THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

1765-1865.

CHAPTER I.

THE COLONISTS, 1760-65.

THE colonists numbered in 1760 about sixteen hundred thousand souls, whites and negroes, slaves and freemen, foreigners and native born. They are always described as English Americans; and, as a matter of fact, the English race was the predominant element. But nearly all the more important branches of the Germanic and Keltic races were represented among them. There were no Slavs, however, and thus, as Mr Henry Cabot Lodge has pointed out, the whites, although representing many nationalities, belonged to the two branches of the Aryan stock which have always shown great powers of amalgamation. The several elements which made up this population were so intermingled that some care is needed to separate them.

In New England and in the eastern and older settled portion of Virginia the whites were of pure English extraction-that is to say, their ancestors all came from the southern portion of Great

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The New England Colonists.

I

Britain. The people of Connecticut probably held in their veins the purest English blood of any single group of colonists. In Massachusetts there was a slight mixture of Scottish blood, introduced by the prisoners deported by Cromwell after the victories of Dunbar and Worcester. There was also a small French element in the population of the Bay Colony. This comprised the descendants of the Huguenot refugees, who fled from France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Few in point of numbers, they were still of considerable importance. Peter Fanueil and James Bowdoin, of this stock, were among the most eminent Massachusetts men of their times. In Rhode Island, the Huguenot descendants formed a larger proportion of the population; but, considered numerically, they were insignificant. There were also a few Portuguese Jews living at Newport. With these exceptions, the New Englanders were of pure English blood-descended for the most part from the people of the eastern counties. Therefore, they in all strictness may be termed English. The earlier settlers of the tide-water portion of Virginiathe section containing the large tobacco plantations were likewise of pure English extraction. The later comers to the Shenandoah Valley and to the slopes of the Blue Ridge were English and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. Intermingled with them was a strong body of German Protestants who had reached that country through Pennsylvania. This combined ScotchIrish and German folk penetrated farther south and west along the foot-hills of the Appalachian Mountains. They formed the bulk of the settlers in the "upper regions" of the Carolinas. This racial element in the interior of the Southern Colonies entirely unlike the older settlers on the seaboard in blood, religion, and institutions-was a factor of importance in the history of the South. A strong, God-fearing race, it produced two of the most remarkable figures in the annals of

The Southern Colonists.

America-Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun. Unlike the inhabitants of tide-water Virginia, the dwellers in the lowlands of the Carolinas and Georgia were largely of non-English blood. The Huguenots were especially strong in South Carolina, and among them were some of the most prosperous and public-spirited families of the colony. The South German Protestants, or Salzburgers as they were termed, formed an important portion of the inhabitants of Georgia. Scattered here and there throughout the Carolinas and Georgia were groups of Scots who had migrated thither after the final overthrow of the Stuart cause at Culloden and the subsequent breaking down of the clan system by the English government. Among them were Flora MacDonald, the saviour of Prince Charles, and her husband, who was a man of some influence among his neighbours. The recent immigrants from Scotland, some of whom had done their best to overthrow the Hanoverian dynasty in 1745, remained true to George the Third in 1776. A few returned to Scotland and others enlisted in the loyalist regiments. Many of them however remained on their farms and played important parts in the terrible internecine conflicts which devastated the frontier settlements of the Carolinas.

The People of the Middle Colonies.

It was in the colonies lying between the Hudson and the Potomac that the greatest diversity of race was to be found. In New York there were the Dutch, descendants of the first settlers, and now well reconciled to the English domination; but no Irish Catholics lived there before the Revolution, owing to the severe anti-Catholic laws till then in force in that colony. In the interior, along the banks of the lower Mohawk, dwelt a large and prosperous body of German settlers. This element at one time had been much larger, but many families had been lured to Pennsylvania by promises of lavish grants of land. In Pennsylvania, indeed, there were representatives of nearly

every nation of Western Europe. Side by side with the descendants of the early Swedish, Dutch, and English colonists might be seen Germans of all shades of religious belief, Lutherans and Calvinists, Quakers and Mennonists, and other sects almost without number. There, too, were Spanish and Irish Roman Catholics-for in that colony the adherents of all Christian faiths enjoyed full civil rights. In New York and Pennsylvania, as well as in Rhode Island, there were Jewish congregations. In Pennsylvania only Christians could hold office, but in Rhode Island a Jew could obtain the right to vote by means of a special act of the colonial legislature. Nowhere was the Jewish element of much importance in 1760. It is clear from this brief statement of facts that there was no well defined race which could be called American then living in the colonies. This will be made more evident, perhaps, by an analysis of the population according to colour and place of birth.

Distribution

of the population.

About one half of the colonists lived on either side of the southern boundary of Pennsylvania. This line had been settled by an agreement between the heirs of William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, and those of Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore, under whose direction Maryland had been colonized. It was defined for a considerable distance by two English surveyors, Mason and Dixon. Separating Pennsylvania from Maryland and Virginia, Mason and Dixon's line at first divided the northern colonies, where agriculture was diversified, from the southern colonies, where one or two staple products were the rule. Later in the history of the country, it became the dividing line between the slave and free states east of the Appalachian Mountains; and, in this sense, has immortalized the names of its early surveyors. The statement that this line divided the population into two nearly equal parts requires further examination. There were in the colonies in 1760 about four hundred thousand negro

slaves. Of these some three hundred thousand lived in the southern colonies, the remainder being owned and employed in the North, mainly in New York and Rhode Island. Subtracting the negro population from the total population of the two divisions, it is found that there were about seven hundred thousand whites in the North and not far from five hundred thousand whites in the South. Probably between four and five hundred thousand of the colonists were immigrants-including in this estimate seventy-five thousand negro slaves, for the slave-trade was then in active operation. The population of the colonies, therefore, was divided by race distinctions, by colour, and by length of exposure to colonial institutions. It would appear, in point of fact, that the problem of assimilating the "foreign element" was certainly not less serious in 1760 than it has been at any other time in the history of the country. This was especially true because a majority of these recent immigrants were not English either by birth or by speech. Among them were some of the most prominent leaders in the Revolution. For example the first two great financiers of the United States, Robert Morris and Alexander Hamilton, were born outside of the colonies-and it may be added that Albert Gallatin, the only man among the early financiers who can claim a place with these two men, was like them born without the limits of the United States. Notwithstanding the great diversity of the population, race conflicts seem to have been very rare, and, except in New England, the immigrant was everywhere welcomed as an addition to the wealth of the country.

Physical conditions.

The colonists then inhabited that portion of North America which lies between the thirty-first and the fortyfifth parallels of north latitude and between the Atlantic Ocean and the Appalachian Mountains. To understand the history of this people, it is necessary to know something of the conditions of life prevailing in this