GEORGIA. 
 
 The original plan of Oglethorpe was " to provide an 
 asylum or place of refuge for the honest industrious poor, 
 and the unfortunate, with some view to the relief of the per- 
 secuted Protestants in Germany. Among these unfortunate 
 persons it could not be guarded against that numbers, unfor- 
 tunate only by their own vices or follies, intruded themselves 
 among the real objects of charity." We have already 
 shown that the foreign element in the population was very 
 large. It is clear that tin- Knirlisli portion was not from 
 the gentry but the paupers ; not from the manor-house, 
 but from the jail and poor-house. There were several ser- 
 mons delivered 1732-1745 before the Society in London, of 
 Trustees for establishing the Colony of Georgia. The 
 following is an extract from one by KVv. George Watts, 
 London, 1736 : 
 
 "And this is a farther excellence of this m:si<;\, that it 
 saves many distressed people of our own, from want and 
 
 destruction The fact I think is plain, that there 
 
 are numbers of people that want employment, and numbers 
 more that cannot subsist on the employment they have. 
 Hence it is that our roads are infested, and our streets 
 thronged with wretched creatures, forced to seek a liveli- 
 hood from vice and wickedness, and living only to corrupt 
 others. Hence it is that our prisons are full of miserable 
 men, useless to all the purposes of society whilst they are 
 there, and by too long a restraint, made useless likewise 
 
 when they came out Surely they are still objects 
 
 of such a charity (if any one can lie found) that shall relieve 
 their distress, and cure their idleness and extravagance at
 
 23 
 
 the same time. What shall we do then with these misera- 
 ble, useless or pernicious inhabitants ? 
 
 Thus shall we erect a new Kingdom to ourselves, out 
 of the refuse of our own people, and the subjects of neigh- 
 boring nations. 
 
 If ever, therefore, there was in reality a colony, what 
 it should be by description, a refuge to the poor, and ease 
 and security to the rich, a nursery of people, and a supply 
 of necessaries, a reward to the deserving, and a reformation 
 to the disorderly ; this, of all others, seems most likely to 
 answer such a character." 
 
 Again a sermon by Rev. James King, in 1743 pursues 
 the same theme of aid to the poor, and refers to a vote of 
 the House of Commons, 29 June, 1742, providing for the 
 transportation of paupers by means of this society. At p. 
 21, the author writes, "many families of our own poor hare 
 already settled there ; and they have been joined by the in- 
 digent protestants of other countries, who have resorted 
 hither to supply the exigences both of their bodies and their 
 souls." 
 
 VIRGINIA. 
 
 As the most conspicuous claimant of a Cavalier origin, 
 let Virginia have the benefit of most extensive quotations. 
 I give the first place to an authority who contrasts Virginia 
 with New England. 
 
 "It is certain that the first settlers of New England did 
 not (as in some of our Colonies) come over indigent or 
 criminals, but as devout religious Puritans ; they were not 
 servants to the adventurers as in some Colonies." (Douglas* 
 vol 1, part ii, 371.) 
 
 "The settling of our sundry Colonies, have been upon 
 several Occasions and from various Beginnings. New Eng- 
 land was first settled by people from England, tenacious of 
 their own non-conformist way of Religious Worship, were 
 resolved to endure any Hardships, viz : a very distant Re- 
 7iioval, Inclemencies of the Climate, Barrenness of the soil 
 &c., in Order to enjoy their own Way of Thinking, called 
 Gospel-Privileges, in Peace and Purity. Our liWest India 
 
 * A summary Historical and Political, of the first planting, progressive Im- 
 provements and present state of the British settlements in North America. By Wil- 
 liam Douglas, M. D. Boston, N. E. 1749.
 
 24 
 
 Islands have been settled or increased, some of them by 
 Royalists, some by Parliamentarians, sonic by Tories, .some 
 by Whig*, at different Times Fugitives or Exiles from their 
 native Country. Virginia and Maryland have been for many 
 Years and continue to be a sink for transported Criminals. 
 Pennsylvania being the property of Mr. Penn, a Quaker, he 
 planted it with Quakers, (as Lord Baltimore for the same 
 Reason at first planted Maryland with Roman Catholics) it 
 is lately very much increased by Husbandmen swarming 
 from Ireland and Germany." Douglas, vol. 1, part i, 115. 
 
 "The assiduous and well-qualified Agent. Dummer, in 
 his ingenious and politick Piece published in London, 17-1, 
 writes 'That the expense of settling the Massachusetts Bay 
 Colony for the first twelve years, was about 200,000 ster- 
 ling; that the settlers are neither necessitous nor Criminals'." 
 Douglass, vol. I, part ii, 428. 
 
 "Our Plantations in America, New England excepted, 
 have been generally settled. 1. I'>y Malcontents with the Ad- 
 ministrations from Time to Time ; 2. By fraudulent Debtors, 
 as a refuge from their Creditors; and bv Convicts or Crimi- 
 nals, who chose Transportation rather than Death." Doug- 
 lass, vol. I, part ii, 490. 
 
 VIRGINIA CAMPBELL'S HISTORY. 
 
 1619. "The condition of the white servants of the 
 colony, many of them convicts, was so abject that men ac- 
 customed to see their own race in bondage could look with 
 more indifference at the worse condition of the slaves." 
 p. 145. 
 
 1619. "The planters at length enjoyed the blessings 
 of property and the society of women. The wives (90) 
 were sold to the colonists for one hundred and twenty pounds 
 of tobacco. . . .The price of a wife afterwards became high- 
 er." 
 
 1620. "One hundred disorderly persons or convicts 
 sent over during the previous year by the King's order 
 were employed as servants." 
 
 1621. Commercial letter. "We send you a shipment, 
 one widow and eleven maids for wives for the people of 
 Virginia ; there hath been especial care in the choice of them. 
 There are nearly fifty more that are shortly to come." 
 
 1617 22. "Nor were these settlers voluntary emi- 
 grants ; the bulk of them had been sent over without regard 
 to their choice by the King or the Virginia Company."
 
 25 
 
 1648. ''There came yearly to trade above thirty ves- 
 sels. Many of the masters and chief mariners of these ves- 
 sels had plantations, houses, and servants in the Colony." 
 
 1660. "A good many republicans and puritans had 
 found their way to Virginia." 
 
 1661. The failure of the schemes proposed in the 
 Virginia Assembly, for the establishment of towns, is attrib- 
 uted by the author of "Virginia's Cure," to the majority of 
 the House of Burgesses who are said to have come over at first 
 as servants, and who although they may have accumulated by 
 their industry competent estates, yet owing to their mean 
 education, were incompetent to judge of public matters, eith- 
 er in church or state." 
 
 1670. "In the year 1670, complaints were made to 
 the General Court by members of the Council and others 
 being gentlemen of the counties of York, Gloucester and 
 Middlesex, representing their apprehensions of danger from 
 the great number of felons and other dangerous villains, 
 sent hither from the prisons of England. Masters of ves- 
 sels were prohibited from landing any such convicts or jail- 
 birds." 
 
 1671. "Captains Bristow and Walbier were required 
 to give security in the sum of one million pounds of tobac- 
 co and cash that Mr. Nevett should send out the Newgate- 
 birds within two months." 
 
