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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James Edward Oglethorpe was already five years old when the Eighteenth
Century began. He was a Londoner by birth, and had a fortune which he did
not misuse. He was a valiant soldier against the Turks; he was present
with Prince Eugene at the capitulation of Belgrade; and he sat for more
than thirty years in Parliament. He died at the age of ninety; though
there is a portrait of him extant said to have been taken when he was one
hundred and two. If long life be the reward of virtue, he deserved to
survive at least a century.

The speculative fever in England had brought about much poverty; and
debtors were lodged in jail in order, one might suppose, to prevent them
from taking any measures to liquidate their debts. Besides these unhappy
persons, there were many Protestants on the Continent who were persecuted
for their faith's sake. England compassionated these persons, having
learned by experience what persecution is; and did not offer any objection
to a scheme for improving the lot of debtors in her own land, if any
feasible one could be devised.

General Oglethorpe had devised one. He was then, according to our
reckoning, a mature man of about seven-and-thirty; he had visited the
prisons, and convinced himself that there was neither political economy
nor humanity in this method of preserving the impecunious class. Why not
take them to America? Why not found a new colony there where men might
dwell in peace and comfort, with the aim not of amassing wealth, but of
living sober and useful lives? On the southern side of South Carolina
there was a region fitted for such an enterprise, which, owing to its
proximity to the Spanish colony at St. Augustine, had been vexed by border
quarrels; but Oglethorpe, with his military experience, would be able to
keep the Spaniards in their place with one hand, while he was planting
gardens for his proteges with the other. Thus his colony would be useful
on grounds of high policy, as well as for its own ends. And in order
additionally to conciliate the good will of the home government,
controlled as it was by mercantile interests chiefly, the silk-worm should
be cultivated there, and England thus saved the duties on the Italian
fabrics. Should there be slaves in the new Eden?--On all accounts, No:
first because slavery was intrinsically wrong, and secondly because it
would lead to idleness, if not to wealth, among the colonists. For the
same reason, land could only pass to the eldest son, or failing male
issue, back to the state; if permission were given to divide it, or to
sell it, there would soon be great landed properties and an aristocracy.
Nor should the importation of rum be permitted, for if men have rum, they
are prone to drink it, and drunkenness was incompatible with the kind of
existence which the good General wished his colonists to lead. In a word,
by removing temptations to vice and avarice, he thought he could make his
people forget that such evils had ever belonged to human nature. But
experiments founded upon the innate impeccability of man have furnished
many comedies and not a few tragedies since the world began.

The Oglethorpe idea, however, appealed to the public, and became a sort
of fashionable fad. It was commended, and after Parliament had voted ten
thousand pounds toward it, it was everywhere accepted as the correct
thing. The charter was given in June, 1732, and a suitable design was not
wanting for the corporation seal--silkworms, with the motto, Non Sibi, sed
Aliis. This might refer either to the colonists or to the patrons, since
the latter were to receive no emoluments for their services, and the
former were to work for the sake, in part at least, of vindicating the
nobility of labor. It is true that the silkworm is an involuntary and
unconscious altruist; but we must allow some latitude in symbols; and
besides, all executive and legislative power was given to the trustees, or
such council as they might choose to appoint.

In November the general conducted his hundred or more human derelicts to
Port Royal, and, going up the stream, chose the site for his city of
Savannah, and laid it out in liberal parallelograms. While it was building
he tented beneath a quartette of primeval pines, and exchanged friendly
greetings and promises with the various Indian tribes who sent deputies to
him. A year from that time, the German Protestant refugees began to
arrive, and started a town of their own further inland. A party of
Moravians followed; and the two Wesleys aided to introduce an exalted
religious sentiment which might have recalled the days of the Pilgrims.
For the present, all went harmoniously; the debtors were thankful to be
out of prison; the religious folk were happy so long as they might wreak
themselves on their religion; and the silk-culture paid a revenue so long
as England paid bounties on it. But the time must come when the colonists
would demand to do what they liked with their own land, and other things;
when they would import rum by stealth and hardly blush to be found out;
when some of the less democratically-minded decided that there were
advantages in slaves after all; and when some of the more independent
declared they could not endure oppression, and migrated to other colonies.
After struggling a score of years against the inevitable, the trustees
surrendered their trusteeship, and the colony came under the management of
the Second George. Oglethorpe had long ere this retired to England, after
having kept his promise of reducing the Spaniards to order; and at his
home at Cranham Hall in Essex he continued to be the friend of man until
after the close of the American Revolution.

