CAUSES OF THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION. 39

CHAPTER II.

CAUSES OF THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION.

I. Social Causes.

In the previous chapter we have endeavoured to show from the early history of the colonies that the principle of State sovereignty was the fundamental notion upon which the Union was based.

To discover the first causes of the dissolution of the Union, it is necessary to go back still farther, to the history of the colonists before their emigration to America.

The first permanent settlement in America was that made in Virginia under a Royal Charter. As early as the year 1619, we find a legislative assembly existing there, which was formed after the model of the English Parliament. The King was represented by the Governor, the House of Lords by the council of the Governor, and the House of Commons by the House of Burgesses.* Accordingly Virginia was, in the strictest sense, a royal province, colonised by subjects

of the English Crown, who evinced their attachment to the political institutions of the mother-country and their loyalty to the Crown by the organisation of their colonial Government and the adoption of the Anglican Church. Herein is a striking proof exhibited that the settlers of Virginia belonged to the Conservative party of England. Not the less true is it that they were among the most devoted adherents of royalty and the most steadfast friends of Charles I., who was executed in the course of the civil war.

When Cromwell became successful in England, a large number of the noblest cavaliers of Charles I. fled to Virginia. By the accession of these cavaliers, the population of the existing colony of Virginia was considerably increased. And it is well known that most of the Southern States were peopled by emigration from Virginia, and not by direct emigration from Europe. A congenial population was then already present in America to receive the Huguenots on their arrival. Such was the origin of the population of the Southern States.

Between 1605 and 1610, a religious sect left its English home, self-exiled, to seek in Holland religious freedom, and to escape persecution on account of its religious creed. In the year 1620, about one hundred of this religious sect, the Puritans, embarking at Leyden in Holland, landed in America on the inhospitable shores of Plymouth. These persons were

THE CAVALIERS AND PURITANS.

41

mere adventurers, who had no right to the soil, much less a charter authorising them to organise a government. Nevertheless they obtained afterwards a grant of land from the already existing colony of Plymouth, which was in possession of a Royal Charter, and in this way they established themselves in New England. From these Puritans the population of New England is almost exclusively descended.

The zeal displayed by the colonists of Virginia in support of the royal cause during the civil war in England formed a strong contrast to the behaviour of the New England colonies. The presence of the cavaliers in Virginia contributed to strengthen the loyalty of the colonists there towards the Crown. And they remained so unshaken in their fidelity to the son of Charles I., whom they acknowledged as their king during the vicissitudes of his misfortune, that a force had to be sent out from England to reduce them to submission. On the other hand, the Puritans had espoused the cause of Cromwell with warmth from the beginning, finding a double incentive thereto in their hatred of the cavaliers and of the Established Church. It was in this way that the same dissensions, which long before had exercised their baneful influence in the Old World, came to be propagated in the New. In America a new sphere of action was thus presented for these enmities. The Puritans, who, by reason of the distance which separated them from

England, had nothing to fear, were enabled to display more energy in the promulgation of their doctrines, whereas the cavaliers, deserted by the English Government, were compelled to advocate their conservative tendency unsupported.

It is remarkable that the Puritans, who had fled from religious persecutions, soon became in America the most cruel persecutors of religious freedom and the most relentless bigots, whilst the Catholics, who had come with Lord Baltimore to Maryland under the same circumstances, were the first upon the American continent to distinguish themselves by the most decided tolerance of all religious creeds. While the recollection of former persecutions induced the Catholics in Maryland, the Baptists in Rhode Island, and the Quakers in Pennsylvania, to grant freedom of conscience to others, in Massachusetts, under similar circumstances, fanaticism overpowered the sense of justice.'* The same historian who relates this, describes the Puritans most admirably as follows:'But in truth fellow-feeling for the suffering from persecution could avail little against the fanatical bigotry of the Puritans, which infatuation, confounding all moral distinctions, regards the most savage cruelty as innocent, and converts lenity and moderation into crime.'†

Fanaticism in New England did not restrict itself

* Tucker, vol. i. p. 34.

† Ibid.

FANATICISM OF THE PURITANS.

43

to the persecution of Dissenters. A frequent occasion for persecution was presented by the delusion of witchcraft,* the first criminal prosecutions for which took place in 1645, in Massachusetts, where four persons were executed on this charge.† Nearly half a century later, in the year 1690, this delusion had only reached its culmination. These facts, taken from history, are cited to show the character and tendency of Puritanism in America. But nothing more characteristic of the spirit of that puritanical fanaticism can be found than the 'blue laws,' whose home was New England. One of these declared it to be a crime for a mother to kiss her babe on a Sunday.

Although these laws are no longer in force in New England, still the spirit which produced them is at present more rabid than at any previous time. And more than ever are the hothouses and sanctuaries of deluded fanaticism to be found at the firesides of New

England homes. The immoral and repulsive doctrines of Free Love, Spirit-rapping, and Woman's Rights, owe to Christian New England their 'divine ’ origin.

This puritanical fanaticism has in the present time

* Grahame, Colonial History, vol. iii.

† Hildreth, History of the United States of America, vol. ii. pp.

145-167.

‡ Tucker, vol. i. p. 36.