The development of the United States from the colonies to a world power

Preface

For over thirty years a new spirit has been gradually making its way into the study and interpretation of American history and taking other than political and military events into consideration. After the appearance of Bryce's American Commonwealth (1888), when instituting a comparison of this work with de Tocqueville's, Emile Boutmy wrote: "En un mot les Etats-Unis sont avant tout une societe economique; ils ne sont qu'^ titre secondaire une societe historique et politique." McMaster's History of the People of the United States (1883) and Roosevelt's Winning of the West (1889) were indicative of the new history, while the greatest influence upon recent study has been exerted by Professor Frederick J. Turner through his classes and in his writings. Of the latter none has been more important than "The Influence of the Frontier in American History," which appeared in the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1893.

When the traditional, or conventional, point of view is once departed from, the most conspicuous, as well as the most significant, feature

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PREFACE

of American history becomes the expansion of a few thousand colonists, scattered along the Atlantic coast in the early seventeenth century, into a population of over one hundred millions, occupying the whole central portion of the North American continent and holding many outlying possessions. These people have developed distinctive traits and institutions that have become known as American, and if they do not constitute a nation they are at least citizens of a single great federal state, the United States of America. The original colonists were the subjects of European monarchs, and they have been joined by millions of people of all races and nationalities, mainly from monarchical states, yet they established and have maintained not the purest but the greatest democracy the world has known. From humble beginnings they have risen to a commanding position in the realm of industry and finance, and they have become one of the leading powers of the world.

The new history attempts to explain these things, and to that end many studies have been made and a large number of monographs produced, which are known to the special student but not to the general public. A new Interpretation of American history has arisen which, at least to the prejudiced eyes of the present generation, offers a better understanding of the viii

PREFACE

development of the United States, and should be of especial value to those whose interest in American history has been recently stimulated. In the hope of rendering a service to them this little book has been written. No one appreciates better than the author the difficulty of trying to compress the history of the United States into a small compass, but the appeal was too strong to be resisted, and he only hopes that his sins of omission are greater than those of commission. He has tried to state things truly, but even if he had succeeded he realizes that it would only be a part of the truth, for after all this is not intended to be comprehensive, it is only a sketch or rather an attempt to point out some of the things which help to explain how Americans have come to be what they are to-day.

As is the case with every historical study, and peculiarly so with one of this sort, the personal element of selection and emphasis has been the controlling factor. The work is in a sense a compilation, for the author has drawn freely upon books and men for his ideas and for the expression of them, and even the bibliography is a personal one, chosen largely from the books in his own library. He has tried to acknowledge the source of each extract, and wherever possible it has been done, but in default of that he would express here his grati-

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PREFACE

tude to all from whom he has received assistance. He recognizes a peculiar obligation to Professor Turner, who, by his writings and even more by the generous sharing of his studies, brought the author to a realizing sense of the significance of the new point of view and has since assisted him in many ways. He is also under special obligations to President Arthur T. Hadley of Yale and to his former colleague the late Professor Guy S. Callender for stimulating suggestions obtained in friendly intercourse as well as from their books. He is grateful to his colleagues in American history Professor Charles M. Andrews and Professor Allen Johnson, who have both aided and encouraged him. The former rendered a special service which is recognized, though inadequately, in the bibliographical note at the end of Chapter I, and the latter read the manuscript of the first ten chapters and made helpful criticisms. Finally his thanks are due to his secretary, Miss Helen E. Williams, for her patient and untiring assistance.

M. F.

Contents

I. Colonization i

II. Independence 33

III. The United States 53

II America became known as the land ^^ of opportunity and the population

increased by leaps and bounds. Within the limits of the thirteen colonies, which later became the United States, in 1600 no settlers were to be found ; at the end of twenty years there were 2500 and in twenty years more some 25,000; by 1700 the population was estimated at over 250,000; and before the middle of the eighteenth century the numbers ran up to over 1,000,000.

It was a heterogeneous mass that was thus assembled. Mingling with the English settlers from the start there had been some French, Germans, Swedes, Welsh, Scotch, Irish, and others, while the Dutch had formed a separate and not insignificant element by themselves. Then, toward the close of the seventeenth century, and in the eighteenth century, because of unsatisfactory conditions at home, Germans, Swiss, and Scotch- Irish poured into the colonies by tens, by hundreds, and by thousands. It was immigration on a scale proportionately greater even than the United States has seen in recent times. The Germans claim that by 1775 the people of their blood amounted to 225,000, or one tenth of the total population; and the Scotch-Irish claim 375,000, or about one sixth. Professor Edward Channing, in the second volume of his scholarly

History of the United States, has estimated that "About one third of the colonists in 1760 were born outside of America."

