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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Another man than Smith would have committed some folly or rashness which
would have precipitated his fate; but Smith was as much at his ease as was
Julius Caesar of old on the pirate's ship. His two companions were killed,
but he was treated as a prisoner of rank and importance by the brother of
the great chief Powhatan, by whom he had been captured. He interested and
impressed his captors by his conversation and his instruments; and at the
same time he kept his eyes and ears open, and missed no information that
could be of use to himself and his colony. Powhatan gave him an audience
and seems to have adopted a considerate attitude; at all events he sent
him back to Jamestown after a few days, unharmed, and escorted by four
Indians, with a supply of corn. But precisely what occurred during those
few days we shall never certainly know; since we must choose between
accepting Smith's unsupported story, only made public years afterward, and
believing nothing at all. Smith's tale has charmed the imagination of all
who have heard it; nothing could be more prettily romantic; the trouble
with it is, it seems to most people too pretty and romantic to be true.
Yet it is simple enough in itself, and not at all improbable; there is no
question as to the reality of the dramatis personae of the story, and
their relations one to another render such an episode as was alleged
hardly more than might reasonably be looked for.

The story is--as all the world knows, for it has been repeated all over
the world for nearly three hundred years, and has formed the subject of
innumerable pictures--that Powhatan, for reasons of high policy
satisfactory to himself, had determined upon the death of the Englishman,
rightly inferring that the final disappearance of the colony would be the
immediate sequel thereof. The sentence was that Smith's brains were to be
knocked out with a bludgeon; and he was led into the presence of the chief
and the warriors, and ordered to lay his head upon the stone. He did so,
and the executioners poised their clubs for the fatal blow; but it never
fell. For Smith, during his captivity, had won the affection of the little
daughter of Powhatan, a girl of ten, whose name was Pocahontas. She was
too young to understand or fear his power over the Indians; but she knew
that he was a winning and fascinating being, and she could not endure that
he should be sacrificed. Accordingly, at this supreme crisis of his career,
she slipped into the dreadful circle, and threw herself upon Smith's
body, so that the blow which was aimed at his life must kill her first.
She clung to him and would not be removed, until her father had promised
that Smith should be spared.

So runs the Captain's narrative, published for the first time in 1624,
after Pocahontas's appearance in London, and her death in 1617. Why he had
not told it before is difficult to explain. Perhaps he had promised
Powhatan to keep it secret, lest the record of his sentimental clemency
should impair his authority over the tribes. Or it may have been an
embellishment of some comparatively trifling incident of Smith's
captivity, suggested to his mind as he was compiling his "General History
of Virginia." It can never be determined; but certainly his relations with
the Indian girl were always cordial, and it seems unlikely that Powhatan
would have permitted him to return to Jamestown except for some unusual
reason.

Pocahontas's life had vicissitudes such as seldom befall an Indian
maiden. Some time between the Smith episode of 1607, and the year 1612,
she married one of her father's tributary chiefs, and went to live with
him on his reservation. There she was in some manner kidnapped by one
Samuel Argall, and held for ransom. The ransom was paid, but Pocahontas
was not sent back; and the following year she was married to John Rolfe, a
Jamestown colonist, and baptized as Rebecca. He took her to London, where
she was a nine days' wonder; and they had a son, whose blood still flows
in not a few American veins to-day. If she was ten years old in 1607, he
must have been no more than twenty at the time of her death in Gravesend,
near London. But her place in American history is secure, as well as in
the hearts of all good Americans. She was the heroine of the first
American romance; and she is said to have been as beautiful as all our
heroines should rightly be.

