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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Raleigh perhaps deserves to be regarded as the greatest English gentleman
who ever lived. In addition to the learning of his time, he had a towering
genius, indomitable courage and constancy, lofty and generous principles,
far-seeing wisdom, Christian humanity, and a charity that gave and forgave
to the end. He was a courtier and a statesman, a soldier and a sailor, a
merchant and an explorer. His life was one of splendid and honorable
deeds; he was not a talker, and found scant leisure to express himself in
writing; though when he chose to write poetry he approved himself best in
the golden age of English literature; and his "History of the World,"
composed while imprisonment in the Tower prevented him from pursuing more
active employments, is inferior to no other produced up to that time. Such
reverses as he met with in life only spurred him to fresh efforts, and his
successes were magnificent, and conducive to the welfare of the world. He
was a patriot of the highest and purest type; a champion of the oppressed;
a supporter of all worthy enterprises, a patron of literature and art.
Withal, he was full of the warm blood of human nature; he had all the
fire, the tenderness, and the sympathies that may rightly belong to a man.
The mind is astonished in contemplating such a being; he is at once so
close to us, and so much above the human average. King James I. of
England, jealous of his greatness, imprisoned him for twelve years, on a
groundless charge, and finally slew him, at the age of sixty-six, broken
by disease, and saddened, but not soured, by the monstrous ingratitude and
injustice of his treatment. Upon the scaffold, he felt of the edge of the
ax which was to behead him, and smiled, remarking, "A sharp medicine to
cure me of my diseases!" Such are the exploits of kings.

Raleigh was the first man who perceived that America was to be the home
of a white people: that it was to be a dwelling-place, not a mere
supply-house for freebooters and home traders. He resolved to do his part
toward making it so; he impoverished himself in the enterprise; and though
the colony which he planted in what is now North Carolina, but was then
called Virginia, in honor of the queen, who was pleased thus to advertise
her chastity--though this failed (by no fault of Raleigh's) of its
immediate object, yet the lesson thus offered bore fruit in due season,
and the colonization of the New World, shown to be a possibility and an
advantage, was taken up on the lines Raleigh had drawn, and resulted in
the settlement whose heirs we are.

In 1585, after receiving the favorable report of a preliminary
expedition, Raleigh sent out upward of a hundred colonists under the
command of Sir Richard Grenville, one of the heroic figures of the time, a
man of noble nature but fearful passions. They landed on the island of
Roanoke, off the mouth of the river of that name, and were well received
by the native tribes, who thought they were immortal and divine, because
they were without women, and possessed gunpowder. It would have been well
had the English responded in kind; but within a few days, Grenville, angry
at the non-production of a silver cup which had been stolen from his party
during a visit to a village, burned the huts and destroyed the crops; and
later, Lane, who had been left by Grenville in command of the colony,
invited the principal chief of the region to a friendly conference, and
murdered him. This method of procedure would not have been countenanced by
the great promoter of the expedition; nor would he have encouraged the
hunt for gold that was presently undertaken. This was the curse of the
time, and ever led to disaster and blood. Nor did Lane escape the delusion
that a passage could be found through the land to the Indies; the savages,
humoring his ignorance for their own purposes, assured him that the
Roanoke River (which rises some two hundred miles inland) communicated
with the Pacific at a distance of but a few days' journey. Lane selected a
party and set hopefully forth to traverse fifty degrees of latitude; but
ere long his provisions gave out, and he was forced to go starving back
again. He arrived at the settlement just in time to save it from
annihilation by the Indians.

But there were able men among these colonists, and some things were done
which were not foolish. Hariot, who had scientific knowledge, and was a
careful observer, made notes of the products of the land, and became
proficient in tobacco smoking; he also tested and approved the potato, and
in other ways laid the foundation for a profitable export and import
trade. John White, an artist, who afterward was put in charge of another
colony, made drawings of the natives and their appurtenances, which still
survive, and witness his fidelity and skill. Explorations up and down the
coast, and for some distance inland, were made; the salubrity of the
climate was eulogized, and it was admitted that the soil was of excellent
fertility. In short, nothing was lacking, in the way of natural
conditions, to make the colony a success; yet the Englishmen grew homesick
and despondent, and longed to return to England and English women. The
supplies which they were expecting from home had not arrived; and their
situation was rendered somewhat precarious, by the growing hostility of
the natives, who had come to the conclusion that these godlike white men
were not persons with whom it was expedient for them to associate.

