The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 by Julian Hawthorne

J >> Julian Hawthorne >> The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1

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At the time of the return of Andros to England, in 1682, the assembly
decreed free trade, and Dongan, the new Roman Catholic governor, permitted
them to enact a liberal charter. In the midst of the happiness consequent
upon this, the Duke became king and lost no time in breaking every
contract that he had, in his unanointed state, entered into. Taxes
arbitrarily levied, titles vacated in order to obtain renewal fees, and
all the familiar machinery of official robbery were put in operation. But
Dongan, a kindly Kildare Irishman--he was afterward Earl of Limerick
--would not make oppression bitter; and the New Yorkers were not so
punctilious about abstract principles as were the New England men.
Favorable treaties were made with the Indians; and the despot's heel was
not shod with iron, nor was it stamped down too hard. The Dongan charter,
as it was called, remained in the colony's possession for over forty
years. The rule of Dongan himself continued till 1688.

Andros, after an absence from the colonies of five years, during which
time a native but unworthy New Englander, Joseph Dudley, had acted as
president, came back to his prey with freshened appetite in 1686. He was
royal governor of all New England. Randolph, an active subordinate under
Dudley, had already destroyed the freedom of the press. Andros's power was
practically absolute; he was to sustain his authority by force, elect his
own creatures to office, make such laws as pleased him, and introduce
episcopacy. He forbade any one to leave the colony without leave from
himself; he seized a meeting house and made it into an Episcopal church,
in spite of the protests of the Puritans, and the bell was rung for
high-church service in spite of the recalcitrant Needham. Duties were
increased; a tax of a penny in the pound and a poll tax of twenty pence
were levied; and those who refused payment were told that they had no
privilege, except "not to be sold as slaves." Magna Charta was no
protection against the abolition of the right of Habeas Corpus: "Do not
think the laws of England follow you to the ends of the earth!" Juries
were packed, and Dudley, to avoid all mistakes, told them what verdicts to
render. Randolph issued new grants for properties, and extorted grievous
fees, declaring all deeds under the charter void, and those from Indians,
or "from Adam," worthless. West, the secretary, increased probate duties
twenty-fold. When Danforth complained that the condition of the colonists
was little short of slavery, and Increase Mather added that no man could
call anything his own, they got for answer that "it is not for his
majesty's interest that you should thrive." In the history of
Massachusetts, there is no darker day than this.

The great New England romancer, writing of this period a hundred and
seventy years later, draws a vivid and memorable picture of the people and
their oppressors. "The roll of the drum," he says, "had been approaching
through Cornhill, louder and deeper, till with reverberations from house
to house, and the regular tramp of martial footsteps, it burst into the
street. A double rank of soldiers made their appearance, occupying the
whole breadth of the passage, with shouldered matchlocks, and matches
burning, so as to present a row of fires in the dusk. Their steady march
was like the progress of a machine, that would roll irresistibly over
everything in its way. Next, moving slowly, with a confused clatter of
hoofs on the pavement, rode a party of mounted gentlemen, the central
figure being Sir Edmund Andros, elderly, but erect and soldier-like. Those
around him were his favorite councilors, and the bitterest foes of New
England. At his right rode Edward Randolph, our arch-enemy, that 'blasted
wretch,' as Mather calls him, who achieved the downfall of our ancient
government, and was followed with a sensible curse, through life and to
his grave. On the other side was Bullivant, scattering jests and mockery
as he rode along. Dudley came behind, with a downcast look, dreading, as
well he might, to meet the indignant gaze of the people, who beheld him,
their only countryman by birth, among the oppressors of his native land.
The captain of a frigate in the harbor, and two or three civil officers
under the Crown, were also there. But the figure that most attracted the
public eye, and stirred up the deepest feeling, was the Episcopal
clergyman of King's Chapel, riding haughtily among the magistrates in his
priestly vestments, the fitting representative of prelacy and persecution,
the union of church and state, and all those abominations which had driven
the Puritans to the wilderness. Another guard of soldiers, in double rank,
brought up the rear. The whole scene was a picture of the condition of New
England, and its moral, the deformity of any government that does not grow
out of the nature of things and the character of the people. On one side
the religious multitude, with their sad visages and dark attire, and, on
the other, the group of despotic rulers, with the high churchman in the
midst, and here and there a crucifix at their bosoms, all magnificently
clad, flushed with wine, proud of unjust authority, and scoffing at the
universal groan. And the mercenary soldiers, waiting but the word to
deluge the street with blood, showed the only means by which obedience
could be secured."