When Smith, with his Indian escort, got back to Jamestown, he was just in
season to prevent the colony from running away in the boat. Soon after a
new consignment of emigrants and supplies arrived from England; but again
there were fewer men than gentlemen, and Smith sent back a demand for
"rather thirty carpenters, husbandmen, gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths,
masons, and diggers up of trees' roots, well provided, than a thousand of
such as we have." There spoke the genuine pioneer, whose heart is in his
work, and who can postpone "gentility" until it grows indigenously out of
the soil. The Company at home were indignant that their colony had not ere
now reimbursed them for their expenditure, and much more; and they sent
word that unless profits were forthcoming forthwith (one-fifth of the gold
and silver, and so forth) they would abandon the colony to its fate. One
cannot help admiring Smith for refraining from the obvious rejoinder that
to be abandoned was the dearest boon that they could crave; but a sense of
humor seems to have been one of the few good qualities which the Captain
did not possess. He intimated to the Company that money was not to be
picked up ready made in Virginia, but must be earned by hard work with
hands and heads in the field and forest. It is his distinction to have
been the first man of eminence visiting the new world who did not think
more of finding gold, or the passage to India, or both, than of anything
else. Smith knew that in this world, new or old, men get what they work
for, and in the long run no more than that; and he made his gentlemen
colonists take off their coats and blister their gentlemanly hands with
the use of the spade and the ax. It is said that they excelled as
woodcutters, after due instruction; and they were undoubtedly in all
respects improved by this first lesson in Americanism. The American ax and
its wielders have become famous since that day; and the gentlemen of
Jamestown may enjoy the credit of having blazed the way.

Fresh emigrants kept coming in, of a more or less desirable quality, as
is the case with emigrants still. Some of them had been sent out by other
organizations than the London Company, and bred confusion; but Smith was
always more than equal to the emergency, and kept his growing brood in
hand. He had the satisfaction of feeling that he was the right man in the
right place; and let the grass grow under neither his feet nor theirs. The
abandonment threat of the London Company led him to take measures to make
the colony independent so far as food was concerned, and a tract of land
was prepared and planted with corn. Traffic for supplies with the Indians
was systematized; and by the time Smith's year of office had expired the
Jamestown settlement was self-supporting, and forever placed beyond the
reach of annihilation--though, the very year after he had left it, it came
within measurable distance thereof.

He now returned to England, and never revisited Jamestown; but he by no
means relaxed his interest in American colonization, or his efforts to
promote it. In 1614 he once more sailed westward with two ships, on a
trading and exploring enterprise, which was successful. He examined and
mapped the northern coast, already seen by Gosnold, and bestowed upon the
country the name of New England. Traditions of his presence and exploits
are still told along the shores of Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
In the year following he tried to found a small colony somewhere in these
regions, but was defeated by violent storms; and at a subsequent attempt
he fell in with French pirates, and his ship and fortune were lost, though
he himself escaped in an open skiff: the chains were never forged that
could hold this man. Nor was his spirit broken; he took his map and his
description of New England, and personally canvassed all likely persons
with a view to fitting out a new expedition. In 1617, aided perhaps by the
interest which Pocahontas had aroused in London, he was promised a fleet
of twenty vessels, and the title of Admiral of New England was bestowed
upon him. Admiral he remained till his death; but the fleet he was to
command never put forth to sea. A ship more famous than any he had
captained was to sail for New England in 1620, and land the Pilgrims on
Plymouth. Rock. Smith's active career was over, though he was but
eight-and-thirty years of age, and had fifteen years of life still before
him. He had drunk too deeply of the intoxicating cup of adventure and
achievement ever to be content with a duller draught; and from year to
year he continued to use his arguments and representations upon all who
would listen. But he no longer had money of his own, and he was
forestalled by other men. He was to have no share in the development of
the country which he had charted and named. At the time of his death in
London in 1632, poor and disappointed, Plymouth, Salem and Boston had been
founded, Virginia had entered upon a new career, and Maryland had been
settled by the Catholics under Lord Baltimore. The Dutch had created New
Amsterdam on Manhattan Island in 1623; and the new nation in the new
continent was fairly under way.

