The United States of America, 1765-1865

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Prefatory Note

The aim of this little book is to trace the steps by which the American people and its peculiar type of federal state have developed out of such heterogeneous and unpromising materials for nation-building as were to be found in the English-American Colonies in 1760. Less attention has been given to campaigns and battles than is usual in works of this class, and the space thus gained has been devoted to the elucidation of the deeper causes underlying the American Revolution, and to a detailed account of the period between the close of the Revolutionary War and the inauguration of President Madison.

The Bibliographical Note at the end of the volume is intended to be of service to those who desire to make a further study of American History, and not necessarily to indicate the sources of information on which the text is founded. The first six chapters are in fact based on the author's own reading of the original sources. For Chapter VI, however, considerable assistance was derived from Henry Adams's History of the United States (1800 — 1817), and the first part of Chapter VH was drawn mainly from that masterly work. For the remaining portion of Chapter VH, and for Chapter VHI, the biographies and collected writings and speeches of the leading men of that time were perused. Chapter IX is founded mainly on James Ford Rhodes's two volumes on the period from 1850 — 1860. The author has also read the more important biographies and collections of speeches dealing with that epoch \ but his prinviii Prefatory Note.

cipal reliance was on Mr. Rhodes's excellent work. It is to be regretted that the present book was in type before the publication of Mr. Rhodes's third volume, covering the critical years i860 — 1862. For Chapter X the official records and the comprehensive works have been used — especially Colonel Dodge's stimulating Bird's- Eye View of the Civil War. John C. Ropes's careful study of the early campaigns {The Story of the Civil War, Vol. I) was published too late to be of assistance in the preparation of this account. Mr. Ropes, however, has kindly read the proofs of this chapter — a service Dr. Justin Winsor graciously performed for the earlier chapters. For their many valuable suggestions the author's thanks are due, as they are also to Professor Prothero, who has laid him under deep obligation. Above all he desires to express his sense of the kindness of his friend and colleague Professor Albert Bushnell Hart, who has read the proofs of the entire work. Perhaps it is needless to add that none of these authors and kind friends is to be held in any way responsible for any errors, whether of fact or of opinion, which may be found within these covers.

The maps were compiled by the author to illustrate this volume, and it is hoped that they will be found useful. It is practically impossible to be absolutely accurate in a work of this size, covering such an extended period and deahng with so many disputed events. It is sometimes impossible for an American to appreciate the motives of his " kin beyond sea " ; and it is not always easy for him to do justice to his own countrymen. The utmost that an historical student can do is to study and write without mahce in his heart — and this the present writer can fairly claim to have done. He will cordially welcome the discovery and communication of any error.

EDWARD CHANNING.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, October, 1895.

Table Of Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Colonists, 1 760-1 765 i

II. Constitutional Opposition, 1 760-1 774 ..... 41

Chapter I. The Colonists, I76o-65

The colonists numbered in 1760 about sixteen hundred thousand souls, whites and negroes, slaves and freemen, foreigners and native born. They are always described as English Americans; and, as a matter of fact, the English race was the predominant element. But nearly all the more important branches of the Germanic and Keltic races were represented among them. There were no Slavs, however, and thus, as Mr Henry Cabot Lodge has pointed out, the whites, although representing many nationalities, belonged to the two branches of the Aryan stock which have always shown great powers of amalgamation. The several elements which made up this population were so intermingled that some care is needed to separate them.

In New England and in the eastern and older settled portion of Virginia the whites were of pure ^j^^ ^^^ English extraction — that is to say, their ancestors England

,, . , , ■ r r- ^ Colonists.

all came from the southern portion 01 Great

C. A. I

MAI- I . TO ILLUSTRATE CHAPTERS IIV.

NOTES TO MAP I.

The Proclamation of 1763 (see pp. 27, 103, 108, 109, 117). li' m' n'. Northern limit of East Florida. 0' f ' g:' h' p'. Boundaries of West Florida. The territory included within

the lines f b 0' g' was added to West Florida in 1764. e'n'. "Lands lying between the rivers Altamaha and St Maria's" were

annexed to Georgia.

