heart yearned for an asylum for his brethren. Among the most influential of his converts was William Penn,' son of the renowned admiral of that name. Through him the sect gained access to the ears of the nobility, and soon the Quakers possessed the western half of New Jersey, by purchase from Lord Berkeley. The first company of immigrants landed in the autumn of 1675, and named the place of debarkation Salem. They established a democratic form of government; and, in November, 1681, the first legislative assembly of Quakers ever convened, met at Salem.

3

While these events were progressing, Penn, who had been chief peace-maker when disputes arose among the proprietors and the people, took measures to plant a new colony beyond the Delaware. He applied to Charles the Second for a charter. The king remembered the services of Admiral Penn, and gave his son a grant [March 14, 1681] of "three degrees of latitude by five degrees

4

1 William Penn was born in London, in October, 1644, and was educated at Oxford. He was remarkable, in his youth, for brilliant talents; and while a student, having heard the preaching of Quakers, he was drawn to them, and suffered expulsion from his father's roof, in consequence. He went abroad, obtained courtly manners, studied law after his return, and was again driven from home for associating with Quakers. He then became a preacher among them, and remained in that connection until his death. After a life of great activity and considerable suffering, he died in England, in 1718, at the age of seventy-four years. 2 Page 119.

3 Now the capital of Salem county, New Jersey.

He was a very efficient naval commander, and by his skill contributed to the defeat of the Dutch in 1664. The king gave him the title of Baron for his services. Note 15, page 62.

of longitude west of the Delaware," and named the province Pennsylvania, in honor of the proprietor. It included the principal settlements of the Swedes. To these people, and others within the domain, Penn sent a proclamation, filled with the loftiest sentiments of republicanism. William Markham, who bore the proclamation, was appointed deputy-governor of the province, and with him sailed [May, 1681] quite a large company of immigrants, who were members or employees of the Company of Free Traders,' who had purchased lands of the proprietor. In May, the following year, Penn published a frame of government, and sent it to the settlers for their approval. It was not a constitution, but a code of wholesome regulations for the people of the colony.' He soon afterward obtained by grant and purchase [Aug. 1682] the domain of the present State of Delaware, which the Duke of York claimed, notwithstanding it was clearly not his own. It comprised three counties, Newcastle, Kent, and Sussex, called The Territories.

Penn had been anxious, for some time, to visit his colony, and toward the close of August, 1682, he sailed in the Welcome for America, with about one hundred emigrants. The voyage was long and tedious; and when he arrived at Newcastle, in Delaware [Nov. 6], he found almost a thousand new comers there, some of whom had sailed before, and some after his departure from England. He was joyfully received by the old settlers, who then numbered almost three thousand. The Swedes said, "It is the best day we have ever seen;' and they all gathered like children around a father. A few days afterward, he proceeded to Shackamaxon (now Kensington suburbs of Philadelphia), where, under a wide-spreading elm, he entered into an honorable treaty with the Indians, for their lands, and established with them an everlasting covenant of peace and friendship. "We meet," said Penn, "on the broad pathway of good faith and good will; no advantage shall be taken on either side; but all shall be openness and love." And so it was.

"Thou'lt find," said the Quaker, "in me and in mine,

But friends and brothers to thee and thine,

Who abuse no power and admit no line

'Twixt the red man and the white.

And bright was the spot where the Quaker came,

To leave his hat, his drab, and his name,

That will sweetly sound from the trump of Fame,

Till its final blast shall die."

On the day after his arrival, Penn received from the agents of the Duke of York, in the presence of the people, a formal surrender of The Territories ;

1

3

1 Lands in the new province were offered for about ten cents an acre. Quite a number of purchasers united, and called themselves The Company of Free Traders, with whom Penn entered into an agreement concerning the occupation of the soil, laying out of a city, &c.

