little vices which compose great private and public evils. Dwelling upon a parsimonious soil, and possessing neither the means nor the inclination for sumptuous living, indulged in by their southern brethren, their dwellings were simple, and their habits frugal.

EARLY N. E. HOUSE.'

after the English society had become They were plodding

In New York, and portions of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the manners, customs, and pursuits of the Dutch prevailed even a century conquest of New Netherland' [1664], and permeated by English ideas and customs. money-getters; abhorred change and innovation, and loved ease. They possessed few of the elements of progress, but many of the substantial social virtues necessary to the stability of a State, and the health of society. From these the Swedes and Finns upon the Delaware' did not differ much; but the habits of the Quakers, who finally predominated in West Jersey and Pennsylvania, were quite different. They always exhibited a refined simplicity and equanimity, without ostentatious displays of piety, that won esteem; and they were governed by a religious sentiment without fanaticism, which formed a powerful safeguard against vice and

immorality.

In Maryland, the earlier settlers were also less rigid moralists than the New Englanders, and greater formalists in religion. They were more refined, equally industrious, but lacked the stability of character and perseverance in pursuits, of the people of the East. But at the close of the period we have been considering [1756], the peculiarities of the inhabitants of each section were greatly modified by inter-migration, and a general conformity to the necessities of their several conditions, as founders of new States in a wilderness. The tooth of religious bigotry and intolerance had lost its keenness and its poison, and when the representatives of the several colonies met in a general Congress' [Sept., 1774], for the public good, they stood as brethren before one altar, while the eloquent Duchè laid the fervent petitions of their hearts before the throne of Omnipotence.

The chief pursuit of the colonists was, necessarily, agriculture; yet, during the time we have considered, manufactures and commerce were not wholly neglected. Necessity compelled the people to make many things which their poverty would not allow them to buy ; and manual labor, especially in the New England provinces, was dignified from the beginning. The settlers came where a throne and its corrupting influences were unknown, and where the idleness and privileges of aristocracy had no abiding-place. In the magnificent forests

This is a picture of one of the oldest houses in New England, and is a favorable specimen of the best class of frame dwellings at that time. It is yet standing [1856], we believe, near Medfield, in Massachusetts. " Page 144.

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of the New World, where a feudal lord' had never stood, they began a life full of youth, vigor, and labor, such as the atmosphere of the elder governments of the earth could not then sustain. They were compelled to be self-reliant, and what they could not buy from the workshops of England for their simple apparel and furniture, and implements of culture, they rudely manufactured,' and

were content.

3

The commerce of the colonies had but a feeble infancy; and never, until they were politically separated from Great Britain [1776], could their interchange of commodities be properly dignified with the name of Commerce. England early became jealous of the independent career of the colonists in respect to manufactured articles, and navigation acts, and other unwise and unjust restraints upon the expanding industry of the Americans, were brought to bear upon them. As early as 1636, a Massachusetts vessel of thirty tons made a trading voyage to the West Indies; and two years later [1638], another vessel went from Salem to New Providence, and returned with a cargo of salt, cotton, tobacco, and negroes. This was the dawning of commerce in America. The eastern people also engaged quite extensively in fishing; and all were looking forward to wealth from ocean traffic, as well as that of the land, when the passage of the second Navigation Act,' in 1660, evinced the strange jealousy of Great Britain. From that period, the attention of Parliament was often directed to the trade and commerce of the colonies, and in 1719, the House of Commons declared "that erecting any manufactories in the colonies, tended to lessen their dependence upon Great Britain." Woolen goods, paper, hemp, and iron were manufactured in Massachusetts and other parts of New England, as early as 1732; and almost every family made coarse cloth for domestic use. Heavy duties had been imposed upon colonial iron sent to England; and the colonists, thus deprived of their market for pig iron, were induced to attempt the manufacture of steel and bar iron for their own use. It was not until almost a century [1750] afterward that the mother country perceived the folly of her policy in this respect, and admitted colonial pig iron, duty free, first into London, and soon afterward into the rest of the kingdom. Hats were manufac

1 Note 15, page 62.

From the beginning of colonization there were shoemakers, tailors, and blacksmiths in the several colonies. Chalmers says of New England in 1673: "There be fine iron works which cast no guns; no house in New England has above twenty rooms; not twenty in Boston have ten rooms each; a dancing-school was set up here, but put down; a fencing-school is allowed. There be no musicians by trade. All cordage, sail-cloth, and mats, come from England; no cloth made there worth four shillings per yard; no alum, no copperas, no salt, made by their sun."

The first Navigation Act [1651] forbade all importations into England, except in English ships, or those belonging to English colonies. In 1660, this act was confirmed, and unjust additions were made to it. The colonies were forbidden to export their chief productions to any country except to England or its dependencies. Similar acts, all bearing heavily upon colonial commerce, were made law, from time to time. See note 4, page 109.