 Mr. Jefferson has made the following remark: "The 
 malefactors sent to America were not sufficient in num- 
 ber to merit enumeration as one class out of three which 
 peopled America. It was at a late period of their history 
 that the practice begun. I have no book by me which ena- 
 bles me to point out the date of its commencement, but I 
 do not think the whole number sent would amount to two 
 thousand," and he supposed they and their descendants did 
 not in 1786, exceed four thousand, "which is little more 
 than one thousandth part of the whole population." Mr. 
 Jefferson appears to have been mistaken in his opinion that 
 malefactors were not sent over until a late period in the an- 
 nals of Virginia; and he probably underrated the number of 
 their descendants." Campbell, p. 270. 
 
 1670. Population 40,000 of which 2,000 were negro 
 slaves, and 6,000 white servants. 
 
 "Three kinds of servants are brought over. First, 
 such as came upon certain wages by agreement for a certain 
 
 (4)
 
 26 
 
 time. Second, such as are bound by indentures, commonly 
 called Kids, who are usually to serve four or five years, and 
 third, those convicts or felons that are transported, whose 
 room they had much rather have than their company. These 
 are to serve seven and sometimes fourteen years .... To pre- 
 vent too great a stock of which servants and negroes, many 
 attempts and laws have been in vain made. . . .They after- 
 wards rent a small plantation or else turn overseers." Hugh 
 Jones, Present State of Virginia, (1724,) p. 54. 
 
 "But for the generality, the servants and inferior sort 
 of persons, who have either been sent over to Virginia or 
 have transported themselves tint her, have been and are the 
 poorest, idlest and worst of mankind, the refuse of Great 
 Britain and Ireland, and the outcast of the people." Ibid. 
 p. 114. 
 
 " The country is reported to be an unhealthy place, a 
 nest of rogues, whores, dissolute and rooking persons; a 
 place of intolerable labour, bad usage and hard diet. To 
 answer these several calumnies, I shall first show what it was. 
 next what it is. At the iirst settling, and many years after, 
 it deserved most of these aspersions, (nor were they asper- 
 sions but truths). . . .Then were jails emptied, youths se- 
 duced, infamous women drilled in. .. .no redress of griev- 
 ances, complaints paid with stripes. . . .Yet was not Virginia 
 all this while without divers honest and virtuous inhabit- 
 ants." John Hammond's "Leah and Rachel,'' London, 1656. 
 
 Robert Beverly (I quote from the edition published at 
 Richmond in 1855) says: 
 
 "Those that went over to that country first, were chief- 
 ly single men who had not the incumbrance of wives and 
 children in England ; and if they had, they did not expose 
 them to the fatigue and hazard of so long a voyage, until 
 they saw how it should fan- with themseive -. From hence 
 it came to pass, that when they were settled there in a com- 
 fortable way of subsisting a family, they grew sensible of 
 the misfortune of wanting wives, and such as had left wi ve- 
 in England sent for them, but the single men were put to 
 their shifts. They excepted against the Indian women on 
 account of their being pagans, as well as their complexions, 
 and for fear they should conspire with those of their own 
 nation to destroy their husbands. Under this difficulty they 
 had no hopes but that the plenty in which they lived might 
 invite modest women, of small fortunes, to go over thither 
 from England. However, they would not receive any but
 
 27 
 
 such as could carry sufficient certificate of their modesty 
 and good behavior. Those, if they were but moderately 
 qualified in all other respects, might depend upon marrying 
 very well in those days, without any fortune. Nay, the first 
 planters were so far from expecting money with a woman, 
 that 'twas a common thing for them to buy a deserving wife 
 that carried good testimonials of her character, at the price 
 of one hundred pounds, and make themselves believe they 
 had a bargain. 
 
 " 67. But this way of peopling the colony was only 
 at first. For after the advantages of the climate and the 
 fruit fulness of the soil were well known, and all the dangers 
 incident to infant settlements were over, people of better 
 condition retired thither with their families, either to in- 
 crease the estates they had before, or to avoid being perse- 
 cuted for their principles of religion or government. 
 
 " Thus in the time of the rebellion in England, several 
 good cavalier families went thither with their effects to es- 
 cape the tyranny of the usurper, or acknowledgment of his 
 title. And so again, upon the Restoration, many people of 
 the opposite party took refuge there, to shelter themselves 
 from the king's resentment. But Virginia had not many of 
 these last, because that country was famous for holding out 
 the longest for the royal family of any of the English do- 
 minions.* For which reason the Roundheads went, for the 
 most part, to New England, as did most of those that in the 
 reign of King Charles II were molested on account of their 
 religion, though some of these fell likewise to the share of 
 Virginia. 
 
 As for malefactors condemned to transportation, though 
 the greedy planter will always buy them, yet it is to be 
 feared they will be very injurious to the country, which has 
 already suffered many murders and robberies, the effect of 
 that new law of England. 
 
 1619. "One hundred idle and dissolute persons in 
 custody for various misdemeanors, were transported by au- 
 thority of the King and against the wishes of the company 
 to Virginia. . . .At the accession of Sir Edwin to office, af- 
 ter twelve years labor, and an expenditure of eighty thous- 
 
 *Yet our author had already shown that Dennis, Cromwell's captain, 
 'contrived a stratagem which betrayed the country. He had got a considera- 
 ble parcel of goods aboard, which belonged to two of the Council, and found 
 a method of informing them of it. By this means they were reduced to the 
 dilemma, either of submitting or losing their goods. This caused factions 
 amongst them, so that at last' we blush to add 'the colony surrendered 
 and saved the goods.' En dot Virginia quintwn. The fifth crown had its 
 price even for a 'usurper.'
 
 28 
 
 and pounds by the company, there were in the colony no 
 more than six hundred persons, men. women, and children. 
 In one year he provided a passage for twelve hundred and 
 sixty one new emigrants. Among these were ninety agree- 
 able young women, poor but respectable and incorrupt, to 
 furnish wives to the colonists .... This new commodity was 
 transported at the expense of the colony and sold to the 
 young planters, and the following year another consignment 
 was made of sixty young maids of virtuous education, 
 young, handsome and well recommended. A wife in the 
 first lot sold generally for one hundred pounds of tobacco, 
 but as the value of the new article became known in the 
 market, the price rose, and a wife would bring a hundred 
 and fifty pounds of tobacco. A debt for a wife was of a 
 higher dignity than other debts, and to be paid first." Ga- 
 zetcer of Virginia. 
 
 Beverly notes also about these servants that "a white 
 woman is rarely or never put to work in the ground, if she 
 be good for anything else." 
 
 Bishop Meade (vol. i, p. 89) speaks also of these fe- 
 male servants : 
 
 "While the company and the Governor were endeavor- 
 ing to improve the condition of the colony, by selecting a 
 hundred young females of good character to be wives to the 
 laborers on the farms of Virginia. King James had deter- 
 mined to make of the colony a Botany Bay for the wretched 
 convicts in England, and ordered one hundred to be sent 
 over. The company remonstrated, but in vain. A large 
 portion, if not all of them, were actually sent. The influ- 
 ence of this must have been pernicious. Whether it was 
 continued by his successors, and how long, and to what ex- 
 tent, I know not." 
 
 And again (pp. 365 '6), he says : 
 
 ''The greatest difficulty they (the vestrymen) appear to 
 have had, was with the hired servants, of whom, at an early 
 period, great numbers came over to this country binding 
 themselves to the richer families. The number of illegitimate 
 children born of them and thrown upon the parish, led to 
 much action on the part of the legislature. The lower order of 
 persons in Virginia, in a great measure, sprang from these ap- 
 prenticed servants and from poor exited culprits" 
 
 Stith says, (ed. 1747, p. 103), under date of 1609 : 
 " But a great part of this new company consisted of un-
 
 29 
 
 ruly sparks, packed off by their friends to escape worse des- 
 tinies at home. And the rest were chiefly made up of poor 
 gentlemen, broken tradesmen, rakes, and libertines, footmen, 
 and such others as were much fitter to spoil or ruin a com- 
 monwealth, than to help to raise or maintain one". 
 
