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Chapter 24:
English encroachments on the colonial Monopo-lies of Spain prepare American independence.
the moral world is swayed by general laws.
They
extend not over inanimate nature only, but over and nations,—over the policy of rulers and the opinion of masses.
Event succeeds event according to their influence: amidst the jars of passions and interests, amidst wars and alliances, commerce and conflicts, they form the guiding principle of civilization, which marshals incongruous incidents into their just places, and arranges checkered groups in clear and harmonious order.
Yet let not human arrogance assume to know intuitively, without observation, the tendency of the ages.
Research must be unwearied, and must be conducted with indifference; as the student of natural history, in examining even the humblest flower, seeks instruments that may unfold its wonderful structure, without color and without distortion.
For the historic inquirer to swerve from exact observation, would be as absurd as for the astronomer to break his telescopes, and compute the path of a planet by conjecture Of success, too, there is a sure criterion; for, as every false statement contains a contradiction, truth alone possesses harmony.
Truth also, and truth alone, is permanent.
The selfish passions of a party are as evanescent as the material interests involved in the transient
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conflict: they may deserve to be described; they never
can inspire; and the narrative which takes from them its bias will hurry to oblivion as rapidly as the hearts in which they were kindled moulder to ashes.
But facts faithfully ascertained, and placed in proper contiguity, become of themselves the firm links of a brightly burnished chain, connecting events with their causes, and marking the line along which the electric power of truth is conveyed from generation to generation.
Events that are past are beyond change, and where they merit to be known, can, in their general aspect, be known accurately.
The constitution of the human mind varies only in details; its elements are the same always; and the multitude, possessing but a combination of the powers and passions of which each one is conscious, is subject to the same laws which control individuals.
Humanity, also, constantly enriched and cultivated by the truths it develops and the inventions it amasses, has a life of its own, and yet possesses no element that is not common to each of its members.
By comparison of document with document; by an analysis of facts, and the reference of each of them to the laws of the human mind which it illustrates; by separating the idea which inspires combined action from the forms it assumes; by comparing events with the great movement of humanity,— historic truth may establish itself as a science; and the principles that govern human affairs, extending like a path of light from century to century, become the highest demonstration of the superintending providence of God.
The inference that there is progress in human affairs, is also warranted.
The trust of our race has ever been in the coming of better times.
Universal history does
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out seek to relate ‘the sum of all God's works of prov-
idence.’
In
America, the first conception of its office, in the mind of
Jonathan Edwards, though still cramped
and perverted by theological forms not derived from observation, was nobler than the theory of Vico: more grand and general than the method of
Bossuet, it embraced in its outline the whole ‘work of redemption,’ —the history of the influence of all moral truth in the gradual regeneration of humanity.
The meek
New England divine, in his quiet association with the innocence and simplicity of rural life, knew that, in every succession of revolutions, the cause of civilization and moral reform is advanced.
‘The new creation’—
such are his words—‘is more excellent than the old. So it ever is, that when one thing is removed by God to make way for another, the new excels the old.’— ‘The wheels of
Providence,’ he adds, ‘are not turned about by blind chance, but they are full of eyes round about, and they are guided by the spirit of God.
Where the spirit goes, they go.’
Nothing appears more self-determined than the volitions of each individual; and nothing is more certain than that the providence of God will overrule them for good.
The finite will of man, free in its individuality, is, in the aggregate, subordinate to general laws.
This is the reason why evil is self-destructive; why truth, when it is once generated, is sure to live forever; why freedom and justice, though resisted and restrained, renew the contest from age to age, confident that messengers from heaven fight on their side, and that the stars in their courses war against their foes.
There would seem to be no harmony, and no consistent tendency to one great end, in the confused events of the reigns of George [I. of
England and Louis XV.
of
France, where legislation
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was now surrendered to the mercantile passion for
gain, was now swayed by the ambition and avarice of the mistresses of kings,—where the venal corruption of public men, the open profligacy of courts, the greedy cupidity of trade, conspired in exercising dominion over the civilized community.
The political world was without form and void; yet the spirit of God was moving over the chaos of human passions and human caprices, bringing forth the firm foundations on which better hopes were to rest, and setting in the firmament the bright lights that were to serve as guides to the nations.
England,
France, and
Spain, occupied all the continent, nearly all the islands, of
North America; each established over its colonies an oppressive metropolitan monopoly.
Had they been united, no colony could have rebelled successfully; but
Great Britain, in the pride of opulence, vigorously enforced her own acts of navigation, and disregarded those of
Spain.
Strictly maintaining the exclusive commerce with her own colonies, she coveted intercourse with the
Spanish islands and main; and, intent on her object, she was about to give to the world, for the first time in its history, the spectacle of a war for trade.
One colonial power encroached on another, and, in its passion for gain, not content with oppressing its own plantations, strove to appropriate to itself the wealth and commerce of the colonies of its rival.
Thus the metropolitan monopolists were divided against themselves.
Their divisions were to their colonies reciprocally a promise of an ally in case of rebellion.
The war, engendered by the grasping avidity of
England, against the colonial monopoly of
Spain, hastened the approach of commercial freedom, and contained for the colonies an augury of independence.
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A part of the creditors of
England had been incorpo-
rated into a company, with the exclusive trade to the
South Seas.
But as
Spain, having acquired the
American coast in those seas, possessed a monopoly of its commerce, the grant was nugatory and worthless, unless the monopoly of
Spain could be successfully invaded; and, for this end, the benefit of the assiento treaty was assigned to the
South Sea company.
In 1719, the capital of the company was increased by new subscriptions of national debts; and, in the next year, it was proposed to incorporate into its stock all the national debt of
England.
The system resembled that of Law; but the latter was connected with a bank of issue, and became a war against specie.
In
England, there was no attempt, directly or indirectly, to exile specie, no increase of the circulating medium, but only an increase of stocks.
The parties implicated suffered from fraud and folly; the stockjobbers—they who had parted with their certificates of the national debt for stock in the company—they who, hurried away by a blind avidity, had engaged in other ‘bubbles’—were ruined; but the country was not impoverished.
Enough of the
South Sea company survived the overthrow of hopes which had no foundation but in fraud or delusion, to execute the contract for negroes, and to covet an illicit commerce with Spanish America.
Cupidity grew the more earnest from having been baffled; and, at last, ‘ambition, avarice, distress, dis-
appointment, and all the complicated vices that tend to render the mind of man uneasy, filled all places and all hearts in the
English nation.’
Dreams of the conquest of
Florida, with the possession of the
Bahama Channel,—of the conquest of
Mexico and
Peru, with
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their real and their imagined wealth,—rose up to daz-
zle the minds of the restless.
While the opportunity of conquest and rapine was anxiously waited for,
Jamaica became the centre of an extensive smuggling trade; and slave ships, deriving their passport from the assiento treaty, were the ready instruments of contraband cupidity.
The great activity of the
English slave trade does not acquire its chief interest for American history by the transient conflict to which it led. While the
South Sea company satisfied but imperfectly its passion for wealth, by a monopoly of the supply of negroes for the
Spanish islands and main, the African company and independent traders were still more busy in sending negroes to the colonies of
England.
To this eagerness, encouraged by English legislation, fostered by royal favor, and enforced for a century by every successive ministry of
England, it is due, that one sixth part of the population of the
United States—a moiety of those who dwell in the five states nearest the
Gulf of Mexico—are descendants of Africans.
The colored men who were imported into our colonies, sometimes by way of the
West Indies, and some times, especially for the south, directly from the Old World, were sought all along the
African coast, for thirty degrees together, from
Cape Blanco to Loango
St. Pauls; from the Great Desert of Sahara to the kingdom of
Angola, or perhaps even to the borders of the land of the Caffres.
It is not possible to relate precisely in what bay they were respectively laden, from what sunny cottages they were kidnapped, from what more direful captivity they were rescued.
The traders in men have not been careful to record the lineage of their victims.
They were chiefly gathered from gangs
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that were marched from the far interior; so that the
freight of a single ship might be composed of personsof different languages, and of nations altogether strange to each other.
Nor was there uniformity of complexion: of those brought to our country, some were from tribes of which the skin was of a tawny yellow.
The purchases in
Africa were made, in part, of convicts punished with slavery, or mulcted in a fine, which was discharged by their sale; of debtors sold, though but rarely into foreign bondage; of children sold by their parents; of kidnapped villagers; of captives taken in war. Hence the sea-coast and the confines of hostile nations were laid waste.
But the chief source of supply was from swarms of those born in a state of slavery; for the despotisms, the supersti-
tions, and the usages of
Africa had multiplied bondage.
In the upper country, on the Senegal and the Gambia, three fourths of the inhabitants were not free; and the slave's master was the absolute lord of the slave's children.
The trade in slaves, whether for the caravans of the Moors or for the
European ships, was chiefly supplied from the natural increase.
In the healthy and fertile uplands of
Western Africa, under the tropical sun, the reproductive power of the prolific race, combined with the imperfect development of its moral faculties, gave to human life, in the eye of man himself, an inferior value.
Humanity did not respect itself in any of its forms,—in the individual, in the family, or in the nation.
Our systems of morals will not explain the phenomenon: its cause is not to be sought in the suppression of moral feeling, but rather in the condition of a branch of the human family not yet conscious of its powers, not yet fully possessed of its moral and rational
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life.
In the state of humanity itself, in Sene
gambia, in Upper and
Lower Guinea, the problem of the slave trade finds its solution.. The habits of lift of the native tribes of
America rendered its establishment with them impossible.
The quick maturity of life, the facility of obtaining sustenance, the nature of
the negro, as influenced by a hot sun, a healthful and fertile clime, an undeveloped intelligence, and he fruitfulness of the race, explain why, from century to century, the slave ships could find a freight, and yet the population of the interior be constantly replenished.
England valued
Africa as returning for her manufactures abundant laborers for her colonies, and valued it for nothing else.
Africans of more than thirty years of age were rejected by the traders as too old, and few were received under fourteen.
Of the whole number, not more than one third part was composed of women, and a woman past two-and-twenty was hardly deemed worth transportation.
The English slave ships were laden with the youth of
Africa.
Slavery, and even a change of masters, were familiar to the African; but to be conducted to the shores of the
Western Ocean, to be doomed to pass its boundless deep, and enter on new toils, in an untried clime, and amidst an unknown race, was appalling to the black man. The horrors of the passage, also, corresponded with the infamy of the trade.
Small vessels, of little more than two hundred tons burden, were prepared for the traffic; for these could most easily penetrate the bays and rivers of the coast, and, quick.
ly obtaining a lading, could soonest hurry away from the deadly air of
Western Africa.
In such a bark five hundred negroes and more have been stowed, exciting wonder that men could have lived, within the
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tropics, cribbed in so few inches of room The ine-
quality of force between the crew and the cargo led to the use of manacles; the hands of the stronger men were made fast together, and the right leg of one was chained to the left of another.
The avarice of the trader was a partial guaranty of the security of life, as far as it depended on him; but death hovered always over the slave ship.
The negroes, as they came from the higher level to the sea-side,—poorly fed on the sad pilgrimage, sleeping at night on the damp earth without covering, and often reaching the coast at unfavorable seasons,—imbibed the seeds of disease, which confinement on board ship quickened into feverish activity.
There have been examples where one half of them—it has been said, even, where two thirds of them—perished on the passage.
The total loss of life on the voyage is computed to have been, on the average, fifteen, certainly full twelve and a half, in the hundred: the harbors of the
West Indies proved fatal to four and a half more out of every hundred.
No scene of wretchedness could surpass a crowded slave ship during a storm at sea, unless it were that same ship dismasted, or suffering from a protracted voyage and want of food, its miserable inmates tossed helplessly to and fro under the rays of a vertical sun, vainly gasping for a drop of water.
Of a direct voyage from
Guinea to the coast of the
United States no journal is known to exist, though slave ships from
Africa entered nearly every considerable harbor south of
Newport.
In the northern provinces of English America, the few negroes were lost in the larger number of whites; and only in the lowlands of
South Carolina and
Virginia did they constitute a great majority of the in
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habitants.
But they came with the limited faculties of
uncivilized man: when they met on our soil, they were as strange to one another as to their masters.
Coming from places in
Africa a thousand miles asunder, the negro emigrants to
America brought with them no common language, no abiding usages, no worship, no nationality.
They were compelled to adopt a new dialect for intercourse with each other; and broken Eng, lish became their tongue not less among themselves than with their masters.
Hence there was no unity among them, and no immediate political danger from their joint action.
Once an excitement against them raged in New York, through fear of a pretended plot; but the frenzy grew out of a delusion.
Sometimes the extreme harshness of taskmasters may have provoked resistance; or sometimes an African, accustomed from birth to freedom, and reduced to slavery by the chances of war, carried with him across the
Atlantic the indomitable spirit of a warrior; but the instances of insurrection were insulated, and without result.
Destitute of common traditions, customs, and laws, the black population existed in fragments, having no bonds of union but color and misfortune.
Thus the negro slave in
America was dependent on his master for civilization; he could be initiated into skill in the arts only through him; through him only could he gain a country; and, as a consequence, in the next generation, if dissatisfied with his condition, he had yet learned to love the land of his master; it was his country also.
It is not easy to conjecture how many negroes were imported into the
English continental colonies.
The usual estimates far exceed the truth.