Jamestown, as has been said, narrowly escaped extinction in the winter of
1609. The colonists found none among their number to fill Smith's place,
and soon relapsed into the idleness and improvidence which he had so
resolutely counteracted. They ate all the food which he had laid up for
them, and when it was gone the Indians would sell them no more. Squads of
hungry men began to wander about the country, and many of them were
murdered by the savages. The mortality within the settlement was terrible,
and everything that could be used as food was eaten; at length cannibalism
was begun; the body of an Indian, and then the starved corpses of the
settlers themselves were devoured. Many crawled away to perish in the
woods; others, more energetic, seized a vessel and became pirates. In
short, such scenes were enacted as have been lately beheld in India and in
Cuba. The severity of the famine may be judged from the fact that out of
five hundred persons at the beginning of the six months, only sixty
diseased and moribund wretches survived. And this in a land which had been
described by its discoverers as a very Garden of Eden, flowing with milk
and honey.

Meanwhile, great things were preparing in England. Smith's warning that
America must be regarded and treated as an agricultural and industrial
community, and not as a treasure-box, had borne fruit; and a new charter
was applied for, which should more adequately satisfy the true conditions.
It was granted in 1609; Lord Salisbury was at the head of the promoters,
and with him were associated many hundreds of the lords, commoners and
merchants of England. The land assigned to them was a strip four hundred
miles in breadth north and south of Old Point Comfort, and across to the
Pacific, together with all islands lying within a hundred miles of shore.
In respect of administrative matters, the tendency of the new charter was
toward a freer arrangement; in especial, the company was to exercise the
powers heretofore lodged with the king, and the supreme council was to be
chosen by the shareholders. The governor was the appointee of the
corporation, and his powers were large and under conditions almost
absolute. The liberties of the emigrants themselves were not specifically
enlarged, but they were at least emancipated from the paternal solicitude
of the stingy and self-complacent pettifogger who graced the English
throne.

Lord Delaware was chosen governor; and Newport, Sir Thomas Gates and Sir
George Somers were the commissioners who were to conduct the affairs of
the colony until his arrival. A large number of emigrants, many of whom
contributed in money and supplies to the expedition, were assembled, and
the fleet numbered altogether nine vessels. But Newport and his fellow
commissioners suffered shipwreck on the Bermudas, and did not reach
Jamestown till nine months later, in May, 1610. The calamitous state of
things which there awaited them was an unwelcome surprise; and the
despairing colonists would be contented with nothing short of exportation
to Newfoundland. But before they could gain the sea, Lord Delaware with
his ships and provisions was met coming into port; and the intending
fugitives turned back with him. The hungry were fed, order was restored,
and industry was re-established. A wave of religious feeling swept over
the little community; the rule of Lord Delaware was mild, but just and
firm; and all would have been well had not his health failed, and
compelled him, in the spring of 1611, to return to England. The colony was
disheartened anew, and the arrival of Sir Thomas Dale in Delaware's place
did not at first relieve the depression; his training had been military,
and he administered affairs by martial law. But he believed in the future
of the enterprise, and so impressed his views upon the English council
that six more ships, with three hundred emigrants, were immediately sent
to their relief. Grates, who brought these recruits to Jamestown, assumed
the governorship, and a genuine prosperity began. Among the most important
of the improvements introduced was an approximation to the right of
private ownership in land, which had hitherto been altogether denied, and
which gave the emigrants a personal interest in the welfare of the
enterprise. In 1612 a third charter was granted, still further increasing
the privileges of the settlers, who now found themselves possessed of
almost the same political powers as they had enjoyed at home. It was still
possible, as was thereafter shown, for unjust and selfish governors to
inflict misery and discontent upon the people; but it was also possible,
under the law, to give them substantial freedom and happiness; and that
was a new light in political conceptions.

More than thirty years had now passed since Raleigh first turned his mind
to the colonizing of Virginia. He was now approaching the scaffold; but he
could feel a lofty satisfaction in the thought that it was mainly through
him that an opportunity of incalculable magnitude and possibilities had
been given for the enlargement and felicity of his race. He had sowed the
seed of England beyond the seas, and the quality of the fruit it should
bear was already becoming apparent to his eyes, soon to close forever upon
earthly things. The spirit of America was his spirit. He was for freedom,
enlightenment, and enterprise; and whenever a son of America has fulfilled
our best ideal of what an American should be, we find in him some of the
traits and qualities which molded the deeds and colored the thoughts of
this mighty Englishman.