 Again, (p. 306), in describing one of the domestic quar- 
 rels of the colony, he copies a statement : 
 
 "And whereas it was affirmed that very few of his maj- 
 esty's servants were lost in those days, and those persons of 
 the meanest rank, they replied that for one that then died 
 five had perished in Sir Thomas Smith's time, many being of 
 ancient houses, and born to estates of a thousand pounds a 
 year, some more, some less,who likewise perished by famine." 
 
 These extracts are ail that I can urge in support of the 
 claim of Virginians to be descended from the English gentry. 
 There may be many other authorities ; it is for the asserters 
 of this theory to produce them, and I certainly would repub- 
 lish them if I could obtain them. 
 
 I regret exceedingly that I am unable to present any 
 complete statement of the number of convicts transported 
 from Great Britain to the colonies, with the report of their 
 destination. Such records, no doubt, exist in England, and 
 can be obtained if any one be bold enough to challenge farther 
 inquiry. I am able to give a general idea of the extent of 
 the custom, by copying the notices made monthly among the 
 "Current Events " of the Annual Register and the London 
 Magazine. 
 
 These lists are imperfect, since the account is mainly 
 for the sessions at the Old Bailey, and is not continuous and 
 full even for these. We see many indications that the other 
 courts in Great Britain sentenced many felons, and that the 
 place of punishment was almost invariably Virginia, Mary- 
 land, or the Carolinas. 
 
 I believe I am correct in saying that the term "the Plan- 
 tations in America," was applied exclusively to our Southern 
 states, and did not include any of the West India Islands. 
 
 In December 1717, there were 27 sentenced at the Old 
 Bailey to transportation. In 1718, 137; in 1719, 184; in 
 1720, 173; in 1721, 200; in 1722, 182; in 1723, 219; in 
 1724, 226; in 1725, 290; in 1726, 234; in 1727, 187.
 
 30 
 
 These are by no means perfect lists being only for various 
 months in each year, and only for the session at the Old 
 Bailey. The disposal of the convicts is shown by notes like 
 these: "August 1718, 106 convicts that were ordered for 
 transportation, were taken out of Newgate, and put into a 
 lighter, at Black fryers stairs; from whence they were i-ar- 
 ried through Bridge to Long Reach, and then shipped on 
 board the Eagle Galley, Captain Staples, Commander, bound 
 to Virginia and Maryland." 
 
 May 1719, 105 felons convict taken out of New-rate. 
 the Marshalsea, and several other country gaols, were put 
 on ship-board, to be transported to Maryland.'' -'May 17'JO, 
 92 felons convict out of Newgate, and 62 out of the Mar- 
 shalsea, were put on ship-board to be transported to Vir- 
 ginia." February, 1723, 36 felons convict were taken out 
 of Newgate, and conveyed on ship-board, in order to be 
 transported to Maryland." 1724, 5 & 6. "Convict felons 
 shipped to the Plantations in America." 
 
 I find among the items of monthly intelligence in the 
 London Magazine, the records of felons sentenced to trans- 
 portation to his majesty's plantations in America, and often 
 the different colonies named. I find a calculation incident- 
 ally made, about 1750, that 500 culprits were hung annually 
 in Great Britain and bloody as the circuits then were. 1 
 cannot believe that less than ten times that number annually 
 received the questionable charity of expatriation. I will 
 give a few extracts, to show the foundation upon which 
 Southern society has been erected. 
 
 In October, 1732, "68 men and 50 women, felons con- 
 vict, were carried from Newgate to Black Fryars, and put 
 on board a lighter, to be carried down the river, to be 
 shipped on board the Caesar, off of Dcptford, for transpor- 
 tation to Virginia." January, 1736: "This morning 140 
 felons convict for transportation, were carried from Newgate, 
 and shipped for the plantations, and 18 likewise from the 
 new gaol at South wark." In May, 106 were also so 
 shipped. In 1738, 126 were shipped at one time "for the 
 plantations." In 1739, 127 were shipped "to America." In 
 1741, 9 of the felons on board a ship lying at Black wall, "to 
 be transported to Virginia," made a bold dash to escape.
 
 31 
 
 In May 1747, " We are informed that several large ships 
 sailed lately from Liverpool, with the rebel prisoners, under 
 strong convoy to Virginia and Maryland, and other of his 
 majesty's plantations, which makes the whole of what have 
 been transported, upward of 1,000." In January, 1749, 
 " the "Laura " with 135 convicts, bound to Maryland, was 
 cast away." In 1754, Mr. Stuart was the contractor to 
 transport convicts ''to America." In 1758, "63 men and 
 women transports were sent from Newgate on board the 
 ship " Trial," bound to Maryland, and 45 from the new gaol, 
 Southwark." Later in the same year, 53 "for America " 
 36 men and 20 women "for the plantations." In 1761, a 
 ship sails with 8 men and 27 women "convicts to America." 
 In October, "27 women and 1 8 men from Newgate, 14 from 
 the new gaol, and 62 from the country goals, were transpor- 
 ted to America this month." In 1762, 36 women and 5 men 
 convicts were shipped "to America ;" "62 convicts were em- 
 barked for Maryland." 
 
 In 1776, 1 find : "The above observation occurred to my 
 mind a few days' ago, on seeing the convicts pass along to 
 the water side, in order to be shipped for America, with fifes 
 playing before them, "Through the wood, laddie," an ev- 
 idence that the practice was then in force, and a matter of 
 course. 
 
 In a "Tour through the British Plantations," published 
 in the London Magazine, in 1755, which contains a good ac- 
 count of each colony, I read of Virginia, that under Sir Edwyn 
 Sandys, "there were 12,000 acres laid off for the use ofthecom- 
 pany,and 100 tenants or planters sent to be placed thereon ; 
 and 3,000 acres for the support of the Governor, for the plant- 
 ing of which, 100 more men were sent; and what was now 
 become absolutely necessary, there were no less than 90 
 young women, of a healthful constitution, and unspotted 
 reputation, sent out to be married to the planters, instead 
 of diseased and profligate strumpets, as is now the ridiculous 
 practice. . . . Thus the company and colony began to 
 be in a thriving way : but now they began to be oppressed 
 by the Government here, for in November, they were or- 
 dered to send over to Virginia, at their own charge, 100 fel-
 
 32 
 
 ons or vagabonds, then it may be supposed in prison, which 
 they were obliged to comply with." 
 
 The same writer says of Maryland : 
 
 "The convicts that are transported here, sometimes 
 prove very worthy creatures, and entirely forsake their for- 
 mer follies ; but the trade has for some time run in another 
 channel ; and so many volunteer servants come over, espec- 
 ially Irish, that the other is a commodity much blown over. 
 Several of the best planters, or their ancestors, have, in the 
 two colonies,* been originally of the convict class, and there- 
 fore are much to be praised and esteemed for forsaking 
 their old courses." 
 
 In 1751, (p. 293) is printed the following: 
 
 "A LETTER LATELY PUBLISHED IN VIRGINIA." 
 
