Читать книгу The Conquest of the American Continent - Grant Madison - Страница 8

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Before considering the question of the origin of the English settlers of the Atlantic seaboard, it is important to understand the motives that actuated the newcomers.

The impelling motive of the settlers who crossed the ocean to America from the earliest Colonial times down to 1880 was land hunger, and just as we speculate in stocks today, so down to one hundred years ago our ancestors speculated in lands on the frontier.

It is difficult to realize the extent to which the ownership of the land in Europe was monopolized, largely through the exercise of Royal favor, by the upper classes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This established English tradition and practice, brought to America by the early settlers, coupled with the favoritism of the royal governors in land grants, was one of the causes which led to the Revolution. After the American victory much land was confiscated on the plea that the owners were Loyalists.

The distribution of free land in the United States came substantially to an end about 1880, when the public domain became exhausted. Up to that date, the immigration into America had been assimilated readily. Certain exceptions will be dealt with later. Practically all of it was from northwestern Europe, and the immigrants came mostly of their own volition. It took some degree of enterprise to leave home, cross the Atlantic, and establish oneself in a new country amid strange surroundings. Settling new land meant clearing the forests and destroying the game, as well as buying off or fighting the Indians, whose ideas about land ownership were vague. To the frontiersman in early days, the term "a clearing" was synonymous with "a settlement."

Religious motives and the desire for political and economic independence, of course, were also great factors in the Pilgrim and Puritan migration to New England from 1620 to 1640.

The New England Puritans represented only a part and relatively a small part of the exodus from England. They were pure English from the most Anglo-Saxon part of England and consisted largely of yeomen and the lesser gentry, who found the religious and political conditions in England under the Stuarts intolerable for freemen. They were essentially dissenters, who refused to bend the knee to prelate or to king.

In 1640, under the Commonwealth the Puritans seized the reins of government in England and only permitted the return of royalty in 1660 under conditions which established for all time the supremacy of Parliament. In fact, during the Commonwealth the power of Parliament had become so great that many of the best minds of England felt that a restoration of the monarchy was needed as a check.

The settlers of New England may be regarded as essentially rebels against established religion and established authority when the religion and authority were not of their own choosing. This non-conformist spirit persisted in the successive new frontiers as they were settled by New Englanders. The early New England settlers of western New York and the old Northwest Territory gave birth to an astonishing number of new sects, religions, "isms," and communities, ranging all the way from Mormonism to Shakers and the Oneida Community. They were, however, law-abiding in their own way and murders and crimes of violence were relatively infrequent.

This is in sharp contrast to the southern frontiersmen, who were and are addicted to killings and physical violence. That, however, is chiefly true of the inhabitants of the Appalachian valleys, who always have been lawless. The dissent and predisposition to rebellion among the New Englanders dates back to the Puritans in England and the lawlessness and violence of the Ulster Scots to the endless border warfare on the Scottish frontier. The southern frontiersman was originally a Presbyterian, but he found his religion too intellectual for isolated communities and turned in many cases to the more emotional creeds of the Methodist and Baptist. The hatred of England by the Ulster Scotch frontiersmen dated back to the unjust and oppressive interference with their industries in the north of Ireland, as well as to a deep-seated impatience of all authority.

After the Revolution this hatred of authority was transferred to the tidewater aristocrats and was accentuated by the debtor complex, which has characterized all our frontiers.

The character of the frontier from the very beginning remained the same. Each generation of the restless, the discontented and the failures pushed West, carrying with them some of the fine qualities of the original settlers of the seaboard, but more often developing a new complex of intolerance for the restraints and usages of the older communities.

There is an amusing and significant evolution of these traits in families who settled around Massachusetts Bay and then moved to the Connecticut Valley; thence to Vermont, western New York, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, and Los Angeles, where they now flourish.

At the time of the Revolution the intense hatred in New England of the mother country was due partly to a desire to confiscate the lands of the Loyalists and partly to that which they considered unfair restrictions on their overseas trade, as well as to an unwillingness to being taxed to pay a part of the great cost of conquering Canada.

The net result of these forces was a widespread anti-British and, later, anti-governmental complex, which has characterized our country ever since. In contrast to England and to Canada, we are an essentially lawless people.

Ireland.