The war with Spain, of which Oglethorpe's unsuccessful attack upon St.
Augustine and triumphant defense of his own place was but a very minor
feature, raged for a while in the West Indies with no very marked
advantage to either contestant, and then drew the other nations of Europe
into the fray. Nothing creditable was being fought for on either side.
England, to be sure, had declared war with the object of expunging Spain
from America; but it had been only in order that she herself might replace
Spain there as a monopolist. France came in to prevent England from
enjoying this monopoly. The death of the Austrian king and a consequent
dispute as to the succession added that power to the melee. Russia
received an invitation to join, and this finally led to the Peace of Aix
La Chapelle in 1748, which replaced all things in dispute just where they
were before innumerable lives and enormous treasure had been expended. But
the Eighteenth was a fighting Century, for it was the transition period
from the old to the new order of civilized life.

The part borne by the American colonies in this struggle was quite
subordinate and sympathetic; but it was not the less interesting to the
Americans. In 1744 the Six Nations (as the Five had been called since the
accession of the Tuscaroras) made a treaty of alliance with the English
whereby the Ohio valley was secured to the latter as against the French--
so far, that is, as the Indians could secure it. But the Pennsylvanians
understood that more than Indian treaties would be needed against France,
and as their country was likely to be among the first involved, they
determined to raise money and men for the campaign. There were, of course,
men in Pennsylvania who were not of the Quaker way of thinking; but even
the Quakers forbore to oppose the measure, and many of them gave it
explicit approval. The incident gains its chief interest however from the
fact that the man most active and efficient in getting both the funds and
the soldiers was Benjamin Franklin, the Boston boy, in whose veins flowed
the blood of both Quaker and Calvinist, but who was himself of far too
original a character to be either. He was at this epoch just past forty,
and had been a resident of Philadelphia for some twenty years, and a
famous printer, writer, and man of mark. He hit upon the scheme--which,
like so many of his, was more practical than orthodox--of persuading
dollars out of men's pockets by means of a lottery. He knew that, whatever
a fastidious morality might protest, lotteries are friendly to human
nature; and if there be any part of human nature with which Franklin was
unacquainted, it has not yet been announced. Having got the money, his
next care was for the men; and his plans resulted in assembling an
organized force of ten or twelve thousand militiamen. But the energy and
ingenuity of this incomparable Franklin of ours could be equaled only by
his modesty; he would not accept a colonelcy, but shouldered his musket
along with the rank and file; and doubtless the company to which he
belonged forgot the labors of war in their enjoyment of his wit, humor,
anecdotes, parables, and resources of all kinds.