Climate came in aid of opinion to oppose the introduction of them-As their limited number diminished the danger from
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their presence, they, from the first, appear to have
increased, though, owing to the inequality of the sexes, not rapidly in the first generation.
Previous to the year 1740, there may have been introduced into our country nearly one hundred and thirty thousand; before 1776, a few more than three hundred thousand.
In 1727, ‘the vast importation of negroes’ was a subject of complaint in
South Carolina.
The German
traveller Von Reck, in 1734, reported the number of negroes in that province at thirty thousand, and for the annual importation gave the greatly exaggerated estimate of nearly three thousand.
In the
Northern and the
Middle States, the negro was employed for menial offices and in the culture of wheat and maize.
Almost all the tobacco exported from
Maryland and
Virginia, all the indigo and lice of
Carolina, were the fruit of his toils.
Instead of remaining in a wild and unproductive servitude, his labor contributed to the wealth of nations,—his destiny, from its influence on commerce, excited interest throughout the civilized world.
With new powers of production, the negro learned new wants, which were at least partially supplied.
At the north, he dwelt under the roof of his master; his physical well-being was provided for, and opinion protected him against cruelty.
At the south, his home was a rude cabin of his own, constructed of logs or slabs,—to him, but for the abundance of fuel, a feeble protection against winter.
The early writers tell us little of his history, except the crops which he raised.
The physical constitution of the negro decided his home in the New World: he loved the sun; even the climate of
Virginia was too chill for him. His labor, therefore, increased in value as he proceeded south;
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and hence the relation of master and slave came to be
essentially a southern institution: to the southern colnies, mainly,
Providence intrusted the guardianship and the education of the colored race.
The concurrent testimony of tradition represents the negroes, at their arrival, to have been gross and stupid, having memory and physical strength, but undisciplined in the exercise of reason and imagination.
Their organization seemed analogous to their barbarism.
But, at the end of a generation, all observers affirmed the marked progress of the negro
American.
In the midst of the horrors of slavery and the slave trade, the masters had, in part at least, performed the office of advancing and civilizing the negro.
The thought of general emancipation early presented itself.
Massachusetts, where the first planters assumed to themselves ‘a right to treat the Indians on the foot of Canaanites or Amalekites,’ always opposed the in-
troduction of slaves from abroad; and, in 1701, the town of
Boston instructed its representatives ‘to put a period to negroes' being slaves.’
In 1712, to a general petition for the emancipation of negro slaves by law, the legislature of Pennsylvania answered that ‘it was neither just nor convenient to set them at liberty;’ and yet
George Keith, the early abolitionist, was followed by the eccentric Benjamin Lay,—by
Ralph Sandiford, who held slavery to be inconsistent alike with the rights of man and the principles of Christianity,—and, at a later day, by the amiable enthusiast
Anthony Benezet.
But did not Christianity enfranchise its converts?
The Christian world of that day almost universally revered in
Christ the impersonation of the divine wisdom.
Could an intelligent being, who, through the
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Mediator, had participated in the Spirit of God, and,
by his own inward experience, had become conscious of a Supreme Existence, and of relations between that Existence and humanity, be rightfully held in
bondage?
From
New England to
Carolina, the ‘notion’ prevailed, that ‘being baptized is inconsistent with a state of slavery;’ and this early apprehension proved a main obstacle to the culture and ‘conversion of these poor people.’
The sentiment was so deep and so general, that
South Carolina in 1712,
Maryland in 1715,
Virginia repeatedly from 1667 to
Hen. II. 260; III. 448, &c. |
1748, gave a negative to it by special enactments.
The lawyers, also, declared the fear groundless; and ‘the opinion of his majesty's attorney and solicitorgeneral,
Yorke and
Talbot, signed with their own hands, was accordingly printed in
Rhode Island, and dispersed through the plantations.’
‘I heartily wish,’ adds
Berkeley, ‘it may produce the intended effect;’ and, at the same time, he rebuked ‘the irrational contempt of the blacks,’ which regarded them ‘as creatures of another species, having no right to be instructed.’
In like manner,
Gibson, the bishop of
London,
declared that ‘Christianity and the embracing of the gospel does not make the least alteration in civil property;’ while he besought the masters to regard the negroes ‘not barely as slaves, but as men-slaves and women-slaves, having the same frame and faculties with themselves.’
Thus was strife with the lawyers and the planters avoided by friends to the negro, who were anxious for his improvement, and yet willing to leave his emancipation to be decided by the result.
But for the difference of color, this question would at once have been decided in the affirmative.
There is not, in all the colonial legislation of
America, one
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single law which recognizes the rightfulness of slavery
in the abstract.
Every province favored freedom as such.
The real question at issue was, from the first, not one of slavery and freedom generally, but of the relations to each other of the Ethiopian and American races.
The
Englishman in
America tolerated and enforced not the slavery of man, but the slavery of the man who was
guilty of a skin
Not colored like his own.
In the skin lay unexpiated, and, as it was held, inexpiable, guilt.
The negro, whom the benevolence of his master enfranchised, was not absorbed into the mass of the free population: his color adhered to him, and still constituted him a separate element in society.
Hence arose laws restricting the right of emancipation.
The indelible mark of his species remained unfaded and unchanged; and, in the state of opinion, for him to rise by single merit was impracticable; the path to
social equality was not open to him; he could not raise himself from humiliation without elevating his race.
Our country might well have shrunk from assuming the guardianship of the negro.
Hence the question of tolerating the slave trade and the question of abolishing slavery rested on different grounds.
The one related to a refusal of a trust; the other, to the manner of its exercise.
The English continental colonies, in the aggregate, were always opposed to the African slave trade.
Maryland,
Virginia, even Carolina,— alarmed at the excessive production and the consequent low price of their staples, at the heavy debts incurred by the purchase of slaves on credit, and at the dangerous increase of the colored population,—each showed an anxious preference for the introduction of
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white men; and laws designed to restrict importations
of slaves, are scattered copiously along the records of colonial legislation.
The first continental congress
which took to itself powers of legislation, gave a legal expression to the well-formed opinion of the country,
Journals of Congress, i 307 |
by resolving ‘that no slaves be imported into any of the thirteen united colonies.’
Before
America legislated for herself, the interdict of the slave trade was impossible.
England was inexorable in maintaining the system, which gained new and stronger supporters by its excess.
The English slave trade began to attain its great activity after the assiento treaty.
From 1680 to 1700, the
English took from
Africa about three hundred thousand ne-
groes, or about fifteen thousand a year.
The number, during the continuance of the assiento, may have averaged not far from thirty thousand.
Raynal considers the number of negroes exported by all
European nations from
Africa before 1776, to have been nine millions; and the considerate German historian of the slave trade,
Albert Hune, deems his statement too small.
A careful analysis of the colored population in
America at different periods, and the inferences to be deduced from the few authentic records of the numbers imported, corrected by a comparison with the commercial products of slave labor, as appearing in the annals of English commerce, seem to prove, beyond a doubt, that even the estimate of
Raynal is larger than the reality.
We shall not err very much, if, for the century previous to the prohibition of the slave trade by the American congress, in 1776, we assume the number imported by the
English into the
Spanish, French, and English
West Indies, as well as the
English continental colonies, to have been, collectively, nearly three millions; to which are to be added more than a
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quarter of a million purchased in
Africa, and thrown
into the
Atlantic on the passage.
The gross returns to English merchants, for the whole traffic in that number of slaves, may have been not far from four hundred millions of dollars.
Yet, as at least one half of the negroes exported from
Africa to
America were carried in English ships, it should be observed that this estimate is by far the lowest ever made by any inquirer into the statistics of human wickedness.
After every deduction, the trade retains its gigantic character of crime.
In an age when the interests of trade guided legislation, this branch of commerce possessed paramount attractions.
Not a statesman exposed its enormities; and, if
Richard Baxter echoed the opinions of
Puritan Massachusetts; if Southern drew tears by the tragic tale of Oronooko; if
Steele awakened a throb of indignation by the story of Inkle and Yarico; if
Savage and
Shenstone pointed their feeble couplets with the wrongs of ‘Afric's sable children;’ if the Irish metaphysician
Hutcheson, struggling for a higher system of morals, justly stigmatized the traffic; yet no public opinion lifted its voice against it. English ships, fitted out in English cities, under the special favor of the royal family, of the ministry, and of parliament, stole from
Africa, in the years from 1700 to 1750, probably a million and a half of souls, of whom one eighth were buried in the
Atlantic, victims of the passage; and yet in
England no general indignation rebuked the enormity; for the public opinion of the age was obedient to materialism.
Wars had been for the balance of power, as though the safeguards of nations lay in force alone.
Protestantism itself had, in the political point of view, been the triumph of materialism over the spiritual authority of the church.
The same
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influence exhibited itself in philosophy and letters.
Shaftesbury, who professed to be its antagonist, degrading conscience to the sphere of sensibility, enlarged, rather than subverted, the philosophy of the senses.
The poetical essayist on man, in exquisite diction, exalted self-love into an identity with social, and celebrated its praise as the source of the most capacious philanthropy.
Bolingbroke, in his attacks on religion, was but a caviler at historical difficulties.
Of the large school of English deists, some were only disposed to make war upon human authority; while others, led astray by materialism, in their theories of necessity, so lost sight of the creative power of mind, as to make of the universe but one vast series of results consequent on laws of nature.
Even
Hume did not reject a system, which, as he demonstrated, led to nothing absolute but skepticism.
The philosophy of that day furnished to the African no protection against oppression; and the interpretation of English common law was equally regardless of human freedom.
The colonial negro, who sailed to the metropolis, found no benefit from touching the soil of
England, but returned a slave.
Such was the approved law of
Virginia in the first half of the last century; such was the opinion of
Yorke and
Talbot, the law officers of the crown, as expressed in 1729, and, after a lapse of twenty years,
repeated and confirmed by one of the same authorities, as chancellor of
England.
The influence of the manufacturers was still worse.
They clamored for the protection of a trade which opened to them an African market.
Thus the party of the slave trade dictated laws to
England.
A resolve of the commons, in the days of William and Mary, proposed to lay open the trade in negroes ‘for the better supply of the plantations’ and the statute-book of
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England soon declared the opinion of its king and its
parliament, that ‘the trade is highly beneficial and advantageous to the kingdom and the colonies.’
In 1708,
1695. 8 and 10 Wil. III c. XXVI. |
a committee of the house of commons report that ‘the trade is important, and ought to be free;’ in 1711, a committee once more report that ‘the plantations ought to be supplied with negroes at reasonable rates,’ and recommend an increase of the trade.
In June, 1712, Queen Anne, in her speech to parliament, boasts of her success in securing to Englishmen a new market for slaves in Spanish America.
In 1729, George II.
recommended a provision, at the national expense, for the African forts; and the recommendation was followed.
At last, in 1749, to give the highest activity to the trade, every obstruction to private enterprise was removed, and the ports of
Africa were laid open to English competition; for ‘the slave trade’—such are the words of the statute—‘the slave trade is very ad-
vantageous to
Great Britain.’—‘The British senate,’ wrote one of its members, in February, 1750, ‘have this fortnight been pondering methods to make more
effectual that horrid traffic of selling negroes.
It has appeared to us that six-and-forty thousand of these wretches are sold every year to our plantations alone.’
But, while the partial monopoly of the African company was broken down, and the commerce in men was opened to the competition of Englishmen, the monopoly of British subjects was rigidly enforced against foreigners.
That Englishmen alone might monopolize all wealth to be derived from the trade,
Holt and Pollexfen, and eight other judges, in pursuance of an order in council, had given their opinion ‘that negroes are merchandise,’ and that therefore the act of navigation was to be extended to the
English trade in them, to the exclusion of aliens.
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The same policy was manifested in the relations
between the
English crown and the colonies.
Land from the public domain was given to emigrants, in one
West India colony, at least, on condition that the resident owner would ‘keep four negroes for every hundred acres.’
The eighteenth century was, as it were, ushered in by the royal instruction of Queen Anne to the
governor of New York and
New Jersey, ‘to give due encouragement to merchants, and in particular to the royal African company of
England.’
That a similar instruction was given generally, is evident from the apology of
Spotswood for the small importations of slaves into
Virginia.
In that commonwealth, the planters beheld with dismay the increase of negroes.
A tax checks their importation; and, in 1726,
Hugh Drysdale, the deputy-governor, announces to the house that ‘the interfering interest of the African company has obtained the repeal of that law.’
Long afterwards, a statesman of
Virginia, in full view of the course of colonial legislation and English counteracting authority, unbiased by hostility to
England, bore true testimony that ‘the
British government constantly checked the attempts of
Virginia to put a stop
Madisor Papers, III. 1390 |
to this infernal traffic.’
On whatever ground
Virginia opposed the trade, the censure was just.
The white man, emigrating, became a dangerous freeman: it was quite sure that the negroes of that century would never profess republicanism; their presence in the colonies increased dependence.
This reasoning was avowed by ‘a British merchant,’ in 1745,
in a political tract entitled ‘The African Slave Trade the great Pillar and Support of the
British Plantation Trade in
America.’
‘Were it possible for white men to answer the end of negroes in planting,’ it is there contended, ‘our colonies would interfere with the
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manufactures of these kingdoms.
In such case, in-
deed, we might have just reason to dread the prosperity of our colonies; but while we can supply them abundantly with negroes, we need be under no such apprehensions.’