In the North the Revolution was largely a movement of various Calvinist communities. The few Episcopalians in New England and the more numerous adherents of that church in New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland were almost all Loyalists. In Virginia, however, and further to the south the numerous Church of England planter class took the American side and as a result retained their leadership as an aristocracy down to the time of the Civil War. Even at the time of the Revolution this church contributed more than its quota of leaders. Of fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, thirty-four are classified as Episcopalians, twelve as Congregationalists, five as Presbyterians, two Quakers, one Baptist and one Roman Catholic. Of the Continental Congress which ratified this Declaration, nearly two-thirds are said to have been Episcopalians.

In the North following the expulsion of the Loyalists, the Church of England was left prostrate, and it was some time after the Revolution before it was successfully reorganized and was definitely designated as the Protestant Episcopal Church to become, after a century, the fashionable church of the Atlantic seaboard. The Protestant Episcopal Church has never had any substantial hold in the Middle or Far West and even today it is there largely a missionary church with a tendency towards ritualism, which has checked its normal development.

The Roman Catholic population of the colonies was negligible. In 1790 out of a white population of a little over 3,000,000, there were not more than 35,000 Catholics in the United States. This number included 5000 Negroes and some Germans. They were located for the most part in Maryland and Pennsylvania, showing that the South Irish Catholics had not come over in appreciable numbers during Colonial times. Many of the colonies legislated against Roman Catholics.

The Revolution itself was political and social, carrying to an extreme development the political theories of the English Whigs. The distrust of officialdom in power, engendered by the Revolution, led to all manner of constitutional and legal restrictions, in place of a reliance on the personal character of office holders as in England.

During Colonial times two distinct types of population developed. First, the older communities along the tidewater districts, closely in touch with Europe and having a long tradition of culture and wealth. Second, a type grew up on the frontier which from the very beginning showed itself intolerant of the control of the older and richer settlements. This found its expression in Shays's Rebellion in West Massachusetts in 1786-87, in the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania in 1794, and, still earlier, in 1770, when the "Regulators" in North Carolina were in open rebellion. After the Revolution this tendency became more and more marked until the then West under Andrew Jackson took over the control of the country and, with many unfortunate results, carried Jefferson's ideals to an extreme.

The Revolution emphasized this second attitude of mind and resulted in the loss, by expulsion, of some of the best Nordic blood in the country. The Loyalists from Boston, for instance, comprised many of the oldest and most distinguished families. The representative families of that city today are not descended wholly from the aristocratic Colonial families, but largely from the population of the small towns and villages in its neighborhood. It is said that a total of eighty to a hundred thousand Loyalists left the colonies and went to Canada and England and to the English West Indies.

New England to a greater extent than any other colony had been at war with France and her Canadian Indians for the best part of one hundred and fifty years, but the memory of this prolonged and bloody struggle was obliterated by the Revolution. In its place there arose in America a sentiment for France, caused largely by the romantic personality of Lafayette, which survives to this day. The Jeffersonian emotional sympathy with the French Revolution also played a large part. The fact nevertheless is that we had a naval war in 1798 with the French, although no formal war was declared. It was caused by French depredations on American commerce, resulting in several duels between American and French frigates. All this is conveniently forgotten or ignored in some of our school text-books.

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The earliest permanent settlements of importance in New England were around Massachusetts Bay, and in Virginia along navigable streams. From such centers settlements spread up and down the coast until all the desirable lands accessible to salt water became occupied. In New England the coasts of southern Maine, of Rhode Island, and of Connecticut were quickly occupied. Migration then went overland from Massachusetts Bay, westward to the Connecticut River. This was our first real northern frontier, and it took more than a century to populate southern and western New England.

The settlement of Connecticut westward was blocked by the colony of New York, while the Indians delayed the advance of Massachusetts to the north. Connecticut in turn threw out colonies at an early date, such as Newark in New Jersey in 1666.

Vermont was not settled until just before the Revolution, owing to the danger from the Indians and a serious dispute between New Hampshire and New York as to its ownership. At the time of the Revolution it was a typical frontier with all of its bad features. At that time it was about as rough and tough as Kentucky or Tennessee. After the Revolution some of the best of its population migrated to western New York, along with settlers from all over New England who went for the most part through Vermont.

Early in the eighteenth century nearly all the desirable lands within reach of salt water had been occupied from New Jersey southward, and later coming immigrants were forced back into the uplands of the West beyond the so-called Fall Line at which the Atlantic rivers cease to be navigable.

