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POLITICAL LIFE.

on their part to throw off the yoke of the mother country. Some members of the Board of Trade even went so far as to express an opinion that nothing but the interposition of Parliament could arrest the manifest manifest tendency to independence. Not only at this time, but throughout the next decade, the colonies dismissed such charges as without foundation. Not until 1770-1775 was there any clearly defined purpose in the minds of the colonists to declare themselves independent. When, however, the mother country began to impose heavy burdens upon them, the colonists, beginning to feel their own strength, resolved not to submit to tyranny and imposition of any sort. Still, the idea of independence was in the air, and it is not impossible that a great many of the more advanced and radical thinkers had given the matter serious thought.*

In the Middle colonies, with the exception of New York, the conditions were practically the same as in New England. In New York the taxes

Frothingham says: "Still the allegation was deliberately made by Chalmers, that, from the epoch of the Revolution and throughout every reign, it was the settled policy of the colonies to acquire independence; and this has been repeated by a recent British writer. Neither supports the statement by proofs. It may be confidently affirmed, that no citations from private letters, no consultations for such an object by any political leaders, no resolves of any public body, no act of any colonial assembly, can be adduced to sustain such a charge. The only evidence of any such design is an impression made on the

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were oppressive and the government corrupt and expensive. The English officials and the wealthy aristocrats favored the home government in order to curry favor, but all classes of the people favored liberal men for representatives in the Assembly. There was much rioting at elections; and much bitter feeling against the mother country because of the Navigation Acts and the impression of seamen. The same conditions prevailed in Pennsylvania, but because of their conservatism, the Quakers were slower to exhibit their opposition to the home government. The same was the case with New Jersey, which, because it had no Indian wars to fight, no foreign trade, and but light taxes, had no complaint to make against the authorities, and consequently it was necessary for them to be gradually drawn into opposition against English rule. New York was the only one of the Middle colonies to take a bold stand against England and this she did in spite of a large and determined Tory element.

minds of royal officials by the zealous assertion on the part of the colonists of what they regarded as their rights; and this is too vague for history. While there was neither an aim nor even a desire for independence on the part of the colonists, yet the increase of population and wealth, the working of ideas, the quiet unfolding of Providence, elicited much reasoning and speculation on the tendency of events.”— Rise of the Republic, pp. 154-155 and footnote (copyright 1900 by Thomas G. Frothingham, Mary C. O'Neill, Matilda Gill, Vrylena McClean, Sarah S. Gill, and by courtesy of Little, Brown & Co.).

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SOCIAL LIFE.

CHAPTER II.

1609-1764.

SOCIAL LIFE OF THE PEOPLE.

Indented white serv

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Important towns in the South and their condition · Condition and treatment of slaves ants Farmers and tradesmen - - The so-called upper-class of aristocrats — Foreign elements in the population-Sports and pastimes in the South-Improvement in social conditions in New England—The gentry— Picture of a New England home Women copy foreign frivolities-Pleasures of the New Englanders — Decline of theocratic influence over social customs · General character of New Englanders — Social distinctions not so well defined in Middle colonies- The great manors Architecture of the houses - General sobriety — Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey — Divertisements at New Amsterdam in the early Seventeenth century - Variety of pleasures in the Eighteenth century Sports Crime and Pauperism Hospitals.

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In describing the social life of the colonial period prior to the Revolution, it has seemed best to treat it by geographical divisions - the New England colonies, the Middle colonies, and the Southern colonies for each for each section had traits peculiarly its own. In the South the soil was rich and widely distributed and the mild climate was well adapted to agricultural industries. The plantations, often many miles apart, were strung along the rivers, which served as convenient highways for the transportation of products to and from seacoast ports. Attempts were made at various times by the legislatures of the Southern provinces to create manufacturing manufacturing and trading towns by statute. In 1662 the legislature of Virginia ordered that thirty-two brick houses be erected at Jamestown and that no wooden buildings should be built or repaired; that all the tobacco grown in that vicinity should be sent to Jamestown to be stored for shipping, under a penalty of 1,000 pounds of

tobacco for disobedience; and that every ship ascending the river above Mulberry Island must land its cargo at Jamestown or forfeit it, half of the fines being paid to the town and half to the informer.* In 1680, by a statute known as the Cohabitation Act, and again in 1691, attempts were made to establish towns of the same character in every county.† But these efforts in that direction proved futile, and for many years even the largest villages were untidy and possessed but few of the characteristics of a modern town. Jamestown, Williamsburg, St. Mary's,‡ Providence (or Annapolis), and other villages of the same character were hardly worthy to be called towns in the early years of the century, but

*Hening's Statutes, vol. ii., pp. 172-176. † Ibid, ii., pp. 471-478; iii., 53–69.