After so much waste and folly as had marked the conduct of the war in
Europe, it is good to hear the tale of the capture of Louisburg. It was an
adventure which gave the colonists merited confidence in themselves, and
the character of the little army, and the management of the campaign, were
an excellent and suggestive dress rehearsal of the great drama of thirty
years later. The army was a combination of Yankees with arms in their
hands to effect an object eminently conducive to the common welfare. For
Louisburg was the key to the St. Lawrence, it commanded the fisheries, and
it threatened Acadia, or rather Nova Scotia, which was inhabited chiefly
by Bretons, liable to afford succor to their belligerent brethren. The
fort had been built, after the close of the former war, by those who had
preferred not to live under the government of the House of Hanover, on the
eastern extremity of the island called Cape Breton, itself lying northeast
of the Nova Scotian promontory. The site was good for defense, and the
fortifications, scientifically designed, were held to be impregnable. Had
Louisburg rested content with being strong, it might have been allowed to
remain at peace; but at the beginning of the war, and before the frontier
people in Nova Scotia had heard of it, a French party swooped down from
Louisburg on the settlement at Canso (the gut between Cape Breton and Nova
Scotia), destroyed all that was destructible, and carried eighty men as
prisoners of war to their stronghold. After keeping them there during the
summer, these men were paroled and went to Boston. This was a mistake on
the Louisburgers' part; for the men had made themselves well acquainted
with the fortifications and the topography of the neighborhood, and placed
this useful information at the disposal of William Shirley, a lawyer of
ability, who was afterward governor of the colony, and a warrior of some
note. It was Shirley's opinion that Louisburg must be taken, and the idea
immediately became popular. It was the main topic of discussion in Boston,
and all over New England, during the autumn and winter; Massachusetts
decided that it could be done, and that she could do it, though the help
of other colonies would be gladly accepted. Yet the feeling was not
unanimous, if the vote of the legislature be a criterion; the bill passed
there by a majority of one. Be that as it may, once resolved upon, the
enterprise was pushed with ardor, not unmingled with prayer--the old
Puritan leaven reappearing as soon as deeds of real moment were in the
wind. In every village and hamlet there was excitement and preparation
--the warm courage of men glad to have a chance at the hated fortress, and
the pale bravery of women keeping down the heavy throbbing of their hearts
so that their sons and husbands might feel no weakness for their sakes.
The fishermen of Marblehead, used to face the storms and fogs of the
Newfoundland Banks; the farmers and mechanics, who could hit a Bay
shilling (if one could be found in that era of paper money) at fifty
paces; and the hunters, who knew the craft of the Indians and were inured
to every fatigue and hardship--finer material for an army was never got
together before: independent, bold, cunning, handy, inventive, full of
resource; but utterly ignorant of drill, and indifferent to it. Their
officers were chosen by themselves, of the same rank and character as
they; their only uniforms were their flintlocks and hangers. They marched
and camped as nature prompted, but they had common-sense developed to the
utmost by the exigencies of their daily lives, and they created, simply by
being together, a discipline and tactics of their own; they even learned
enough of the arts of fortification and intrenchment, during the siege, to
serve all their requirements. They had the American instinct to break
loose from tradition and solve problems from an original point of view;
they laughed at the jargon and technicalities of conventional war, but
they had their own passwords, and they understood one another in and out.
The carpenters and other mechanics among them carried their skill along,
and were ever ready to put it in practice for the general behoof. Most of
them left wives and children at home; but "Suffer no anxious thoughts to
rest in your mind about me," writes his wife to Seth Pomeroy, who had sent
word to her that he was "willing to stay till God's time comes to deliver
the city into our hands":--"I leave you in the hands of God," added she;
and subjoined, by way of village gossip, that "the whole town is much
engaged with concern for the expedition, how Providence will order the
affair, for which religious meetings every week are maintained." We can
imagine those meetings, held in the village meeting-house, with an infirm
old veteran of King William's War to lead in prayer, and the benches
occupied by the women, devout but spirited, with the little children by
their sides. What hearty prayers: what sighs irrepressibly heaving those
brave, tender bosoms; what secret tears, denied by smiles when the face
was lifted from the clasping hands! Righteous prayers, which were
fulfilled.

Over three thousand men went from Massachusetts alone; New Hampshire
added five hundred, and more than that number arrived from Connecticut,
after the rest had gone into camp at Canso. The three hundred from little
Rhode Island came too late. Other colonies sent rations and money. But the
four thousand were enough, with Pepperel of Kittery for commander, and a
good cause. They set out alone while the Cape Breton ice still filled the
harbors; for Commodore Warren of the English fleet at Antigua would not go
except by order from England--which, however, came soon afterward, so that
he and his ships joined them after all before hostilities began. The
expedition first set eyes on their objective point on the day before May
day, 1745.

The fortress bristled with guns of all sizes, and the walls were of
enormous thickness, so that no cannon belonging to the besiegers could
hope to make a breach in them. But the hearts of the garrison were less
stout than their defenses; and when four hundred cheering volunteers
approached a battery on shore, the Frenchmen spiked their guns and ran
away.

The siege lasted six weeks, with unusually fine weather. In the intervals
of attacks upon the island battery, which resisted them, the men hunted,
fished, played rough outdoor games, and kept up their spirits; and they
pounded Louisburg gates with their guns; but no advantage was gained; and
a night-attack, in the Indian style, was discovered prematurely, and
nearly two hundred men were killed or captured. Finally, there seemed to
be nothing for it but to escalade the walls, Warren--who had done nothing
thus far except prevent relief from approaching by sea--bombarding the
city meanwhile. It hardly seems possible the attempt could have succeeded;
at best, the losses would have been enormous. But at the critical moment,
depressed, perhaps, by having witnessed the taking of an incautious French
frigate which had tried to run the blockade, what should the French
commander do but hang out a white flag! Yes, the place had capitulated!
The gates that could not be hammered in with cannon-balls were thrown
open, and in crowded the Yankee army, laughing, staring, and thanking the
Lord of Hosts for His mercies. Truly, it was like David overcoming
Goliath, without his sling. It was a great day for New England; and on the
same day thirty years later the British redcoats fell beneath the volleys
on Bunker Hill.

