A School History of the United States by John Bach McMaster

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%97. The Three Groups of Colonies.%--It has always been usual to
arrange the colonies in three groups: 1. The Eastern or New England
Colonies (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut).
2. The Middle Colonies (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and
Delaware). 3. The Southern Colonies (Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina,
South Carolina, and Georgia). Now, this arrangement is good not only
from a geographical point of view, but also because the people, the
customs, the manners, the occupations, in each of these groups were very
unlike the people and the ways of living in the others.

[Illustration: New England mansion]

%98. Occupations in New England.%--In New England the colonists were
almost entirely English, though there were some Scotch, some
Scotch-Irish, a few Huguenot refugees from France, and, in Rhode Island,
a few Portuguese Jews. As the climate and soil did not admit of raising
any great staple, such as rice or tobacco, the people "took to the sea."
They cut down trees, with which the land was covered, built ships, and
sailed away to the Grand Banks off Newfoundland for cod, and to the
whale fisheries for oil. They went to the English, Dutch, and Spanish
West Indian Islands, with flour, salt meat, horses, oxen; with salted
salmon, cod, and mackerel; with staves for barrels; with onions and
salted oysters. In return, they came back with sugar, molasses, cotton,
wool, logwood, and Spanish dollars with which the New England Colonies
paid for the goods they took from England. They went to Spain, where
their ships were often sold, the captains chartering English vessels and
coming home with cargoes of goods made in England. Six hundred ships are
said to have been employed in the foreign trade of Boston, and more than
a thousand in the fisheries and the trade along the coast.

[Illustration: Dutch House at Albany[1]]

[Footnote 1: From an old print.]

Farming, outside of Connecticut, yielded little more than a bare
subsistence. Manufactures in general were forbidden by English law.
Paper and hats were made in small quantities, leather was tanned, lumber
was sawed, and rum was distilled from molasses; but it was on homemade
manufactures that the people depended.

%99. Occupations in the Middle Colonies.%--In the Middle Colonies the
population was a mixture of people from many European countries. The
line of little villages which began at the west end of Long Island and
stretched up the Hudson to Albany, and out the Mohawk to
Schenectady---the settled part of New York--contained Englishmen,
Irishmen, Dutchmen, French Huguenots, Germans from the Rhine countries,
and negroes from Africa. The chief occupations of those people were
farming, making flour, and carrying on an extensive commerce with
England, Spain, and the West Indian Islands.

[Illustration: Shoes worn by Palatines in Pennsylvania]

In New Jersey the population was almost entirely English, but in
Pennsylvania it was as mixed as in New York. Around Philadelphia the
English predominated, but with them were mingled Swedes, Dutch, Welsh,
Germans, and Scotch-Irish. Taken together, the Germans and the
Scotch-Irish far outnumbered the English, and made up the mass of the
population between the Schuylkill and the Susquehanna rivers. Both were
self-willed and stubborn, and they were utterly unable to get along
together peaceably, so that their settlements ran across the state in
two parallel bands, in one of which whole regions could be found in
which not a word of English was spoken. Indeed, then, and long after the
nineteenth century began, the laws of Pennsylvania were printed both in
English and in German. The chief occupation of the people was farming;
and it is safe to say that no such farms, no such cattle, no such grain,
flour, provisions, could be found in any other part of the country.
Lumber, too, was cut and sold in great quantities; and along the
frontier there was a lively fur trade with the Indians. At Philadelphia
was centered a fine trade with Europe and the West Indies. Had it not
been for the action of the mother country, manufactures would have
flourished greatly; even as it was, iron and paper were manufactured in
considerable quantities.