Education was temporarily paralyzed, and the right of franchise was
rendered nugatory by the order that oaths must be taken with the hand on
the Bible--a "popish" ceremony which the Puritans would not undergo. The
town meetings, which were the essence of New Englandism, were forbidden
except for the election of local officers, and ballot voting was stopped:
"There is no such thing as a town in the whole country," Andros declared.
Verily, it was "a time when New England groaned under the actual pressure
of heavier wrongs than those threatened ones which brought on the
Revolution." Yet the spirit of the people was not crushed; their leaders
did not desert them; in private meetings they kept their faith and hope
alive; the ministers told them that "God would yet be exalted among the
heathen"; and one at least among them, Willard, significantly bade them
take note that they "had not yet resisted unto blood, warring against sin!"

Boston was Andros's headquarters, and in 1688 was made the capital of the
whole region along the coast from the French possessions in the north to
Maryland in the south. But Andros had not yet received the submission of
Rhode Island and Connecticut. Walter Clarke was the governor of the former
colony in 1687, when, in the dead of winter, Andros appeared there and
ordered the charter to be given up. Roger Williams had died three years
before. Clarke tried to temporize, and asked that the surrender be
postponed till a fitter season. But Andros dissolved the government
summarily, and broke its seal; and it is not on record that the Rhode
Islanders offered any visible resistance to the outrage. From Rhode Island
Andros, with his retinue and soldiers, proceeded to Hartford, which had
lost its Winthrop longer ago than the former its Williams. Governor Dongan
of New York had warned Connecticut of what was to come, and had counseled
them to submit. Three writs of quo warranto were issued, one upon another,
and the colony finally petitioned the king to be permitted to retain its
liberties; but in any case to be merged rather in Massachusetts than in
New York. It was on the last day of October, 1687; Andros entered the
assembly hall, where the assembly was then in session, with Governor Treat
presiding. The scene which followed has entered into the domain of legend;
but there is nothing miraculous in it; a deed which depended for its
success upon the secrecy with which it was accomplished would naturally be
lacking in documentary confirmation. Upon Andros's entrance, hungry for
the charter, Treat opposed him, and entered upon a defense of the right of
the colony to retain the ancient and honorable document, hallowed as it
was by associations which endeared it to its possessors, aside from its
political value. Andros, of course, would not yield; the only thing that
such men ever yield to is superior force; but force being on his side, he
entertained no thought of departing from his purpose. The dispute was
maintained until so late in the afternoon that candles must be lighted;
some were fixed in sconces round the walls, and there were others on the
table, where also lay the charter, with its engrossed text, and its broad
seal. The assemblymen, as the debate seemed to approach its climax, left
their seats and crowded round the table, where stood on one side the royal
governor, in his scarlet coat laced with gold, his heavy but
sharp-featured countenance flushed with irritation, one hand on the hilt
of his sword, the other stretched out toward the coveted document:--on the
other, the governor chosen by the people, in plain black, with a plain
white collar turned down over his doublet, his eyes dark with emotion, his
voice vibrating hoarsely as he pleaded with the licensed highwayman of
England. Around, is the ring of strong visages, rustic but brainy,
frowning, agitated, eager, angry; and the flame of the candles flickering
in their heavily-drawn breath.

Suddenly and simultaneously, by a preconcerted signal, the lights are
out, and the black darkness has swallowed up the scene. In the momentary
silence of astonishment, Andros feels himself violently shoved aside; the
hand with which he would draw his sword is in an iron grasp, as heavy as
that which he has laid upon colonial freedom. There is a surging of unseen
men about him, the shuffling of feet, vague outcries: he knows not what is
to come: death, perhaps. Is Sir Edmund afraid? We have no information as
to the physical courage of the man, further than that in 1675 he had been
frightened into submission by the farmers and fishermen at Fort Saybrook.
But he need not have been a coward to feel the blood rush to his heart
during those few blind moments. Men of such lives as his are always ready
to suspect assassination.