M' a' m. Lands west of this line reserved for the use of the Indians • the

words of the Proclamation are : " Lands beyond the heads or sources

of any of the rivers which fall into the Atlantic Ocean from the west or

north-west. f h g b 0. Southern boundary of the Province of Quebec.

The Quebec Act, 1774 (pp. 66—67). 1 1. Southern limit of territory added to the Province of Quebec " provided aJways, That nothing herein contained relating to the boundary of the Province of Quebec, shall in any wise affect the boundaries of an J other colony.

Treaty of 1783 (p. loj). athg'b. Northern limit of United States. b e 1. Eastern limit of United States.

The line from b to 1 was in dispute from ,783—1842, g e is the line as finally determined In 1842 (p. 224). 4 . 6 o is me line as

a d k b p t u w X b' f '. Western limit of United States. ^ p. nyf. ' ^''""'^"' ""^' "' ^"""^ ^"'''- ^''P"'^<^ ^y Spain (see Claims and Cessions, 1776— 1801 (pp. 108— no, 112). h ^' '^°'''j"=™ boi'ndary of Massachusetts according to the charters

i:ZT' ''^'""" Massachusetts and Conicticut unde" their P q. Southern boundary of Connecticut according to her charter

vl- ^'"'^"^!""='' '" '^' ''"'^ ""'■"^ °f 'his line and west of PennsvL I Sc'cut"""^^"'' ^'"""'' ^^ Massachusetts, New York?7nd | W 2. Boundary between the Carolinas.

X d _. Southern boundary of South Carolina.

Mason and Dixon Line (p. 4)

separating the llave^an^ frTst'at'^n'X'yrL'; iTlt"^ '"^ ""' Vermont.

Britain. The people of Connecticut probably held in their veins the purest English blood of any single group of colonists. In Massachusetts there was a slight mixture of Scottish blood, introduced by the prisoners deported by Cromwell after the victories of Dunbar and Worcester. There was also a small French element in the population of the Bay Colony. This comprised the descendants of the Huguenot refugees, who fled from France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Few in point of numbers, they were still of considerable importance. Peter Faneuil and James Bowdoin, of this stock, were among the most eminent Massachusetts men of their times. In Rhode Island, the Huguenot descendants formed a larger proportion of the population ; but, considered numerically, they were insignificant. There were also a few Portuguese Jews living at Newport. With these exceptions, the New Englanders were of pure EngUsh blood — descended for the most part from the people of the eastern counties. Therefore, they in all strictness may be termed English.

The earlier settlers of the tide-water portion of Virginia — the section containing the large tobacco planc^onistT*^^'^" tations — were likewise of pure English extraction. The later comers to the Shenandoah Valley and to the slopes of the Blue Ridge were English and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. Intermingled with them was a strong body of German Protestants who had reached that country through Pennsylvania. This combined Scotch- Irish and German folk penetrated farther south and west along the foot-hills of the Appalachian Mountains. They formed the bulk of the settlers in the "upper regions" of the Carolinas. This racial element in the interior of the Southern Colonies — entirely unlike the older settlers on the seaboard in blood, religion, and institutions — was a factor of importance in the history of the South. A strong, God-fearing race, it produced two of the most remarkable figures in the annals of

I.] Soiithern and Middle Colonies. 3

America — Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun. Unlike the inhabitants of tide-water Virginia, the dwellers in the lowlands of the Carolinas and Georgia were largely of non-English blood. The Huguenots were especially strong in South Carolina, and among them were some of the most prosperous and public-spirited families of the colony. The South German Protestants, or Salzburgers as they were termed, formed an important portion of the inhabitants of Georgia. Scattered here and there throughout the Carolinas and Georgia were groups of Scots who had migrated thither after the final overthrow of the Stuart cause at CuUoden and the subsequent breaking down of the clan system by the English government. Among them were Flora MacDonald, the saviour of Prince Charles, and her husband, who was a man of some influence among his neighbours. The recent immigrants from Scotland, some of whom had done their best to overthrow the Hanoverian dynasty in 1745, remained true to George the Third in 1776. A few returned to Scotland and others enlisted in the loyalist regiments. Many of them however remained on their farms and played important parts in the terrible internecine conflicts which devastated the frontier settlements of the Carolinas.