 "SIR: When we see our papers filled continually, with 
 accounts of the most audacious robberies, the most cruel 
 murders, and infinite other atrocities, perpetrated by con- 
 victs transported from Europe, what melancholy, what ter- 
 rible reflections must it occasion ! What will become of our 
 posterity ? These are some of thy favors, Britain ! Thou art 
 called our mother country; but what good mother ever sent 
 thieves and villains to accompany her children ; to corrupt 
 some with their infectious vices, and murder the rest ? What 
 father ever endeavored to spread the plague in his family ! 
 We do not ask fish, but thou givest us serpents ! In what 
 can Britain show a more sovereign contempt for us, than by 
 emptying their gaols into our settlements, unless they would 
 likewise empty their ofi'al upon our tables? What must we 
 think of that board, which has advised the repeal of every 
 law we have hitherto made to prevent this deluge of wicked- 
 ness overwhelming us ; and with this cruel sarcasm, that 
 these laws were against the public utility, for they tended 
 to prevent the improvement and well peopling of the col- 
 onies ! And what must we think of those merchants, who 
 for the sake of a little paltry gain, will be concerned in im- 
 porting and disposing of these abominable cargoes ?" 
 
 I can hardly believe that my readers will require any 
 further proofs, that the idea that the inhabitants of the Seced- 
 ing States are descended from the English Cavaliers, is en- 
 tirely erroneous. 
 
 When we descend from the lofty realms of fancy, in 
 which these Southern enthusiasts dwell, and seek to discover 
 
 * Virginia was the other, of which he was writing.
 
 33 
 
 what proportion, however small, of truth there is in the sto- 
 ry, we arc almost unable to detect it. Genealogy is a 
 science, based upon facts. Certain records, such as the 
 official list of births, deaths, and marriages, preserved on 
 town, county, state or parish records, and, in some cases, 
 private memoranda, are the only recognized authorities. 
 In New England these records have been kept with remark- 
 able accuracy, since the commencement of the settlement. 
 In Virginia, and probably in the other Southern States, 
 these records are wanting. As is shown by Bishop Meade 
 in his book, especially devoted to the history of the "Old 
 Churches and Old Families of Virginia," the records of the 
 parishes have been lost, the churchyards destroyed, and few 
 authorities, save tradition, remain. Even in the case of 
 the Washingtons, a family whose records have been traced 
 with sedulous care, there is now no evidence of the connec- 
 tions with an English family, sufficient to satisfy Heralds 
 College. In short there are two hundred families in Massa- 
 chusetts having as great a claim, through traditions and the 
 use of coats-of-arms, to the rank of gentlemen, as the bulk 
 of the patrician families of Virginia. 
 
 We have therefore to glean here and there, little frag- 
 ments of truth, to prevent our styling the entire claim of 
 the Cavaliers, a bold fabrication. A very few Virginia fam- 
 ilies can be thus proved to have sprung from the English 
 gentry. The book of Bishop Meade's, already cited, gives 
 the following meagre list, and any other authorities are 
 still wanting. He names the families of Ambler, Barradall, 
 Baylor, Bushrod, Burwell, Carter, Digges, Fairfax, Fit zhugh, 
 Fowke, Harrison, Jacqueline, Lee, Lewis, Ludwell, Mason, 
 Robinson, Spottswood, Sandys, and "Washington. I believe 
 I have omitted none, and I have rather strained a point in 
 admitting some. 
 
 I do not, of course, mean to deny that others may ex- 
 ist, but until the proofs are submitted to examination, there 
 is no justice in presuming them to exist. 
 
 I quote from Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry, the follow- 
 
 (5)
 
 ing description of Virginian society by "a gentleman who 
 lived in those days, (1768) and who had the best opportuni- 
 ties of judging on the subject :" 
 
 " There were then, first aristocrats, composed of the 
 great landholders, who had settled themselves below tide 
 water on the main rivers, and lived in a style of luxury and 
 extravagance, insupportable by the other inhabitants, and 
 which indeed ended in several instances, in the ruin of their 
 fortunes. Next to these were what might be called half-breeds; 
 the descendants of the younger sons and daughters of the 
 aristocrats, who inherited the pride of their ancestors, with- 
 out their wealth. 
 
 Then came the pretenders, men who from vanity or 
 the impulse of growing wealth, or from that enterprise 
 which is natural to talents, sought to detach themselves 
 from the plebeian ranks, to which they properly belonged, 
 and imitated at some distance, the manners and habits of 
 the great. Next to these were a solid and independent 
 yeomanry, looking askance at those above, yet not ventur- 
 ing to jostle them. And last and lowest, a feculum of be- 
 ings called overseers, the most abject, degraded, unprinci- 
 pled race ; always cap in hand to the dons who employed 
 them, and furnishing material for the exercise of their pride, 
 insolence, and spirit of domination. 
 
 Does this picture suggest a colony composed entirely 
 of gentry or " First Families" ? 
 
 Again, it is often most erroneously supposed, that the 
 names of certain families is a proof of their gentle origin. 
 This idea is wholly unfounded. The gentry of England 
 consist of certain families, whose ancestors held a certain 
 rank. Unless the line of descent can be clearly proved, 
 identity of name signifies nothing. We are arguing in 
 this essay, upon a certain arbitrary nomenclature, and we 
 are bound by certain well-known rules. A Courtenay, a 
 Howard, a De Yere, is not a gentleman in the sense the 
 heralds use the term, unless he can trace his pedigree. Yet 
 even here, the Yirginians have no exclusive claim. The 
 following list is given by Bishop Meade, as comprising th<> 
 chief familes of the Virginian gentry. 
 
 "Names of some of the Old and Leading Families in Eas- 
 tern Virginia, in Colonial Times and immediately succeding 
 the Revolution. (Meade, ii, 428.)
 
 35 
 
 Allen, Alexander, Ambler, Archer, Armistead, Atkinson, 
 Aylett, Acril. 
 
 Bacon, Baker, Ball, Baldwin, Ballard, Bankhead, 
 Banister, Bassett, Baylor, Baynham, Berkeley, Beverly, 
 Birchett, Blair, Bland, Boiling, Bouldin, Booth, Bowyer, 
 Bradley, Brent, Braxton, Bowdoin, Browne, Brooke, Broad- 
 naxe, Burwell, Burley, Butler, Buckner, Byrd, Baskerville, 
 Branch, Booker, Blow. 
 
 Cabell, Galloway, Carr, Carrington, Carter, Gary, Cat- 
 lett, Chamberlayne, Christian, Clopton, Claiborne, Clayton, 
 Clarke, Cocke, Coleman, Coles, Colston, Cooper, Conway, 
 Corbin, Custis, Crawford. 
 
 Dabney, Daniel, Davenport, Davis, Dandridge, Digges, 
 Dulany. 
 
 Edmunds, Edwards, Eggleston, Eldridge, Ellis, Embry, 
 Eppes, Everard, Eyre. 
 
 Fairfax, Farley, Faulcon, Field, Fitzgerald, Fitzhugh, 
 Fleming, Fry. 
 
 Gay, Gibbon, Gilmer, Goode, Goodwyn, Graves, Gray- 
 son, Green, Griffin, Grymes, Grammat, Greenway, Garnet, 
 Garland, Gaines, Gholson. 
 
 Hackley, Hansford, Hardaway, Harmer, Harrison, Har- 
 vie, Herbert, Hill, Holliday, Holmes, Hooe, Howard, Hub- 
 ard, Hairston, Heath, Heth, Hicks, Hopkins, Hawkins, Hod- 
 ges, Henderson, Haynes. 
 
 Innes, Irby. 
 
 Jefferson, Jennings, Johnson, Jones, Joynes. 
 
 Kennon, King. 
 
 Lanier, Lee, Lewis, Lightfoot, Littlepage, Littleton, Lo- 
 max, Ludwell, Lyons, Leftwich. 
 