New England remained more largely peopled by English stock; the dominant planter class in the South was of similar origin, though negroes and white foreigners were there in great numbers; while the Middle Colonies contained the greatest admixture. Schoepf, a surgeon attached to some of the German mercenaries sent to America, could write from New York in 1780: —

A promiscuous crowd of almost all nations of Europe, of Jews and Negroes, of all creeds and sects, of people who have settled here for such diverse reasons, and often in order to escape legal penalties, here congregates and ingrafts upon the common country of their adoption the sentiments, manners, and habits of life which each individual has brought with him.

At about the same time Crevecceur, in his delightful Letters from an American Farmer, being familiar with conditions in Pennsylvania and New York, answered his own question, "What is an American?", by saying: —

They are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. From this promiscuous breed, that race now called Americans have arisen. ... I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations.

People who were going away from their own countries to settle in the New World, people who wished to leave home because they were unable to live under existing institutions, were usually allowed to do so without great difficulty. Reformers or even progressive members of a community may be estimable persons, but they are often unpleasant neighbors. The French Huguenots are rightly regarded as among the best elements of the population in the countries in which they settled; yet it was a relief to France at the time to have them go. The Scotch- Irish were competing dangerously with British industries, and advantage was taken of the difference in religious opinion to subject them, as Presbyterians, to the requirements of the Test Act which had been primarily intended for the subjection of Catholics. The Swiss Mennonites, because of their form of worship and their communistic tendencies, and also because of their refusal to bear arms, were considered a source of danger to both church and state. Governments could not sit idly by and allow these people, who were in general of an industrious class, to leave the country as freely as they chose. Laws were passed and proclamations were issued against emigration, but effective measures of enforcement were seldom taken. It is evident that underneath there was more or less of a feeling that after all it was "good riddance to bad rubbish."

The Americans were a nation of immigrants, a composite people, and the process of fusion was slow. While it was taking place thought and action were dominated by a relatively small upper class which was in general closely allied to the English by blood. This class fixed upon Americans the tradition of Anglo-Saxon origin which was probably not true for the majority of the people after the middle of the eighteenth century. Still the colonies were of English foundation; the English language was the dominant language; and the institutions were fundamentally British. This was well illustrated in the matter of government.

The New Englanders, in accordment ance with their training and tradi-

tions, but also in keeping with their environment, organized themselves into closely compact communities with a form of local life characteristic of the towns of Old England. While this implied a large amount of self-government, it did not mean popular control. For a time, in several of the colonies, the church and civil communities were practically identical and membership in the church was frequently required for the exercise of civil rights. This might be regarded as a restriction of political privileges, but it should rather be taken as an assurance of the equality of all men in the civil community just as they were equal before God in the church covenant. Yet theoretical considerations gave way before existing conditions; the aristocratic traditions of Old England were reproduced in America. Politically as well as socially the control of affairs remained largely in the hands of the upper class.

Local conditions in Virginia were responsible for the development in that colony of scattered private plantations with a small group of aristocratic owners in control of affairs, and a larger body of an inferior, and to a great extent dependent, class. It was, therefore, inevitable that the local government should take on a form of looser political organization than in New England. It accordingly followed the larger English divisions of hundreds and counties.

Other colonies showed variations and combinations of these types.

If the colonies are viewed in the light of their foundation as commercial enterprises, many things otherwise obscure seem relatively clear and simple. A joint-stock company would have a board of directors, the council, in London or wherever the company originated. The necessary authority In the colonies would naturally be exercised by a local or resident director, the governor, with an advisory board or committee, the council. As most of these enterprises did

I6 not prove to be successful business ventures, changes were made; and various experiments were tried in the effort to make them more profitable. For example, it was quickly appreciated that individual property-holding offered a great Incentive to effort; accordingly mutual profit-sharing, which had been attempted In the first colonies, was given up. The men upon the ground would know local conditions better; their experience would be helpful and their advice valuable; accordingly in Virginia each plantation or group of inhabitants was asked to send two delegates to an assembly — and representative government In America was begun. In Massachusetts advantage was taken of the fact that there was no stipulation In the charter that the meetings of the stockholders should be held in England. Accordingly, by taking the charter with them the settlers who were stockholders were able to hold meetings in the colony itself and so to obtain almost complete control of their own affairs.