2 It ordained a General Assembly or court, to consist of a governor, a council of seventy, chosen by the freemen of the colony, and a house of delegates, to consist of not less than two hundred members, nor more than five hundred. These were also to be chosen by the people. The proprietor, or his deputy (the governor), was to preside, and to have a three-fold voice in the council; that is, ou 3 Page 144. all questions, he was to have three votes for every one of the councillors.

and after resting a few days, he proceeded to visit his brethren in New Jersey, and the authorities at New York. On his return, he met the General Assembly of the province at Chester,' when he declared the union of The Territories with Pennsylvania. He made a more judicious organization of the local government, and then were permanently laid the foundations of the commonwealth of PENNSYLVANIA.

THE ASSEMBLY HOUSE.

3

UNSUCCESSFUL efforts at settlement on the coast of Carolina, were made during a portion of the sixteenth century. These we have already considered.* As early as 1609, some dissatisfied people from Jamestown settled on the Nansemond; and in 1622, Porey, then Secretary of Virginia, with a few friends, penetrated the country beyond the Roanoke. In 1630, Charles the First granted to Sir Robert Heath, his attorney-general, a domain south of Virginia, six degrees of latitude in width, extending from Albemarle Sound to the St. John's River, in Florida, and, as usual, westward to the Pacific Ocean. No settlements were made, and the charter was forfeited. At that time, Dissenters or Nonconformists suffered many disabilities in Virginia, and looked to the wilderness for freedom. In 1653, Roger Green and a few Presbyterians left that colony and settled upon the Chowan River, near the present village of Edenton. Other dissenters followed, and the colony flourished. Governor Berkeley, of Virginia, wisely organized them into a separate political community [1663], and William Drummond," a Scotch Presbyterian minister, was appointed their governor. They received the name of Albemarle County Colony, in honor of the Duke of Albemarle, who, that year, became a proprietor of the territory. Two years previously [1661], some New England® adventurers settled in the vicinity of Wilmington, on the Cape Fear River, but many of them soon abandoned the country because of its poverty.

4

Charles the Second was famous for his distribution of the lands in the New World, among his friends and favorites, regardless of any other claims, Abo

1 The picture is a correct representation of the building at Chester, in Pennsylvania, wherein the Assembly met. It was yet standing in 1850. Not far from the spot, on the shore of the Delaware, at the mouth of Chester Creek, was also a solitary pine-tree, which marked the place where Penn landed.

Pages 55 to 57 inclusive.

3 Note 2, page 76.

4 Page 78.

6

5 Drummond was afterward executed on account of his participation in Bacon's revolutionary acts. See note 5, page 112. Page 108.

riginal or European. In 1663, he granted the whole territory named in Sir Robert Heath's charter, to eight of his principal friends,' and called it CAROLINA. As the Chowan settlement was not within the limits of the charter, the boundary was extended northward to the present line between Virginia and North Carolina, and also southward, so as to include the whole of Florida, except its peninsula. The Bahama Islands were granted to the same proprietors in 1667.3 Two years earlier [1665], a company of Barbadoes planters settled upon the lands first occupied by the New England people, near the present Wilmington, and founded a permanent settlement there. The few settlers yet remaining were treated kindly, and soon an independent colony, with Sir John Yeamans* as governor, was established. It was called the Clarendon County Colony, in honor of one of the proprietors. Yeamans managed prudently, but the poverty of the soil prevented a rapid increase in the population. The settlers applied themselves to the manufacture of boards, shingles, and staves, which they shipped to the West Indies; and that business is yet the staple trade of that region of pine forests and sandy levels. Although the settlement did not flourish, it continued to exist; and then was founded the commonwealth of NORTH CAROLINA.

5

The special attention of the proprietors was soon turned toward the more southerly and fertile portion of their domain, and in January, 1670, they sent three ships with emigrants, under the direction of William Sayle and Joseph West, to plant a colony below Cape Fear. They entered Port Royal, landed on Beaufort Island at the spot where the Huguenots built Fort Carolina in 1564, and there Sayle died early in 1671. The immigrants soon afterward abandoned Beaufort, and sailing into the Ashley River,' seated themselves on its western bank, at a place a few miles above Charleston, now known as Old Town. There they planted the first seeds of a South Carolina colony. West exercised authority as chief magistrate, until the arrival of Sir John Yeamans, in December, 1671, who was appointed governor. He came with fifty families, and a large number of slaves. Representative government was instituted in 16729 under the title of the Carteret County Colony. It was so called in honor of one of the proprietors.10 Ten years afterward they abandoned the spot;

8

1 Lord Clarendon, his prime minister; General Monk, just created Duke of Albemarle; Lord Ashley Cooper, afterward Earl of Shaftesbury; Sir George Carteret, a proprietor of New Jersey; Sir William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia; Lord Berkeley, Lord Craven, and Sir John Colleton.