‘Negro labor will keep our
British
The African Slave Trade, &c. p. 14 nd 13. |
colonies in a due subserviency to the interest of their mother country; for, while our plantations depend only on planting by negroes, our colonies can never prove injurious to British manufactures, never become independent of their kingdom.’
This policy of
England knew no relenting.
‘My friends and I,’ wrote
Oglethorpe, ‘settled the colony of
Georgia, and by charter were established trustees.
We determined not to suffer slavery there; but the slave merchants and their adherents not only occasioned us much trouble, but at last got the government to sanction them.’
South Carolina, in 1760, from prudential motives, attempted restrictions, and gained only a rebuke from the
English ministry.
Great Britain, steadily rejecting every colonial limitation of the slave trade, instructed the governors, on pain of removal, not to give even a temporary assent to such laws; and, but a year before the prohibition of the slave trade by the American congress, in 1776, the earl of Dartmouth illustrated the tendency of the colonies and the policy of
England, by addressing to a colonial agent these memorable words:—‘We cannot allow the colonies to check, or discourage in any degree, a traffic so beneficial to the nation.’
The assiento treaty, originally extorted from
Spain by force of arms, remained a source of jealousy between that kingdom and
England.
Other collisions were preparing on the
American frontier, where
Spain resolutely claimed to extend her jurisdiction north of the
Savannah River, as far, at least, as
St. Helena Sound.
The foundation of
St. Augustine had preceded
[
417]
that of
Charleston by a century; national pride
still clung to the traditions of the wide extent of
Florida; the settlement of the Scottish emigrants at
Port Royal had been successfully dispersed; Indians and negroes were received as ready allies against English encroachments; and it was feebleness alone which had tolerated the advancement of the plantations of
South Carolina towards the
Savannah.
Meantime,
England resolved to pass that stream, and carry her flag still nearer the walls of
St. Augustine.
The resolution was not hastily adopted.
In 1717, a proposal was brought forward, by one whose father
Mountgomery's Discourse concerning a New Colony &c. 1717. |
had been interested in the unfortunate enterprise of Lord Cardross, to plant a new colony south of
Carolina, in the region that was heralded as the most delightful country of the universe.
The land was to be tilled by British and Irish laborers, exclusively, without ‘the dangerous help of blackamoors.’
Three years afterwards, in the excited season of English stockjobbing and English anticipations, the suggestion was revived.
When
Carolina became, by purchase, a royal
province,
Johnson, its governor, was directed to mark
Purry's Description of S Carelina, 1731. |
out townships as far south as the Alatamaha; and, in 1731, a site was chosen for a colony of Swiss in the ancient land of the Yamassees, but on the left bank of the
Savannah.
The country between the two rivers was still a wilderness, over which
England held only a nominal jurisdiction, when the spirit of benevolence
formed a partnership with the selfish passion for extended territory, and, heedless of the objection that ‘the colonies would grow too great’ for
England, ‘and throw off their dependency,’ resolved to plant the sunny clime with the children of misfortune,—with those who in
England had neither land nor shelter,
[
418]
and those on the continent to whom, as Protestants
bigotry denied freedom of worship and a home.
In the days when protection of property was avowed to be the end of government, the gallows was set up as the penalty for a petty theft; and each year, in Great
Reasons for establishing Georgia, &c |
Britain, at least four thousand unhappy men were immured in prison for the misfortune of poverty.
A small debt exposed to a perpetuity of imprisonment; one indiscreet contract doomed the miserable dupe to life-
long confinement.
The subject won the attention of
James Oglethorpe, a member of the British parliament;
Georgia, a man of an heroic mind and a merciful disposition; in the full activity of middle life; rich in varied experience; who had been disciplined alike in the schools of learning and action; a pupil of the university of
Oxford; an hereditary loyalist; receiving his first commission in the
English army during the ascendency of
Bolingbroke; a volunteer in the family of Prince Eugene; present at the siege of
Belgrade, and in the brilliant campaign against the Turks on the
Danube.
To him, in the annals of legislative philanthropy, the honor is due of having first resolved to redress the griefs that had so long been immured
from the public gaze,—to lighten the lot of debtors.
thorpe. Touched with the sorrows which the walls of a prison could not hide from his merciful eye, he searched into the gloomy horrors of jails,
Where sickness pines, where thirst and hunger burn,
And poor misfortune feels the lash of vice.
In 1728, he invoked the interference of the English parliament; and, as a commissioner for inquiring into the state of the jails in the kingdom, his benevolent zeal persevered, till, ‘from extreme misery, he restored
[
419]
to light and freedom multitudes, who, by long confine-
ment for debt, were strangers and helpless in the country of their birth.’
He did more.
For them, and for persecuted Protestants, he planned an asylum and a new destiny in
America, where former poverty would be no reproach, and where the simplicity of piety could indulge the spirit of devotion, without fear of persecution from men who hated the rebuke of its example.
It was not difficult for
Oglethorpe to find associates in his disinterested purpose.
To further this end, a charter from George II., dated the ninth day of June,
1732, erected the country between the
Savannah and the Alatamaha, and from the head-springs of those rivers due west to the
Pacific, into the province of
Georgia, and placed it, for twenty-one years, under the
Establishment of the Colony of Georgia |
guardianship of a corporation, ‘in trust for the poor.’
The common seal of the corporation, having on one side
Georgia a group of silk-worms at their toils, with the motto,
Non sibi, sed aliis,—Not for themselves, but for others,—expressed the disinterested purpose of the patrons, who, by their own request, were restrained from receiving any grant of lands, or any emolument whatever.
On the other side of the seal, the device represented two figures reposing on urns, emblematic of the boundary rivers, having between them the genius of ‘
Georgia Augusta,’ with a cap of liberty on her head, a spear in one hand, the horn of plenty in the other.
But the cap of liberty was, for a time at least, a false emblem; for all executive and legislative power, and the institution of courts, were, for twenty-one years, given exclusively to the trustees, or their common council, who
were appointed during good behavior.
The trustees, men of benevolence and of leisure, ignorant of the value or the nature of popular power, held these grants
[
420]
to contain but ‘proper powers for establishing and
governing the colony.’
The land, open to Jews, was closed against ‘Papists.’
At the head of the coun-
cil stood
Shaftesbury, fourth earl of that name; but its most celebrated member was
Oglethorpe.
So illustrious were the auspices of the design, that hope at once painted brilliant visions of an Eden that was to spring up to reward the ardor of such disinterested benevolence.
The kindly sun of the new colony was to look down on the abundance of purple vintages, and the
silkworm yield its thread to enrich the
British merchant, and employ the
British looms.
The benevo lence of
England was aroused; the charities of an opulent and an enlightened nation were to be concern trated on the new plantation; individual zeal was kindled in its favor; the Society for propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts sought to promote its interests; and parliament showed its good will by at once contributing ten thousand pounds.
But, while others gave to the design their leisure, their prayers, or their wealth,
Oglethorpe, heedless of danger, devoted himself to its fulfilment.
In Novem-
1732. Nov. 17-28. 1733. Jan. 13. Jan. 13-24. Jan. 20-31. |
ber, 1732, embarking with about one hundred and twenty emigrants, he began the voyage to
America, and in fifty-seven days arrived off the bar of
Charleston.
Accepting a hasty welcome, he sailed directly for
Port Royal.
While the colony was landing at
Beaufort, its patron ascended the boundary river of
Georgia, and chose for the site of his chief town the high bluff on which
Savannah now stands.
At the distance of a half mile dwelt the Yamacraws, a branch of the Muskhogees, who, with Tomo-chichi, their chieftain, sought security by an alliance with the
English.
‘Here is a little present,’ said the red man, as he
[
421]
offered a buffalo skin, painted on the inside with the
head and feathers of an eagle.
‘The feathers of the eagle are soft, and signify love; the buffalo skin is
warm, and is the emblem of protection.
Therefore love and protect our little families.’
On the first day of February, or, according to the new style of computation, on the twelfth, the colonists, on board of a small sloop and periaguas, arrived at the place intended for the town, and before evening encamped on shore near the edge of the river.
Four beautiful pines protected the tent of
Oglethorpe, who, for near a twelve-
month, sought no other shelter.
In the midst of the pleasant region, the streets of
Savannah were laid out with greatest regularity; in each quarter a public square was reserved; the houses were planned and constructed on one model—each a frame of sawed timber, twenty-four feet by sixteen, floored with rough deals, the sides with feather-edged boards unplaned, and the roof shingled.
Such a house
Oglethorpe afterwards hired as his residence, when in
Savannah.
Erelong a walk, cut through the native woods, led to the large garden on the river side, destined as a nursery of
European fruit and of the wonderful products of
America.
Thus began the commonwealth of
Georgia.
The humane reformer of prison discipline was already the father of a state, ‘the place of refuge for the distressed people of Britain and the persecuted Protestants of
Europe.’
The fame of the hero penetrated the wilderness;
and, in May, the chief men of the eight towns of the
Lower Muskhogees, accepting his invitation, came down to make an alliance.
Long
King, the tall and aged civil chief of the Oconas, spoke for them all:— ‘The Great Spirit, who dwells every where around,
[
422]
and gives breath to all men, sends the
English to in
struct us.’
Claiming the country south of the
Savannah, he bade the strangers welcome to the lands which
his nation did not use; and, in token of sincerity, he laid eight bundles of buckskins at
Oglethorpe's feet.
‘Tomo-chichi,’ he added, ‘though banished from his nation, has yet been a great warrior; and for his wisdom and courage, the exiles chose him their king.’
Tomo-chichi entered timorously, and, bowing very low, gave thanks that he was still permitted ‘to look for good land among the tombs of his ancestors.’
The chief of
Coweta stood up and said, ‘We are come twenty-five days journey to see you. I was never willing to go down to
Charleston, lest I should die on the way; but when I heard you were come, and that you are good men, I came down, that I might hear good things.’
He then gave leave to the exiles to summon the kindred that loved them out of each of the
Creek towns, that they might dwell together.
‘Recall,’ he added, ‘the Yamassees, that they may be buried in peace among their ancestors, and may see their grave before they die.’
On the first of June, a treaty of peace wassigned, by which the
English claimed sovereignty over the land of the
Creeks as far south as the
St. Johns; and the chieftains departed laden with presents.
A Cherokee appeared among the
English.
‘Fear nothing,’ said
Oglethorpe, ‘but speak freely:’ and the mountaineer answered, ‘I always speak freely.
Why should I fear?
I am now among friends; I never feared even among my enemies.’
And friendly relations were cherished with the Cherokees.
In the following year, Red Shoes, a Chocta chief, proposed
commerce.
‘We came a great way,’ said he, ‘and
[
423]
we are a great nation.
The
French are building forts
about us, against our liking.
We have long traded with them, but they are poor in goods; we desire that
a trade may be opened between us and you.’
And
when commerce with them was begun, the
English coveted the harbors on the
Gulf of Mexico.
The good faith of
Oglethorpe, in the offers of peace, his noble mien and sweetness of temper, conciliated the confidence of the red men; and he, in his turn, was pleased with their simplicity, and sought for means to clear the glimmering ray of their minds, to guide their bewildered reason, and teach them to know the God whom they ignorantly adored.
While the neighboring province of
South Carolina displayed ‘a universal zeal for assisting its new ally and bulwark,’ the persecuted Protestants known to us
Von Reck, Nachricht von dem Etablissement derer Salzburgischen Emigranten zu Ebenezer |
as Moravians heard the message of hope, and, on the invitation of the Society in
England for propagating the Gospel, prepared to emigrate to the
Savannah.
A free passage; provisions in
Georgia for a whole season; land for themselves and their children, free for ten years, then to be held for a small quitrent; the privileges of native Englishmen; freedom of worship;— these were the promises made, accepted, and honorably fulfilled.
On the last day of October, 1733, ‘the
evangelical community,’—well supplied with Bibles and hymn-books, catechisms and books of devotion,— conveying in one wagon their few chattels, in two other covered ones their feebler companions, and especially their little ones,—after a discourse, and prayer, and benedictions,—cheerfully, and in the name of God, began their pilgrimage.
History need not stop to tell what charities cheered them on their journey, what towns were closed against them by
Roman Catholic
[
424]
magistrates, or how they entered
Frankfort on the
Maine, two by two, in solemn procession, singing spiritual songs.
As they floated down the
Maine, and
between the castled crags, the vineyards, and the white-walled towns that adorn the banks of the
Rhine, their conversation, amidst hymns and prayers, was of
I'm standlicher Vorbericht, 16 Nov. 27. |
justification, and of sanctification, and of standing fast in the
Lord.
At
Rotterdam, they were joined by two preachers, Bolzius and Gronau, both disciplined in charity at the
Orphan House in
Halle.
A passage of
six days carried them from
Rotterdam to
Dover, where several of the trustees visited them and provided considerately for their wants.
In January, 1734, they set sail for their new homes.
The majesty of the ocean
quickened their sense of God's omnipotence and wisdom; and, as they lost sight of land, they broke out into a hymn to his glory.
The setting sun, after a calm, so kindled the sea and the sky, that words could not express their rapture; and they cried out, ‘How lovely the creation!
How infinitely lovely the Creator!’
When the wind was adverse, they prayed; and, as it changed, one opened his mind to the other on the power of prayer, even the prayer ‘of a man subject to like passions as we are.’