The French tried to recapture the place next year, but storms, pestilence
and other disasters prevented; and the only other notable incident of the
war was the affair of Commander Knowles at Boston in 1747. He was anchored
off Nantasket with a squadron, when some of his tars deserted, as was not
surprising, considering the sort of commander he was, and the charms of
the famous town. Knowles, ignorant of the spirit of a Boston mob,
impressed a number of wharfmen and seamen from vessels in the harbor; he
had done the same thing before in England, and why not here? But the mob
was on fire at once, and after the timid governor had declined to seize
such of the British naval officers as were in the town, the crowd,
terrible in its anger, came thundering down King Street and played the
sheriff for itself. The hair of His Majesty's haughty commanders and
lieutenants must have crisped under their wigs when they looked out of the
windows of the coffee-house and saw them. In walks the citizens'
deputation, with scant ceremony: protests are unavailing: off to jail His
Majesty's officers must straightway march, leaving their bottles of wine
half emptied, and their chairs upset on the sawdusted floor; and in jail
must they abide, until those impressed Bostonians have been liberated. It
was a wholesome lesson; and among the children who ran and shouted beside
the procession to the prison were those who, when they were men grown,
threw the tea into Boston Harbor.

In 1748 the Peace was made, and the Duke of Newcastle, a flighty, trivial
and faithless creature, gave place to the strict, honest, and narrow Duke
of Bedford as Secretary of the Colonies. The colonies had been under the
charge of the Board of Commissioners, who could issue what orders they
chose, but had no power to enforce them; and as the colonial assemblies
slighted their commands except when it pleased them to do otherwise, much
exasperation ensued on the Commissioners' part. The difficulties would
have been minimized had it not been the habit of Newcastle to send out as
colonial officials the offscourings of the British aristocracy: and when a
British aristocrat is worthless, nothing can be more worthless than he.
The upshot of the situation was that the colonists did what they pleased,
regardless of orders from home; while yet the promulgation of those
orders, aiming to defend injustices and iniquities, kept up a chronic and
growing disaffection toward England. So it had been under Newcastle, who
had uniformly avoided personal annoyance by omitting to read the constant
complaints of the Commissioners; but Bedford was a man of another stamp,
fond of business, granite in his decisions, and resolved to be master in
his department. It was easy to surmise that his appointment would hasten
the drift of things toward a crisis. England would not tamely relinquish
her claim to absolute jurisdiction over her colonies. But the bulwarks of
popular liberty were rising in America, and every year saw them
strengthened and more ably manned. English legislative opposition only
defined and solidified the colonial resistance. What was to be the result?
There would be no lack of English statesmen competent to consider it; men
like Pitt, Murray and Townshend were already above the horizon of history.
But it was not by statesmanship that the issue was to be decided. Man is
proud of his intellect; but it is generally observable that it is the
armed hand that settles the political problems of the world.

There were in the colonies men of ability, and of consideration, who were
traitors to the cause of freedom. Such were Thomas Hutchinson, a plausible
hypocrite, not devoid of good qualities, but intent upon filling his
pockets from the public purse; Oliver, a man of less ability but equal
avarice; and William Shirley, the scheming lawyer from England, who had
made America his home in order to squeeze a living out of it. These men
went to England to promote the passage of a law insuring a regular revenue
for the civil list from the colonists, independent of the latter's
approval; the immediate pretext being that money was needed to protect the
colonies against French encroachments. The several assemblies refused to
consent to such a tax; and the question was then raised whether Parliament
had not the right to override the colonists' will. Lord Halifax, the First
Commissioner, was urgent in favor of the proposition; he was an ignorant,
arbitrary man, who laid out a plan for the subjugation of the colonies as
lightly and willfully as he might have directed the ditch-digging and
fence-building on his estates. Murray, afterward Lord Mansfield, held that
Parliament had the requisite power; but in the face of the united protest
of the colonies, that body laid the measure aside for the present.
Meanwhile the conditions of future trouble were preparing in the Ohio
Valley, where French and English were making conflicting claims and
planting rival stations; and in Nova Scotia, where the town of Halifax was
founded in an uninviting fir forest, and the project was mooted of
transporting the French Acadians to some place or places where they would
cease to constitute a peril by serving as a stage for French machinations
against the English rule.