But assassination is not an American method of righting wrong. Anon the
steel had struck the flint, and the spark had caught the tinder, and one
after another the candles were alight once more. All stared at one
another: what had happened? Andros, his face mottled with pallor, was
pulling himself together, and striving to resume the arrogant insolence of
his customary bearing. He opens his mouth to speak, but only a husky
murmur replaces the harsh stridency of his usual utterance. "What devilish
foolery is this--" But ere he can get further, some bucolic statesman
brings his massive palm down on the table with a bang that makes the oaken
plank crack, and thunders out--"The charter! Where's our charter?"

Where, indeed? That is one of those historic secrets which will probably
never be decided one way or the other. "There is no contemporary record of
this event." No: but, somehow or other, one hears of Yankee Captain Joe
Wadsworth, with the imaginative audacity and promptness of resource of his
race, snatching the parchment from the table in the midst of the groping
panic, and slipping out through the crowd: he has passed the door and is
inhaling with grateful lungs the fresh coolness of the cloudy October
night. Has any one seen him go? Did any one know what he did?--None who
will reveal it. He is astride his mare, and they are off toward the old
farm, where his boyhood was spent, and where stands the great hollow oak
which, thirty years ago, Captain Joe used to canvass for woodpeckers'
nests and squirrel hordes. He had thought, in those boyish days, what a
good hiding-place the old tree would make; and the thought had flashed
back into his mind while he listened to that fight for the charter to-day.
It did not take him long to lay his plot, and to agree with his few
fellow-conspirators. Sir Edmund can snatch the government, and scrawl
Finis at the foot of the Connecticut records; but that charter he shall
never have, nor shall any man again behold it, until years have passed
away, and Andros has vanished forever from New England.

Meanwhile, he returned to Boston, there, for a season, to make "the
wicked walk on every side, and the vilest to be exalted." Then came that
famous April day of 1689; and, following, event after event, one storming
upon another's heels, as the people rose from their long bondage, and
hurled their oppressors down. The bearer of the news that William of
Orange had landed in England, was imprisoned, but it was too late. Andros
ordered his soldiers under arms; but the commander of the frigate had been
taken prisoner by the Boston ship-carpenters; the sheriff was arrested;
hundreds of determined men surrounded the regimental headquarters; the
major resisted in vain; the colors and drums were theirs; a vast throng at
the town house greeted the venerable Bradstreet; the insurrection was
proclaimed, and Andros and his wretched followers, flying to the frigate,
were seized and cast into prison. "Down with Andros and Randolph!" was the
cry; and "The old charter once more!" It was a hundred years to a day
before that shot fired at Concord and heard round the world.

CHAPTER NINTH

THE NEW LEAF, AND THE BLOT ON IT

Popular liberty is one thing; political independence is another. The
latter cannot be securely and lastingly established until the former has
fitted the nation to use it intelligently. When the component individuals
have thrown off the bondage of superstition and of formulas, their next
step must be, as an organization, to abrogate external subordination to
others, and, like a son come of age, to begin life on a basis and with an
aim of their own.

But such movements are organic, and chronologically slow; so that we do
not comprehend them until historical perspective shows them to us in their
mass and tendency. They are thus protected against their enemies, who, if
they knew the significance of the helpless seed, would destroy it before
it could become the invincible and abounding tree. Great human revolutions
make themselves felt, at first, as a trifling and unreasonable annoyance:
a crumpling in the roseleaf bed of the orthodox and usual. They are
brushed petulantly aside and the sleeper composes himself to rest once
more. But inasmuch as there was vital truth as the predisposing cause of
the annoyance it cannot thus be disposed of; it spreads and multiplies.
Had its opponents understood its meaning, they would have humored it into
inoffensiveness; but the means they adopt to extirpate it are the sure way
to develop it. Truth can no more be smothered by intolerance, than a sown
field can be rendered unproductive by covering it with manure.

