tress supervised weaving and spinning, the master rode over his fields to supervise cultivation. The two usually cared for the slaves, looked after them in sickness, allotted their daily rations, arranged "marriages." The central point in the plantation was the imposing mansion of brick or wood, with broad verandahs, surrounded by houses for foremen and other assistants and by a number of offices. At a distance was a little village of Negro cabins. The chief bond with

MOUNT VERNON, the home of George Washington, and a typical residence of a Southern planter. From a photograph.

the outer world was the lavish hospitality between the planter's family and neighbors of like position scattered over many miles of territory.

A wholly different society was symbolized by even the exterior of New England. Here the small farms were subdivided into petty fields by stone fences, gathered from the soil. All habitations clustered in hamlets, which dotted the landscape. Each was marked by the spire of a white church, and, seen closer, each was made up of a few wide, elm-shaded streets, with

The New England village

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165

rows of small but decent houses in roomy yards. And yet, even in New England, people were expected to dress according to their social rank; and inferiors were made to "keep their places," in churches and public inns. The clubroom and the inn parlor were for the gentry only: the tradesman and his wife found places in the kitchen or taproom.

The symbol of the West was neither the broad-verandahed country mansion nor the town of elm-shaded streets cluster

LEXINGTON GREEN, showing part of a New England village, with typical homes of the better sort. The deeper interest of this picture is explained on page 167, at the end of the chapter.

ing about a white spire. Rather it was a stockaded fort, with scattered log cabins, in their stump-dotted clearings spotting the forest for miles about it. As early as 1660, in The WestVirginia, there was a difference noticeable between ern stockade eastern and western counties. The great planters were not much attracted to the ruder frontier, and so the western districts were left almost wholly to a democratic society of small farmers. So in New England, by 1700, good land was scarce in settled districts, and town "free-holders" were less and

less willing to admit "cottagers" to rights of pasture on the town "commons." Accordingly, the more enterprising and daring of the landless men began to strike out for themselves in new settlements far up the rivers, usually at some point where good water power suggested a mill site, and always where land could be taken almost at will. Long before the Revolution, men of New England birth had begun a newer and more democratic New England in the pine woods up the Kennebec and Androscoggin in Maine, along the upper course of the Merrimac in New Hampshire,

"BOONE'S FORT," one of the early western

"stations." Cf. page 244. From a print based on contemporary accounts. The structure was 250 feet by 125, with heavy gates

at the middle of the long sides.

in the Green Mountains of what was one day to be "Vermont," and in the Berkshires of Massachusetts as about Pittsfield on the upper Housatonic.

Meanwhile, farther west, beyond the first mountain range, in the long valleys from Georgia to New York, the Scotch-Irish were building the true West (page 135). No rivers

made visits and trade possible for them with the older settled area divided from it as they were by the bristling Blue Ridge; and so here difference of race and lack of intercourse added to the earlier distinction between eastern and western districts.

The de

But in all the western regions, English or German or Irish, east or west of the Blue Ridge, compared with the tidewater districts, there was little aristocracy. mocracy There were few large proprietors, few gentry, of the West few servants, almost no slaves. The gold lace and powdered wigs of the older sections were rarely seen, and only on some official from the eastern counties. Nearly every male settler was a free proprietor working his own

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167

land with his own hands, and eating and wearing the products of his own labor. There were fewer schools and fewer clergy than in the older region; and the hard conditions of life in the wilderness, and constant touch with savage enemies, developed a rudeness of manner and a ruthless temper. Both for good and bad, this new frontier had already begun in its own way to Americanize the old Europeanized frontier of the tidewater districts.

N.B. Lexington Green, shown on page 165, has of course its deepest interest as the scene of the first bloodshed of the American Revolution. On their way to Concord (page 208), the British regulars found a few Minute Men drawn up here in front of the Meeting House (from the site of which this photograph is taken). Inspired by the spirit of free Americans and by the sturdy heroism of Captain Parker's exhortation (note his words upon the Memorial stone), this little band stood its ground to a man, despite the British officer's order, "Disperse, you rebels," — and received a deadly volley. One of those who fell, the patriot Harrington, mortally wounded, dragged himself to his home (the house directly opposite), but died upon its steps while his wife was trying to assist him. Forever may men standing upon their rights but threatened by blustering tyranny remember the fine constitutional ring of Captain Parker's words,-"Stand your ground! Don't fire unless fired upon. But if they mean to have a war, let it begin here."

PART III-SEPARATION FROM ENGLAND

CHAPTER IX

THE CAUSES

I. HOW THE FRENCH WARS PREPARED THE WAY

THE Seventy years of Intercolonial wars closed in 1763. They had won for England a new colonial empire; but soon it became plain that they had also put at hazard her old empire. They had prepared her colonies in North America for union, removed the need of her protection, and brought her to tax them.

1. The common danger, during the long wars, had done much to bring the colonies together. In 1698 William Penn drew up a scheme for colonial federation, and in Projects for colonial 1754, at a council of governors at Albany, Franklin union presented his famous plan for union. Between these dates seven other like plans appeared, and leaders from distant colonies came together to consider some of them. True, the great majority of colonists everywhere ignored or rejected all such proposals; but the discussion was to bear fruit when a stronger motive for union should arise. And without union, resistance to England would have been impossible.

English conquest of Canada

2. The conquest of Canada removed the most pressing need of English protection. Far-sighted men had long seen that the colonies might be less true to the mother country if the dreaded French power should cease to threaten them from the north. In 1748 Peter Kalm, a shrewd Swedish traveler, wrote: "It is of great advantage to the crown of England that the colonies