It was in the colonies lying between the Hudson and the Potomac that the greatest diversity of race was ^^ „

° •' The People

to be found. In New York there were the of the Middle Dutch, descendants of the first settlers, and now ° °"'^^' well reconciled to the English domination; but no Irish Catholics lived there before the Revolution, owing to the severe anti-Catholic laws till then in force in that colony. In the interior, along the banks of the lower Mohawk, dwelt a large and prosperous body of German settlers. This element at one time had been much larger, but many families had been lured to Pennsylvania by promises of lavish grants of land. In Pennsylvania, indeed, there were representatives of nearly

1 — 2 every nation of Western Europe. Side by side with the descendants of the early Swedish, Dutch, and English colonists might be seen Germans of all shades of religious belief, Lutherans and Calvinists, Quakers and Mennonists, and other sects almost without number. There, too, were Spanish and Irish Roman Catholics — for in that colony the adherents of all Christian faiths enjoyed full civil rights. In New York and Pennsylvania, as well as in Rhode Island, there were Jewish congregations. In Pennsylvania only Christians could hold office, but in Rhode Island a Jew could obtain the right to vote by means of a special act of the colonial legislature. Nowhere was the Jewish element of much importance in 1760. It is clear from this brief statement of facts that there was no well-defined race which could be called American then living in the colonies. This will be made more evident, perhaps, by an analysis of the population according to colour and place of birth.

About one-half of the colonists lived on either side of the ^. .^ ,. southern boundary of Pennsylvania. This line had

Distribution ■' ■'

of thepopuia- been settled by an agreement between the heirs *^°°' of William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, and

those of Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore, under whose direction Maryland had been colonized. It was defined for a considerable distance by two English surveyors. Mason and Dixon. Separating Pennsylvania from Maryland and Virginia, Mason and Dixon's line at first divided the Northern Colonies, where agriculture was diversified, from the Southern Colonies, where one or two staple products were the rule. Later in the history of the country, it became the dividing line between the slave and free states east of the Appalachian Mountains; and, in this sense, has immortalized the names of its early surveyors. The statement that this line divided the population into two nearly equal parts requires further examination. There were in the colonies in 1760 about four hundred thousand negro

I.] Distribution and Physical Conditions. 5

slaves. Of these some three hundred thousand lived in the southern colonies, the remainder being owned and employed in the North, mainly in New York and Rhode Island. Subtracting the negro population from the total population of the two divisions, it is found that there were about seven hundred thousand whites in the North and not far from five hundred thousand whites in the South. Probably between four and five hundred thousand of the colonists were immigrants — including in this estimate seventy-five thousand negro slaves, for the slave-trade was then in active operation. The population of the colonies, therefore, was divided by race distinctions, by colour, and by length of exposure to colonial institutions. It would appear, in point of fact, that the problem of assimilating the "foreign element" was certainly not less serious in 1760 than it has been at any other time in the history of the country. This was especially true because a majority of these recent immigrants were not English either by birth or by speech. Among them were some of the most prominent leaders in the Revolution. For example the first two great financiers of the United States, Robert Morris and Alexander Hamilton, were born outside of the colonies — and it may be added that Albert Gallatin, the only man among the early financiers who can claim a place with these two men, was like them born without the limits of the United States. Notwithstanding the great diversity of the population, race conflicts seem to have been very rare, and, except in New England, the immigrant was everywhere welcomed as an addition to the wealth of the country.

The colonists then inhabited that portion of North America which lies between the thirty-first and the fortyfifth parallels of north latitude and between the condftlcms. Atlantic Ocean and the Appalachian Mountains. To understand the history of this people, it is necessary to know something of the conditions of life prevailing in this

The Colonists, 1760-65.