 Mallory, Martin, Marshall, Marye, Mason, Massie, Mat- 
 thews, Mayo, Meade, Mercer, Minor, Meredith, Meriwether, 
 Michie, Minge, McCarty, Moore, Moseley, Munford, Morris, 
 Morton, Mosby. 
 
 Nash, Nelson, Newton, Nichols, Nivison,Norvell, Noland. 
 
 Page, Parke, Parker, Peachey, Pegram, Pendleton, Peun, 
 Peter, Peyton, Phillips, Pierce, Pleasant, Pollard, Pope, Pow- 
 ell, Poythress, Prentice, Price, Prosser, Posey. 
 
 Randolph, Reade, Riddick, Roane, Robinson, Rose, Ruf- 
 fin, Russell, Royall. 
 
 Savage, Saunders, Scarburgh, Selden, Shepherd, Short, 
 Skelton, Skepwith, Slaughter, Spottswood, Stanard, Steven- 
 son, Stith, Stokes, Steptoe, Strother, Swann, Syme, Spencer,
 
 36 
 
 Tabb, Talbot, Taliafero, Tayloe, Taylor, Tazewell, 
 Terry, Thornton, Todd, Travis, Trent, Tucker, Tyler. 
 
 Upshur, Upshaw : Tenable, Vaughn. 
 
 Waller, Walker, Walton, Wade, Ward, Waryng, Wash- 
 ington, Watkins, Watson, West, Wickham, Webb, Whiting, 
 Westwood, Wilkins, Wilcox, Willis, Winston, Williams,With- 
 ers, Wood, Woodson, Wise, Wonnlcy, Wyatt, Wythe. 
 
 Yates, Yelverton. 
 
 Most of the names in this list also occur in Savage's Dic- 
 tionary of the Settlers of New England; two thirds of them 
 are to be found in both places. The proof is as ample in 
 the one case as the other. If the Virginians were gentle- 
 men on account of their names, so were the Yankees. 
 
 Again, I give the following list of Delegates in 1776, 
 comprising the most influential persons, but I do not find it 
 an epitome of the English Peerage : 
 
 VIK<;IXIA CONVKXTIOX, 1776. 
 
 Acrill, Adams, Aylett, Barrister, Brrki-lcy, Bird, Blair, 
 Bland, Booker, Bowyer, Brook, Bullitt, Burwell,Cabell, Camp- 
 bell, Carrington, Gary, Clapham, Clayton, Cocke, Cowper, 
 Cralle, Curie, Dandridge, Diggs, Drew, Edmunclson, Farmer, 
 Field, Fitzhugh, Fleming, Fulton, Garland, Gee, Gilnier, 
 Goode, Gordon, Gray, Harrison, Harvie, Harwood, Henry, 
 Hite, Hold, Jefferson, Johnson, Jones, Kcnncr. King, Lank- 
 ford, Lee, Lewis, Lockhart, Lynch, Lyne, Madin, MacDow- 
 ell, McCarty, Madison, Mason. Mayo, Mercer, Meriwether, 
 Montague, Moore, Muse, Nelson, Newton, Nicholas, Norvell, 
 Page, Patterson, Pendleton, Penn, Peyton, Pickett, Poyth- 
 ress, Randolph, Reddick, Reed, Robinson, Russell, Rutherford, 
 Savage, Scott, Selden, Simms, Simpson, Smith, Speed, Starko, 
 Strother, Syme, Tabb, Talbot, Taylor, Tazewell, Terry, 
 Thornton, Thoroughgood, Tipton, Travis, Washington, Wat- 
 kins, Watts, West, Whiting, Wilkins, Williams, Winn, Wood, 
 Woodson, Wythe, Zane. 
 
 NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 When we commence an examination of the ancestry of 
 the settlers of New England, we find ourselves at once on 
 sure ground. No other community possesses the same fa- 
 cilities for investigation. Our records are very full, they 
 are open to inspection at all times, and a great number of 
 them have been printed. We have the only Genealogical 
 Society in the country, perhaps in the world, and in Savage's
 
 37 
 
 "Dictionary of the Early Settlers of New England," we have 
 a collection of genealogical information, such as no other 
 community possesses of its ancestry. I will first give the 
 statements, on the subject of the nationality of our ancestors? 
 as presented by HUTCHINSON, SAVAGE, and PALFREY, and the 
 earlier authorities, RANDOLPH and BRADSTEEET. 
 
 In 1776. The Lords of the Privy Council sent to New 
 England divers inquiries, as to the present state of the col- 
 ony. Edmund Randolph's report, printed in Hutchinson's 
 Collection of Papers, pp. 477 505, contains the following 
 items : 
 
 P. 484 " The inhabitants within this government, inclu- 
 ding Hampshire and Maine, are computed to be upward of 
 150,000 souls. The chief professions are merchants, who 
 are principally seated at Boston, Salem, Charlestown, and 
 Portsmouth, and wealthy shop-keepers or retailers, who 
 dwell in most towns of the colony, and get good estates. 
 There are rich men of all callings and professions, and all 
 mechanical arts and occupations thrive well. 
 
 The farmers are numerous and wealthy, live in good 
 houses, are given to hospitality, and make good advantage 
 by their corn, cattle, poultry, butter, and cheese. 
 
 There are about 30 merchants that are esteemed worth 
 from 10,000 to 20,000; most have considerable estates, 
 and very great trades, and are an industrious and thriving 
 people. There are no servants but upon hired wages, except 
 some few, who serve four years for the charge of being trans- 
 ported thither by their masters, and not above 200 slaves 
 in the colony, and those are brought from Guinea and Mad- 
 agascar. 
 
 There are men able to bear arms, between 30 and 40- 
 000, and in the town of Boston, is computed about 4,000." 
 
 P. 502. "As to the Colonies of New-Plymouth and 
 Connecticut,. . . .the number of inhabitants in both colonies, 
 is computed to be 80,000 souls. There are no slaves, only 
 hired servants. The chief professions are farmers, graziers, 
 and fishermen. Very few merchants, they being supplied 
 with all foreign commodities, from Boston. The number fit 
 to bear arms, 20,000." 
 
 Gov. Bradstreet replies to the same questions (See Mass. 
 Historical Society's Collections, 3d series, viii, p. 336.) 
 " There have been very few English come to plant in this 
 jurisdiction for seven years past and more, and few or no 
 Scots, Irish, or Foreigners in the like space ; they rather go 
 
 D055
 
 38 
 
 to Carolina or other places more commodious, and less in- 
 habited, for with us, all the lands near the sea coast are ap- 
 propriated and improved, and up into the country is more 
 difficult (especially for new comers) to plant and subdue, and 
 must be done by the settled inhabitants by degrees, as di- 
 vers towns already have been. 
 
 There hath been no company of blacks or slaves brought 
 into the country since the beginning of this plantation, for 
 the space of fifty years, only one small vessel about two years 
 since, after twenty months' voyage to Madagascar, brought 
 hither betwixt forty and fifty negroes, most women and chil- 
 dren, sold here for 10, 15, 20, apiece, which stood the mer- 
 chants in near 40, one with another. 
 
 Now and then, two or three negroes are brought hither 
 from Barbadoes and others of his Majesty's plantations, and 
 sold here for about 20 apiece, so that there may be within 
 our government, 100 to 120, and it may be as many Scots 
 brought hither and sold for servants, in the time of the war 
 with Scotland, and most now married and living here, and 
 about half so many Irish, brought here at several times as ser- 
 vants." 
 