As the voyage excited weariness, a devout listener confessed himself to be an unconverted man; and they reminded him of the promise to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at the word.
As they sailed pleasantly, with a favoring breeze, at the hour of evening prayer, they made a covenant with each other, like Jacob of old, and resolved, by the grace of
Christ, to cast all the strange gods which were in their hearts into the depths of the sea. A storm grew so high, that not a sail could
be set; and they raised their voices in prayer and song
[
425]
amidst the tempest; for to love the
Lord Jesus as a
brother gave consolation.
At
Charleston Oglethorpe bade them welcome; and, in five days more, the way-
faring men, whose home was beyond the skies, pitched their tents near
Savannah.
It remained to select for them a residence.
To cheer their principal men, as they toiled through the forest and across brooks,
Oglethorpe, having provided horses, himself joined the little party.
By the aid of blazed trees and Indian guides, he made his way through morasses; a fallen tree served as a bridge over a stream, which the horses swam, for want of a ford;
at night, he encamped with them abroad round a fire, and shared every fatigue, till the spot for their village was chosen, and, like the little stream which formed
its border, was named Ebenezer.
There they built
their dwellings, and there they resolved to raise a column of stone, in token of gratitude to God, whose providence had brought them safely to the ends of the earth.
In the same year, the town of
Augusta was laid out,
soon to become the favorite resort of Indian traders.
The good success of
Oglethorpe made the colony increase rapidly by volunteer emigrants.
‘His under taking will succeed,’ said
Johnson, the governor of
South Carolina; ‘for he nobly devotes all his powers to serve the poor, and rescue them from their wretchedness.’
‘He bears a great love to the servants and children of God,’ wrote the pastor of
Ebenezer.
‘He has taken care of us to the utmost of his ability.’
‘God has so blessed his presence and his regulations in the land, that others would not in many years have accomplished what he has brought about in one.’
At length, in April, 1734, after a residence in
America of about fifteen months,
Oglethorpe sailed for Eng-
[
426]
land, taking with him Tomo-chichi and others of the
Creeks, to do homage at court, and to invigorate the confidence of
England in the destiny of the new colony, which was shown to possess the friendship of the surrounding Indian nations.
His absence left
Georgia to its own development.
For its franchises, it had only the system of juries, and, though it could not prosper but by self-reliance, legislation by its own representatives was not begun
The laws, too, which the trustees had instituted, were irksome.
To prevent the monopoly of lands, to insure an estate even to the sons of the unthrifty, to strengthen a frontier colony, the trustees, deceived by reasonings from the system of feudal law, and by their own prejudices as members of the landed aristocracy of
England, had granted lands only in tail male.
Here was a grievance that soon occasioned a just discontent.
Another regulation, which prohibited the introduction of ardent spirits, could not be enforced: it led only to clandestine traffic.
A third rule forbade the introduction of slaves.
‘No
Rundle's Sermon to recommend the Charity for Georgia, &c. p. 15. 1733-1734. Feb. 16 |
settlement was ever before established on so humane a plan.’
Such was the praise of
Georgia uttered in
London in 1734. ‘Slavery, the misfortune, if not the dishonor, of other plantations, is absolutely proscribed.
Let avarice defend it as it will, there is an honest reluctance in humanity against buying and selling, and regarding those of our own species as our wealth and possessions.’
‘The name of slavery is here unheard and every inhabitant is free from unchosen masters and
oppression’ And the testimony of
Oglethorpe, who
yet had once been willing to employ negroes, and once, at least, ordered the sale of a slave, explains the mo-
tive of the prohibition.
‘Slavery,’ he relates, ‘is
[
427]
against tile gospel, as well as the fundamental law of
England.
We refused, as trustees, to make a law permitting such a horrid crime.’
‘The purchase of negroes is forbidden,’ wrote Von Reck, ‘on account of the vicinity of the Spaniards;’ and this was doubtless ‘the governmental view.’
The colony was also ‘an asylum to receive the distressed.
It was necessary, therefore,
not to permit slaves in such a country; for slaves starve the poor laborer.’
But, after a little more than two years, several ‘of the better sort of people in
Savannah’ addressed a petition to the trustees ‘for the use
of negroes.’
During his stay in
England,
Oglethorpe won univer-
sal favor for his colony, the youngest child of the colonial enterprise of
England.
Parliament continued its benefactions; the king expressed interest in a province which bore his name.
While the jealousy of the maritime powers on the continent was excited, new emigrants continued to be sent from
England.
The voice of mercy reached the Highlands of
Scotland; and a company of Gaelic mountaineers, as brave as the bravest warriors of the
Creek nation, some of them kindred to the loyalists who fell victims to their fidelity to the Stuarts, embarked for
America, and established New Inverness, in
Darien,
‘Where wild Altama murmured to their woe.’
Within a few weeks, a new company of three
hundred emigrants, conducted by
Oglethorpe himself, whose care of them during the voyage proved him as considerate as he was brave, ascended a rising ground, not far from
Tybee Island, ‘where they all knelt and returned thanks to God for having safely arrived in
Georgia.’
Among that group was a reinforcement of Moravians;—men who had a faith above fear; ‘whose
[
428]
wives and children even were not afraid to die;’
whose simplicity and solemnity, in their conferences and prayers, seemed to revive the primitive ‘assem-
blies, where form and state were not, but
Paul, the tent-maker, or Peter, the fisherman, presided with the demonstration of the Spirit.’
There, too, were John and
Charles Wesley,—the latter selected as the secretary to
Oglethorpe, the former eager to become an apostle to the Indians,—fervent enthusiasts, who, by their own confession, were not yet disciplined to a peaceful possession of their souls.
‘That they were simple of heart, but yet that their ideas were disturbed,’ was the judgment of
Zinzendorf.
‘Our end in leaving our native country,’ said they, ‘is not to gain riches and honor, but singly this—to live wholly to the glory of God.’
They desired to make
Georgia a religious colony, having no theory but devotion, no ambition but to quicken the sentiment of piety.
The reformation of Luther and Calvin had included a political revolution; its advocates went abroad on the whirlwind, eager to overthrow the institutions which time had consecrated and selfishness perverted.
The age in which religious and political excitements were united, had passed away; with the period of commercial influence fanaticism had no sympathy.
Mystic piety, more intense by its aversion to the theories of the eighteenth century, appeared as the rainbow; and Wesley was as the sower, who comes after the clouds have been lifted up, and the floods have subsided, and scatters his seed in the serene hour of peace.
The new devotees, content to remain under the guardianship of the established government, sought to enjoy the exquisite delights of religious sensibility, not to overthrow dynasties, or to break the bonds of colonial depend
[
429]
ence.
By
John Wesley, therefore, who resided in
America less than two years, no share in moulding the political institutions of
Georgia was desired or exerted.
As he strolled through natural avenues of palmettoes and evergreen hollies, and woods sombre with hanging moss, his heart gushed forth in addresses to God.
Is there a thing beneath the sun,
That strives with Thee my heart to share?
Ah!
tear it thence, and reign alone,—
The Lord of every motion there.
The austerity of his maxims involved him in controversies with the mixed settlers of
Georgia: and his residence in
America preceded his influence on the religious culture of its people.
His brother was still less suited to shape events: fainting under fatigue, he sighed for sympathy; the privations and hardships of the wilderness, among rough associates, plunged his gentle nature into the depths of melancholy and homesickness; and, at this time, his journal, of which extracts have unwisely been made public, is not a record of events around him, but rather a chronicle of what passed within himself—the groundless jealousies of a pure mind, rendered suspicious by pining disease.
When afterwards
George Whitefield came, his intrepid nature did not lose its cheerfulness in the encounter with the wilderness; his eager benevolence, led by the example of the Moravians and the fame of the
Orphan House at
Halle, founded and sustained an orphan house at
Savannah by contributions which his eloquence extorted.
He became more nearly identified with
America, visited all the provinces from
Florida to the northern frontier, and made his grave in
New England; but he, also, swayed no legislatures, and is chiefly remembered for his fervor and his power of melting the multitude.
[
430]
At once,
Oglethorpe visited the Moravians at Eben-
ezer, to praise their good husbandry, and to select the site of their new settlement—of which the lines were
no sooner drawn, and the streets laid out by an engineer, than huts covered with bark rose up as a shelter, and the labors of the field were renewed.
In a few years, the produce of raw silk by the Germans amount
Von Reck's Nachricht, 36. |
ed to ten thousand pounds a year; and indigo also became a staple.
In earnest memorials, they long deprecated the employment of negro slaves, pleading the ability of the white man to toil even under the suns of
Georgia.
Their religious affections bound them together in the unity of brotherhood; their controversies were decided among themselves; every event of life had its moral; and the fervor of their worship never disturbed their healthy tranquillity of judgment.
They were cheerful, and at peace.
From the
Moravian towns Oglethorpe hastened to
the southward, passing in a scout boat through the narrow inland channels, which delighted the eye by their clear, sea-green color and stillness, and were sheltered by woods of pines, and evergreen oaks, and cedars, that grew close to the water's side.
On the second day, aided by the zeal of his own men, and by
Indians skilful in using the oar, he arrived at
St. Simon's Island.
A fire, kindling the long grass on an old Indian field, cleared a space for the streets of
Frederica; and, amidst the carols of the great numbers of
red and the mocking bird, and the noisy mirth of the rice bird, a fort was constructed on the centre of the bluff, with four bastions, commanding the river, and protecting the palmetto cabins, which, appearing like a camp, with bowers instead of tents, and smooth leaves, of a pleasing color, for canvass, each twenty
[
431]
feet by fourteen, were set up on forks and poles in
regular rows—a tight and convenient shelter for the emigrants.
It was but ten miles from
Frederica to the Scottish settlement at
Darien.
To give heart to them by his presence,
Oglethorpe, in the Highland costume, sailed up the Alatamaha; and all the
Highlanders, as they perceived his approach, assembled, with their plaids, broadswords, targets, and fire-arms, to bid him welcome.
The brave men were pleased that a town was to be settled, and ships to come up, so near them, and also that they now had a communication by land with
Savannah.
The ‘boggy places’ proved to be not quite impassable; ‘two rivers,’ that had no ford, could be crossed by swimming; and trees had been blazed all the way for a ‘horse-road.’
It remained to vindicate the boundaries of
Georgia.
1736 April. Von Reck's Reise Diarium in Urlsperger, i. 846. |
The messenger who, in February, had been despatched to
St. Augustine, had not returned.
Oglethorpe resolved himself to sustain the pretensions of
Great Britain to the territory as far south as the
St. John's, and the
Highlanders volunteered their service.
With their aid,
he explored the channels south of
Frederica; and on the island to which Tomo-chichi gave the name of
Cumberland, he marked out a fort to be called St. Andrew's. But
Oglethorpe still pressed forward to the south.
Passing
Amelia Island, and claiming the
St. John's River as the southern boundary of the territory possessed by the
Indian subjects of
England at the time of the treaty at
Utrecht, on the southern extremity of the island at the entrance of that stream, where myrtles and palmettoes abounded, and wild grape vines, climbing to the summit of trees, formed as beautiful
Von Reck, in Urlsperger i. 848 |
walks as art could have designed, he planted the
Fort St. George, as the defence of the
British frontier.
[
432]
Indignant at the near approach of the
English, the
Spaniards of
Florida threatened opposition.
The messengers of
Oglethorpe were detained as prisoners, and
he resolved to claim their liberty.
The rumors of his intended expedition had reached the wilderness; and
the Uchees, all brilliantly painted, came down to form an alliance, and to grasp the hatchet.
Long speeches and the exchange of presents were followed by the war-dance.
Tomo-chichi appeared, also, with his war-
riors, ever ready to hunt the buffalo along the frontiers of
Florida, or to engage in warfare with the few planters on the peninsula; and an embarkation was made for the purpose of regulating the southern boundary of the
British colonies.
Oglethorpe knew his danger: the Spaniards had been tampering with his allies, and were willing to cut off the settlements in
Georgia at a blow; the promised succors, which he awaited from
England, had not ar rived.
But, in his enthusiasm, regardless of incessant toil, regardless of himself,—unlike Baltimore and
Penn, securing domains not to his family, but to emi grants,—unlike so many royal governors at the north, amassing no lands, and not even appropriating to himself permanently a cottage, or a single lot of fifty acres, —he resolved to assert the claims of
England, and preserve his colony as the bulwark of
English North Amer---ica.
‘To me,’ said he to
Charles Wesley, ‘death is
nothing.’
‘If separate spirits,’ he added, ‘regard our little concerns, they do it as men regard the follies of their childhood.’
The people at
Frederica declared to him their readiness to die in defence of the place, grieving only at his exposure to danger without them.
But, for that season, active hostilities were avoided by negotiation.
The
Spaniard did, indeed, claim peremptorily the whole country as far as St. Helena's
[
433]
Sound; but the
English envoys at
St. Augustine were
set free; and, if the
English post on
St. George was abandoned, St. Andrew's, commanding the approach to the
St. Mary's, was maintained.
Hence the
St. Ma-
ry's ultimately became the boundary of the colony of
The friendship of the red men insured the safety of the
English settlements.
The
Chickasas, animated by their victory over the
Illinois and
D'Artaguette, came
down to narrate how unexpectedly they had been attacked, how victoriously they had resisted, with what exultations they had consumed their prisoners by fire.
