CHAPTER I.

Four Centuries of American History

OUR hundred years is a brief interval in the long epoch of human history, yet within that short period, including nearly

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a century of discovery and adventure on an unknown shore, the United States has developed from a handful of hardy men and women, thinly scattered along our Atlantic coast, into a vast and mighty country, peopled by not less than seventy-five millions of human beings, the freest, richest, most industrious, and most enterprising of any people upon the face of the earth. It began as a dwarf; it has grown into a giant. It was despised by the proud nations of Europe; it has become feared and respected by the proudest of these nations. For a long time they have claimed the right to settle among themselves the affairs of the world; they have now to deal with the United States in this self-imposed duty. And it is significant of the high moral attitude occupied by this country, that one of the first enterprises in which it is asked to join these ancient nations has for its end to do away with the horrors of war, and substitute for the drawn sword in the settlement of national disputes a great Supreme Court of arbitration.

This is but one of the lessons to be drawn from the history. of the great republic of the West. It has long been claimed that this history lacks interest, that it is devoid of the romance which we find in that of the Eastern world, has nothing in it of the striking. and dramatic, and is too young and new to be worth men's attention when compared with that of the ancient nations, which has come down from the mists of prehistoric time. Yet we think those who familiarize themselves with story of hardship, deprivation and heroic defence of God-given liberty will not be ready to admit this

claim. They will find in the history of the United States an abundance of the elements of romance. It has, besides, the merit of being a complete and fully rounded history. We can trace it from its birth, and put upon record the entire story of the evolution of a nation, a fact which it would be difficult to affirm of any of the older nations of the world.

FROM THE BEST STOCK OF EUROPE

If we go back to the origin of our country, it is to find it made up of a singular mixture of the best people of Europe. The word best is used here in a special sense. The settlers in this country were not the rich and titled. They came not from that proud nobility which claims to possess bluer blood than the common herd, but from the plain people of Europe, from the workers, not the idlers, and this rare distinction they have kept up until the present day. But of this class of the world's workers, they were the best and noblest. They were men who thought for themselves, and refused to be bound in the trammels of a State religion; men who were ready to dare the perils of the sea and the hardships of a barren shore for the blessings of liberty and free-thought; men of sturdy thrift, unflinching energy, daring enterprise, the true stuff out of which alone a nation like ours could be built.

Such was the character of the Pilgrims and the Puritans, the hardy empire-builders of New England, of the Quakers of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the Catholics of Maryland, the Huguenots of the South, the Moravians and other German Protestants, the sturdy Scotch-Irish, and the others who sought this country as a haven of refuge for free-thought. We cannot say the same for the Hollanders of New Amsterdam, the Swedes of Delaware, and the English of Virginia, so far as their purpose is concerned, yet they, too, proved hardy and industrious settlers, and the Cavaliers whom the troubles in England drove to Virginia showed their good blood by the prominent part which their descendants played in the winning of our independence and the making of our government. While the various peoples named took part in the settlement of the colonies,

the bulk of the settlers were of English birth, and Anglo-Saxon thrift and energy became the foundation stones upon which our nation has been built. Of the others, nearly the whole of them were of Teutonic origin, while the Huguenots, whom oppression drove from France, were of the very bone and sinew of that despotridden land. It may fairly be said, then, that the founders of our nation came from the cream of the populations of Europe, born of sturdy Teutonic stock, and comprising thrift, energy, endurance, love of liberty, and freedom of thought to a degree never equaled in the makers of any other nation upon the earth. They were of solid oak in mind and frame, and the edifice they built had for its foundation the natural rights of man, and for its superstructure that spirit of liberty which has ever since throbbed warmly in the American heart.

A COMMON ASPIRATION FOR LIBERTY

It was well for the colonies that this underlying unity of aim existed, for aside from this they were strikingly distinct in character and aspirations. Sparsely settled, strung at intervals along the far-extended Atlantic coast, silhouetted against a stern background of wilderness and mountain range, their sole bond of brotherhood was their common aspiration for liberty, while in all other respects they were unlike in aims and purposes. The spirit of political liberty was strongest in the New England colonies, and these held their own against every effort to rob them of their rights with an unflinching boldness, which is worthy of the highest praise, and which set a noble example for the remaining colonists. Next to them in bold opposition to tyranny were the people of the Carolinas, who sturdily resisted an effort to make them the enslaved subjects of a land-holding nobility. In Pennsylvania and Maryland political rights were granted by highminded proprietors, and in these colonies no struggle for self-government was necessary. Only in Virginia and New York was autocratic rule established, and in both of these it gradually yielded to the steady demand for self-government.

On the other hand, New England, while politically the freest was religiously the most autocratic. The Puritans, who had crossed the ocean in search of freedom of thought, refused to grant a similar freedom to those who came later, and sought to found a system as intolerant as that from which they had fled. A natural revulsion from their oppressive measures gave rise in Rhode Island to the first government on the face of the earth in which absolute religious liberty was established. Among the more southern colonies, a similar freedom, so far as liberty of Christian worship is concerned, was granted by William Penn and Lord Baltimore. But this freedom was maintained only in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, religious intolerance being the rule to a greater or less degree, in all the other colonies; the Puritanism of New England being replaced elsewhere by the Church of England autocracy.

The diversity in political condition, religion, and character of the settlers tended to keep the colonies separate, while a like diversity in commercial interests created jealousies which built up new barriers between them. The unity that might have been looked for between these feeble and remote communities, spread like links of a broken chain far along an ocean coast, had these and other diverse conditions to contend with, and they promised to develop into a series of weak and separate nations rather than into a strong and single commonwealth.

FIRST STEPS TOWARD UNION

The influences that overcame this tendency to disunion were many and important. We can only glance at them here. They may be divided into two classes, warlike hostility and industrial oppression. The first step toward union was taken in 1643, when four of the New England colonies formed a confederation for defense against the Dutch and Indians. "The United Colonies of New England" constituted in its way a federal republic, the prototype of that of the United States. The second step of importance in this connection was taken in 1754, when a convention was held.