At this juncture, down upon the coast suddenly swooped a fleet of over
twenty sail with the English flag flying, and no less a personage than Sir
Francis Drake in command. He was returning from a profitable pirating
expedition against the Spaniards in the West Indies, and desired to
see for himself how the colony sent out by his friend Raleigh was
prospering. Out of his easily-got abundance he generously supplied the
needs of the colonists, and presented them with a ship into the bargain,
in which they might sail home should circumstances demand it. A couple of
his most experienced officers, too, were added to the gift of the generous
freebooter; and the outlook was now very different from what it had been a
few days before. Yet fate was against them; or, to speak more accurately,
they had lost the spirit which should animate pioneers, and when a touch
of bad luck was added to their indisposition, they incontinently beat a
retreat. A storm arose, which wrecked the ship that Drake had given them,
and thus deprived them of the means of escape in case other disasters
should arrive. They besought Drake to take them home with him; and he,
with inexhaustible good humor, agreed to do so. His fleet, with the
slack-souled colonists on board, had scarcely lost sight of the low shores
of Roanoke, when the supply ship that had been so long awaited arrived
with all the requisites for subduing the wilderness on board. She found
the place deserted, and, putting about, sailed for home again. A fortnight
later came Sir Richard Grenville with three ships more; and he, being of a
persistent nature, would not consent to lose altogether the fruit of the
efforts which had been made; he left fifteen of his men on the island, to
carry on until fresh colonists could be brought from England. But before
this could be done the men were dead, whether by the act of God or of the
savages; and the first English experience in colonizing America was at an
end.

The story of the second colony, immediately sent out by Raleigh, ends
with a mystery that probably hid a tragedy. Seventeen women and two
children accompanied the eighty-nine men of the party. Having established
the fact that the land was habitable and cultivatable, Raleigh perceived
that in order to render it attractive also it was necessary that the
colonists should have their helpmeets with them. For the first time in
history, therefore, the feet of English women pressed our soil, and the
voices of children made music in the woodland solitudes. It had been
designed that the more commodious bay of the Chesapeake should be the
scene of this settlement; but the naval officer who should have
superintended the removal was hungering for a West Indian trading venture,
and declined to act. They perforce established themselves in the old spot,
therefore, where the buildings were yet standing on the northern end of
the little island, which, though deserted now, is for us historic ground.
The routine of life began; and before the ship sailed on her return trip
to England, the daughter of the governor and artist, John White, who was
married to one of his subordinates named Dare, had given birth to a
daughter, and called her Virginia. She was the first child of English
blood who could be claimed as American; she came into the world, from
which she was so soon to vanish, on the 18th of August, 1587. White
returned to England with the ship a week or two later. He was to return
again speedily with more colonists, and further supplies. But he never saw
his daughter and her infant after their farewell in the landlocked bay. He
reached England to find Raleigh and all the other strong men of England
occupied with plans to repel the invasion that threatened from Spain, and
which, in the shape of the Invincible Armada, was to be met and destroyed
in the English Channel, almost on the first anniversary of the birth of
Virginia Dare. Nothing could be done, at the moment, to relieve the people
at Roanoke; but in April of 1588, Raleigh found time, with the defense of
a kingdom on his hands, to equip two ships and send them in White's charge
to Virginia. All might have been well had White been content to attend
with a single eye to the business in hand; but the seas were full of
vessels which could be seized and stripped of their precious cargoes, and
White thought it would be profitable to imitate the exploits of Drake and
Grenville, and take a few prizes to Roanoke with him. But he was the ass
in the lion's hide. One of his ships was itself attacked and gutted, and
with the other he fled in terror back to London. Raleigh could not help
him now; his own fortune was exhausted; and it was not until the Armada
had come and gone, and the country had in a measure recovered itself from
the shocks of war, that succor could be attempted. The charter which had
been granted to Raleigh enabled him to give liberal terms to a company of
merchants and others, who on their part could raise the funds for the
voyage. But though Raleigh executed this patent in the spring of 1589, it
was not until more than a year afterward that the expedition was ready to
sail. White went with them, and we may imagine with what straining eyes he
scanned the spot where he had last beheld his daughter and grandchild, as
the ship glided up the inlet.