Ever attached to the
English, they now sent their deputation of thirty warriors, with their civil sachem and war chief, to make an alliance with
Oglethorpe, whose fame had reached the
Mississippi.
They brought for him an Indian chaplet, made from the spoils of their enemies, glittering with feathers of many hues, and
enriched with the horns of buffaloes.
Thus the
Creeks, the Cherokees, the Chickasas, were his unwavering friends, and even the Choctas had covenanted with him to receive English traders.
To hasten preparations for the impending contest with
Spain,
Oglethorpe embarked for
England.
He could
report to the trustees, ‘that the colony was doing
well; that Indians from seven hundred miles' distance had confederated with him, and acknowledged the authority of his sovereign.’
Receiving a commission as brigadier-general, with
a military command extending over
South Carolina,
Oglethorpe himself, in
Great Britain, raised and disciplined a regiment; and, after an absence of more than a year and a half, he returned to
Frederica.
There,
by the industry of his soldiers, the walls of the fortress
[
434]
were completed.
Their ivy-mantled ruins are still
standing; and the village, now almost a deserted one, in the season of its greatest prosperity, is said to have
contained a thousand men.
At
Savannah, he was welcomed by salutes and bon-
fires.
But he refused any alteration in the titles of land.
The request for the allowance of slaves he rejected sternly, declaring that, if negroes should be introduced into
Georgia, ‘he would have no further
concern with the colony;’ and he used his nearly arbitrary power as the civil and military head of the state, the founder and delegated legislator of
Georgia, to interdict negro slavery.
The trustees applauded this decision, and, notwithstanding ‘repeated applications,’ ‘persisted in denying the use of negroes,’—
even though many of the planters, believing success impossible with ‘white servants,’ prepared to desert the colony.
The openness and fidelity of
Oglethorpe preserved the affection of the natives.
Muskhogees and Chickasas came round him once more, to renew their covenants of friendship.
The former had, from the first, regarded him as their father; and, as he had made some progress in their language, they appealed to him
directly in every emergency.
Nor was this all. In the summer of 1739, the civil
and war chiefs of the Muskhogees held a general council in Cowetas, and adjourned it to Cusitas, on the
Chattahouchee; and
Oglethorpe, making his way through solitary paths, fearless of the suns of summer, the night dews, or the treachery of some hireling Indian, came also into the large square of their councilplace, to distribute presents to his red friends; to renew and explain their covenants; to address them
[
435]
in words of affection; and to smoke with their nations
the pipe of peace.
It was then agreed, that the ancient love of the tribes to the
British king should re-
main unimpaired; that the lands from the
St. John's to the
Savannah, between the sea and the mountains, belonged, of ancient right, to the Muskhogees.
Their cession to the
English of the land on the
Savannah, as far as the
Ogeechee, and along the coast to the
St. John's, as far into the interior as the tide flows, was, with a few reservations, confined; and the entrance to the rest of their domains was barred forever against the Spaniards.
The right of preemption was reserved for the trustees of
Georgia alone; nor might they enlarge their possessions, except with the consent of the ancient proprietaries of the soil.
The news of this treaty could not have reached
England before the negotiations with
Spain were abruptly terminated.
Walpole desired peace; he pleaded for it in the name of national honor, of justice, and of the true interests of commerce.
But the active English mind had become debauched by the hopes of sudden gains, and soured by disappointment, and was now resolved on illicit commerce, or on plunder and conquest.
A war was desired, not because
England insisted on cutting logwood in the
Bay of Honduras, where
Spain claimed a jurisdiction, and had founded no settlements; nor because the
South Sea company differed with the king of
Spain as to the balances of their accounts; nor yet because the boundary between
Carolina and
Florida was still in dispute;— these differences could all have been adjusted;—but because
English ‘merchants were not permitted to
Lord Mahon's History of England, III. 5 |
smuggle with impunity.’
A considerable part of the population of
Jamaica was sustained by the profits of the contraband trade with Spanish ports; the annual
[
436]
ship to Porto Bello, which the assiento permitted, was
followed at a distance by smaller vessels; and fresh bales of goods were nightly introduced in the place of those that had been discharged during the day. Not only did the slave ships assist in violating the revenue laws of
Spain; British smuggling vessels, also, pretending distress, would claim the right by treaty to enter the
Spanish harbors on the
Gulf of Mexico.
In consequence, the colonial commerce of
Spain was almost annihilated.
In farmer days, the tonnage of the fleet of
Cadiz had amounted to fifteen thousand tons; it was now reduced to two thousand tons, and had no office but to carry the royal revenues from
America.
The monarch of
Spain, the victim of bigoted scruples, busy in celebrating auto-da-fes and burning heretics, and regarding as an affair of state the question who should be revered as the true patron saint of his kingdom, was at last roused to angry impatience.
His complaints, when addressed to
England, were turned aside; and when the
Spanish officers showed vigor in maintaining the commercial system of their sovereign, the
English merchants resented their interference as the ebullitions of pride, and the wanton aggressions of tyranny.
One
Jenkins, who to the
pursuits of smuggling had joined maraudings which might well have been treated as acts of piracy, was summoned to the bar of the house of commons to give evidence.
The tale, which he was disciplined to tell, of the loss of his ears by Spanish cruelty, of dishonor offered to the
British flag and the
British crown, was received without distrust.
‘What were your feelings, when in the hands of such barbarians?’
was asked by a member, as his mutilated ears were exhibited.
‘I commended my soul to my God,’ answered the impudent fabler, ‘and my cause to my country.’—‘We
[
437]
have no need of allies to enable us to command jus-
tice; the story of
Jenkins will raise volunteers:’ such was the cry of
Pulteney, resolved to find fault at any rate, and to embarrass and overthrow the administration of
Walpole.
The clamor of orators was seconded by the greatest poets of that age:
Pope, in his dying notes sneered at the timidity which was willing to shun giving offence,
And own the Spaniard did a waggish thing,
Who cropped our ears, and sent them to the king;
and the early genius of
Johnson, in more energetic strains, indignant at the supporters of
Walpole, as men who explained away the rights of their country, and openly pleaded for pirates, vindicated the right of
England to the territory which
Oglethorpe had colonized:—
Has Heaven reserved, in pity to the poor,
No pathless waste, or undiscovered shore?
No secret island in the boundless main?
No peaceful desert yet unclaimed by Spain?
At last, a convention was signed.
The mutual
claims for damages sustained in commerce were balanced and liquidated; and, while the king of
Spain demanded of the
South Sea company sixty-eight thousand pounds, as due to him for his share of their profits, he agreed to pay, as an indemnity to British merchants for losses sustained by unwarranted seizures, the sum of ninety-five thousand pounds. On these questions no dispute remained but the trivial one, whether the
British government should guaranty to
Spain the acknowledged debt of the
South Sea company.
The question with regard to the boundaries of
Florida was equally well settled; the actual possessions of each nation were to remain without change till commissioners Could mark the boundary.
In other words,
England
[
438]
was to hold undisturbed jurisdiction over the country
as far as the mouth of the
St. Mary's.
It is to the honor of
Walpole, that he dared to resist the clamor of the mercantile interest, and, opposing the imbecile duke of
Newcastle, boldly advocated the acceptance of the convention.
‘It requires no great abilities in a minister,’ he exclaimed, ‘to pursue such measures as may make a war unavoidable.
But how many ministers have known the art of avoiding war by making a safe and honorable peace?’—‘The convention,’ said
William Pitt, afterwards Lord Chatham, —giving an augury, in his first speech on American affairs, that his political career might be marked by energy, but not by an elevated political faith,—‘The convention is insecure, unsatisfactory, and dishonorable: I think, from my soul, it is nothing but a stipulation for national ignominy.
The complaints of your despairing merchants, the voice of
England, has condemned it. Be the guilt of it upon the head of the advisers; God forbid that this committee should share the guilt by approving it.’
What judgment posterity would form of
Pulteney, was foreshadowed in the poetry of Akenside; but there was no need of awaiting the judgment of posterity, or listening to the indignation of contemporary patriotism;
Pulteney and his associates stand self-condemned.
The original documents demonstrate ‘the extreme injustice’ of their opposition.
‘It was my fortune,’ said
Edmund Burke, ‘to converse with those who principally excited that clamor.
None of them, no, not one, did in the least defend the measure, or attempt to justify their conduct.’
In an ill hour for herself, in a happy one for
Amer-
ica,
England declared war against
Spain.
If the
[
439]
rightfulness of the
European colonial system be con-
ceded, the declaration was a wanton invasion of it forimmediate selfish purposes; but, in endeavoring to open the ports of Spanish America to the mercantile enterprise of her own people,
England was also, though unconsciously, making war on monopoly, and advancing the cause of commercial freedom.
The struggle was now, not for
European conquests, or the balance of power, or religion, but for the opportunity of commerce with the colonies of
Spain.
That a great nation, like
Spain, should be compelled by force of arms to admit a contraband trade with any part of its dominions, was an absurdity.
England, therefore, could gain her purpose only by destroying the colonial system of
Spain; and she began a career, which could not end till American colonies of her own, as well as of
Spain, should obtain independence.
To acquire possession, of the richest portions of
Spanish America, Anson was sent, with a small squadron, into the
Pacific; but disasters at sea compelled him to renounce the hope of conquest, and seek only booty.
As he passed
Cape Horn, the winds, of which the fury made an ordinary gale appear as a gentle breeze, scattered his ships; one after another of them was wrecked or disabled; and at last, with a single vessel, after circumnavigating the globe, he returned to
England, laden with spoils, rich in adventures, having won a merited celebrity by his sufferings, his good judgment, and his cheerful perseverance,—
while the brilliant sketches of the Ladrones, by the historian of his voyage, made his name familiar to the lovers of romance throughout
Europe.
In November, 1739,
Edward Vernon, with six men-
of-war, appeared off Porto Bello.
The attack on the
[
440]
feeble and ill-supplied garrison began on the twenty-
first; and, on the next day,
Vernon, losing but seven men, was in possession of the town and the castles.
A booty of ten thousand dollars, and the pleasure of demolishing the fortifications of the place, were the sole fruits of the enterprise; and, having acquired no rightful claim to glory,
Vernon returned to
Jamaica.
Party spirit, in free governments, sometimes vitiates the contemporary verdict of opinion.
Vernon belonged to the opposition; and the enemies of
Walpole exalted his praises, till his heroism was made a proverb, his birthday signalized by lights and bonfires, and his head selected as the favorite ornament for signposts.
Meantime, he took and demolished Fort Chagre, on
this side of the Isthmus of
Darien; but without result; for the gales near
Cape Horn had prevented the coop eration of Anson at
Panama.
The victory, in its effects, was sad for the northern colonies.
England prepared to send to the
West Indies by far the largest fleet and army that had ever appeared in the
Gulf of Mexico, and summoned the colonies north of
Carolina to contribute four battalions to the armament.
No colony refused its quota; even
Pennsylvania voted a contribution of money, and thus enabled its governor to enlist troops for the occasion.
‘It will not be amiss,’ wrote
Sir Charles Wager to
Admiral Vernon, ‘for both French and Spaniards to be a month or two in the
West Indies before us, that they may be half dead, and half roasted, before our fleet arrives.’
So the expedition from
England did not begin its voyage till October, and, after stopping for water at
Dominica, where Lord Cathcart, the commander of the land forces, fell a victim to the climate,
reached
Jamaica in the early part of the following year.
[
441]
How has history been made the memorial of the
passionate misdeeds of men of mediocrity!
The death of Lord Cathcart left the command of the land forces with the inexperienced, irresolute
Wentworth; the
naval force was under the impetuous
Vernon, who was impatient of contradiction, and ill disposed to endure even an associate.
The enterprise, instead of having one good leader, had two bad ones.
Wasting at
Jamaica the time from the ninth of January, 1741, till near the end of the month, at last, with
a fleet of twenty-nine ships of the line, beside about eighty smaller vessels, with fifteen thousand sailors, with twelve thousand land forces, equipped with all sorts of warlike instruments, and every kind of convenience,
Vernon weighed anchor, without any definite purpose.
Havana lay within three days sail; its conquest would have made
England supreme in the
Gulf of Mexico.
But
Vernon insisted on searching for the fleet of the
French and
Spaniards; and the
French had already left the fatal climate.
The council of war, yielding to the vehement direction of
Admiral Vernon, resolved to attack
Carthagena, the strongest place in Spanish America.
The fleet appeared before the town on the fourth of March, and lost five days in inactivity.
Fifteen days were required to gain possession of the fortress that rose near the entrance to the harbor; the Spaniards themselves abandoned Castillo Grande.
It remained to storm Fort San Lazaro, which commanded the town.
The attack, devised without judgment, was made by twelve hundred men with intrepidity; but the assailants were repulsed, with the loss of half their number,—while the admiral gave no timely aid to the land forces; and discord aggravated defeat.
Erelong, rains set in; the
[
442]
days were wet, the nights brilliant with vivid light-
ning.
The fever of the low country in the tropics began its rapid work; men perished in crowds; the dead were cast into the sea, sometimes without windingsheet or sinkers; the hospital ships were crowded with miserable sufferers.
In two days, the effective force on land dwindled from six thousand six hundred to three thousand two hundred.
Men grew as jealous as they were wretched, and inquired if there were not Papists in the army.
The
English could only demolish the fortifications and retire.