 Hutchinson writes (History of Massachusetts, Isted. i, 
 93) under date of 1640 : "The importation of settlers now 
 ceased. The motive to transportation to America was over 
 by the change in the affairs of England. They say who then 
 professed to be able to give the best account, that in 298 
 ships, which were the whole number from the beginning of 
 the colony, there arrived 21,200 passengers, men, women, 
 and children, perhaps about 4,000 families. Since which 
 more persons have removed out of New England to other 
 parts of the world, than have come from other parts to it. 
 and the number of families may be supposed to be less 
 rather than more than the natural increase of four thousand. 
 
 Again in the preface he writes: "The Massachusetts 
 colony may be considered as the parent of all the other col- 
 onies of New England. There was no importation of plant- 
 ers from England, to any part of the continent northward 
 of Maryland, except to the Massachusetts, for more than 
 fifty years after the colony began. In the first two year* 
 about twenty thousand souls had arrived in the Massachu- 
 setts. Since then it is supposed more have gone hence to 
 England, than have come thence hither. Massachusetts-Bay, 
 New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, at this day 
 (1764) probably contain 500,000 souls. A surprising in- 
 crease of subjects of the British crown !"
 
 39 
 
 Palfrey writes in the Introduction to his History of 
 New England : "The founders of the commonwealth of which 
 I write, were Englishmen. Their emigration to New Eng- 
 land began in 1620. It was inconsiderable till 1630. At 
 the end of ten years more, it almost ceased. A people, con- 
 sisting at that time of not many more than twenty thousand 
 persons, thenceforward multiplied on its own soil, in remark- 
 able seclusion from other communities, for nearly a century 
 and a half. Some slight emigration from it took place at 
 an early day ; but they were soon discontinued ; and it was 
 not till the last quarter of the eighteenth century, that those 
 swarms began to depart, which have since occupied so large 
 a portion of the territory of the United States." 
 
 During that long period, and for many years later, their 
 identity was unimpaired. No race has ever been more ho- 
 mogeneous than this remained, down to the time of the gen- 
 eration now upon the stage. With a near approach to pre- 
 cision, it may be said that the millions of living persons, eith- 
 er born in New England, or tracing their origin to natives 
 of that region, are descendants of the twenty-one thousand 
 Englishmen, who came over before the early emigration from 
 England ceased upon the meeting of the Long Parliament. 
 Such exceptions to this statement, as belong to any time pre- 
 ceding that of the present generation, are of small account. 
 In 1651, after the battles of Dunbar and Worcester, Crom- 
 well sent some four or five hundred of his Scotch prisoners 
 to Boston ; but very little trace of this accession is left. The 
 discontented strangers took no root. After the revocation 
 of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, about one hundred and fifty 
 families of French Huguenots came to Massachusetts, where, 
 though their names have mostly died out, a considera- 
 ble number of their posterity are yet to be found. A hun- 
 dred and twenty Sootch-Irish families came over in 1719, 
 and settled in Londonderry, in New Hampshire and else- 
 where. Great numbers of foreigners especially of Irish, 
 and, next to them, of Germans are now to be reckoned in a 
 census of New England ; but it is chiefly within the last thir- 
 ty years that they have come, and they remain for the most 
 part unamalgamated with the population of English descent. 
 
 Thus the people of New England are a singularly un- 
 mixed race. There is probably not a county in England, 
 occupied by a population of purer English blood than theirs. 
 It is a race still more specially to be characterized as repre- 
 senting a peculiar type of the Englishmen of the seventeenth 
 century. A large majority of the early planters were Puri- 
 tans. Some of the small English settlements in the eastern
 
 40 
 
 part of the country were composed of other elements. But, 
 from the early time when these were absorbed by Massachu- 
 setts, their anti-Puritan peculiarities began to disappear, and 
 a substantial conformity to the Puritan standard, became 
 universal. 
 
 Sequestered from foreign influences, the people thus con- 
 stituted, was forming a distinct character by its own disci- 
 pline, and was engaged at work within itself, on its own 
 problems, through a century and a half. Down to the eve 
 of the war which began in 1775, New England had little 
 knowledge of the communities which took part with her in 
 that conflict. Till the time of the Boston Port Bill, eighty- 
 four years ago, Massachusetts and Virginia, the two princi- 
 pal English colonies, had with each other scarcely more rela- 
 tions of acquaintance, business, mutual influence, or common 
 action, than cither of them had with Jamaica or Quebec. 
 
 This people, so isolated in its pupilage, has now diffused 
 itself. I am to tell the early story of a vast tribe of men, 
 numbering at the present time, it is likely, some seven or 
 eight millions. Exactness in such an estimate is not attain- 
 able; but it would probably be coming somewhere near the 
 truth to divide the present white population of the United 
 States into three equal parts; one, belonging to the New 
 England stock; one, the posterity of English who settled in 
 the other Atlantic colonies ; and another, consisting of the 
 aggregate of Irish, Scotch, French, Dutch, German, Swedish, 
 Spanish, and other immigrants, and their descendants. Ac- 
 cording to the United States' Census of 1 850, the six New 
 England States had in that year 2,705,095 inhabitants, of 
 which number 305,444 were of foreign birth. It would, I 
 suppose, be making a liberal allowance to refer the round 
 number of half a million of the present inhabitants of those 
 States, to the modern immigrations from abroad. On the 
 other hand, more than seven hundred and fifty thousand na- 
 tives of New England, often persons not inconsiderable in 
 respect to activity, property or influenee are supposed to 
 be now living in other parts of the Union. The New En- 
 gland race has contributed largely to the population of the 
 great State of New York, and makes a majority in some of 
 the new States further west. Considerable numbers of them 
 are dispersed in distant parts of the world, where commerce 
 or other business invites enterprise, though they do not often 
 establish themselves for life in foreign countries. I presume 
 there is one third of the people of these United States wher- 
 ever now residing of whom no individual could peruse this 
 volume, without reading the history of his own progenitors."
 
 41 
 
 SAVAGE writes "That New-England was first occupied 
 by a civilized people, in so short a period before the great 
 civil war broke out in our mother country, though half a 
 century and more after its elementary principles began to 
 ferment, especially in Parliament, and almost in every par- 
 ish in the Kingdom, was a very fortunate event, if it may 
 not be thought a providential arrangement for the happiness 
 of mankind. Even if our views be restricted to the lineal 
 origin of those people here, when the long protracted impol- 
 icy of Great Britain, drove our fathers into open hostility, 
 and forced them to become a nation in 1776, in that century 
 and a half from its colonization, a purer Anglo Saxon race 
 would be seen on this side of the ocean than on the other. 
 Within forty years a vast influx of Irish, with not a few thou- 
 sand Scotch and Germans, has spread over this new country, 
 but certainly more than four-fifths of our people * still count 
 their progenitors among the ante-revolutionary colonists. 
 
 From long and careful research, I have judged the pro- 
 portion of the whole number living here in 1775, that deduce 
 their origin from the Kingdom of England, i. e. the South- 
 ern part of Great Britain, excluding also the principality of 
 Wales, to exceed ninety-eight in a hundred. Every county 
 from Northumberland to Cornwall, Kent to Cumberland, 
 sent its contribution of emigrants, and the sparse population 
 of the narrow shire of Rutland had more than one offshoot 
 in New England. But, during that interval, great was the di- 
 versity of circumstances between the old and new country, so 
 far as the increase of their number by incoming of strangers 
 was affected. In 1660, the restoration of Charles II in 
 1685, the expulsion of the two hundred thousand Protestants 
 from France, the desired invasion of William and Mary, in 
 1688, and the settlement of the House of Hanover, in 1714, 
 each brought from the continent an infusion upon the origi- 
 nal stock, the aggregate of which may not have been less 
 than five or six per cent, of that into which it was ingrafted. 
 