* This was the first introduction of slaves into New England. The first slaves introduced into the English colonies, were those landed and sold in Virginia in 1620. [See note 6, page 105.] They were first recognized as such, by law, in Massachusetts, in 1641; in Connecticut and Rhode Island, about 1650; in New York, in 1656; in Maryland, in 1663; and in New Jersey, in 1665. There were but few slaves in Pennsylvania, and those were chiefly in Philadelphia. There were some there as early as 1690. The people of Delaware held some at about the same time. The introduction of slaves into the Carolinas was coeval with their settlement, and into Georgia about the year 1750, when the people generally evaded the prohibitory law. Page 174. Note 4, page 109.

tured and carried from one colony to the other in exchange; and at about the same time, brigantines and small sloops were built in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, and exchanged with West India merchants for rum, sugar, wines, and silks. These movements were regarded with disfavor by the British Government, and unwisely considering the increase of manufactures in the colonies to be detrimental to English interests, greater restrictions were ordained. It was enacted that all manufactories of iron and steel in the colonies, should be considered a "common nuisance," to be abated within thirty days after notice being given, or the owner should suffer a fine of a thousand dollars.' The exportation of hats even from one colony to another was prohibited, and no hatter was allowed to have more than two apprentices at one time. The importation of sugar, rum, and molasses was burdened with exorbitant duties; and the Carolinians were forbidden to cut down the pine-trees of their vast forests, and convert their wood into staves, and their juice into turpentine and tar, for commercial purposes. These unjust and oppressive enactments formed a part of that "bill of particulars" which the American colonies presented in their account with Great Britain, when they gave to the world their reasons for declaring themselves "free and independent States."

From the beginning, education received special attention in the colonies, particularly in New England. Schools for the education of both white and Indian children were formed in Virginia as early as 1621; and in 1692, William and Mary College was established at Williamsburg.' Harvard College, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, was founded in 1637. Yale College, in Connecticut, was established at Saybrook in 1701, and was removed to its present location, in New Haven, in 1717. It was named in honor of Elihu Yale, president of the East India Company, and one of its most liberal benefactors. The college of New Jersey, at Princeton, called Nassau Hall, was incorporated in 1738; and King's (now Columbia) College, in the city of New York, was foudned in 1750. The college of Philadelphia was incorporated in 1760. The college of Rhode Island (now Brown University) was established at Warren in 1764. Queen's (now Rutger's) College, in New Jersey, was founded in 1770; and Dartmouth College, at Hanover, New Hamshire, was opened in

A law was enacted in 1750, which prohibited the "erection or contrivance of any mill or other engine for slitting or rolling iron, or any plating forge to work with a tilt hammer, or any furnace for making steel in the colonies." Such was the condition of manufactures in the United States one hundred years ago. Notwithstanding we are eminently an agricultural people, the census of 1850 shows that we have, in round numbers, $530,000,000 invested in manufactures. The value of raw material is estimated at $550,000,000. The amount paid for labor during that year, was $240,000,000, distributed among 1,050,000 operatives. The value of manufactured articles is esti mated at more than a thousand millions of dollars!

* For a hundred years the British government attempted to confine the commerce of the colo nies to the interchange of their agricultural products for English manufactures only. The trade of the growing colonies was certainly worth securing. From 1738 to 1748, the average value of exports from Great Britain to the American colonies, was almost three and a quarter millions of dollars annually.

The schools previously established did not flourish, and the funds appropriated for their support were given to the college.

In 1700, ten ministers of the colony met at Saybrook, and each contributed books for the establishment of a college. It was incorporated in 1701. See note 8, page 158.

* It was a feeble institution at first. In 1747, Governor Belcher became its patron.

1771. It will be seen that the colonies could boast of no less than nine colleges when the War for Independence commenced-three of them under the supervision of Episcopalians, three under Congregationalists, one each under Presbyterians, the Reformed Dutch Church, and the Baptists. But the pride and glory of New England have ever been its common schools. Those received the earliest and most earnest attention. In 1636, the Connecticut Legislature enacted a law which required every town that contained fifty families, to maintain a good school, and every town containing one hundred householders, to have a grammar school.' Similar provisions for general education soon prevailed throughout New England; and the people became remarkable for their intelligence. The rigid laws which discouraged all frivolous amusements, induced active minds, during leisure hours, to engage in reading. The subjects contained in books then in general circulation, were chiefly History and Theology, and of these a great many were sold. A traveler mentions the fact, that, as early as 1686, several booksellers in Boston had "made fortunes by their business."" But newspapers, the great vehicle of general intelligence to the popular mind of our day, were very few and of little worth, before the era of the Revolution.3

Such, in brief and general outline, were the American people, and such their political and social condition, at the commencement of the last inter-colonial war, which we are now to consider, during which they discovered their strength, the importance of a continental union, and their real independence of Great Britain.