New York interposed an absolute bar to westward migration because the Iroquois Indians held almost all the fertile lands to the west of the Hudson River. The east bank of the Hudson was more or less filled up with New Englanders and the west bank with its undesirable lands was turned over to late coming immigrants, chiefly Germans. The Dutch population of New York was but small. The total population of the colony at the time of its seizure by England in 1664 was little more than 10,000 and there were already many English among them.

The English settlers occupied both banks of the Delaware around Philadelphia, forcing the later-coming Germans and Ulster Scots to the west. The Swedish settlement along the river was trifling and was soon absorbed. There is very little trace of it left in place or personal names. On the upper reaches of the Delaware River, in Pennsylvania, and in New York, there were some small settlements of French Huguenots, who suffered severely from Indian depredations during the Revolution.

Delaware and the country east of Chesapeake Bay are purely English, as was Maryland, except that western Maryland was really part of western Pennsylvania and western Virginia.

Virginia itself was the mother of States and in Colonial times extended in fact, as other colonies did in theory, to the Mississippi, without mentioning claims to the South Sea. The tidewater population of Virginia differed profoundly from that of the western part of the State, including the Shenandoah Valley, which was settled largely from western Pennsylvania.

There was a marked difference between the settlement of New England and that of Virginia. To New England the earliest settlers brought their women and families, while in Virginia the early arrivals were nearly all males. Women were afterwards sent over by the shipload, but this was only during the early days of the colony.

Like Virginia, North Carolina in Colonial times extended nominally to the Mississippi. Its population lacked the tidewater aristocrats of the Old Dominion and contained many Scots, straight from the Highlands, who, strangely, took the British side during the Revolution, as well as a very large number of Ulster Scots in the western mountains, and in the counties which were afterwards Tennessee.

Kentucky and Tennessee were both settled from the colonies immediately to the east, but largely by the Ulster Scots, coming from western Pennsylvania through the mountainous districts of Virginia and North Carolina. These Ulster Scots came south along the Appalachian valleys, which trend in a southwesterly direction. They were reinforced by the numerous groups of the same people, who came up from South Carolina. Kentucky was much more purely English than Tennessee.

It is a fact but little understood, that the frontier was not much reinforced from the coast but extended itself. In other words, the frontier from the beginning was pushed onward by the backwoodsmen, each generation advancing a little farther westward and making new clearings.

The people along the coast, after a couple of generations of severe privation, became relatively rich as compared with the frontiersmen. The inhabitants of the coast cities for the most part preferred a sea-faring life rather than the hewing out of a homestead in the wilderness. There have been many cases in our Colonial history where men went from the coast towns to the wilderness, but for the most part they were content to stay at home.

As to the original racial complexion of the colonies, New England was purely Nordic and English. The handful of Ulster Scots in New Hampshire was not to be distinguished from the English, and the individual Huguenot families around Boston were only trifling in number. This remained true of all New England during the Colonial period.

In New York, however, conditions were different. Dutch New Amsterdam, afterwards English New York City, was always an important port and attracted to itself from the earliest times a substantial number of foreigners. In addition to the Dutch founders a considerable number of French Huguenots were among the earlier settlers. There were also a few Germans and Portuguese.

The west bank of the Hudson was less accessible and desirable than the east bank, but there were some substantial colonies of Palatine Germans settled there and up the valleys of the Mohawk and its connecting streams. These last played a creditable part in the heavy fighting which raged in this district with the British settlers, who were for the most part Loyalists. There were also some small colonies of pure Scotch along the Mohawk.

One of the results of the Revolution was the expulsion of the Iroquois Indians, who had occupied New York westward from near Albany to Buffalo. They had sided with the British and had committed many atrocities. Their lands were immediately occupied by New Englanders, coming chiefly from or through Vermont, so that New York State west of Albany became little more than an extension of New England, except that the settlers had become Presbyterians.

Many of the colonists who came to New York from Holland were refugees from the provinces now included in Belgium—in other words, they were either Flemings or French Huguenots. The real Dutch in the province came from the north of Holland and were mostly Nordic Frisians.

In addition to the large migration from Ulster very many English Protestants from Leinster came to America by way of New York immediately after the Revolution. The Catholic Irish did not come in any numbers until after 1845.