 Yet hardly more than three in a thousand, for instance 
 of Scottish ancestry, almost wholly the migration of the hero- 
 ic defenders of Londonderry, that came as one hundred and 
 twenty families in 1718 and 19, could be found in 1775, 
 among dwellers on our soil ; a smaller number still of the 
 glorious Huguenot exiles above thirty years longer had been 
 resident here, and may have been happy enough by natural 
 increase (though I doubt it) to equal the latter band. If 
 these be also counted three in a thousand, much fewer, though 
 earler still, must be the Dutch that crept in from New York, 
 
 * Mr. Savage must be understood as speaking of New England. 
 
 (6)
 
 42 
 
 chiefly to Connecticut, so that none can believe they reach 
 two in a thousand ; while something less must be the ratio 
 of Irish. Germany, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Africa, and all the 
 rest of the world, together, did not outnumber the Scotch 
 or the French singly. A more homogeneous stock cannot 
 be seen I think, in any so extensive a region, at any time 
 since that when the ark of Noah discharged its passengers 
 on Mount Ararat, except in the few centuries elapsing before 
 the confusion of Babel. 
 
 What honorable ancestry the body of New England 
 population may assert, has often been proclaimed in glow- 
 ing language ; but the words of William Stoughton, in his 
 Election sermon, 1688, express the sentiment with no less 
 happiness than brevity ; ' GOD SIFTED A WHOLE NATION 
 
 THAT HE MIGHT SEND CHOICE GRAIN INTO THE WILDERNESS'." 
 
 It seems almost superfluous to add any corroboration of 
 these opinions ; yet the case may be strengthened by a de- 
 tail of our authorities. Mr. SAVAGE'S Dictionary, from the 
 preface of which the previous paragraphs are cited, con- 
 sists of four volumes embracing over twenty-five hundred, 
 closely printed, octavo pages. He attempts to give the 
 first three generations of those who settled in New Eng- 
 land before 1692. However imperfect the book may be in 
 the record of the children, he has unquestionably obtained 
 the names of nineteen-twentieths of those who settled here 
 previous to 1 640, the date, when, as Hutchinson says, the 
 immigration ceased, and these names confirm entirely his 
 assertion, that the settlers were English. Of the 4000 
 heads of families, one third at least had taken the freeman's 
 oath by that time, and their names are printed in the Mas- 
 sachusetts Records. Massachusetts, Plymouth, Rhode Isl- 
 and and Connecticut, have all issued volumes containing 
 the early records of the respective colonies. Nearly all the 
 older towns have their histories carefully prepared and 
 printed. Of those not yet published, I believe hardly one 
 can be named whose records have not been examined in aid 
 of Mr. Savage, or for the use of our numerous genealogists. 
 Our county registries of deeds, the records of births, mar- 
 riages, and deaths, preserved in every town, and the regis- 
 tries of the different parishes, are all very complete, are 
 open to inspection freely and gratuitously, and have been
 
 43 
 
 consulted by hundreds of our writers. We have a Genea- 
 logical Society, which has published seventeen annual vol- 
 umes, averaging nearly four hundred pages each, devoted to 
 the history of New England families. Genealogy has been 
 a favorite study here, and, as Sir Bernard Burke writes, 
 " for ten or twelve years before the civil conflict broke out, 
 Massachusetts was more genealogical than Yorkshire, and 
 Boston sustained what London never did, a magazine devo- 
 ted exclusively to genealogy." 
 
 When I prepared a " Handbook of American Genealo- 
 gy," in 1862, the list comprised 222 genealogies, 16 tabular 
 pedigrees, and 59 town histories and collections, and of the 
 genealogies, not half a dozen were of other than New Eng- 
 land families. It is almost certain that there are extant 
 more printed pages of genealogical information relative to 
 the eight generations of families here, than there are rela- 
 tive to the history of English families since the Conquest. 
 
 Is it too much to claim, therefore, that we are dealing 
 with facts and not conjectures, when we say that whatever 
 was the case in other colonies, New England was and is 
 thoroughly English and homogeneous ? 
 
 In pursuance of the plan adopted, having shown the 
 nationality of the colonists of New England, it is necessary 
 to speak of their social position prior to their emigration 
 from England. Having demonstrated that our ancestors 
 were not convicts, nor the outcasts of society swept from 
 the wretched dens of the great cities by a disdainful char- 
 ity, anxious only to be rid of them, we might well pause, 
 content to say that they were at least equal to the ances- 
 tors of that portion of the English people of the present 
 day, which includes the respectable classes. 
 
 As however a false impression has been given by the 
 use of the terms Cavalier and Roundhead, let us pursue 
 the investigation a little farther. MACAULAY has sketched 
 the origin of these parties, and familiar as his descriptions 
 may be, we may here repeat them. He says "when, in Oc- 
 tober, 1641, the Parliament reassembled, after a short re- 
 cess, two- hostile parties, essentially the same with those, 
 which, under different names, have ever since contended,
 
 44 
 
 and are still contending, for the direction of public affairs, 
 appeared confronting each other. During some years they 
 were designated as Cavaliers and Roundheads. They were 
 subsequently called Tories and Whigs, nor does it seem 
 that these appellations are likely soon to become obsolete." 
 
 "When the rival parties first appeared in a distinct 
 form they seemed to be not unequally matched. On the 
 side of the government was a large majority of the nobles 
 and of those opulent and well-descended gentlemen to 
 whom nothing was wanting of nobility but the name. 
 These, with the dependents whose support they could com- 
 mand, were no small power in the state. On the same side 
 were the great body of the clergy, both the universities 
 and all those laymen who were strongly attached to epis- 
 copal government, and to the Anglican ritual. These respec- 
 table classes found themselves in the company of some allies 
 much less decorous than themselves. The Puritan austeri- 
 ty drove to the kings' faction, all who made pleasure their 
 business, who affected gallantry, splendor of dress, or taste 
 in the lighter arts. With these went all who live by amus- 
 ing the leisure of others, from the painter and comic poet, 
 down to the rope-dancer and Merry Andrew, for these ar- 
 tists well knew they might thrive under a superb and luxu- 
 rious despotism, but must starve under the rigid rule of the 
 precisians." 
 
 "The main strength of the Opposition lay among the 
 small freeholders in the country, and among the merchant 
 and shop-keepers of the towns. But these were headed 
 by a formidable minority of the aristocracy ; a minority 
 which included the rich and powerful Earls of Northumber- 
 land, Bedford, Warwick, Stamford, and Essex, and several 
 other lords of great wealth and influence. In the same 
 ranks were found the whole body of Protestant Non-con- 
 formists, and most of those members of the Established 
 Church, who still adhered to the Calvinistic opinions, which, 
 forty years before, had been generally held by the prelates 
 and clergy. The municipal corporations took, with few ex- 
 ceptions, the same side. In the House of Commons, the 
 Opposition preponderated, but not very decidedly."
 
 45 
 
 We see by this statement, that the Cavaliers of 
 Charles' time were not a class distinct from the Round- 
 heads. Even the absurd distinction which Southern wri- 
 ters attempt to make, is untenable. The Cavaliers were no 
 better gentlemen than their opponents ; and the preponde- 
 rance in the proportion was probably in favor of the Puri- 
 tans. 
 