Nor can we find a better example of the restless, practical, resourceful
side of the American character than is offered in Captain John Smith; even
in his boastfulness we must claim kinship with him. His sterling manhood,
his indomitable energy, his fertile invention, his ability as a leader and
as a negotiator, all ally him with the traditional Yankee, who carries on
in so matter-of-fact a way the solution of the problems of the new
democracy. Both these men, each in his degree, were Americans before
America.

And with them we may associate the name of Columbus; to him also we must
concede the spiritual citizenship of our country; not because of the bare
fact that he was the first to reach its shores, but because he had a soul
valiant enough to resist and defy the conservatism that will believe in no
new thing, and turns life into death lest life should involve labor and
self-sacrifice. Columbus, Smith, and Raleigh stand at the portals of our
history, types of the faith, success and honor which are our heritage.

CHAPTER SECOND

THE FREIGHT OF THE MAYFLOWER

The motive force which drove the English Separatists and Puritans to a
voluntary exile in New England in 1620 and later, had its origin in the
brain of the son of a Saxon slate cutter just a century before. Martin
Luther first gave utterance to a mental protest which had long been on the
tongue's tip of many thoughtful and conscientious persons in Europe, but
which, till then, no one had found the courage, or the energy, or the
conviction, or the clear-headedness (as the case might be) to formulate
and announce. Once having reached its focus, however, and attained its
expression, it spread like a flame in dry stubble, and produced results in
men and nations rarely precedented in the history of the world, whose
vibrations have not yet died away.

Henry VIII. of England was born and died a Catholic; though of religion
of any kind he never betrayed an inkling. His Act of Supremacy, in 1534,
which set his will above that of the Pope of Rome, had no religious
bearing, but merely indicated that he wanted to divorce one woman in order
to marry another. Nevertheless it made it incumbent upon the Pope to
excommunicate him, and thus placed him, and England as represented by him,
in a quasi-dissenting attitude toward the orthodox faith. And coming as it
did so soon after Luther's outbreak, it may have encouraged Englishmen to
think on lines of liberal belief.

Passionate times followed in religious--or rather in theological--matters,
all through the Sixteenth Century. The fulminations of Luther and the
logic of Calvin set England to discussing and taking sides; and when
Edward VI. came to the throne, he was himself a Protestant, or indeed a
Puritan, and the stimulus of Puritanism in others. But the mass of the
common people were still unmoved, because there was no means of getting at
them, and they had no stomach for dialectics, if there had been. The new
ideas would probably have made little headway had not Edward died and Mary
the Catholic come red-hot with zeal into his place. She lost no time in
catching and burning all dissenters, real or suspected; and as many of
these were honest persons who lived among the people, and were known and
approved by them, and as they uniformly endured their martyrdom with
admirable fortitude and good-humor, falling asleep in the crackling flames
like babes at the mother's breast, Puritanism received an advertisement
such as nothing since Christianity had enjoyed before, and which all the
unaided Luthers, Melanchthons and Calvins in the world could not have
given it.