The Huguenots were pre-dominantly Nordic. For example, New Rochelle in New York was settled directly from Old Rochelle which is, even today, one of the purest Nordic districts remaining in France. It is entirely safe to say that the Huguenots from Brittany, Normandy, and Picardy, who came to the American colonies by way of England and Holland were overwhelmingly Nordic. Some of those from southern France were probably Mediterranean.

Outside of the Port of New York the Dutch population was confined to the Hudson River towns, chiefly on the east bank, up to and including Albany and Schenectady. The Dutch element of New Jersey was very small.

New Jersey was almost all English, except a few Scotch settlements. It was settled directly from England by way of Perth Amboy, Elizabeth, and Freehold in the north. South Jersey was settled from Pennsylvania. There were a few German communities scattered throughout the north-central part of New Jersey, but, on the whole, the State can be counted as purely English.

The case of Pennsylvania was somewhat different. The original settlers on the west bank of the Delaware, around Philadelphia, were English Quakers with a certain number of Welsh, who probably were for the most part Nordic. This section was the most cultured and important part of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia was the port of entry of two important migrations in the eighteenth century. First, the Ulster Scots, who came in great numbers after 1720. In fact, most of the Ulster Scots in America entered the colonies through Philadelphia and, to a less extent, through Charleston, South Carolina. These late comers found the desirable land along the Delaware had been taken up, so they moved westward to the Indian frontier. They were a restless, brave, and pugnacious people, and immediately assumed the burden of the Indian fighting, often without the support or even the sympathy of the Philadelphia Quakers. They were numerous and soon spread along the foothills and valleys of the Appalachians southwestward through western Maryland and Virginia into North and South Carolina, whence they again crossed the ridges westward, until, by the time of the Revolution, they had laid the foundations of Kentucky and of Tennessee. They were, of course, pure Nordics and of North England and Lowland Scotch origin. They had resided for two or three generations in North Ireland. Being fervent Presbyterians, they had not mingled with the Catholic Irish.

In 1790 these Ulster Scots in the colonies numbered about 200,000 and the pure Scots about 300,000 and taken together they were, next to the English, the most important element. They were, as said above, pre-eminently pioneers and Indian fighters and the same fact appears in the history of practically every frontier of British colonies during the next century. They were a highly selected group when they first went to Ireland, which was at that time to all intents a frontier. Since that time the Scots and the Ulster Scots have everywhere shown the characteristics of the ideal pioneer. They played a predominant part in the settlement of the southern part of the Middle West.

The next most important racial element was the Germans. In fact, it was the only non-British element of importance in the colonies. At the time of the Revolution the Germans numbered about a quarter of a million and by 1790 they have been computed to have been about 9 per cent of the total population of the colonies. They settled in the districts of Pennsylvania immediately west of Philadelphia around York and Lancaster, where they are to be found today. They were a peaceful and industrious people, and have to some extent retained their language and customs down to the present time. A very few of them joined their neighbors, the Ulster Scots, in the migration to the Southwest. They were not particularly loyal to the American cause during the Revolution nor in the preceding French Wars, and their presence in the colonies excited much hostility. They were refugees, who had fled down the Rhine from Alsace and the Palatinate to escape the French when Louis XIV invaded and devastated their country. With them were many refugees from German-speaking Switzerland together with Hussites from Moravia. While there were some Lutherans and Calvinists among them, most of the "Pennsylvania Dutch," as they were called by the English colonists, belonged to small and obscure sects. Dunkards, Schwankenfelders, Amish, and Mennonites still maintain their special religious communities. Their language is Alemannish and this German dialect is still spoken in Alsace and Switzerland. In addition to their colonies in Pennsylvania, there was a small settlement of Moravian Brothers in the western part of North Carolina.

Maryland was originally settled under a charter to Lord Baltimore as a refuge for English Catholics, but from the beginning these latter were very few in number and by 1690 were so thoroughly outnumbered that they were deprived of the franchise.

Virginia, the most important of the colonies next to New England, if the latter be taken as a whole, was pure English in the tidewater district, that is, as far west as Richmond. Beyond were many Ulster Scots, who, it must be remembered, were very largely English.

North Carolina was much the same, except that the Ulster Scots were relatively more numerous.

South Carolina had an English planter aristocracy and was much purer English and had less Ulster Scotch than her northern neighbor. It had also a considerable French Huguenot element, by far the largest and most influential in the colonies. These Huguenots, while not very numerous, were nearly all men of culture and social standing and played a large part in the development of the country.

Georgia was substantially of the same racial complexion as South Carolina.