 A slight digression may render plainer a matter which 
 
 has been obscured by the falsehoods of Southern writers and 
 their English allies. A gentleman, in English Heraldry, 
 taking the largest definition, is a man whose ancestors at a 
 certain time used coats-of-arms, and had a certain rank. 
 This gentility of birth being inheritable may descend to a 
 person of any rank ; the proof of his pedigree being all suf- 
 ficient. Of late years, the rule has fallen into neglect, and 
 probably not one quarter of the Englishmen who style them- 
 selves gentlemen, and use armorial bearings, could establish 
 their rights. In common usage, this distinction being for- 
 gotten, we term a man a gentleman by birth whose ances- 
 tors have possessed wealth and social position for two or 
 three generations. Now, accepting this definition, it is eas- 
 ily to be proved that a greater number, perhaps a greater 
 proportion, of our New England settlers were of this rank 
 than in the whole of the colonies embraced in the Confeder- 
 ate States. The whole point is one of enumeration and fig- 
 ures, and does not properly belong to this essay. Should the 
 assertion be questioned, the facts can easily be produced, 
 and names given. More than this, in the heraldric sense, 
 New England possesses a much larger proportion of gentle 
 blood than the entire South. No one supposes that very 
 many representatives of old English families abandoned their 
 homes and came to New England, Virginia, or the Carolinas. 
 But the great middle class of that day did send forth a great 
 number from its ranks to New England, even as the work- 
 houses and gaols sent their swarms to people Virginia and 
 the other Southern colonies. 
 
 The old county families must have contributed largely 
 to the very class from which our ancestors here were sup- 
 plied. The men who lost their lands by war, by subdivis-
 
 4G 
 
 ion or misfortune, the whole category of younger sons, all 
 contributed to the class of merchants and tradespeople, 
 which rose to such importance during the reigns of Eliza- 
 beth and James. Whoever considers the present condition 
 of the laboring population of England, and their probable 
 position two centuries ago, will feel convinced that it was 
 not there, that we should find men with the means, intelli- 
 gence, and devotion, which the early emigrants possessed. 
 
 It is impossible to discuss here the question of the per- 
 centage of gentle blood in New England. Such discus- 
 sions belong to genealogists, and are too personal and trivial 
 to be suffered to draw us from the main point. We are 
 content with our ancestors, so far as we can trace their his- 
 tory in this country ; it is only in reply to the falsehoods of 
 our opponents, that we need retort. 
 
 If we leave the dry details, which I have presented sim- 
 ply as indications of the method in which this question can 
 be discussed, and regard the problem in a more general view, 
 it is surprising to see how theory and fact agree. The United 
 States are essentially English to-day, despite the millions of 
 foreigners which have been absorbed into its population. 
 The tendency of its citizens has been toward a democracy, 
 and yet not toward anarchy and lawlessness. The throes of 
 a gigantic revolution have not sufficed to outweigh the in- 
 stinctive love of law and order, peculiar to the English race. 
 
 When we enquire what controlling influence has im- 
 pressed this form upon the national character, the enemies 
 of the predominant party instinctively show that it is New 
 England. Not the comparatively limited New England of 
 1863, but the New England stock and influence, which has 
 invigorated nearly every State of the Union. In their ig- 
 norance of the past, these revilers of New England have been 
 blindly attacking a greater fact than they were aware of. Not 
 only is nearly a third part of our native-born population the 
 offspring of the New England of the Revolution, but long 
 before that time the intermixture had commenced. White- 
 head's "New Jersey" (p. 159) quotes Governor Burnet's let- 
 ter, written in 1729 : 
 
 "The people of New Jersey (being generally of New
 
 47 
 
 England extraction, and therefore enthusiasts) would con- 
 sider the number of planters, etc., as a repetition of the same 
 sin as David committed in numbering the people." 
 
 The History of Dorchester, Massachusetts, quotes a let- 
 ter from the Secretary of Georgia, in 1755, in relation to a 
 colony from that town, in which he says : 
 
 "I really look upon these people moving here to be one 
 of the most favorable circumstances that could befall the col- 
 ony." 
 
 It is added : 
 
 " This settlement has furnished Georgia with two gov- 
 ernors, two of its most distinguished judges, the theological 
 seminary of South Carolina and Georgia with an able pro- 
 fessor, the Methodist Episcopal Church with an influential 
 and pious bishop, the Presbyterian and Baptist Churches of 
 that State with many of their ablest and most useful minis- 
 ters ; and six of her sons have been called away to profes- 
 sional chairs in collegiate institutions." 
 
 The first attempt at colonizing the Mississippi delta, 
 was made by the Lymans, Dwights, and their associates 
 from Connecticut. New York received a constant accession 
 from New England long before 1775. 
 
 Here, then, history and theory both agree. New En- 
 gland, colonized by Englishmen, homogeneous in a remarka- 
 ble degree, has been the only thoroughly pure nationality 
 within our territories. The few stray Englishmen of educa- 
 tion in the Southern colonies, the much greater number of 
 convicts, the increasing immigration of French, Irish, Scotch, 
 and German settlers, have not only failed to overwhelm this 
 compact and thoroughly alive minority, but have been formed 
 and moulded into shape by it. In protesting against New 
 England, the Vallandighams and Coxes are only proving the 
 nullity of "expunging resolutions." "Can they make that 
 not to be which has been ?" Until they can recall the past, 
 annihilate the past inhabitants of these States, and from 
 stones raise up some other progenitors for the present gener- 
 ation, they cannot destroy the influence of New England. 
 
 And yet we are called upon to believe that the race 
 which has thus done the greatest work of the past two cen- 
 turies, was the random aggregation of opposite and mongrel
 
 48 
 
 races, the offspring of ignorance, poverty, and crime. AVc 
 are to believe that while the pure blood of English gentle- 
 men in Virginia, has produced not only the gentlemanly vi- 
 ces of pride, treachery, and falsehood in the leaders, but the 
 ignoble faults of crime and debasement in the " poor trash, " 
 that some occult influence of climate has advanced an entire 
 community at the North far above the position of its progen- 
 itors that while the gentle Cavalier has been overcome 1 >y 
 the seductive charms of luxury and repose, the ignoble Puri- 
 tan has thrown off his degrading antecedents, and has ob- 
 tained the control of the allied races. The servant has be- 
 come the master, the scum of all nations has overpowered 
 the choicest offspring of that race which Macaulay terms "the 
 hereditary rulers of mankind." 
 
 These conclusions, so eminently logical and convincing, 
 we must believe, or we must doubt the pure blood of the 
 aristocracy of the Slave States. 
 
 Is it not more reasonable to believe, as facts daily prove, 
 that New England was colonized from the hardiest and best 
 portion of the English stock? That our a'ice.-tors, accept- 
 ing the state of English society as a fact, neither invited nor 
 repelled the accession of the gentry. That many of that 
 class did join in the enterprise, and that, where they were 
 worthy, they received the slight preference which is accorded 
 to personal advantages of any sort. That the bulk of the 
 colonists were separated from this class by slight barriers, 
 that many of them were excluded only by a want of the nec- 
 essary property to maintain the position, and that on this 
 new territory, these distinctions were speedily forgotton 
 not because the higher class deteriorated, but because the 
 lower, having but a slight advance to make, soon stood on 
 an actual equality with them. 
 
 If the sympathy of England were now as desirable and 
 as strongly expected as it was two years ago, I might urge 
 the matter further. As it is, it seems sufficient to overthrow 
 the claims of Southerners, based upon false pretenses, and 
 supported only by unblushing effrontery, and to refute the 
 slanders which have been thrown upon an entire section of 
 the loyal States.
 
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