But no one came forth between the trees to wave a greeting to his
long-deferred return; there were no figures on the shore, no smoke of
family fires rose heavenward; families and hearths alike were gone. The
place was a desert. Little Virginia Dare and the Lost Colony of Roanoke
had already passed out of history, leaving no clew to their fate except
the single word "CROATAN" inscribed on the bark of a tree. It was the name
of an island further down the coast; and had White gone thither, he might
even yet have found the lost. But he was a man unfitted in all respects to
live in that age and take part in its enterprise. He was a soft, feeble,
cowardly and unfaithful creature, yet vain and ambitious, and eager to
share the fame of men immeasurably larger and worthier than he. He could
draw pictures, but he could not do deeds; and now, after having deserted
those to whom he had been in honor bound to cleave, he pleaded the excuse
of bad weather and the lateness of the season for abandoning them once
more; and, re-embarking on his ship, he went back with all his company to
England. It was the dastardly ending of the first effort, nobly conceived,
and supported through five years, to engraft the English race in the soil
of America.

Tradition hazards the conjecture that the Roanoke colony, or some of
them, were cared for by the friendly Indians of Hatteras. There was a
rumor that seven of them were still living twenty years after White's
departure. But no certain news was ever had of them, though several later
attempts to trace them were made. Between the time when their
faint-hearted governor had deserted them, and his return, three years had
passed; and if they were not early destroyed by the hostile tribes, they
must have endured a more lingering pain in hoping against hope for the
white sails that never rose above the horizon. Most of them, if not all,
were doubtless massacred by the Indians, if not at once, then when it
became evident that no succor was to be expected for them. Some, possibly,
were carried into captivity; and it may be that Virginia Dare herself grew
up to become the white squaw of an Indian brave, and that her blood still
flows in the veins of some unsuspected red man. But it is more likely that
she died with the others, one of the earliest and most innocent of the
victims sacrificed on the altar of a great idea.

White disappears from history at this point; but Raleigh never forgot his
colony, and five times, at his own expense, and in the midst of events
that might have monopolized the energies of a score of ordinary men, he
dispatched expeditions to gain tidings of them. In 1595 he himself sailed
for Trinidad, on the northern coast of South America, and explored the
river Orinoco, nine degrees above the equator, It was his hope to offset
the power of Spain in Mexico and Peru by establishing an English colony in
Guiana. Wars claimed his attention during the next few years, and then
came his long imprisonment; but in 1616, two years before his execution,
he headed a last expedition to the southern coast of the land he had
labored so faithfully to unite to England. It failed of its object, and
Raleigh lost his head.

But the purpose which he had steadfastly entertained did not die with
him; and we Americans claim him to-day as the first friend and father of
the conception of a great white people beyond the sea.