Browne says that St. Mary's, even as late as 1678, was hardly a town at all, but only a settlement of about 30 houses straggling along the shore for five miles, and these houses being " very mean and little."- Maryland: The History of a Palatinate, p. 159.

SOCIAL LIFE.

later grew to have some semblance of trade and fashion. Charlestown, however, was the most important town in the South; it was well built and contained a number of handsome residences; being the capital of the State it was the centre of the political and fashionable life; and as the wealthiest plantation owners lived there and left the care of their estates to overseers, the city became also the commercial and business centre.

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The slaves, who formed the lower stratum of the social order, had rapidly increased since their first introduction into the country; in many parts they equalled the whites in number, while in some localities they constituted two-thirds of the population. Being considered merely chattels or ordinary bits of property the laws for their repression became severe, particularly after the insurrection in Virginia, but the actual treatment of them was not so barbarous as the statute would seem to indicate. The laws against intermarriage with the whites were especially stringent. In certain instances slaves were killed by their masters and runaway slaves were slain, but especially in the two Northern colonies of the Southern group they were well fed and clothed, lived in comfortable houses and were cared for in times of sickness with a great degree of kindness, whether from a humanitarian or a commercial stand

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point matters little. While, on the one hand the tobacco industry was healthful and only required the attention of slaves at certain times during the year, the rice and indigo industries of South Carolina, on the other hand, required slaves in the full vigor of early manhood, as the intense heat was extremely exhausting. Slave owners therefore worked the young slaves to their full capacity, and a large and lucrative trade in slaves still in their prime sprang up, importations being made in such numhers in South Carolina that an athletic man could be purchased for £40, or less.†

Scarcely differing from the blacks except in color were the indented white servants, consisting in a large degree of persons of doubtful character, political offenders, prisoners of war, often criminals or convicts.‡

*See Bruce, Economic History of Virginia, chap. xi.; Beverley, History and Present State of Virginia; Fiske, Old Virginia, vol. ii., p. 196 et seq. The laws are given in Hening's Statutes, vols. iii.-vi. Foote, Sketches of Virginia; E. L. Whitney, Government of the Colony of South Carolina, in Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, series xiii., nos. 1-11. See also Hidreth, vol. ii., pp. 418-430. Fiske, vol. ii., p. 327.

It ought to be explained here that many of the convicts of those times were sentenced for the most trivial offences, as they are now considered; for instance, if a woman stole a joint of meat to feed her starving children, it did not necessarily mean that she was a hardened criminal, yet if the price of the meat were above a shilling, the death penalty was incurred. Other small offences were dealt with equally harshly and the judges were only too willing to substitute transportation to the colonies as a punishment for offences of a lighter sort, while they continued to send murderers, etc., to the gallows. There

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They were treated with almost as much severity as the blacks. There were many pretexts on which their terms of service (usually about four years) could by law be lengthened, such as assaulting a master, thievery, unchaste conduct, running away, etc., second offenders being treated with usual severity. No indented servant could marry without the consent of his or her master. Slightly above these in the social order were the small farmers and tradesmen,- uneducated, rude, addicted to drinking and gambling, but sturdy, manly and liberty-loving.

The upper class was composed of officials and wealthy planters,— men of aristocratic birth, in dress, manners and political thought differing but little from the country gentlemen of old England. While some of them possessed a fair education, the majority were surprisingly ignorant considering their station and oppor

fore, the colonies did not get the worst class of habitual criminals, but received many who later became useful citizens.