The whole tendency was toward a greater and greater amount of self-government being allowed because It seemed to meet conditions better and because the colonies flourished under that arrangement. The colonies being of British foundation, the colonists being British subjects, and being granted all the rights and privileges of that status, It was natural that the institutions which developed should be essentially British. In practically every colony, therefore, the government developed on the British model. This consisted of a governor and council appointed by the Crown, as well as a whole set of officials holding their positions directly or indirectly by royal appointment, an assembly elected by the property-owners which had fairly extensive powers of legislation and taxation, and a series of judicial courts modeled on those of England.

Nor was this local self-government incompatible with the fact that before the end of the seventeenth century the Crown followed a fairly consistent policy of bringing all the colonies so far as possible under its own immediate control. The corporate colonies were continually giving trouble; the proprieties were only slightly better; simplicity and uniformity demanded royal administration. While it would be misleading to say that the Government never stopped until this purpose had been accomplished, it is true that with a few lapses the Government persisted in its purpose until out of some thirty establishments all but four eventually became royal or Crown colonies.

. . Although colonial governments and

institutions were essentially British,

and though their development in the main fol-

i8 lowed on British lines, even governmental changes in England being reflected in America, yet in the adaptation to new conditions many and considerable modifications came about. Some of the most obvious as well as the most significant changes arose out of the mere growth of the colonies. A population that increased from 275,000 in 1700 to 1,200,000 in 1750 meant an expansion of settlement so rapid as to be phenomenal. While this was possible because of a liberal land policy, the expansion itself was partly responsible for that liberality. If the land were not freely given the impatient colonists seized it. James Logan, Penn's agent, complained in 1725 that there were "as many as one hundred thousand acres of land possessed by persons who resolutely set down and improve it without any right to it." ^

A liberal land policy was a large factor in the establishment of property rights in America and this has been spoken of as one of the most significant features of American development; but there were social and political results from expansion that were of almost equal importance. Professor Frederick J. Turner, in his remarkable and telling articles on the West, beginning with The Significance of the Frontier

^ * With so great a demand for land there came an inevitable rise in land values and investment and speculation followed. In Philadelphia, in 1768, it was said that "every great fortune made here within these fifty years has been by land."

in American History, has pointed out that American expansion has been a process of colonization, and that the characteristic feature of American social development has resulted from starting life over again on the frontier. With the expansion of population and the development of new frontiers, came a constant recurrence of the process and a constant reorganization of social institutions. Being in operation from the earliest times this process slowly but surely was causing a divergence. The farther west the population went the farther removed were European influences, until out of the action and interaction of frontier and coast, out of the interplay of sections and of classes, there came something different, a development of life and institutions which has become known as American.

Where economic conditions were more nearly equal and where opportunities were open to all, social and political privileges could not be maintained on the same strict lines as in England. Many ambitious and discontented people in the settled portions of the colonies went of their own accord out to the undeveloped sections of the country and took up land. Other undesirable elements such as superfluous foreigners were pushed out to the frontier. Just as the American colonists in general were regarded by Englishmen and Europeans as of a somewhat inferior grade, so the frontiersmen were looked down upon by the coast settlers with something of indifference if not of contempt. The ruling classes in the colonies were running affairs in their own interests and without too great regard to the needs of others. They were fearful of the effect upon their hold of the social and political organization if this dissatisfied, rough, inferior element of the population should ever come into power. They accordingly took precautions to keep the reins of government in their own hands. The frontiersmen had many things to complain of, but their culminating grievance was that they did not have the share in the government to which they claimed their numbers entitled them, for then they would have been in a position to remedy the situation for themselves. Dissatisfaction existed everywhere, and just as soon as the discontented element was sufficiently strong to make trouble, trouble was bound to result. Continued friction, revolt, and even bloodshed forced concessions. Results were slow in coming, but ultimately the frontiersmen, the newcomers, the inferiors placed themselves on a footing of equality, at least so far as formal recognition was concerned, with the older, superior class.

While England was yielding to her Commerce , . ^ j i r r j

and trade colonies a great deal oi Ireedom in

the matter of local government, she was passing many and minute regulations affecting the commerce and internal industrial development of those same colonies ; and in this she was carrying out a fairly consistent policy and had done so from early times.