‘Even the Spaniards,’ wrote
Vernon, ‘will give us a certificate that we have effectually destroyed all their castles.’
In July, an attack on
Santiago, in
Cuba, was meditated, and abandoned almost as soon as attempted.
Such were the fruits of an expedition which was to have prepared the way for conquering
Mexico and
Peru.
Of the recruits from the colonies, nine out of ten fell victims to the climate and the service.
When the fleet returned to
Jamaica, late in November, 1741, the entire loss of lives is estimated to have been about twenty thousand, of whom few fell by the enemy.
Vernon attributed the failure to his own want of a sole command.
It is certain that nothing had been accomplished.
In March, 1742,
Vernon and
Wentworth planned an expedition against
Panama; but, on reaching Porto Bello, the design was voted impracticable, and they returned.
Meantime, the commerce of
England with
Spain itself was destroyed; the assiento was interrupted; even the contraband was impaired; while English ships became the plunder of privateers.
England had made no acquisitions, and had inflicted on the
Spanish West Indies far less evil than she herself had suffered.
[
443]
The disasters in the
West Indies prevented the con-
quest of
Florida.
Having, in September, 1739, received instructions from
England of the approaching
war with
Spain,
Oglethorpe hastened, before the close of the year, to extend the boundaries of
Georgia once more to the
St. John's, and immediately, in December, urged upon the province of
South Carolina the reduc-
tion of the Spaniards at
St. Augustine.
‘As soon as the sea is free,’ he adds, ‘they will send a large body of troops from
Cuba.’
His own intrepidity would brook no delay, and, in the first week of 1740, he entered
Florida. ‘Dear
Mr. Oglethorpe,’ wrote the Moravian ministers, ‘is now exposed to much danger;
for the Spaniards wish nothing more than to destroy his health and life.
He does not spare himself, but, in the common soldier's dress, he engages in the most perilous actions.
Since the new year, he has captured
Bolzius and Gronau, in Urlsperger i. 2555. |
two small fortified places of the Spaniards, which were the outposts of
St. Augustine, and now waits only for more Indians and more soldiers to attack that important fortress itself.’
In March,
Oglethorpe hurried to
Charleston, to encourage the zeal of
South Carolina; but the forces, which that province voted in April, were not ready till May; and when the expedition, composed of six hundred regular troops, four hundred militia from
Carolina, beside Indian auxiliaries, who were soon reduced to two hundred, advanced to the walls of
St. Augustine,
the garrison, commanded by
Monteano, a man of courage and energy, had already received supplies.
A vigorous sally was successful against a detached party, chiefly of Highlanders, at Fort Moosa.
Yet, for nearly five weeks,
Oglethorpe endeavored, in defiance of his own weakness and the strength of the
[
444]
place, to devise measures for victory, till ‘the
Carolina troops, enfeebled by the heat, dispirited by sickness, and fatigued by fruitless efforts, marched away in large
bodies.’
The small naval force also resolved, in council, ‘to take off all their men, and sail away,’ and thus ‘put an end to the enterprise.’
Oglethorpe returned without molestation to
Frederica.
His conduct throughout the summer was a commentary on his character.
The few prisoners whom he made were kindly treated; the cruelties of the savages were reproved and restrained; not a field, or a garden, or a house, near
St. Augustine, was injured, unless by the Indians,— for burning them he thought the worst use to which they could be devoted.
‘He endured more fatigues than any of his soldiers; and, in spite of ill health con-
sequent on exposure to perpetual damps, he was always at the head in every important action.’
The
English still asserted their superiority on the
southern frontier.
St. Augustine had not fallen; the Spaniards had not been driven from
Florida; but
Oglethorpe maintained the extended limits of
Georgia; his Indian alliances gave him the superiority in the wilderness as far as the land of the Choctas.
At last, to make good its pretensions, the
Spanish government resolved on invading
Georgia.
It collected its forces from
Cuba, and a large fleet, with an armament of which the force has been greatly
exaggerated, sailed towards the mouth of the
St. Mary's.
Fort William, which
Oglethorpe had constructed at the southern extremity of
Cumberland Island, defended the entrance successfully, till, fighting his way through Spanish vessels, which endeavored to intercept him, the general himself reinforced it. Then, promptly returning to
St. Simon's, having no aid from Carolina;
[
445]
with less than a thousand men, by his vigilant activity,
trusting in
Providence, he prepared for defence.
‘We are resolved not to suffer defeat’—such was his cheer-
1742 June 24.
Nachricht vom Einfall der Spanier in Georgien, <*> Urlsperger II. 1254. |
ing message to
Savannah;—‘we will rather die, like
Leonidas and his Spartans, if we can but protect
Carolina and the rest of the
Americans from desolation.’
And, going on board one of the little vessels that chanced to be at hand, he called on the seamen to stand by their liberties and country.
‘For myself,’ he added, ‘I am prepared for all dangers.
I know
the enemy are far more numerous than we; but I rely on the valor of our men, and, with the aid of God, I do not doubt we shall be victorious.’
On the fifth of July, seven days after it first came to
anchor off
Simon's Bar, the Spanish fleet of thirty-six vessels, with the tide of flood and a brisk gale, entered St. Simon's Harbor, and succeeded in passing the
English batteries on the southern point of the island.
The general signalled his ships to run up to
Frederica, and, spiking the guns of the lower fort, withdrew to
the town; while the Spaniards landed at Gascoin's Bluff, and took possession of the camps which the
English had abandoned.
But, in constructing the road to
Frederica,
Oglethorpe had left a morass on the
one side, and a dense
oak wood on the other.
A party of Spaniards advance; they are within a mile of the town; they are met by
Oglethorpe himself, with the Highland company, are overcome, pursued, and most of the party killed or taken prisoners.
A second party of the Spaniards march to the assault; they come to a place where the narrow avenue, bending with the edge of the morass, forms a crescent: as they reach the fatal spot, Highland caps rise up in the wood, and, under the command of
Mackay and
Sutherland, an
[
446]
attack is begun.
The opposing grenadiers at first
stood firm, and discharged volley after volley at an enemy whom the thicket concealed.
But, as Ogle-
thorpe hastened to the scene, he found the victory already complete, except as a Highland shout or the yell of an Indian announced the discovery of some straggling Spaniard.
The enemy had retreated, with a loss of about two hundred men, leaving to the ground, which was now strown with the dead, the name of ‘the
Bloody Marsh.’
Despairing of success, and weakened by divisions,—
deceived, too, by an ingenious stratagem,—the Spaniards, on the night of the fourteenth, reembarked, leaving a quantity of ammunition and guns behind them.
On the eighteenth, on their way to the south, they renewed their attack on
Fort William, which was bravely defended by
Stuart and his little garrison of fifty men. The English boats watched the movements of the retreating squadron till it was south of the
St. John's; and, on the twenty-fourth day of July,
Oglethorpe could publish an order for a general thanksgiving for the end of the invasion.
Thus was
Georgia colonized and defended; its frontiers were safe against inroads; and, though
Florida still lingered under the jurisdiction of
Spain, its limits were narrowed.
To meet the complaints of the disaffected,
Oglethorpe, after a year of tranquillity, sailed for
England, never again to behold the colony
with which the disinterested toils of ten years had identified his fame.
For the welfare of
Georgia, he had renounced ease and the enjoyment of fortune, to
scorn danger, and fare ‘much harder than any of the people that were settled there.’
Yet his virtues were the result of sentiment, not of reflection, and were
[
447]
colored by the prejudices of his nation, the hatred of
Papists, the aversion to
Spain.
But the gentleness of his nature appeared in all his actions: he was merciful
to the prisoner; a father to the emigrant; the unwavering friend of Wesley; the constant benefactor of the Moravians; honestly zealous for the conversion of the Indians; invoking for the negro the panoply of the
gospel.
His heart throbbed warmly for all around him; he loved to relieve the indigent, to soothe the mourner; and his name became known as another expression for ‘vast benevolence of soul.’
Of an honorable lineage; from boyhood devoted to the profession of arms; by hereditary attachment, and by personal character, a friend to legitimacy; he was, for a commercial age, the representative of that chivalry which knew neither fear nor reproach, and felt a stain on honor like a wound.
There are men filled with the sentiment of humanity, yet having a predilection for hierarchical forms,—revering the institutions of aristocracy, with a genuine faith in them,—willing to protect the humble, rather than to surrender power and establish equality.
Such was
Oglethorpe.
Loyal and brave; choleric, yet merciful; versed in elegant letters; affable even to talkativeness; slightly boastful, and tinged with vanity,—he was ever ready to shed blood, rather than brook an insult, and yet more ready to expose life for those who looked to him for defence.
A monarchist in the state, friendly to the church, he seemed, even in youth, like one who had survived his times,—like the relic of a former century and a more chivalrous age,—illustrating to the modern world of business what a crowd of virtues and charities could cluster round the heart of a Cavalier.
The life of
Oglethorpe was prolonged to near fivescore;
[
448]
and, even in the last year of it, he was extolled
as ‘the finest figure’ ever seen, the impersonation of venerable age; his faculties were as bright as ever,
and his eye was undimmed; ever ‘heroic, romantic, and full of the old gallantry,’ he was like the sound of the lyre, as it still vibrates, after the spirit of the age that sweeps its strings has passed away.
But, as he belonged to the past, he could not found enduring institutions.
He could not mould the future, and his legislation did not outlive his power.
The system of tail male went gradually into oblivion; the importation of rum was no longer forbidden; slaves from
Carolina were hired by the planter, first for a short period, then for life or a hundred years. Slavers from
Africa sailed directly to
Savannah, and the laws against them were not rigidly enforced.
Whitefield, who believed that God's providence would certainly make slavery terminate for the advantage of the Africans, pleaded before the trustees in its favor, as essential to the prosperity of
Georgia; even the poorest people earnestly desired
the change.
The
Moravians still expressed regret, moved partly by a hatred of oppression, and partly by
Urlsperger, III. 482.
Compare Americanisches Ackerwerke, Gottes, 4. |
antipathy to the race of colored men. At last, they too began to think that negro slaves might be employed in a Christian spirit; and it was agreed that, if the negroes are treated in a Christian manner, their change of country would prove to them a benefit.
A message
from
Germany served to hush their scruples.
‘If you take slaves in faith, and with the intent of conducting them to
Christ, the action will not be a sin, but may prove a benediction.’
After the departure of
Oglethorpe, the southern colonies enjoyed repose; for the war for colonial commerce had become merged in a vast
European
[
449]
struggle, involving the principles and the designs
which had agitated the civilized world for centuries.
In
France,
Fleury, like
Walpole, desiring to adhere to
the policy of peace, was, like
Walpole, overruled by the selfishness of his rivals.
He looked anxiously upon
the commotions in
Europe, and saw no way of escape.
It appeared to him as if the end of the world was at hand; and it was so with regard to the world of feudalism and Catholic legitimacy.
He expressed his aversion to all wars; and when the king of
Spain—
whom natural melancholy, irritated by ill health and losses, prompted to abdicate the throne—obtained of Louis XV., under his own hand, a promise of fifty ships of the line, the prime minister explained his purposes:—‘I do not propose to begin a war with
England, or to seize or to annoy one British ship, or to take one foot of land possessed by
England in any part of the world.
Yet I must prevent
England from accomplishing its great purpose of appropriating to itself the entire commerce of the
West Indies.’
‘
France, though it has no treaty with
Spain, cannot consent that the
Spanish colonies should fall into English hands.’
‘It is our object,’ said the statesmen of
France, ‘not to make war on
England, but to induce it to consent to a peace.’
Such was the wise disposition of the aged
Fleury, when, by the death of Charles VI., the extinction of the male line of the house of Hapsburg raised a question tion on the Austrian succession.
The pragmatic sanction, to which
France was a party, secured the whole
Austrian dominions to
Maria Theresa, the eldest daughter of Charles VI.; while, from an eru<*> genealogy or previous marriages, the sovereign of
Spain, of
Saxony, and of
Bavaria, each derived a claim to the
[
450]
undivided heritage.
The interest of the
French King,
his political system, his faith as pledged by a solemn treaty, the advice of his minister, demanded of him the recognition of the rights of
Maria Theresa in their integrity; and yet, swayed by the intrigues of the
Belle Isles and the hereditary hatred of
Austria, without one decent pretext, he constituted himself the centre of an alliance against her. Each of his associates in the war claimed the entire
Austrian succession; and
France, which aimed at its dismemberment, could engage in the strife only as the common supporter of their several unfounded pretensions to the whole.
But individuals, who are bound to each other from selfishness, only, are ever ready to prove false; humanity is the same in masses.
Louis XV.
united his allies by no honest principles, by no definite policy, and was deserted by them, as the selfishness of each could in another manner be better gratified.
Thus the condition of
European political relations was that of tangled intrigues.
No statesman of that day, except
Frederick, seemed in any degree to perceive the tendency of events As
England, by its arrogant encroachments on
Spain, unconsciously enlarged the commercial freedom, or began the independence, of colonies; so
France, by its unjustifiable war on
Austria, floated from its moorings, and foreboded the wreck of Catholic legitimacy.
In the great
European contest,
England, true to its policy of connecting itself with the second continental
power, gave subsidies to
Austria.
The fleets of
England and
France meet in the Mediterranean; the fleet
of
England is victorious.
France declares war against
England also; and the little conflicts in
America are lost in the universal conflagration of
Europe.
