tendencies of a frontier life, a large portion of the interior showed a distinctly religious atmosphere. III. The Old West began the movement of internal trade which developed home markets and diminished that colonial dependence on Europe in industrial matters shown by the maritime and staple-raising sections. Not only did Boston and other New England towns increase as trading centers when the back country settled up, but an even more significant interchange occurred along the Valley and Piedmont. The German farmers of the Great Valley brought their woven linen, knitted stockings, firkins of butter, dried apples, grain, etc., to Philadelphia and especially to Baltimore, which was laid out in 1730. To this city also came trade from the Shenandoah Valley, and even from the Piedmont came peltry trains and droves of cattle and hogs to the same market. The increase of settlement on the upper James resulted in the establishment of the city of Richmond at the falls of the river in 1737. Already the tobacco-planting aristocracy of the lowlands were finding rivals in the grain-raising area of interior Virginia and Maryland. Charleston prospered as the up-country of the Carolinas grew. Writing in the middle of the eighteenth century, Governor Glenn, of South Carolina, explained the apparent diminution of the colony's shipping thus: 95 94 Our trade with New York and Philadelphia was of this sort, draining us of all the little money and bills that we could gather from other places, for their bread, flour, beer, hams, bacon, and other things of their produce, all which, except beer, our new townships begin to supply us with which are 94 Scharf, "Maryland" (Baltimore, 1879), ii, p. 61, and chaps. i and xviii; Kercheval, "The Valley." 95 Weston, "Documents," p. 82. settled with very industrious and consequently It was not long before this interior trade produced those rivalries for commercial ascendancy, between the coastwise cities, which still continue. The problem of internal improvements became a pressing one, and the statutes show increasing provision for roads, ferries, bridges, river improvements, etc." The basis was being laid for a national economy, and at the same time a new source for foreign export was created. 96 IV. The Old West raised the issues of nativism and a lower standard of comfort. In New England, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians had been frowned upon and pushed away by the Puritan townsmen." In Pennsylvania, the coming of the Germans and the Scotch-Irish in such numbers caused grave anxiety. Indeed, a bill was passed to limit the importation of the Palatines, but it was vetoed.98 Such astute observers as Franklin feared in 1753 that Pennsylvania would be unable to preserve its language and that even its government would become precarious.99 "I remember," he declares, "when they modestly declined intermeddling in our elections, but now they come in droves and carry all before them, except in one or two counties;" and he lamented that the English could not remove their prejudices by addressing them in German.1 Dr. Douglas apprehended that Pennsylvania would "degenerate into a foreign colony" and endanger the quiet of the adjacent provinces. Edmund Burke, regretting that the Ger96 See, for example, Phillips, "Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt," pp. 21-53. 97 Hanna, "Scotch-Irish," ii, pp. 19, 22-24. 98 Cobb, "Story of the Palatines" (Wilkes-Barre, Pa., 1897), p. 300, citing "Penn. Colon. Records," iv, pp. 225, 345. 99" Works (Bigelow ed.), ii, pp. 296–299. 1 Ibid., iii, p. 297; cf. p. 221. 2" Summary" (1755), ii, p. 326. mans adhered to their own schools, literature, and language, and that they possessed great tracts without admixture of English, feared that they would not blend and become one people with the British colonists, and that the colony was threatened with the danger of being wholly foreign. He also noted that "these foreigners by their industry, frugality, and a hard way. of living, in which they greatly exceed our people, have in a manner thrust them out in several places." This is a phenomenon with which a succession of later frontiers has familiarized us. In point of fact the "Pennsylvania Dutch " remained through our history a very stubborn area to assimilate, with corresponding effect upon Pennsylvania politics. It should be noted also that this coming of non-English stock to the frontier raised in all the colonies affected, questions of naturalization and land tenure by aliens.