See Ballagh, White Servitude in the Colony of Virginia in Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, series xiii., nos. vi.-vii. See also Hugh Jones, Present State of Virginia (1724). There were many poor and honest persons who had voluntarily sold themselves into this slavery for a brief term to defray the cost of the passage from England. The planters paid the ship's captain in tobacco and the passengers were the planter's servants until the debt was wiped out. This class was known as "redemptioners." A large number of these came to Virginia, Maryland, and the Middle colonies, there being but small demand for any kind of servile labor in New England.

tunities* and in addition were indolent, vain, haughty and arrogant, were prone to over-indulgence in liquor and often contracted scandalous gambling debts. They possessed, however, a keen sense of honor and a great pride of ancestry. Their chief pursuit was the care of plantations and negroes, while the women attended to the domestic affairs and trained the serv

ants.

Fiske says that no hard and fast line can be drawn between the two

upper classes, for following the intermingling of the rural gentry and the yeomanry in England, these two classes in the South both alike became land-owners and slave-owners, mingled together in society, and their families intermarried. Until the end

of the Seventeenth century, there was practically no admixture of foreign blood with the English, though there were some Protestant Frenchmen, Dutch and Walloons. But after 1685, when the Edict of Nantes was revoked, a small part of the Huguenot exodus from France came to Virginia, one of these companies, over 700 in number, under Olivier, Marquis de la Muce, arriving in 1700 and settling in Henrico County.

This statement might be applied also to the clergymen of that day, for, while there were some of scholarly attainments and noble character, the majority were sadly deficient in manners and education. In 1726 a clergyman named Lang wrote to the Bishop of London saying that the sober part of the clergy were "slothful and negligent" while the rest were debauched and "bent on all manners of vices."- Bishop Meade, Old Churches, vol. i., pp. 18, 361, 385.

SOCIAL LIFE.

Some of these immigrants were Waldenses from Piedmont, who from their refuge in England gradually made their way to Virginia.* In the early years of the Eighteenth century began that remarkable emigration of Presbyterians and others from Ireland which brought to America so many of our later patriots and statesmen. The largest number of these settled in the Alleghany Valley and thence spread toward the southwest, along the mountain country, through the Shenandoah Valley, and into the Carolinas, subsequently playing an important part in the formation of Kentucky and Tennessee. The first Scotch-Irish in Virginia settled along the Opequon River, and the Germans were not long in following them.†

The lavish hospitality of these Southern" barons "was ruinous, and together with their lax business methods, speculative habits and expensive tastes, soon plunged many of them deeply into debt. Nevertheless the visitor was always joyfully welcomed and lacked nothing to make his stay pleasant.‡

* Baird, History of the Huguenot Emigration to America; Brock, Documents relating to the Huguenot Emigration to Virginia, Virginia Historical Society Collection.

Fiske, Old Virginia, vol. ii., p. 390 et seq.; Conway, Barons of the Potomack and the Rappahannock; Kercheval, History of the Valley of Virginia.

See "The Social Life of the South" constituting vol. x of the series entitled The South in the

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Coming more from the gentle class of England, the planters of Virginia were more amusement loving than their compatriots of New England. They favored dancing, card playing, racing, coursing and shooting. Their mansions were large, and and well furnished; and they had an abundant supply of good food, so that they could entertain on a grand scale. To this estate they had attained quickly after successfully passing through the first period of rough pioneering. Living remote from each other on their big plantations, their social life was more in their privates homes than in the town centers, as in New England. Their estates were on the banks of rivers or bays, and intercourse between them was by large parties riding gaily on horseback through the woods or sailing up and down the rivers or across the bays in boats twenty to forty miles.

The men were much given to drinking and gambling, and dearly they loved horse-racing, although, without the thoroughbred horse as yet, the racing was much of a "scrub" character. Of milder sport were nine pins and ten pins, both of which were popular. Funerals, weddings, the Sunday church services, the muster, and the country court day were the occasions of large gatherings of the people from all parts of the colony. The funerals were observed.

Building of the Nation, especialy the articles by by feasting, drinking and fusillades

Bruce, Moses, Mims, Freeman and Gordon. See also Page, The Old Dominion, chap. iii.; Cooke, Virginia, p. 364 et seq.

of small arms. Often they were expensive affairs, costing as high as

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