Never die history present such a scene of confusion.
[
451]
While the selfishness which had produced the general
war, was itself without faith, it made use of all the resources that were offered by ancient creeds or ancient animosities, by Protestantism and the Roman church, legitimacy and the mercantile system, the ancient rivalry of
France and
Austria, the reciprocal jealousies of
France and
England.
The enthusiasm of other centuries in religious strifes was extinct; and the new passion for popular power was but just beginning to swell.
Europe rocked like the ocean on the lulling of a long storm, when the opposite wind has just sprung up, throwing the heaving billows into tumultuous conflict.
The absence of purity in public life extinguished attachment to the administration, and left an opportunity to the Pretender to invade
Great Britain, to conquer
Scotland, to advance within four days march of
London.
This invasion had no partisans in
America, where the house of
Hanover was respected as the representative of Protestantism.
In
England, where monarchy was established, the vices of the reigning family had produced disgust and indifference; but the friends of revolution did not look beyond a choice of dynasty.
America was destined to choose, not between kings, but between forms of government.
On the continent
France gained fruitless victories.
Her flag waved over
Prague only to be struck down by
Austria.
Saxony,
Bavaria, her allies on the borders of
Austria, one after another, abandoned her. The fields
of blood at
Fontenoy, at Raucoux, at Laffeldt, were barren of results; for the collision of armies was but an unmeaning collision of brute force, guided by selfishness.
Statesmen scoffed at Virtue, and she avenged herself by bringing their counsels to nougne.
In vain
[
452]
did they marshal all
Europe in hostile array; they had
no torch of truth to pass from nation to nation; and therefore, though they could besiege cities, and burn the granges of the peasant, yet, except as their purposes were overruled, their lavish prodigality of treasure, and honor, and life, was fruitless to humanity.
One result, however, of which the character did not at first appear, was, during the conflict, achieved in the north.
Protestantism was represented on the continent by no great power.
Frederick II., a pupil of the philosophy of
Leibnitz and
Wolf, took advantage of the confusion, and, with the happy audacity of youth, and a discreet ambition, which knew where to set bounds to its own impetuosity, wrested
Silesia from
Austria.
Indifferent to alliances with powers which, having no fixed aims, could have no fixed friendships; he entered into the contest, and withdrew from it, alone.
Twice assuming arms, and twice con-
cluding a separate peace, he retired, with a guaranty from
England of the acquisitions which, aided by the power of opinion, constituted his monarchy the central point of political interest on the continent of
Europe.
Nor was the war limited to
Europe and
European colonies; in the
East Indies, the commercial companies of
France and
England struggled for supremacy.
The empire of the Great Mogul lay in ruins, inviting a restorer.
But who should undertake its reconstruction?
An active instinct urged the commercial world of
England to seek a nearer connection with Hindostan; again the project of discovering a north-western passage to
India was renewed; and, to encourage the
spirit of adventurous curiosity, the English parliament promised liberal rewards for success.
Meantime, the French company of the Indies, aided by the king, had
[
453]
confirmed its power at Pondicherry; and, as the Sor-
bonne had published to a credulous nation, that dividends on the stock of the commercial company would be usurious, and therefore a crime against religion, the corporation was unfortunate, though private merchants were gaining wealth in the
Carnatic and on the
Ganges.
The brave mariner from St. Malo, the enterprising
La Bourdonnais, from his government in the
Isle of France, had devised schemes of conquest.
But the future was not foreseen; and, limited by instructions from the
French ministers to make no acquisitions of territory whatever, though, with the aid of the governor of Pondicherry, he might have gained for
France the entire ascendency in Hindostan, he pledged his word of honor to restore
Madras to the
English, in the very hour of victory, when he proudly planted the
flag of
France on its fortress, and made himself master of the city which, next to Goa and
Batavia, was the most opulent of the
European establishments in
India.
Russia, also, was invoked to take part in the contest; and, in her first political associations with our country, she was on the side of our fathers, the ally of
Austria, the stipendiary of
England.
Thus did
Russia, hastening by her interference the approach of peace, indirectly act upon the fortunes of
America.
But, at an earlier period of the war, she had, in the opposite direction, drawn near our present borders.
After the empire of the czars had been extended over Kamtschatka, Peter the
Great had planned a voyage of discovery along the shores of
Asia; and, in 1728, Behring demonstrated the insulation of that continent on the east.
In 1741, the same intrepid navigator, sailing with two
vessels from Ochotzk, discovered the narrow straits which divide the continents; caught glimpses of the
[
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mountains of North-West America; traced the line of
the Aleutian archipelago; and, tossed by storms, in the midst of snows and ice, fell a victim to fatigue
on a desert island of the group which bears his name.
The gallant
Danish mariner did not know that.
he had seen America; and, though
Russia, by right of discovery, thus gained the north-west of our continent no conception dawned on the lewd revellers who surrounded the empress
Elizabeth, of the political institutions which already felt the weight of her influence in diplomacy, and were one day to extend their power to the borders of the empire bequeathed to her successors.
While the states of
Europe, by means of their wide relations, were fast forming the nations of the whole world into one political system, the few incidents of war in our
America could obtain no interest.
In themselves they were destitute of grandeur, and, though productive of individual distress, had no abiding influence whatever; it was felt that the true theatre of the war was not there.
A proposition was brought forward by
Coxe to form a union of all the colonies, for the purposes of defence; but danger was not so universal or so imminent as to furnish a sufficient motive for a confederacy.
The peace of the central provinces was unbroken; the government of
Virginia feared dissenters more than Spaniards.
Morris, in one of its interior counties, in the south-west range, chanced to have a copy of Luther on Galatians, and
Bunyan's works, and read from them, every
Lord's day, to his neighbors.
At last, a meeting-house was burt for him to read in. His fame spread, and he was taken up for examina-
tion; but when asked of what sect he was, he could
Hawks, Virginia 102, 103. |
not tell.
In the glens of the Old Dominion, he had not heard of sects; he knew not that men could disagree.
[
455]
The strifes of the world, in opinion and in arms,
had not disturbed the scattered planters of
Virginia.
The ownership of the west was still in dispute; and
at
Lancaster, in Pennsylvania, the governor of that state, with commissioners from
Maryland and from
Virginia, met the deputies of the
Iroquois, who, since tile union with the Tuscaroras, became known as the Six Nations. ‘We conquered,’ said they, ‘the country of the Indians beyond the mountains: if the Virgin-
ians ever gain a good right to it, it must be by us.’
And, for about four hundred pounds, the deputies of the Six Nations made ‘a deed recognizing the king's
right to all the lands that are or shall be, by his majesty's appointment, in the colony of
Virginia.’
The lands in
Maryland were, in like manner, confirmed to Lord Baltimore, but with definite limits; the deed to
Virginia extended the claim of that colony indefinitely in the west and north-west.
The events of the war of
England with
France were then detailed, and the conditions of the former treaties of alliance were called to mind.
‘The covenant chain between us and
Pennsylvania,’ replied Canassatego, ‘is an ancient one, and has never contracted rust.
We shall have all your country under our eye. Before we came here, we told Onondio, there was room enough at sea to fight, where he might do what he pleased; but he should not come upon our land to do any damage to our brethren.’
After a pause, it was added—‘The Six Nations have a great authority over the praying
Indians, who stand in the very gates of the
French: to show our further care, we have engaged these very Indians and other allies of the
French; they have agreed with us they will not join against you.’
Then the chain of union was made as bright as the sun.
[
456]
The Virginians proposed to educate the children of the
Iroquois at their public school.
‘Brother Assaragoa,’ they replied, ‘we must let you know we love our chil-
dren too well to send them so great a way; and the Indians are not inclined to give their children learning.
Your invitation is good, but our customs differ from yours.’And then, acknowledging the rich gifts from the three provinces, they continued, as if aware of their doom—‘We have provided a small present for you; but, alas!
we are poor, and shall ever remain so, as long as there are so many Indian traders among us. Theirs and the white people's cattle eat up all the grass, and make deer scarce.’
And they presented three bundles of skins.
At the close of the conference, the Indians gave, in their ordee, five
yo-hahs; and the
English agents, after a health to the king of
England and the Six Nations, put an end to the assembly by three loud huzzas.
Thus did
Great Britain at once acquire and confirm its claims to the basin of the
Ohio, and, at the same time, protect its northern frontier.
Yet the sense of danger led the Pennsylvanians, for the first time, to a military organization, effected, by a voluntary system, under the influence of
Franklin.
‘He was the sole author of two lotteries, that raised
above six thousand pounds, to pay for the charge of batteries on the river;’ and he ‘found a way to put
the country on raising above one hundred and twenty companies of militia, of which
Philadelphia raised ten, of about a hundred men each.’
‘The women were so zealous, that they furnished ten pairs of silk colors, wrought with various mottoes.’
Of the Quakers, many admitted the propriety of self-defence.
‘I principally esteem
Benjamin Franklin,’ wrote
Logan, ‘for saving the country by his contriving the militia.
He
[
457]
was the prime actor in all this;’ and when elected to
the command of a regiment, he declined the distinction, and, as a humble volunteer, ‘himself carried a musket among the common soldiers.’
While the central provinces enjoyed tranquillity, a
body of French from Cape Breton, before the news of the declaration of war with
France had been received in
New England, surprised the little English garrison at Canseau; destroyed the fishery, the fort, and the other buildings there, and removed eighty men, as
prisoners of war, to
Louisburg.
The fortifications of
Annapolis, the only remaining defence of
Nova Scotia, were in a state of ruin.
An attack made upon it by Indians in the service of the
French, accompanied by Le Loutre, their missionary, was with difficulty repelled.
The inhabitants of the province, sixteen thousand in number, were of French origin; and a revolt of the people, with the aid of Indian allies, might have once more placed
France in possession of its ancient colony While
William Shirley, the governor of
Massachusetts, foresaw the danger, and solicited aid from
England, the officers and men taken at Canseau, after passing the summer in captivity at
Louisburg, were sent to
Boston on parole.
They brought accurate accounts of the condition of that fortress; and
Shirley resolved on an enterprise for its reduction.
The fishermen, especially of
Marblehead, interrupted in their pursuits by the war, disdained an idle summer, and entered readily into the design.
The legislature of Massachusetts, after some hesitation, resolved on the
expedition by a majority of one vote.
Solicited to render assistance, New York sent a small supply of artillery, and
Pennsylvania of provisions;
New England alone furnished men; of whom
Connecticut raised five hundred
[
458]
and sixteen;
New Hampshire—to whose troops
Whitefield gave, as
Charles Wesley had done to
Oglethorpe, the motto, ‘Nothing is to be despaired of, with
Christ for the leader’—contributed a detachment of three hundred and four; while the forces levied for the occasion by
Massachusetts exceeded three thousand volunteers.
Three hundred men sailed from
Rhode Island, but too late for active service.
Of Common dore
Warren at
Antigua, an express-boat requested the cooperation with such ships as could be spared from the
Leeward Islands; but, on a consultation with the captains of his squadron, it was unanimously resolved by them, in the absence of directions from
England, not to engage in the scheme.
Thus, then, relying on themselves, the volunteers
of
New Hampshire and
Massachusetts, with a merchant,
William Pepperell of
Maine, for their
chief Seth commander, met at Canseau.
The inventive genius
Seth Pomroy's Ms. Journal of Louisburg Expedition.
R. Wolcott's Ms. Journal, &c. Letters, in Mass.
Hist. Coll. i. Memoirs of Last War. Ms.
Letters. Belknap, i 273. |
of
New England had been aroused; one proposed a model of a flying bridge, to scale the walls even before a breach should be made; another was ready with a caution against mines; a third, who was a minister, presented to the merchant general, ignorant of war, a plan for encamping the army, opening trenches, and placing batteries.
Shirley, wisest of all, gave instructions for the fleet of a hundred vessels to arrive together at a precise hour; heedless of the surf, to land in the dark on the rocky shore; to march forthwith, through thicket and bog, to the city, and beyond it; and to take the fortress and royal battery by surprise before daybreak.
Such was the confiding spirit at home.
The expedition itself was composed of fishermen, who, in time of war, could no longer use the hook and line
[
459]
on the
Grand Bank, but, with prudent forethought, took
with them their codlines; of mechanics, skilled from childhood in the use of the gun; of lumberers, inured
to fatigue and encampments in the woods; of husbandmen from the interior, who had grown up with arms in their hands, accustomed to danger, keenest marksmen, disciplined in the pursuit of larger and smaller game; all volunteers; all commanded by officers from among themselves; many of them church-members; almost all having wives and children.
On the first Sabbath, how did ‘the very great company
of people’ come together on shore, to hear the sermon on enlisting as volunteers in the service of the
Great Captain of our salvation!
As the ice of Cape Breton was drifting in such heaps that a vessel could not enter its harbors, the
New England fleet was detained many days at Canseau,—when, under a clear sky and a bright sun, the squadron of
Commodore Warren hap-
pily arrived.
Hardly had his council at
Antigua declined the enterprise, when instructions from
England bade him render every aid to
Massachusetts; and, learning at sea the embarkation of the troops, he sailed directly to Canseau.
The next day arrived nine ves-
sels from
Connecticut, with the forces from that colony, in high spirits and good health.
On the last day of April, an hour after sunrise, the armament, in a hundred vessels of
New England, entering the
Bay of Chapeaurouge, or Gabarus, as the
English called it, came in sight of
Louisburg.