When Christ came, the common people had no recognized existence except as
a common basis on which aristocratic institutions might rest. That they
could have rights was as little conceived as that inanimate sticks and
stones could have them; to enfranchise them--to surrender to them the
reins of government--such an idea the veriest madness would have started
from. Philosophy was blind to it; religion was abhorrent to it; the common
people themselves were as far from entertaining it as cattle in the fields
are to-day. Christ's sayings--Love one another--Do as ye would be done by
--struck at the root of all arbitrary power, and furnished the clew to all
possible emancipations; but their infinite meaning has even yet been
grasped but partially. A thousand years are but as yesterday in the
counsels of the Lord. The early Christians were indeed a democracy; but
they were common people to begin with, and the law of love suggested to
them no thought of altering their condition in that respect. The only
liberty they dreamed of claiming was liberty to die for their faith; and
that was accorded to them in full measure. Indeed, an apprenticeship, the
years of which were centuries, must be served before they could be
qualified to realize even that they could become the trustees of power.

Their simple priesthood, beginning by sheltering them from physical
violence, ended by subjecting them to a yet more enslaving spiritual
tyranny. Philosophers could frame imaginative theories of human liberty;
but the people could be helped only from within themselves. Wiclif, giving
them the Bible in a living language, and intimating that force was not
necessarily right, began their education; and Luther, in his dogma of
justification by faith alone, forged a tremendous weapon in their behalf.
Beggars could have faith; princes and prelates might lack it; of what
avail was it to gain the whole world if the soul must be lost at last? The
reasonings and discussions to which his dogma gave rise called into
existence two world-covering armies to fight for and against it. Peace has
not been declared between them yet; but there has long ceased to be any
question as to who shall have the victory.

When the battle began, however, the other side had the stronger
battalions, and there would have been little chance for liberty, but for
the timely revelation of the western continent. And, inevitably, it was
the people who went, and the aristocrats who stayed behind; because the
new idea favored the former and menaced the latter. Inevitably, too, it
was the man who had the future in him that was the exile, and the man of
the past who drove him forth. And whenever we find a man of the
aristocratic order emigrating to the colonies, we find in him the same
love of liberty which animates his plebeian companion, graced by a motive
even higher, because opposed to his inherited interests and advantages.
Thus the refuge of the oppressed became by the nature of things the
citadel of the purest and soundest civilization.

Luther, Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards were in the line of succession one
from the other; each defined the truth more nearly than his predecessor,
but left it still in the rough. The whole truth is never revealed at one
time, but so much only as may forge a sword for the immediate combat.
Faith alone was a good blade for the first downright strokes of the
battle; predestination had a finer edge; and Edwards's dialectical
subtleties on the freedom of the will sharpen logic to so fine a point
that we begin to perceive that not logic but love is the true weapon of
the Christian: the mystery of God is not revealed in syllogisms. But each
fresh discrimination was useful in its place and time, and had to exist in
order to prepare the way for its successor. The Puritans would have been
less stubborn without their background of spiritual damnation. That awful
conscience of theirs would have faltered without its lake of fire and
brimstone to keep out of; and if it had faltered, the American nation
would have been strangled in its cradle.

America, then, having no permanent attractions as a residence for any of
the upper classes of European society, became the home of the common
people, in whom alone the doctrine of liberty could find a safe anchorage,
because in them alone did the need for it abide. The philosophy, the
religion, the tolerance, the civil forms, which are broad enough to suit
the common people, must be nearly as broad as truth itself, and therefore
as unconquerable. But the broader they appear, the more must they be
offensive to the orthodox and conventional, who by the instinct of
self-preservation will be impelled to attack them. There was never a more
obvious chain of cause and effect than that which is revealed in the
history of the United States; and having shown the conditions which led to
the planting in the wilderness of the elements which constitute our
present commonwealth, we shall now proceed to trace the manner in which
they came to be wrought into a united whole. They were as yet mainly
unconscious of one another; the opportunity for mutual knowledge had not
yet been presented, nor had the causes conducive to crystallization been
introduced. Oppression had awakened the colonists to the value of their
religious and civic principles; something more than oppression was
requisite to mold them into independent and homogeneous form. This was
afforded, during the next eighty years, by their increase in numbers,
wealth, familiarity with their country, and in the facilities for
intercommunication; and also, coincidently, by the French and Indian wars,
which apprised them of their strength, trained them in arms, created the
comradeship which arises from common dangers and aims, and developed vast
tracts of land which had otherwise been unknown. A country which has been
fought for, on whose soil blood has been shed, becomes dear to its
inhabitants; and the heroism of the Revolution gathered heart and
perseverance from the traditions and the graves of the soldiers of the
Intercolonial wars.