This lasted five years, after which Mary went to her reward, and
Elizabeth came to her inheritance. She was no more of a religion-monger
than her distinguished father had been; but she was, like him, jealous of
her authority, and a martinet for order and obedience at all costs. A
certain intellectual voluptuousness of nature and an artistic instinct
inclined her to the splendid forms and ceremonies of the Catholic ritual;
but she was too good a politician not to understand that a large part of
her subjects were unalterably opposed to the papacy. After some
consideration, therefore, she adopted the expedient of a compromise, the
substance of which was that whatever was handsome and attractive in
Catholicism was to be retained, and only those technical points dropped
which made the Pope the despot of the Church. In ordinary times this would
have answered very well; human nature likes to eat its cake and have it
too; but this time was anything but ordinary. The reaction from old to new
ways of thinking, and the unforgotten persecutions of Mary, had made men
very fond of their opinions, and preternaturally unwilling to enter into
bargains with their consciences. At the same time loyalty to the Crown was
still a fetich in England, as indeed it always has been, except at and
about the time when Oliver Cromwell and others cut off the head of the
First Charles. Consequently when Elizabeth and Whitgift, her Archbishop of
Canterbury, set about putting their house in order in earnest, they were
met with a mixture of humble loyalty and immovable resistance which would
have perplexed any potentates less single-minded. But Elizabeth and
Whitgift were not of the sort that sets its hand to the plow and then
turns back; they went earnestly on with their banishments and executions,
paying particular attention to the Separatists, but keeping plenty in hand
for the Puritans also.--The Separatists, it may be observed, were so
called because their aim was to dispart themselves entirely from the
orthodox communion; the Puritans were willing to remain in the fold, but
had it in mind to purify it, by degrees, from the defilement which they
held it to have contracted. The former would not in the least particular
make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness, or condone the sins of
the Scarlet Woman, or of anybody else; they would not inhale foul air,
with a view to sending it forth again disinfected by the fragrance of
their own lungs. They took their stand unequivocally upon the plain letter
of Scripture, and did away with all that leaned toward conciliating the
lighter sentiments and emotions; they would have no genuflexions, no
altars, no forms and ceremonies, no priestly vestments, no Apostolic
Succession, no priests, no confessions, no intermediation of any kind
between the individual and his Creator. The people themselves should make
and unmake their own "ministers," and in all ways live as close to the
bone as they could. The Puritans were not opposed to any of these beliefs;
only they were not so set upon proclaiming and acting upon them in season
and out of season; they contended that the idolatry of ritual, since it
had been several centuries growing up, should be allowed an appreciable
time to disappear. It will easily be understood that, at the bottom of
these religious innovations and inflammations, was a simple movement
toward greater human freedom in all directions, including the political.
It mattered little to the zealots on either side whether or not the secret
life of a man was morally correct; he must think in a certain prescribed
way, on pain of being held damnable, and, if occasion served, of being
sent to the other world before he had opportunity to further confirm his
damnation. The dissenters, when they got in motion, were just as
intolerant and bigoted as the conformists; and toward none was this
intolerance more strongly manifested than toward such as were in the main,
but not altogether, of their way of thinking. The Quakers and the
Independents had almost as hard an experience in New England, at the hands
of the Puritans, as the latter had endured from good Queen Bess and her
henchmen a few years before. But really, religion, in the absolute sense,
had very little to do with these movements and conflicts; the impulse was
supposed to be religion because religion dwells in the most interior
region of a man's soul. But the craving for freedom also proceeds from an
interior place; and so does the lust for tyranny. Propinquity was mistaken
for identity, and anything which was felt but could not be reasoned about
assumed a religious aspect to the subject of it, and all the artillery of
Heaven and Hell, and the vocabulary thereof, were pressed into service to
champion it.

But New England had to be peopled, and this was the way to people it. The
dissenters perceived that, though they might think as they pleased in
England, they could not combine this privilege with keeping clear of the
fagot or the gibbet; and though martyrdom is honorable, and perhaps
gratifying to one's vanity, it can be overdone.

They came to the conclusion, accordingly, that practical common sense
demanded their expatriation; and some of them humbly petitioned her
Majesty to be allowed to take themselves off. The Queen did not show
herself wholly agreeable to this project; womanlike, and queenlike, she
wanted to convince them even more than to be rid of them; or if they must
be got rid of, she preferred to dispose of them herself in the manner
prescribed for stubborn heretics. But the lady was getting on in years,
and was not so ardently loved as she had been; and her activity against
the heretics could not keep pace with her animosity. She had succeeded in
many things, and her reign was accounted glorious; but she had won no
glory by the Puritans and Separatists, and her campaign against them had
not succeeded. They were stronger than ever, and were to grow stronger
yet. It was remembered, too, by her servants, that, when she was dead,
some one might ascend the throne who was less averse to nonconformity than
she had been; and then those who had persecuted might suffer persecution
in their turn. So although the prayer of the would-be colonists was not
granted, the severity against them was relaxed; and as Elizabeth's last
breath rattled in her throat, the mourners had one ear cocked toward the
window, to hear in what sort of a voice James was speaking.

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