Its walls, raised on a neck of land on the south side of the harbor, forty feet thick at the base, and from twenty to thirty feet high, all swept from the bastions, surrounded by a ditch eighty feet wide, were furnished with one hundred and one cannon, seventy-six swivels.
[
460]
and six mortars; its garrison was composed of more
than sixteen hundred men; the harbor was defended by an island battery of thirty twenty-two pounders,
and by the royal battery on the shore, having thirty large cannon, a moat and bastions, all so perfect that it was thought two hundred men could have defended
it against five thousand.
On the other hand, the
New England forces had but eighteen cannon and three mortars; but no sooner did they come in sight of the city, than, letting down the whale-boats, ‘they flew to shore, like eagles to the quarry.’
The
French, that came down to prevent the landing, were put to flight, and driven into the woods.
On the next day, a detach-
ment of four hundred men, led by
William Vaughan, a volunteer from
New Hampshire, marched by the city, which it greeted with three cheers, and took post near the north-east harbor.
The
French who held the royal battery, struck with panic, spiked its guns, and abandoned it in the night.
In the morning, boats from the city came to recover it; but
Vaughan and thirteen men, standing on the beach, kept them from landing till a reinforcement arrived.
To a major in one of the regiments of
Massachusetts,
Seth Pomroy, from
Northampton, a gunsmith, was assigned the oversight of above twenty smiths in drilling the cannon, which were little injured; and the fire from the city and the island battery was soon returned.
‘
Louisburg,’ wrote
Pomroy to his family, ‘is an exceedingly strong place, and seems impregnable.
It looks as if our campaign would last long; but I am willing to stay till Got's time comes to deliver the city into our hands.’
‘Suffer no anxious thought to rest in your mind about me,’ replied his wife, from the bosom of
New England. ‘The whole town is much engaged with concern
[
461]
for the expedition, how
Providence will order the af-
fair, for which religious meetings every week are maintained.
I leave you in the hand of God.’
The troops made a jest of technical military terms; they laughed at proposals for zigzags and epaule-
ments.
The light of nature, however, taught them to erect fascine batteries at the west and south-west of the city.
Of these the most effective was commanded by Tidcomb, whose readiness to engage in hazardous enterprises was justly applauded.
As it was necessary, for the purposes of attack, to drag the cannon over boggy morasses, impassable for wheels,
Meserve,
a
New Hampshire colonel, who was a carpenter, constructed sledges; and on these the men, with straps over their shoulders, sinking to their knees in mud, drew them safely over.
Thus the siege proceeded
in a random manner.
The men knew little of strict discipline; they had no fixed encampment; destitute of tents to keep off the fogs and dews, their lodgings
were turf and brush houses; their bed was the earth—dangerous resting-place for those of the people ‘unacquainted with lying in the woods.’
Yet the weather was fair; and the atmosphere, usually thick with palpable fogs, was, during the whole siege, singularly dry. All day long, the men, if not on duty, were busy with amusements,—firing at marks, fishing, fowling, wrestling, racing, or running after balls shot from the enemy's guns.
The feebleness of the garrison, which had only six hundred regular soldiers, with about a thou-
sand
Breton militia, prevented sallies; the hunting parties, as vigilant for the trail of an enemy as for game, rendered a surprise by land impossible; while the fleet of
Admiral Warren guarded the approaches by sea.
Four or five attempts to take the island battery,
[
462]
which commanded the entrance to the harbor, had
failed.
The failure is talked of among the troops; a party of volunteers, after the fashion of Indian ex-
peditions, under a chief of their own election, enlist for a vigorous attack by night; ‘but now
Providence seemed remarkably to frown upon the affair.’
The
assailants are discovered; a murderous fire strikes their boats before they land; only a part of them reach the island; a severe contest for near an hour ensues; those who can reach the boats escape, with the loss of sixty killed, and one hundred and sixteen taken prisoners.
To annoy the island battery, the
Americans, under the direction of
Gridley of
Boston, with persevering toil, erect a battery near the north cape of the harbor, on the
Light-House Cliff; while, within two hundred yards of the city, trenches had been thrown up near an advanced post, which, with guns from the royal battery, played upon the north-west gate of
Louisburg.
Still no breach had been effected, while the labors of the garrison were making the fortifications stronger than ever.
The expedition must be abandoned, or the. walls of the city scaled.
The naval officers, who had been joined by several ships-of-war, ordered from
England on the service, agree to sail into the harbor, and bombard the city, while the land forces are to attempt to enter the fortress by storm.
But, strong as were the works, the garrison was discontented, and Ducliambon, their commander, ignorant of his duties.
The Vigilant, a French ship of sixty-four guns, laden with military stores for his supply, was decoyed by
Douglas, of the
Mermaid, into the English fleet, and, after an engagement of some hours, was taken,
in sight of the besieged town.
The desponding governor sent out a flag of truce; terms of capitulation
[
463]
were accepted; on the seventeenth of June, the
city, the fort, the batteries, were surrendered; and a
New England minister soon preached in the
French chapel. As the troops, entering the fortress, beheld the strength of the place, their hearts, for the first time, sunk within them.
‘God has gone out of the way of his common providence,’ said they, ‘in a re-
markable and almost miraculous manner, to incline the hearts of the
French to give up, and deliver this strong city into our hands.’
When the news of success reached
Boston, the bells of the town were rung mer-
rily, and all the people were in transports of joy. Thus did the strongest fortress of
North America capitulate to an army of undisciplined
New England mechanics, and farmers, and fishermen.
It was the greatest success achieved by
England during the war.
The capture of
Louisburg seemed to threaten a
transfer of the scene of earnest hostilities to
America.
France planned its recovery, and the desolation of the
English colonies; but, in 1746, the large fleet from
France, under the command of the duke d'anville, wasted by storms and shipwrecks, and pestilential disease; enfeebled by the sudden death of its commander, and the delirium and suicide of his successor,—did not even attack
Annapolis.
In the next year, the
French fleet, with troops destined for
Canada and
Nova Scotia, was encountered by Anson and
Warren; and all its intrepidity could not save it from striking its colors.
The American colonies suffered only on the frontier.
Fort Massachusetts, in
Williamstown, the post nearest to
Crown Point, having but twenty-two men for its garrison, capitulated to a large body of French and In-
dians.
In the wars of Queen Anne,
Deerfield and
Haverhill were the scenes of massacre.
It marks the
[
464]
progress of settlements, that danger was now repelled
Chap. XXIV.} 1746. 1747, April. |
from
Concord, on the
Merrimac, and from the township now called
Charlestown, on the
Connecticut.
Repairing to
Louisburg,
Shirley, with
Warren, had concerted a project for reducing all
Canada; and the duke of
Newcastle replied to their proposals by direct-
ing preparations for the conquest.
The colonies north of
Virginia voted to raise more than eight thousand men; but no fleet arrived from
England; and the
French were not even driven from their posts in
Nova Scotia.
The summer of the next year passed in that
inactivity which attends the expectation of peace; and in September, the provincial army, by direction of the duke of
Newcastle, was disbanded.
Men believed that
England, from motives of policy, had not desired success.
‘There is reason enough for doubting whether the king, if he had the power, would wish to drive the
French from their possessions in
Canada.’
Such was public opinion at NewYork, in 1748, as pre-
served for us by the Swedish traveller,
Peter Kalm.
‘The English colonies in this part of the world,’ he continues, ‘have increased so much in wealth and population, that they will vie with European England But to maintain the commerce and the power of the metropolis, they are forbid to establish new manufactures, which might compete with the
English; they may dig for
gold and
silver only on condition of ship ping them immediately to
England; they have, with the exception of a few fixed places, no liberty to trade to any parts not belonging to the
English dominions, and foreigners are not allowed the least commerce with these American colonies.
And there are many similar restrictions.
These oppressions have made the inhabitants of the
English colonies less tender
[
465]
towards their mother land.
This coldness is increased
by the many foreigners who are settled among them; for
Dutch, Germans, and
French, are here blended with
English, and have no special love for Old England.
Besides, some people are always discontented, and love change; and exceeding freedom and prosperity nurse an untamable spirit.
I have been told, not only by native
Americans, but by English emigrants, publicly, that, within thirty or fifty years, the
English colonies in
North America may constitute a separate state, entirely independent of
England.
But, as this whole country is towards the sea unguarded, and on the frontier is kept uneasy by the
French, these dangerous neighbors are the reason why the love of these colonies for their metropolis does not utterly decline.
The English government has therefore reason to regard the
French in
North America as the chief power that urges their colonies to submission.’
The
Swede heard but the truth, though that truth lay concealed from British statesmen.
Even during the war, the jealous spirit of resistance to tyranny was kindled into a fury at
Boston.
Sir Charles Knowles, the
British naval commander, whom
Smollett is
thought to have described justly as ‘an officer without resolution, and a man without veracity,’ having been deserted by some of his crew, while lying off Nan-
tasket, early one morning, sent his boats up to
Boston, and impressed seamen from vessels, mechanics and laborers from the wharves.
‘Such a surprise could not be borne here,’ wrote
Hutchinson, who was present, and he assigns, as the reason of impatience, that ‘the people had not been used to it.’
‘Men would not be
contented with fair promises from the governor;’ ‘the seizure and restraint of the commanders and other officers
[
466]
who were in town, was insisted upon, as the only
effectual method to procure the release of the inhabitants aboard the ships.’
And the mob executed what the governor declined.
At last, after three days of rage and resentment, through the mediation of the house of representatives, order was restored.
The officers were liberated from their irregular imprisonment; and, in return, most, if not all, of the impressed citizens of
Boston were dismissed from the English fleet.
The alliance of
Austria with
Russia hastened negotiations for the pacification of
Europe; and a congress convened at Aix la
Chapelle to restore tranquillity to the civilized world.
As between
England and
Spain, and between
France and
England, after eight years of reciprocal annoyance, after an immense accumulation of national debt, the condition of peace was a return to the state before the war. Nothing was gained.
Humanity had suffered, without a purpose, and without a result.
In the colonial world,
Madras was restored for Cape Breton; the boundaries between the
British and the
French provinces in
America were left unsettled, neither party acknowledging the right of the other to the basin of the
Penobscot or of the
Ohio; the frontier of
Florida was not traced.
Neither did
Spain relinquish the right of searching English vessels suspected of smuggling; and, though it was agreed that the assiento treaty should continue for four years more, the right was soon abandoned, under a new convention, for an inconsiderable pecuniary indemnity.
The principle of the freedom of the seas was asserted only by Frederick II.
Holland, remaining neutral as long as possible, claimed, under the treaty of 1674, freedom of
goods for her free ships; but
England, disregarding
[
467]
the treaty, captured and condemned her vessels.
On
occasion of the war between
Sweden and
Russia, the principle was again urged by the
Dutch, and likewise
rejected by the Swedes.
Even Prussian ships were seized; but the monarch of
Prussia indemnified the sufferers by reprisals on English property.
Of higher questions, in which the interests of civilization were involved, not one was adjusted.
To the balance of power, sustained by standing armies of a million of men, the statesmen of that day intrusted the preservation of tranquillity, and, ignorant of the might of principles to, mould the relations of states, saw in
Austria the certain ally of
England, in
France the natural ally of
Prussia.
Thus, after long years of strife, of repose, and of strife renewed,
England and
France solemnly agreed to be at peace.
The treaties of Aix la
Chapelle had been negotiated, by the ablest statesmen of
Europe, in the splendid forms of monarchical diplomacy.
They believed themselves the arbiters of mankind, the pacificators of the world,—reconstructing the colonial system on a basis which should endure for ages,—confirming the peace of
Europe by the nice adjustment of material forces.
At the very time of the congress of Aix la
Chapelle, the woods of
Virginia sheltered the youthful
George Washington, the son of a widow.
Born by the side of the
Potomac, beneath the roof of a Westmoreland farmer, almost from infancy his lot had been the lot of an orphan.
No academy had welcomed him to its shades, no college crowned him with its honors: to read, to write, to cipher—these had been his degrees in knowledge.
And now, at sixteen years of age, in quest of an honest maintenance, encountering intolerable toil; cheered onward by being
[
468]
able to write to a schoolboy friend, ‘Dear Richard, a
doubloon is my constant gain every day, and sometimes six pistoles;’ ‘himself his own cook, having no
spit but a forked stick, no plate but a large chip;’
roaming over spurs of
the Alleghanies, and along the banks of the
Shenandoah; alive to nature, and sometimes ‘spending the best of the day in admiring the trees and richness of the land;’ among skin-clad savages, with their scalps and rattles, or uncouth emigrants, ‘that would never speak
English;’ rarely sleeping in a bed; holding a bearskin a splendid couch; glad of a resting-place for the night upon a little hay, straw, or fodder, and often camping in the forests, where the place nearest the fire was a happy luxury;—this stripling surveyor in the woods, with no companion but his unlettered associates, and no implements of science but his compass and chain, contrasted strangely with the imperial magnificence of the congress of Aix la
Chapelle.
And yet God had selected, not Kaunitz, nor
Newcastle, not a monarch of the house of Hapsburg, nor of
Hanover, but the
Virginia stripling, to give an impulse to human affairs, and, as far as events can depend on an individual, had placed the rights and the destinies of countless millions in the keeping of the widow's son.