[Chap.

region of their activity. One of the first things which impresses the student is its general suitableness for colonization. There were scarcely any swamps to require expensive and longcontinued draining, although, on the other hand, the land was covered with forests which had to be cleared away before husbandry could be begun. The new land was provided, however, with an agricultural product — the well-known Indian corn or maize — which throve on an irregular cultivation and supplied the colonists, after a few months, with the means of existence. Furthermore, this region was accessible from the sea to an extent scarcely equalled by any other country on the earth's surface. The colonies, therefore, were easily reached and easily made to produce enough food to save the colonists from starvation. The next thing to be noted is the fact that the climatic conditions were extraordinary. The following table, extracted from Professor Whitney's United States, will well repay a cursory examination.

Climate and products.

Mean Temperature of the

Place.

Nain, Labrador Aberdeen, Scotland

New York Naples

Norfolk, Virginia San Fernando, Spain

Latitude.

Year.

Coldest month.

Warmest month.

57° 12'

3°.82

57° 12'

37°.22

47° 36' 48° 24'

40°. 10

22°.46

420.44

59°-54 \ 64°.76 1

44° 42' 44° 48'

43°-34 55°-04

220.64 420.44

40° 50' 40° 48'

28°.94 48°.20

36° 50' 36° 30'

Diff.

Year.

4°-3

It will be noted, for instance, that while the difference between the mean yearly temperatures of Aberdeen (Scotland) and San Fernando (Spain) is seventeen degrees, the difference

I.] Climate, Products, and Employments. /

between the mean yearly temperatures of Nain (Labrador) and Norfolk (Virginia) — situated in nearly the same latitudes as Aberdeen and San Fernando, is thirty-four degrees, or exactly double. Perhaps the dissimilarity of the climates of Europe and America can be best elucidated by comparing the climatic conditions of New York and Norfolk on one side of the Atlantic with those of Naples and San Fernando on the other side. The difference in latitude is about four degrees in each case. The difference in the temperatures of the coldest months in the European cities is four and one-half degrees against a difference of twelve degrees on the western side of the Atlantic. It may be added that, proceeding southward from Norfolk, a region is soon reached where the winters are comparatively mild. This sudden change in the isothermal lines indicates a great variety of climatic environments within a comparatively small area, with a corresponding diversity of agricultural produce, and, indeed, of general employments as well. New England, for example, produced fair crops of potatoes, onions, and Indian corn, provided the farmer devoted much labour and care to their cultivation. The Middle Colonies yielded large crops of Indian corn and wheat, at the cost of much less labour and care. Virginia produced tobacco of excellent quality and in great abundance; and the extreme southern colonies were remarkably well suited for the cultivation of rice and cotton. It can be seen, therefore, that in 1 7 60 a small population, scattered through a region eleven hundred miles long and three hundred miles wide, produced commodities associated in other lands with the northern, temperate, and tropical zones.

This great diversity in employments and in conditions of life reacted on the habits and ideas of the people of the several sections and made against polit- erniTioyrnen^ts ical union throughout the whole history of the people inhabiting this country. Thus the New Englanders, able to wring a bare subsistence only from the soil, became, almost of necessity, manufacturers, mechanics, and merchants. They ventured upon the ocean and carried the fame of Boston to every port open to Englishmen. They also became fishermen and drew wealth from the shoals of fish which visited their shores. In whatever pursuit they entered, the New Englanders were almost invariably successful, and retired .in old age with competences — earned, however, by the most strenuous exertions and by great personal sacrifices. This hard struggle with nature and with man bred in them a shrewdness, unequalled perhaps, but not always admirable. The people of the Middle Colonies were beginning to turn their attention to the arts and to commerce. New York and Philadelphia were already large and prosperous seaports. But the most important interest of the Middle Colonies — in the pre-revolutionary days at least — was the production of food- stuffs. There the farms were large, and labour, to an extent unknown in New England, was supplied by "indented " white servants and by negro slaves. South of Mason and Dixon's line, the scene rapidly changed. As one proceeded southward, the cultivation of food-stuffs, except for local needs, diminished, and that of tobacco occupied the energies of the inhabitants. Following this change of product, slave labour became more frequent, until, in the rice and indigo producing colonies of South Carolina and Georgia, a white labourer was not to be found — except in the new settlements on the mountain slopes, where the conditions were similar to those which prevailed in the Middle Colonies.