%100. Occupations in the Southern Colonies.%--South of Pennsylvania,
and especially south of the Potomac River, lay a region utterly unlike
anything to the north of it. In Virginia, there were no cities, no large
towns, no centers of population. At an early day in the history of the
colony the legislature had attempted to remedy this, and had ordered
towns to be built at certain places, had made them the only ports where
ships from abroad could be entered, had established tobacco warehouses
in them, had offered special privileges to tradesmen who would settle in
them, and had provided that each should have a market and a fair. But
the success was small, and Fredericksburg and Alexandria and Petersburg
were straggling villages. Jamestown, the old capital, had by this time
ceased to exist. Williamsburg, the new capital, was a village of 200
houses. There was no business, no incentive in Virginia to build towns.
The planters owned immense plantations along the river banks, and raised
tobacco, which, when gathered, cured, and packed into hogsheads, was
rolled away to the nearest wharf for inspection and shipment to London.
In those early days, when good roads were unknown and wagons few, shafts
were attached to each hogshead by iron bolts driven into the heads, and
the cask was thus turned into a huge roller. With each year's crop would
go a long list of articles of every sort,--hardware, glass, crockery,
clothing, furniture, household utensils, wines,--which the agent was
instructed to buy with the proceeds of the tobacco and send back to the
planter when the ships came a year later for another crop. The country
abounded in trees, yet tables, chairs, boxes, cart wheels, bowls, birch
brooms, all came from the mother country. The wood used for building
houses was actually cut, sent to England as logs to be dressed, and then
taken back to Virginia for use.

[Illustration: Tobacco rolling[1]]

[Footnote 1: From a model in the National Museum, Washington.]

Maryland was in the same condition. Her people raised tobacco, and with
it bought their clothing, household goods, brass and copper wares, and
iron utensils in Great Britain.

In South Carolina rice was the great staple, just as tobacco was the
staple of Virginia, and there too were large plantations and no towns.
All the social, commercial, legal, and political life of the colony
centered in Charleston, from which a direct trade was carried on
with London.

[Illustration: %An old Maryland manor house%]

Labor on the plantations of Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia was
performed exclusively by negro slaves and redemptioners.

%101. Civil Government in the English Colonies.%--If we arrange the
colonies according to the kind of civil government in each, we find that
they fall into three classes:

1. The charter colonies (Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island).

2. The proprietary colonies (Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland).

3. The royal, or provincial, colonies (New Hampshire, New York, New
Jersey, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia).

The charters of the first group were written contracts between the King
and the colonists, defined the share each should have in the government,
and were not to be changed without the consent of both parties. In
colonies of the second group some individual, called the proprietary,
was granted a great tract of land by the King, and, under a royal
charter, was given power to sell the land to settlers, establish
government, and appoint the governors of his colony. In the third group,
the King appointed the governors and instructed them as to the way in
which he wished his colonies to be ruled.

With these differences, all the colonies had the same form of
government. In each there was a legislature elected by the people; in
each the right to vote was limited to men who owned land, paid taxes,
had a certain yearly income, and were members of some Christian church.
The legislature consisted of two branches: the lower house, to which the
people elected delegates; and the upper house, or council, appointed by
the governor. These legislatures could do many things, but their powers
were limited and their acts were subject to review: 1. They could do
nothing contrary to the laws of England. 2. Whatever they did could be
vetoed by the governors, and no bill could be passed over the veto. 3.
All laws passed by a colonial legislature (except in the case of
Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Maryland), and approved by a governor,
must even then be sent to England to be examined by the King in Council,
and could be "disallowed" or vetoed by the King at any time within three
years. This power was used so constantly that the colonial legislatures,
in time, would pass laws to run for two years, and when that time
expired would reenact them for two years more, and so on in order to
avoid the veto. In this way the colonists became used to three political
institutions which were afterwards embodied in what is now the American
system of state and national government: 1. The written constitution
defining the powers of government. 2. The exercise of the veto power by
the governor. 3. The setting aside of laws by a judicial body from whose
decision there is no appeal.

%102. The Colonial Governors.%--The governor of a royal province was
the personal representative of the King, and as such had vast power.
The legislature could meet only when he called it. He could at any
moment prorogue it (that is, command it to adjourn to a certain day) or
dissolve it, and, if the King approved, he need never call it together
again. He was the chief justice of the highest colonial court, he
appointed all the judges, and, as commander in chief of the militia,
appointed all important officers. Yet even he was subject to some
control, for his salary was paid by the colony over which he ruled, and,
by refusing to pay this salary, the legislature could, and over and over
again did, force him to approve acts he would not otherwise have
sanctioned. In Connecticut and Rhode Island the people elected the
governors. This right once existed also in Massachusetts; but when the
old charter was swept away in 1684, and replaced by a new one in 1691,
the King was given power to appoint the governor, who could summon,
dissolve, and prorogue the legislature at his pleasure.