The English Revolution benefited the colonies, though to a less extent
than might have been expected. William of Orange was the logical
consequence, by reaction, of James II. The latter had so corrupted and
confused the kingdom, that William, whose connection with England arose
from his marriage with Mary, James's daughter, was invited to usurp the
throne by Tories, Whigs and Presbyterians--each party from a motive of its
own. The people were not appealed to, but they acquiesced. The Roman
Catholics were discriminated against, and the nonconformists were not
requited for their services; but out of many minor injustices and wrongs,
a condition better than anything which had preceded it was soon
discernible. The principle was established that royal power was not
absolute, nor self-continuing; it could be created only by the
representatives of the people, who could take it away again if its trustee
were guilty of breach of contract. The dynastic theory was disallowed;
kings were to come by election, not succession. The nobility were
recognized as the medium between the king and the people, but not before
they had conceded to the commons the right to elect a king for life; and
presently there came into existence a new power--that of the commercial
classes, the moneyed interest, which, in return for loans to government,
received political consideration. Ownership of land ceased to be the sole
condition on which a candidate could appeal to the electors; and merchants
were raised to a position where they could control national policies.
Merchants might not be wiser or less selfish than the aristocracy; but at
all events they were of the people, and the more widely power is diffused,
the less likely is any class to be oppressed. It was no longer possible
for freemen to be ruled otherwise than by governments of their own making,
and subject to their approval. Freedom of the press, which means liberty
to criticise all state and social procedure, was established, and public
opinion, instead of being crushed, was consulted. The aristocracy could
retain its ascendency only by permitting more weight to the middle class,
whose influence was therefore bound gradually to increase. Popular
legislatures were the final arbiters; and the advantages which the English
had obtained would naturally be imparted to the colonies, which, in
addition, were unhampered by the relics of decaying systems which still
impeded the old country.

[Illustration: Arresting a Woman Charged with Witchcraft]

William cared little for England, nor were the English in love with him;
but he was the most far-seeing statesman of his day, and his effect was
liberalizing and beneficial. He kept Louis XIV. from working the mischief
that he desired, and prevented the disturbance of political equilibrium
which was threatened by the proposed successor to the extinct Hapsburg
dynasty on the Spanish throne. William was outwardly cold and dry, but
there was fire within him, if you would apply friction enough. He was
under no illusions; he perfectly understood why he was wanted in England;
and for his part, he accepted the throne in order to be able to check
Louis in his designs upon the liberties of Holland. In defending his
countrymen he defended all others in Europe, whose freedom was endangered.

But if William's designs were large, they were also, and partly for that
reason, unjust in particulars. He was at war with France; France held
possessions in America; and it was necessary to carry on war against her
there as well as in Europe. The colonists, then, should be made to assist
in the operations; they must furnish men, forts, and, to some extent at
least, supplies. It was easy to reach this determination, but difficult to
enforce it under the circumstances. The various colonies lacked the
homogeneity which was desirable to secure co-operative action from them;
some of them were royal provinces, some proprietary, some were in an
anomalous state, or practically without any recognizable form of
government whatever. Each had its separate interests to regard, and could
not be brought to perceive that what was the concern of one must in the
end be the concern of all. But the greatest difficulty was to secure
obedience of orders after they had been promulgated; the colonial
legislatures pleaded all manner of rights and privileges, under Magna
Charta and other charters; they claimed the privileges of Englishmen, and
they stood upon their "natural" rights as discoverers and inhabitants of a
new country. They were spread over a vast extent of territory, so that in
many cases a journey of weeks would be required, through pathless forests,
across unbridged rivers, over difficult mountains, by swamps and morasses
--in order to carry information of the commands of the government to no
more than a score or a hundred of persons. And then these persons would
look around at the miles of unconquerable nature stretching out on every
side; and they would reflect upon the thousands of leagues of salt water
that parted them from the king who was the source of these unwelcome
orders; and, finally, they would glance at the travel-stained and weary
envoy with a pitying smile, and offer him food and drink and a bed--but
not obedience. The colonists had imagination, when they cared to exercise
it; but not imagination of the kind to bring vividly home to them the
waving of a royal scepter across the broad Atlantic.

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