CHAPTER XVII

"COLONIAL AMERICANS," 1690-1763

I. MATERIAL GROWTH

179. Despite the frequent wars, the seventy years between the English Revolution and the American Revolution (1690–1760) were a period of marvelous prosperity for the colonies. The older districts grew from straggling frontiers into rich and powerful communities marked by self-reliance and intense local patriotism. A new colony, Georgia, was added on the south (1732), and new frontiers were thrown out on the west. Population rose sixfold from 250,000 (§ 132) to 1,600,000; and large non-English elements appeared, especially in the middle colonies.

The most numerous of these were the German Protestants, driven from their homes in South Germany by religious persecution and by the wars of Louis XIV. The French armies in these wars deliberately depopulated large districts. A striking paragraph of Macaulay's tells the fate of one Rhine province : —

"The commander announced to near half a million human beings that he granted them three days' grace . . Soon the roads and fields were blackened by innumerable multitudes of men, women, and children flying from their houses. . . . The flames went up from every market place, every parish church, every county seat."

The survivors of such devastation made the first German immigrants to America. This immigration began to arrive about 1690. It went mainly to New York and the Carolinas and especially to Pennsylvania (§ 174). To the latter colony alone more than 100,000 Germans came between 1700 and 1775. A smaller but highly valuable contribution to American blood was made by the Huguenots, driven from France after 1683 by

§ 180]

NEW FRONTIERS

143

the persecution of Louis XIV. They came mainly to the Carolinas; but some settled in New England, New York, and Virginia. The names Paul Revere, Peter Faneuil, and Governor Bowdoin suggest the services of their sons in Massachusetts.

180. Another immigration of this period belongs especially to a new section · the Scotch-Irish settlement in the "West." The first frontier in

Trenton

Philadelphia

Baltimore

Richmond

Petersburg

Raleig

Columbia

Augusta

-35

America was the "tidewater" region, extending some fifty miles up the navigable streams. Near the mouth of such rivers, or on the harbors along the coast, arose the first line of cities,- Boston, Portsmouth, Providence, New York, Philadelphia, Annapolis, Charleston. By 1660 (that is, by the end of the first half century of colonization), when the first frontier had been transformed into settled areas, a second thin frontier had pushed on fifty or a hundred miles farther inland, to the eastern foothills of the Appalachians. Here, during the next half century, at the head of navigation and on sites of abundant water power, appeared a second line of towns, - Trenton, Princeton, Richmond, Raleigh, Columbia.

25

дея

THE WATERCOURSE FALL LINE.

-30

But,

So far, frontier had kept in touch with settled area. about 1700, a third frontier leaped the first range of mountains, into the long, narrow valleys running north and south between the Alleghenies and the Blue Ridge, leaving a hundred miles of tangled wilderness between itself and civilization. This region was the beginning of a new "section" in our history. It was

our first "West." Moreover, it was made by a new type of American settler, the Presbyterian Scotch-Irish. These were really neither Scotch nor Irish in blood, but Saxon English. For centuries their fathers had lived in the Lowlands of Scotland as frontiersmen against the Celtic Scots of the Highlands. In the reigns of Elizabeth and James they had colonized northeastern Ireland, - frontiersmen against the Catholic and Celtic Irish. But after the English Revolution, the new navigation laws crushed their linen manufactures, the chief basis of their prosperity there, and the English laws against the Irish Catholics bore heavily also upon these Presbyterian "dissenters" from the English Church. So, about 1700, with hearts embittered toward England, they began once more to seek new homes, this time in America. In both Scotland and Ireland there had been some mixture of blood, but the dominant strain was still English.

The volume of this immigration increased rapidly, and it has been estimated that between 1720 and 1750 it amounted to an average of 12,000 a year. In numbers and in significance, the Presbyterian English of the West rank in our nation-making alongside the Episcopalian English of Virginia and the Congregational English of New England.