CHAPTER XII.

THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR. [1756–1763.]

We are now to consider one of the most important episodes in the history of the United States, known in Europe as the SEVEN YEARS' WAR, and in

1 These townships were, in general, organized religious communities, and had many interests in

common.

* Previous to 1753, there had been seventy booksellers in Massachusetts, two in New Hampshire, two in Connecticut, one in Rhode Island, two in New York, and seventeen in Pennsylvania. The first newspaper ever printed in America was the Boston News Letter, printed in 1704. The next was established in Philadelphia, in 1719. The first in New York was in 1725; in Maryland, in 1728; in South Carolina, in 1731; in Rhode Island, in 1732; in Virginia, in 1736; in New Hampshire, in 1753; in Connecticut, in 1755; in Delaware, in 1761; in North Carolina, in 1763; in Georgia, in 1763; and in New Jersey, in 1777. In 1850, there were published in the United States, 2,800 newspapers and magazines, having a circulation of 5,000,000 of copies. The number of copies printed during that whole year was about 423,000,000.

We have no exact enumeration of the inhabitants of the colonies; but Mr. Bancroft, after a careful examination of many official returns and private computations, estimates the number of white people in the colonies, at the commencement of the French and Indian War, to have been about 1,165,000, distributed as follows: In New England (N. H., Mass., R. I., and Conn.), 425,000; in the middle colonies (N. Y., N. J., Penn., Del., and Md.), 457,000; and in the southern colonies (Va., N. and S. Carolina, and Geo.), 283,000. The estimated number of slaves, 260,000, of whom about 11,000 were in New England; middle colonies, 71,000; and the southern colonies, 178.000. Of the 1,165,000 white people, Dr. Franklin estimated that only about 80,000 were of foreign birth, showing the fact that emigration to America had almost ceased. At the beginning of the Revolution, in 1775, the estimated population of the thirteen colonies was 2,803,000. The documents of Congress, in 1775, gives the round number of 3,000,000.

America as the FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR. It may with propriety be considered introductory to the War for Independence, which resulted in the birth of our Republic. The first three inter-colonial wars, or the conflicts in America between the English and French colonies, already noticed,' originated in hostilities first declared by the two governments, and commenced in Europe. The fourth and last, which resulted in establishing the supremacy of the English in America, originated here in disputes concerning territorial claims. For a hundred years, the colonies of the two nations had been gradually expanding and increasing in importance. The English, more than a million in number, occupied the seaboard from the Penobscot to the St. Mary, a thousand miles in extent, all eastward of the great ranges of the Alleghanies, and far northward toward the St. Lawrence. The French, not more than a hundred thousand strong, made settlements along the St. Lawrence, the shores of the great lakes, on the Mississippi and its tributaries, and upon the borders of the Gulf of Mexico. They early founded Detroit [1683], Kaskaskia [1684], Vincennes [1690], and New Orleans [1717]. The English planted agricultural colonies; the French were chiefly engaged in traffic with the Indians. This trade, and the operations of the Jesuit' missionaries, who were usually the self-denying pioneers of commerce in its penetration of the wilderness, gave the French great influence over the tribes of a vast extent of country lying in the rear of the English settlements.3

France and England at that time were heirs to an ancient quarrel. Originating far back in feudal ages, and kept alive by subsequent collisions, it burned vigorously in the bosoms of the respective colonists in America, where it was continually fed by frequent hostilities on frontier ground. They had ever regarded each other with extreme jealousy, for the prize before them was supreme rule in the New World. The trading posts and missionary stations of the French, in the far north-west, and in the bosom of a dark wilderness, several hundred miles distant from the most remote settlement on the English frontier, attracted very little attention, until they formed a part of more extensive operations. But when, after the capture of Louisburg, in 1745, the French adopted vigorous measures for opposing the extension of British power in America: when they built strong vessels at the foot of Lake Ontario'-made treaties of friendship with the Delaware and Shawnee tribes; strengthened Fort Niagara; and erected a cordon of fortifications, more than sixty in number, between Montreal and New Orleans-the English were aroused to immediate and effective action in defense of the territorial claims given them in their ancient charters. By virtue of these, they claimed dominion westward to the Pacific Ocean, south of the latitude of the north shore of Lake Erie; while the French claimed a title to all the territory watered by the Mississippi and its tributaries, under the more plausible plea, that they had made the first explorations and settlements

136).

3

1 King William's War (page 130); Queen Anne's War (page 135); and King George's War (page 2 Note 4, page 130. Chiefly of the Algonquin nation. Page 17. At Fort Frontenac, now Kingston, Upper Canada.

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