These several environments produced a marked effect on the social structures of the different sections. In difionT^ '^°"" New England, society was, so to speak, homogeneous in its very variety. It is difficult to conceive of class distinctions in a country where one man performed many functions each year, and was perhaps, at one and the same time, interested in half a dozen employments — by turns a farmer, an artisan, a fisherman, or a trader, as the

I-] Social Conditions. 9

seasons or the work demanded. The chief inequality was in that of accumulated wealth; and the Calvinistic dogmas of the Congregational Church did much toward equalizing the lots of the rich and the poor. In the Middle Colonies the case was different. There the merchants of the great cities and the tillers of the river valleys were far apart in their ideas of life. The farmers of Central and Western Pennsylvania were the earliest and most earnest of democrats, holding ideas abhorrent to the feelings of their fellow colonists in Philadelphia.

In the South, society was based on an aristocratic model. There, land was held in large estates by a comparatively small number of land and slave >rgmia. owners. In Virginia, these landowners possessed entire power in State and Church, tempered to a very slight extent by the presence of a royal governor. At the first glance, few positions in life seemed more desirable than that of the successful Virginia planter. In company with the Maryland planters, he possessed a monopoly of the British tobacco markets. Excellent tobacco was produced in North Carolina; but, at that time, it was scarcely known outside the tobacco colonies. This was due to the fact that the most practicable route from the North Carolina tobacco fields to the seaboard was through Virginia. The tobacco growers of the latter colony imposed a small duty on all tobacco imported into Virginia and thus excluded North Carolina tobacco from the markets of the world. The whole life of Virginia was dominated by the exigencies of tobacco culture. Large plantations, slave labour, poor and wasteful cultivation, a single crop with its attendant fluctuations, all appear to have been the direct result of tobacco growing. There was one commercial town in the tobacco colonies — Baltimore in Maryland. But Baltimore belonged to the valley of the Susquehanna and not to that of the Potomac — it was to most intents and purposes a Pennsylvania seaport.

lO The Colonists, 1760-65. [Chap.

The great arms of Chesapeake Bay — known as rivers — the James, the York, the Potomac and the rest, were navigable for long distances from the bay. The sea-going vessels loaded within a short distance of the tobacco fields — oftentimes within sight of the planter's verandah. Thus it came about that there was no business transacted in Virginia. The planter consigned his year's crop to his correspondent in London, sending also a long list of goods to be purchased there and sent out in the tobacco ships a year later. The temptation to order more goods than the proceeds of the tobacco would pay for was very great, and it was difficult, too, to calculate closely the precise amount that the tobacco would realize. At all events, the planter soon found himself in debt to the factor, and before long the proceeds of one year's crop would be used to pay the debts already contracted. So the process went on, the planter living in apparent comfort, yet always on the edge of bankruptcy. Of course, here and there, good managers could be found — like George Washington; — but it seems to have required great skill and forbearance to make even a large plantation yield any net return. The Virginia planters were men of large proportions — managing affairs on a large scale and taking liberal views of everything, except when the interests of their own class were menaced; then they became as hard and narrow as the typical Yankee. There is something fascinating in the descriptions of the old Virginia houses and house-life which have been left by travellers of the olden time. Yet we know from the same travellers that, even in Virginia's best days, one might sit down to dinner in one of their splendid rooms — the table set with fine plate and the appetite sharpened with costly wines, when at the same time the window, out of which one looked, might lack several panes of glass, the door be without a knob, the shutters hanging by one hinge, and the whole mansion in a condition of partial ruin. This was due to the fact that negro slaves and free white mechanics seem never

I •] Social Conditions. 1 1

to have been able to thrive together. The glass for these planters' houses had been brought from England, and all the finished woodwork from the North, while the workman who put them together had been imported for that purpose. The blood and sinew of Virginia was in the middle class of whites, those owning small estates and a few slaves. They were in some cases ignorant, and generally lacked the polish of the great planters. They were of the best British stock, however, and capable of development. To this class belonged Patrick Henry and John Marshall, while Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and John Randolph represented the richer and more aristocratic class.