%103. Lords of Trade and Plantations.%--That the King should give
personal attention to all the details of government in his colonies in
America, was not to be expected. In 1696, therefore, a body called the
Lords of the Board of Trade and Plantations was commissioned by the King
to do this work for him. These Lords of Trade corresponded with the
governors, made recommendations, bade them carry out this or that
policy, veto this or that class of laws, examined all the laws sent over
by the legislatures, and advised the King as to which should be
disallowed, or vetoed.

In the early years of our colonial history the Parliament of England had
no share in the direction of colonial affairs. It was the King who owned
all the land, made all the grants, gave all the charters, created all
the colonies, governed many of them, and stoutly denied the right of
Parliament to meddle. But when Charles I. was beheaded, the Long
Parliament took charge of the management of affairs in this country, and
although much of it went back to the King at the Restoration in 1660,
Parliament still continued to legislate for the colonies in a few
matters. Thus, for instance, Parliament by one act established the
postal service, and fixed the rates of postage; by another it regulated
the currency, and by another required the colonists to change from the
Old Style to the New Style--that is, to stop using the Julian calendar
and to count time in future by the Gregorian calendar; by another it
established a uniform law of naturalization; and from time to time it
passed acts for the purpose of regulating colonial trade.

%104. Acts of Trade and Navigation.%--The number of these acts is
very large; but their purpose was four fold:

1. They required that colonial trade should be carried on in ships built
and owned in England or in the colonies, and manned to the extent of two
thirds of the crew by English subjects.

2. They provided a long list of colonial products that should not be
sent to any foreign ports other than a port of England. Goods or
products not in the list might be sent to any other part of the world.
Thus tobacco, sugar, indigo, copper, furs, rice (if the rice was for a
port north of Cape Finisterre), must go to England; but lumber, salt
fish, and provisions might go (in English or colonial ships) to France,
or Spain, or to other foreign countries.

3. When trade began to spring up between the colonies, and the New
England merchants were competing in the colonial markets with English
merchants, an act was passed providing that if a product which went from
one colony to another was of a kind that might have been supplied from
England, it must either go to the mother country and then to the
purchasing colony, or pay an export duty at the port where it was
shipped, equal to the import duty it would have to pay in England.

4. No goods were allowed to be carried from any place in Europe to
America unless they were first landed at a port in England.[1]

[Footnote 1: Edward Eggleston's papers in the _Century Magazine_, 1884;
Scudder's _Men and Manners One Hundred Years Ago_; Lodge's _English
Colonies_.]

SUMMARY

1. The men who began the long struggle for the rights of Englishmen
lived in a state of society very different from ours, and were utterly
ignorant of most of the commonest things we use in daily life.

2. Labor was performed by slaves, by criminals sent over to the colonies
and sold, and by "indented servants," or "redemptioners."

3. Manufactures were forbidden by the laws of trade. Nobody was
permitted to manufacture iron beyond the state of pig or bar iron, or
make woolen goods for export, or make hats.

4. Taking the colonies in geographical groups, the Eastern were engaged
in fishing, in commerce, and in farming; the Middle Colonies were
agricultural and commercial; the Southern were wholly agricultural, and
raised two great, staples--rice and tobacco.

5. As a consequence, town life existed in the Eastern and Middle
Colonies, and was little known in the South, particularly in Virginia.

6. Over the colonies, as a great governing body to aid the King, were
the Lords of Trade and Plantations in London. Under them in America were
the royal and proprietary governors, who with the local colonial
legislatures managed the affairs of the colonies.

LIFE IN THE COLONIES IN 1763.

_Social and Industrial Condition_.

Population.
Implements and inventions unknown.
The printing press.
The postal service.
Trades and occupations then unknown.

Labor.}The apprentice.
}The "indented servant."
}The redemptioner.
}The slave.

No manufactures. }Iron making
Acts of trade regulating. }Cloth making.
The cities. }Hat making.

Travel.
The Navigation Acts.
State of agriculture.

_Government_.