2 It will be perceived [note 1, page 55] that the name of Carolina, given to territory south of Virginia, was bestowed in honor of two kings named Charles, one of France, the other of England. 3 Samuel Stephens succeeded Drummond as governor, in 1667; and in 1668, the first popular Assembly in North Carolina convened at Edenton.

* Yeamans was an impoverished English baronet, who had become a planter in Barbadoes, to mend his fortune. He was successful, and became wealthy.

5

Sayle had previously explored the Carolina coast. Twenty years before, he had attempted to plant an "Eleutharia or place dedicated to the genius of Liberty [see Eleutheria, Anthon's Classical Dictionary], in the isles near the coast of Florida.

6 Page 50.

8

* Page 166. Yeamans brought almost

* This was the commencement of negro slavery in South Carolina. two hundred of them from Barbadoes. From the commencement, South Carolina has been a planting State. 9 Note 5, page 165.

10 He was also one of the proprietors of New Jersey. See page 119.

3

and upon Oyster Point, at the junction of Ashley and Cooper Rivers,' nearer the sea, they founded the present city of Charleston. Immigrants came from various parts of Europe; and many Dutch families, dissatisfied with the English rule at New York, went to South Carolina, where lands were freely given them; and soon, along the Santee and the Edisto, the wilderness began to blossom under the hand of culture. The people would have nothing to do with a government scheme prepared by Shaftesbury and Locke, but preferred simple organic laws of their own making. Then were laid the foundations of the commonwealth of SOUTH CAROLINA, although the history of the two States, under the same proprietors, is inseparable, until the period of their dismemberment, in 1729.5

4

8

GEORGIA was the latest settled of the thirteen original English colonies in America. When the proprietors of the Carolinas surrendered their charter" to the crown in 1729, the whole country southward of the Savannah River, to the vicinity of St. Augustine, was a wilderness peopled by native tribes," and claimed by the Spaniards as part of their territory of Florida. The English disputed this claim, and South Carolina townships were ordered to be marked out as far south as the Alatamaha. The dispute grew warm and warlike, and the Indians, instigated by the Spaniards, depredated upon the frontier English settlements. But, while the clouds of hostility were gathering in the firmament, and grew darker every hour, it was lighted up by a bright beam of benevolence, which proved the harbinger of a glorious day. It came from England, where, at that time, poverty was often considered a crime, and at least four thousand unfortunate debtors were yearly consigned to loathsome prisons. The honest and true, the noble and the educated, as well as the ignorant and the vile, groaned within prison walls. Their wailings at length reached the ears of benevolent men. Foremost among these was James Edward Oglethorpe,1o a brave soldier and stanch loyalist, whose voice had been heard often in Parliament against imprisonment for debt.

A committee of inquiry into the subject of such imprisonments, was ap

1 These were so called in honor of Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury. The Indian name of the former was Ke-a-wah, and of the latter E-ti-wan.

2 Charleston was laid out in 1680 by John Culpepper, who had been surveyor-general for North Carolina. See page 166. 3 Page 164.

6

Page 171.

7

Page 29.

4

Page 144 8 Page 42.

5

9

Page 171.
Page 170.

10 See portrait, page 104. General Oglethorpe was born in Surrey, England, on the 21st of December, 1698. He was a soldier by profession. In 1745, he was made a brigadier-general, and fought against Charles Edward, the Pretender, who was a grandson of James the Second, and claimed rightful heirship to the throne of England. Oglethorpe refused the supreme command of the British army destined for America in 1775. He died, June 30, 1785, aged eighty-seven years.