As we enter the Seventeenth Century, the figure which looms largest in
the foreground is that of Captain John Smith, governor of the colony at
Jamestown in 1607. But the way was prepared for him by a man as honorable,
though less distinguished, Bartholomew Gosnold by name, who voyaged to the
New England coast in 1602, and was the first to set foot on its shores.
The first land he sighted was what is now called Maine; thence he steered
southward, and disembarked on Cape Cod, on which he bestowed that name.
Proceeding yet further south, between the islands off the coast, he
finally entered the inclosed sound of Buzzard's Bay, and landed on the
island of Cuttyhunk. Gosnold was a prudent as well as an adventurous man,
and he was resolved to take all possible precautions against being
surprised by the Indians. On Cuttyhunk there was a large pond, and in the
pond there was an islet; and Gosnold, with his score of followers, fixed
upon this speck of rocky earth as the most suitable spot in the western
hemisphere wherein to plant the roots of English civilization. They built
a hut and made a boat, and gathered together their stores of furs and
sassafras; but these same stores proved their undoing. They could not
agree upon an equable division of their wealth; and recognizing that
disunion in a strange land was weakness and peril, they all got into their
ship and sailed back to England, carrying their undivided furs and
sassafras with them. By this mishap, New England missed becoming the scene
of the first permanent English colony. For when, five years afterward,
Gosnold returned to America with a hundred men and adequate supplies, it
was not to Buzzard's Bay, but to the mouth of the James River, that he
steered, and on its banks the colony was founded. Gosnold himself seems to
have been a man of the type that afterward made the New England whalers
famous in all seas; the mariners of New Bedford, New London, Sag Harbor
and Nantucket. But the companions of his second voyage were by no means of
this stamp: the bulk of them were "gentlemen," who had no familiarity with
hard fare and hard work, and expected nature to provide for them in the
wilderness as bountifully as the London caterers had done at home. To the
accident which brought Gosnold to a southerly instead of a northerly port
on this occasion may be due the fact that Virginia instead of
Massachusetts became the home of the emigrant cavaliers. Had they, as well
as the Puritans, chosen New England for their abiding place, an
amalgamation might have taken place which would have vitally modified
later American history. But destiny kept them apart in place as well as in
sentiment and training; and it is only in our own day that Reconstruction,
and the development of means of intercommunication, bid fair to make a
homogeneous people out of the diverse elements which for so many
generations recognized at most only an outward political bond.

Captain John Smith, fortunately, was neither a cavalier nor a simple
mariner, but a man in a class by himself, and just at that juncture the
most useful that could possibly have been attached to this adventure. His
career even before the present period had been so romantic that, partly
for that reason, and partly because he himself was his own chief
chronicler, historians have been prone to discredit or modify many of its
episodes. But what we know of Smith from other than a Smith source tallies
so well with the stories which rest upon his sole authority that there
seems to be no sound cause for rejecting the latter. After making all
deductions, he remains a remarkable personage, and his influence upon the
promotion of the English colonial scheme was wholly beneficial. He was
brave, ingenious, indefatigable, prudent and accomplished; he knew what
should be done, and was ever foremost in doing it He took hold of the
helpless and slow-witted colonists as a master carpenter handles blocks of
wood, and transformed them into an efficient and harmonious structure,
strong enough to withstand the first onsets of misfortune, and to endure
until the arrival of recruits from home placed them beyond all danger of
calamity.

Smith was born in England in 1579, and was therefore only twenty-eight
years of age when he embarked with Gosnold. Yet he had already fought in
the Netherlands, starved in France, and been made a galley-slave by the
Moslem. He had been shipwrecked at one time, thrown overboard at another,
and robbed at a third. Thrice had he met and slain Turkish champions in
the lists; and he had traversed the steppes of Russia with only a handful
of grain for food. He was not a man of university education: the only
schooling he had had was in the free schools of Alford and Louth, before
his fifteenth year; his father was a tenant farmer in Lincolnshire, and
though John was apprenticed to a trade, he ran away while a mere
stripling, and shifted for himself ever after. An adventurer, therefore,
in the fullest sense of the word, he was; and doubtless he had the
appreciation of his own achievements which self-made men are apt to have.
But there was sterling pith in him, a dauntless and humane soul, and
inexhaustible ability and resource. Such a man could not fail to possess
imagination, and imagination and self-esteem combined conduce to
highly-colored narrative; but that Smith was a liar is an unwarranted
assumption, which will not be countenanced here.

The Gosnold colony had provided itself with a charter, granted by King
James, and as characteristic of that monarch as was his treatment of
Raleigh. It was the first of many specimens of absentee landlordism from
which America was to suffer. It began by setting apart an enormous stretch
of territory, bounded on the north by the latitude of the St. Croix River,
and on the south by that of Cape Fear, and extending westward
indefinitely. To this domain was given the general title of Virginia. It
was subdivided into two approximately equal parts, with a neutral zone
between them, which covered the space now occupied by the cities of New
York, Philadelphia, and Washington, and the land adjoining them. The
northern division was given in charge to the "Plymouth Company," and the
southern to the "London Company"; they were separate mercantile and
colonizing organizations, but the charter applied to both alike.