Another and final war with France was already appearing inevitable; the
colonists must bear a hand in it, but they also were at odds with England
herself on questions vital to their prosperity and happiness. In the
welter of events of the next few years we find a mingling of conditions
deliberately created (with a view, on England's part, of checking the
independent tendencies of the Americans and of forcing tribute from them)
and of unforeseen occurrences due to fortuitous causes beyond the
calculation and control of persons in power. Finally, the declaration of
war against France in 1756--though it had unofficially existed at least
two years before--and its able management by the great Pitt, enabled
England to dictate a peace in 1763 giving her all she asked for in Europe
and the East, and the whole of the French possessions in America, besides
islands in the West Indies. Her triumph was great; but she did not foresee
(though a few acute observers did) that this great conquest would within a
few years fall into the hands of the colonists, making them potentially
the greatest of nations. At the era of the Revolution, the white
inhabitants in the colonies numbered about two millions, and the black
about half a million.

In 1754, the French had upward of sixty posts west of the Alleghanies,
and were sending expeditions to drive out whatever Englishmen could be
found. The Indian tribes who believed themselves to own the land were
aroused, and appealed to the Americans to assist them; which the latter
were willing to do, though not for the Indians' sake. Virginia was
especially concerned, because she claimed beyond the western mountains,
and had definite designs in that direction. In order to find out just what
the disposition of the French might be, Robert Dinwiddie, a Scot, governor
of Virginia, selected a trustworthy envoy to proceed to the French
commanders in the disputed districts and ask their purposes. His choice
fell upon George Washington, a young man of blameless character, steady,
courageous and observant, wise in judgment and of mature mind, though he
was but one and twenty years of age. He was the son of a Virginia planter,
had had such schooling as his neighborhood afforded until he was sixteen,
and had then begun life as a surveyor--a good calling in a country whose
inhabitants were daily increasing and whose lands were practically
limitless. Life in the open air, and the custom of the woods and hills,
had developed a frame originally powerful into that of a tall and hardened
athlete, able to run, wrestle, swim, leap, ride, as well as to use the
musket and the sword. His intellect was not brilliant, but it was clear,
and his habit of thought methodical; he was of great modesty, yet one of
those who rise to the emergency, and are kindled into greater and greater
power by responsibilities or difficulties which would overwhelm feebler or
less constant natures. None would have been less likely than Washington
himself to foretell his own greatness; but when others believed in him he
was compelled by his religious and conscientious nature to act up to their
belief. The marvelous selflessness of the man, while it concealed from him
what he was, immeasurably increased his power to act; to do his duty was
all that he ever proposed to himself, and therefore he was able to
concentrate his every faculty on that alone. The lessons of experience
were never thrown away upon him, and his faith in an overruling Providence
rendered him calm at all times, except on the rare occasions when some
subordinate's incompetence or negligence at a critical moment caused to
burst forth in him that terrific wrath which was more appalling to its
object than the guns of a battery. There was always great personal dignity
in Washington, insomuch that nothing like comradeship, in the familiar
sense, was ever possible to any one with him; he was totally devoid of the
sense of humor, and was therefore debarred from one whole region of human
sympathies which Franklin loved to dwell in. It is one of the marvels of
history that a man with a mind of such moderate compass as Washington's
should have gained the reputation, which he amply deserved, of being the
foremost American of his age, and one of the leading figures in human
annals. But, in truth, we attach far too much weight to intellect in our
estimates of human worth. Washington, was competent for the work that was
given him to do, and that work was one of the most important that ever
fell to the lot of a man. Faith, firmness, integrity, grasp, simplicity,
and the exceptional physical endowment which enabled him to support the
tremendous fatigues and trials of his campaigns, and of the opposition he
encountered from selfish and shortsighted politicians in Congress--these
qualities were almost sufficient to account for Washington. Almost, but
perhaps not quite; there must have been in addition an inestimable
personal equation which fused all into a harmonious individuality that
isolates him in our regard: a wholeness, which can be felt, but which is
hardly to be set down in phrases.

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