* V. The creation of this frontier society — of which so large a portion differed from that of the coast in language and religion as well as in economic life, social structure, and ideals -produced an antagonism between interior and coast, which worked itself out in interesting fashion. In general this took these forms: contests between the property-holding class of the coast and the debtor class of the interior, where specie was lacking, and where paper money and a readjustment of the basis of taxation were demanded; contests over defective or unjust local government in the administration of taxes, fees, lands, and the courts; contests over apportionment in the legislature, whereby the coast was able to dominate, even when its white population was in the minority; contests to secure the complete separation of church and state; and, later, con 3" European Settlements" (London, 1793), ii. p. 200 (1765); cf. Franklin, "Works" (N. Y., 1905-07), ii, p. 221, to the same effect. 4 Proper, "Colonial Immigration Laws," in Columbia Univ., "Studies," tests over slavery, internal improvements, and party politics in general. These contests are also intimately connected with the political philosophy of the Revolution and with the development of American democracy. In nearly every colony prior to the Revolution, struggles had been in progress between the party of privilege, chiefly the Eastern men of property allied with the English authorities, and the democratic classes, strongest in the West and the cities. This theme deserves more space than can here be allotted to it; but a rapid survey of conditions in this respect, along the whole frontier, will at least serve to bring out the point. In New England as a whole, the contest is less in evidence. That part of the friction elsewhere seen as the result of defective local government in the back country, was met by the efficiency of the town system; but between the interior and the coast there were struggles over apportionment and religious freedom. The former is illustrated by the convention that met in Dracut, Massachusetts, in 1776, to petition the States of Massachusetts and New Hampshire to relieve the financial distress and unfair legislative representation. Sixteen of the border towns of New Hampshire sent delegates to this convention. Two years later, these New Hampshire towns attempted to join Vermont. As a Revolutionary State, Vermont itself was an illustration of the same tendency of the interior to break away from the coast. Massachusetts in this period witnessed a campaign between the paper money party which was entrenched in the more recently and thinly-settled areas of the interior and west, and the property-holding classes of the coast. The opposition to the constitutions of 1778 and 1780 is tinctured Libby, "Distribution of the Vote on the Federal Constitution," Univ. of Wis. Bulletin, pp. 8, 9, and citations. Note especially "New Hampshire State Papers," x, pp. 228 et seq. Libby, loc. cit., pp. 12-14, 46, 54-57. 7 with the same antagonism between the ideas of the newer part of the interior and of the coast. Shays' Rebellion and the anti-federal opposition of 1787-88 found its stronghold in the same interior areas.8 The religious struggles continued until the democratic interior, where dissenting sects were strong, and where there was antagonism to the privileges of the congregational church, finally secured complete disestablishment in New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. But this belongs to a later period.9 10 Pennsylvania affords a clear illustration of these sectional antagonisms. The memorial of the frontier "Paxton Boys," in 1764, demanded a right to share in political privileges with the older part of the colony, and protested against the apportionment by which the counties of Chester, Bucks, and Philadelphia, together with the city of Philadelphia, elected twentysix delegates, while the five frontier counties had but ten.1 The frontier complained against the failure of the dominant Quaker party of the coast to protect the interior against the Indians.11 The three old wealthy counties under Quaker rule feared the growth of the West, therefore made few new counties, and carefully restricted the representation in each to preserve the majority in the old section. At the same time, by a property qualification they met the danger of the democratic city population. Among the points of grievance in this colony, 7 Farrand, in Yale Review, May, 1908, p. 52 and citation. 8 Libby, loc. cit. See Turner, "Rise of the New West" (Amer. Nation series, N. Y., 1906), pp. 16-18. 10 Parkman, "Pontiac " (Boston, 1851), ii, p. 352. 11 Shepherd," Proprietary Government in Pennsylvania," in Columbia Univ. Studies, vi, pp. 546 et seq. Compare Watson, Annals," ii, p. 259; Green, "Provincial America" (Amer. Nation series, N. Y., 1905), p. 234. |