The colonies were to be under the immediate control of a council composed
of residents, but appointed by the king; this council was subordinate to
another, meeting in England; and this in its turn was subject to the
king's absolute authority. The emigrants were to pay a yearly rent of
one-fifth of the gold and silver produced, and a third as much of the
copper. A five per cent duty levied on alien traffic was for the first
five-and-twenty years to inure to the benefit of the colony, but afterward
should be the exclusive perquisite of the Crown. The right to call
themselves and their children English was permitted to the emigrants; and
they were also allowed to defend themselves against attacks, though it was
enjoined upon them to treat the natives with kindness, and to endeavor to
draw them into the fold of the Church.

Such was James's idea of what a charter for an American colony should be.
He was taking much for granted when he assumed the right to control the
emigrants at all; and he was careful to deprive them of any chance to
control in the least degree their own affairs. America was to be the abode
of liberty; but this monarch thought only of making it a field for his
private petty tyranny. The colonists were to be his own personal slaves,
and the deputy slaves of the Companies; after discharging all their
obligations to him and to them, they might do the best they could for
themselves with what was left, provided of course that they strictly
observed the laws which his Majesty was kind enough also to draw up for
them, the provisions of which included the penalty of death for most
offenses above petty larceny. A colony which, amid the hardships and
unfamiliar terrors of a virgin wilderness, could enjoy all the benefits of
a charter like this, and yet survive, would seem hardy enough for any
emergency. But James was king, and kings, in those days, if they pleased
no one else, pleased themselves.

As we have seen, the members of the colony, being persons unused to the
practice of the useful arts, were little apt to succeed even under the
most favoring conditions. But they had Smith, in himself a host, and a few
other good heads and able hands; and to speak truth, the provisions of
their charter do not seem to have unduly embarrassed them. It could annoy
and hamper them occasionally, but only themselves could work themselves
serious injury; there were three thousand miles of perilous sea water
between their paternal monarch and them, and the wilderness, with all its
drawbacks, breeds self-confidence and independence. The mishaps of the
colony were due to the shiftlessness of most of its members, and to the
insalubrity of the site chosen for their city of Jamestown, whereby more
than half of them perished during the first few months. On the voyage out,
Smith, who had probably made himself distasteful to the gentlemen
adventurers by his unconventional manners and conversation, had been
placed under restraint--to what extent is not exactly known; and when the
sealed orders under which they had sailed were opened, and it was found
that Smith was named a member of the council, he was for some weeks not
permitted to exercise his lawful functions in that office. When the
troubles began, however, the helpless gentlemen were glad to avail
themselves of his services, which he with his customary good humor readily
accorded them; and so competent did he show himself that ere long he was
in virtual command of them all. The usual search for gold and for the
passage through the continent to India having been made, with the usual
result, they all set to work to build their fort and town, and to provide
food against the not improbable contingency of famine. As crops could not
be raised for the emergency, Smith set out to traffic with the natives,
and brought back corn enough for the general need. All this while he had
been contending with a prevalent longing on the part of the colonists to
get back to England; there was no courage left in them but his, which
abounded in proportion to their need for it. Prominent among the
malcontents was the deposed governor, Wingfield, who tried to bribe the
colonists to return; another member of the council was shot for mutiny. In
the end, Smith's will prevailed, and he was governor and council and King
James all in one; and when, at the beginning of winter, he had brought the
settlement to order and safety, he started on a journey of exploration up
the Chickahominy. He perceived the immense importance of understanding his
surroundings, and at the same time of establishing friendly relations with
the neighboring tribes of Indians; and it was obvious that none but he
(for the excellent Gosnold had died of fever in the first months of the
settlement) was capable of effecting these objects. Accordingly he
proceeded prosperously toward the headwaters of the river, a dozen miles
above its navigable point; but there, all at once, he found himself in the
midst of a throng of frowning warriors, who were evidently resolved to put
an end to his investigations, if not to his existence, forthwith.

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