Non-English elements have played a great part in the making of America. In the colonial day, Frenchman, Dutchman, German, gave us much of our blood and even our thought; and later, Norseman, German, Irishman, and, last of all, Slav and Latin, have made the sinews of our national life. But after all, the forces that have shaped that life have been English, especially the three English elements just mentioned.

The Scotch-Irish came to America mainly through the ports of Philadelphia in the north and Charleston in the south. Many stopped in the settled areas; but a steady stream passed on directly to the mountains and over them. Reaching the Appalachian valleys in the far north and south, the two currents drifted toward each other, until they met in the Shenandoah Valley in western Virginia. And thence, just before the American Revolution, under leaders like Boone and Robertson,

§ 181]

CONQUEST OF NEW FRANCE

145

they began to break through the western wall, to make a fourth frontier at the western foothills and farther west, in what we now call Kentucky and Tennessee.

Until about 1850, the Scotch-Irish were the typical American frontiersmen, especially in the great middle West and Southwest. They showed a marvelous power to assimilate other elements that mingled with them, German, French, Welsh, and even the real Irish and real Scotch, when these came, in small numbers, just before the Revolution. They have furnished too, many leaders to our national life, such as Andrew Jackson and "Stonewall" Jackson, Horace Greeley, Jefferson Davis, Patrick Henry, William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson.

Unlike the country east of the mountains, this new "West" had its real unity from north to south. Politically, it is true, the settlers were divided by the old established colonial boundary lines, running east and west; but, from New York to Georgia, the people of this frontier were one in race, religion, and habits of life, — hard, dogged farmers, reckless fighters and hunters, tall and sinewy of frame, saturnine, restless, dauntless of temper. Other immigrants to the New World had forced themselves into the wilderness, for high reasons, with gallant resolution, against natural inclination. But these men loved the wild for itself. Unorganized and uncaptained, armed only with ax and rifle (in the use of which weapons they have never been equaled), they rejoiced grimly in their task of subduing a continent. First of American colonists, too, did they in earnest face away from the Old World in their thought, and begin to look west toward the glorious destiny of the new continent.

II. THE CONQUEST OF NEW FRANCE

181. From 1689 to 1763, with only short pauses for breath, France and England wrestled for the splendid prize of the Mississippi Valley. This incessant war with the French and their dread Red allies made a somber background for all other movements in the English colonies. It was never for a moment to be forgotten by the daring frontiersman who shifted his home

in search of better and cheaper land, or by the Assemblyman who wrangled with a royal governor for larger self-government.

For the most part the campaigns were fought on European fields (Modern Progress, 229-245); but at bottom the conflict was not determined on the battlefield. Two systems of colonization were at war in America; and free individualism won over despotic centralization (§ 16). A despotic French governor could wield effectively all the resources of New France, though this advantage was offset in part by the corruption that always threatens such a system; while among the English, dissensions between colony and colony, and, within a given colony, between governor and Assembly, many times cost dear. But in the long run, the despotic governor proved no match for the democratic town meeting. Had the French ever succeeded in seizing Boston, they could never have held it—not even as long as King George did a few years later. On the other hand, the English needed only one decisive victory. For, despite the noble patriotism of a few great French leaders, the mass of French colonists had too little political activity to care greatly what country they belonged to, provided only they were treated decently.

182. The closing chapter of the struggle was "the Great French War" of 1754-1763, often called "the French and Indian War." Here the interest centers around two heroic antagonists, Montcalm and Wolfe. All grade students know the romantic story. England's command of the seas made it impossible for France to send Montcalm the reinforcements he pled for; and Wolfe's victory at Quebec settled forever the fate of the continent.

By the final treaties of 1763, England received Florida from Spain, and Canada and the eastern half of the Mississippi Valley from France. The rest of the valley France ceded to her ally Spain, and, except for some West India Islands, she ceased herself to be an American power. North America was

1 Canada, says Parkman, "was the prey of official jackals." For illustra tions, see Thwaites' France in America, 220-221.