The charter colonies.
The proprietary colonies.
The royal colonies.
The colonial governor.
The Lords of Trade and Plantations.
The King.

CHAPTER X

"LIBERTY, PROPERTY, AND NO STAMPS"

%105. The New Provinces.%--The acquisition of Canada and the
Mississippi valley made it necessary for England to provide for their
defense and government. To do this she began by establishing three new
provinces.

In Canada she marked out the province of Quebec, part of the south
boundary of which is now the north boundary of New York, Vermont, New
Hampshire, and Maine.

In the South, out of the territory given by Spain, she made two
provinces, East and West Florida. The north boundary of West Florida was
(1764) a parallel of latitude through the junction of the Yazoo and
Mississippi rivers. The north boundary of East Florida was part of the
boundary of the present state. The territory between the Altamaha and
the St. Marys rivers was "annexed to Georgia."

%106. The Proclamation Line.%--By the same proclamation which
established these provinces, a line was drawn around the head waters of
all the rivers in the United States which flow into the Atlantic Ocean,
and the colonists were forbidden to settle to the west of it. All the
valley from the Great Lakes to West Florida, and from the proclamation
line to the Mississippi, was set apart for the Indians.

%107. The Country to be defended.%--Having thus provided for the
government of the newly acquired territory, it next became necessary to
provide for its defense; for nobody doubted that both France and Spain
would some day attempt to regain their lost possessions. Arrangements
were therefore made to bring over an army of 10,000 regular troops,
scatter them over the country from Canada to Florida, and maintain
them partly at the expense of the colonies and partly at the expense of
the crown.

[Illustration: THE BRITISH COLONIES IN 1764]

The share to be paid by the colonies was to be raised

1. By enforcing the old trade and navigation laws.

2. By a tax on sugar and molasses brought into the country.

3. By a stamp tax.

%108. Trial without Jury.%--In order to enforce the old laws, naval
vessels were sent to sail up and down the coast and catch smugglers.
Offenders when seized were to be tried in some vice-admiralty court,
where they could not have trial by jury.[1]

[Footnote 1: This is one of the things complained of in the Declaration
of Independence.]

%109. The Sugar Act and Stamp Tax.%--The Sugar Act was not a new
grievance. In 1733 Parliament laid a tax of 6_d_. a gallon on molasses
and 5_s_. per hundredweight on sugar brought into this country from any
other place than the British West Indies. This was to force the
colonists to buy their sugar and molasses from nobody but British sugar
planters. After having expired five times and been five times reenacted,
the Sugar Act expired for the sixth time in 1763, and the colonies
begged that it might not be renewed. But Parliament merely reduced the
molasses duty to 3_d_. and laid new duties on coffee, French and East
Indian goods, indigo, white sugar, and Spanish and Portuguese wines. It
then resolved that "for further defraying the expense of protecting the
colonists it would be necessary to charge certain stamp duties in the
colonies."

At that time, 1764, no such thing as an internal tax laid by Parliament
for the purpose of raising revenue existed, or ever had existed, in
America. Money for the use of the King had always been raised by taxes
imposed by the legislatures of the colonies. The moment, therefore, the
people heard that this money was to be raised in future by parliamentary
taxation, they became much alarmed, and the legislatures instructed
their business agents in London to protest.

This the agents did in February, 1765. But Grenville, the Prime
Minister, was not to be persuaded, and on March 22, 1765, Parliament
passed the Stamp Act[1].

[Footnote 1: The exact text of the Stamp Act has been reprinted in
_American History Leaflets_, No. 21. For an excellent account of the
causes and consequences of the Stamp Act, read Lecky's _England in the
Eighteenth Century_, Vol. III., Chap. 12; Frothingham's _Rise of the
Republic of the United States_, Chap. 5; Channing's _The United States
of America, 1765-1865_, pp. 41-50.]