The only other product which determined the whole life of a people was rice. It was produced mainly in South Carolina. Grown in malarial regions, its Planters of cultivation was fatal to the whites, and only less south Caroso to the blacks. The rice planters, unlike their Virginia congeners, could not live on their plantations, except for a brief period in each year. They passed most of their time in the principal town of the colony, Charleston — which enjoyed the almost unique position of being a capital, a business metropolis, and a summer resort all in one. The rice planters formed a well-knit aristocracy. The handling of the crop was performed by the merchants of Charleston, men of means and enterprise. Many of the men of both these classes had been educated in England or in the North. In their hands centred all power, for government was centralized in South Carolina as it was in no other colony. They formed a true oligarchy. Born and bred to habits of command, they enjoyed an influence far beyond what their numerical importance or their wealth would seem to justify. South Carolina was prosperous in 1 760 — forty years before the profitable cultivation of cotton began. This prosperity rested to a great extent on the use of slave labour, which seems to have been considered essential to the wellbeing of South Carolina in 1760, as it was deemed to be one hundred years later.

Slavery existed in all the colonies before the Revolution. In the North it was everywhere dying out because it was unprofitable, except on the shores of Narragansett Bay and on the banks of the Hudson River. In Boston and New

Negro

Slavery: North York City the possession of a young negro was ^" °"* ■ regarded as undesirable. There does not seem

to have been any widespread moral sentiment against slavery, but the institution had no place in the economic environment of the northern colonists. South of Mason and Dixon's line this was not true. The following definition of the word slaves taken from the early Virginia statutes is interesting for many reasons. It reads as follows :

"All persons who have been imported into the colony and who were not Christians in their native country — except Turks and Moors in amity with his Majesty, and those who can prove their being free in England, or in any other Christian country — shall be accounted and be slaves, shall be bought and sold, notwithstanding their conversion to Christianity after their importation."

From this it can be seen that slavery was regarded by the

Virginians as justifiable because the slaves be-

siavery in ^^^.g importation were not Christians, so that

Virginia. ^ '

the knowledge of Christianity given them in Virginia might be considered as an equivalent for the use of their bodies during life. This was the ground upon which slavery was justified for many years. One of the best means of determining the extent to which slavery has eaten into the body politic is to observe the stringency of the laws designed to prevent the amalgamation of the two races and to prevent insurrection. That slavery was a firmly established institution in Virginia becomes evident when one reads in the statutes of the Old Dominion that a white man marrying a

I.] Negro Slavery. 13

negress shall be banished and the clergyman who performed the marriage service shall be subject to a heavy fine. A negro found abroad after nine o'clock at night might be dismembered, and no penalty beset the slave-owner whose slave died during or in consequence of punishment. In Virginia, there were many white bondservants working and living with the negro slaves. This probably mitigated to some extent the lot of the slave. Moreover the cultivation of tobacco was healthful and easy; and, taking everything into consideration, the treatment of the blacks, while harsh in comparison with that in New York, seems to have been mild when compared with their usage by the planters of South Carolina.

In the latter colony the slaves were largely men and women of African birth, carried to Charleston

Slavery m

and other southern seaports from the western South Carocoast of Africa by the northern slave-traders. '"^' They were, therefore, more savage and uncivilized than were the negroes of the tobacco colonies, who were mostly descendants of slaves brought over in the preceding century. The South Carolina negroes may have required harsher treatment to keep them in subjection. Moreover the conditions of labour in the rice colonies were far more severe than farther north. Even the negroes could stand the pestilential rice swamps for a few years only. It became profitable, therefore, to work them to the best advantage during their years of greatest vigour. This naturally tended to increase the severity of their treatment. Another thing which made in the same direction was the fact that the owner was absent from his plantation during the greater part of the year. Thus instead of the patriarchal form which slavery assumed in Virginia, in South Carolina it was simply a business matter. The slaves and the plantation were handed over to an enterprising overseer; and the best overseer was he who secured the most advantageous returns. Finally, the fact that the blacks outnumbered the whites necessarily led to most stringent laws.