%110. The Stamp Distributors.%--That the collection of the new duty
might give as little offense to the colonists as possible, Grenville
desired that the stamps and the stamped paper should be sold by
Americans, and invited the agents of the colonies to name men to be
"stamp distributors" in their colonies. The law was to go into effect on
the 1st of November, 1765. After that day every piece of vellum, every
piece of paper, on which was written any legal document for use in any
court, was to be charged with a stamp duty of from three pence to ten
pounds sterling. After that day, every license, bond, deed, warrant,
bill of lading, indenture, every pamphlet, almanac, newspaper, pack of
cards, must be written or printed on stamped paper to be made in England
and sold at prices fixed by law. If any dispute arose under the law, the
case might be tried in the vice-admiralty courts without a jury.[2]

[Footnote: The stamps were not the adhesive kind we are now accustomed
to fasten on letters. Those used for newspapers and pamphlets and
printed documents consisted of a crown surmounting a circle in which
were the words, "One Penny Sheet" or "Nine Pence per Quire," and were
stamped on each sheet in red ink by a hand stamp not unlike those used
at the present day to cancel stamps on letters. Others, used on vellum
and parchment, consisted of a square piece of blue paper, glued on the
parchment, and fastened by a little piece of brass. A design was then
impressed on the blue paper by means of a little machine like that used
by magistrates and notaries public to impress their seals on legal
documents. When this was done, the parchment was turned over, and a
little piece of white paper was pasted on the back of the stamp. On this
white piece was engraved, in black, the design shown in the second
picture on p. 113, the monogram "G. R." meaning Georgius Rex, or
King George.]

[Illustration: Stamps used in 1765]

The money raised by this tax was not to be taken to England, but was to
be spent in America for the defense of the colonies. Nevertheless, the
colonists were determined that none should be raised. The question was
not, Shall America support an army? but, Shall Parliament tax America?

%111. The Virginia Resolutions.%--In opposition to this, Virginia now
led the way with a set of resolutions. In the House of Burgesses, as the
popular branch of her legislature was called, was Patrick Henry, the
greatest orator in the colonies. By dint of his fiery words, he forced
through a set of resolutions setting forth

1. That the first settlers in Virginia brought with them "all the
privileges and immunities that have at any time been held" by "the
people of Great Britain."

2. That their descendants held these rights.

3. That by two royal charters the people of Virginia had been declared
entitled to all the rights of Englishmen "born within the realm
of England."

4. That one of these rights was that of being taxed "by their own
Assembly."

5. That they were not bound to obey any law taxing them without consent
of their Assembly.[1]

[Footnote 1: These resolutions, printed in full from Henry's manuscript
copy, are in Channing's _The United States of America, 1765-1865, _pp.
51, 52. They were passed May 29, 1765.]

Massachusetts followed with a call for a congress to meet at New York
city.

%112. Stamp-act Congress.%--To the congress thus called came
delegates from all the colonies except New Hampshire, Virginia, North
Carolina, and Georgia. The session began at New York, on the 5th of
October, 1765; and after sitting in secret for twenty days, the
delegates from six of the nine colonies present (Massachusetts, New
York, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland) signed a
"Declaration of Rights and Grievances." [1]

[Footnote 1: This declaration is printed in full in Preston's _Documents
Illustrative of American History_, pp. 188-191.]

%113. Declaration of Rights.%--The ground taken in the declaration
was:

1. That the Americans were subjects of the British crown.

2. That it was the natural right of a British subject to pay no taxes
unless he had a voice in laying them.

3. That the Americans were not represented in Parliament.

4. That Parliament, therefore, could not tax them, and that an attempt
to do so was an attack on the rights of Englishmen and the liberty of
self-government.

%114. Grievances.%--The grievances complained of were: 1. Taxation
without representation. 2. Trial without jury (in the vice-admiralty
courts). 3. The Sugar Act. 4. The Stamp Act. 5. Restrictions on trade.

%115. The English View of Representation.%--We, in this country, do
not consider a person represented in a legislature unless he can cast a
vote for a member of that legislature. In Great Britain, not individuals
but classes were represented. Thus, the clergy were represented by the
bishops who sat in the House of Lords; the nobility, by the nobles who
had seats in the House of Lords; and the mass of the people, the
commons, by the members of the House of Commons. At that time, very few
Englishmen could vote for a member of the House of Commons. Great cities
like Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, did not send even one member. When
the colonists held that they were not represented in Parliament because
they did not elect any members of that body, Englishmen answered that
they were represented, because they were commoners.

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