When the struggle with Spain in the sixteenth century, actuated by religious zeal as well as by lust for riches, was succeeded in the seventeenth century by a commercial rivalry with the Dutch, the control of the carrying trade became all-important. The famous series of Navigation Acts, beginning in 1651, unfolded a policy that was frankly intended to develop English shipping as the best support of the navy. Another closely related feature of the commercial policy developed in these and other acts was to promote in the colonies the production of naval stores for which England was dangerously dependent upon foreign countries with whom she might at any moment go to war. The colonies were also to provide raw materials which were not procurable at home, and they were to furnish a market for English manufactures, the exchange of commodities to be so regulated that the balance of trade would be in favor of the mother country.

In the maintenance of this commercial policy it was inevitable that the Government ' compass many laws, some of which were wise tabsome doubtless unwise, and many exceedin^i-o irritating to the parties restrained by them. These annoying restrictions, however, were only parts or incidents in the organization of a great commercial empire. In this empire the interests of the mother country were paramount and those of the colonies subordinate, it is true ; and where the two came into conflict the colonies must of course yield; but in general the interests of the two were not antagonistic, though at times they were divergent. England and her colonies were partners in a commercial organization. The prosperity of the one was dependent upon the prosperity of the other.

By their very location, with plenty of lumber and the finest of ship timbers, and under the stimulus which came from the fishing industry the New Englanders were foreordained to take up the building of ships. Not only did they build them for their own use; because of their cheapness and excellent qualities they were soon building them also for others. With sailors trained in the best of all schools, the fishing fleet, it was also foreordained that New Englanders should turn to carrying and trading. In all this development the requirement of the Navigation Acts that all ships must be English-owned and manned by English sailors

DLVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES

^ }i great advantage, for the terms of the ajj^ placed colonial and English shipping on .0 same footing.

The system of enumerated commodities by which specified articles could be shipped only to England worked something of a hardship, but compensation was made wherever possible. For example, in the case of tobacco, a better market could probably have been found on the Continent ; but amends were made by granting a monopoly of the English markets. While some manufacturing was done for home use, it did not require legislation to restrain the colonists from this form of activity. In their stage of development they must of necessity rely very largely upon extractive industries. Such other commodities and manufactured articles as they could not or did not produce at home must be paid for out of the profits of the sales of their surplus products. In other words, the colonies were absolutely dependent upon outside markets.

The American continental colonies were carrying on their trade in a large measure for themselves. It was not a trade with the present methods of corporations, public carriers, and fixed routes. Its type was that of the individual merchant who carried his own goods, which would include cases where various people took shares in the venture and formed what might be called small joint-stock companies. There were some fairly well-established trade routes, as to England and to southern France and Spain, but the bulk of the trade, especially among the continental colonies themselves and between them and the West Indies, was carried on in a most irregular way. The colonies produced a great variety of commodities, and the methods of distribution were almost as varied as were the products. Professor Charles M. Andrews, in writing of the New England traders, each with a venture of only a few hundred pounds, going from colony to colony and to the West Indies, carrying every known commodity, well describes this as "a peddling and huckstering business."

The colonies found the markets which they required to a large extent in England and in Europe ; in fact they traded all over the Atlantic and Mediterranean, and probably even on the Baltic coast. But the essential element in the prosperity of their trade was found in the West India islands. They could there dispose of lumber and foodstuffs to advantage; but it was of greater importance that a ready market was found for certain commodities which could not otherwise be sold. For example, the broken fish could not be offered in higher-class markets, but were in demand in the West Indies as food for the slaves. Part of this West India trade was thus equivalent to the profitable sale of by-products, and assisted the colonies materially in maintaining the balance of trade, which would otherwise have gone heavily against them.^

Early in the eighteenth century New England colonists found in the French West India islands molasses and other products so cheap and plentiful that it is said the planters were accustomed to throw much of them away. The trade which quickly sprang up worked to the detriment of the British islands, whose planters made complaint to Parliament. The sugar colonies, because of the greater profits from them, had always been fa\'orites of the home Government, and the returned planters with their wealth exercised a peculiar social and political influence in England. Their appeal was accordingly listened to, and in 1733 the Molasses Act was passed which placed a pro-

^ "The State of the Trade," as drawn up by the Boston merchants, recently printed by C. M. Andrews ("The Boston Merchants and the Non-Importation Movement," Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, 1917, p. 167), shows this in most convincing fashion: "... about \ of this Bank Fish turns out merchantable and is sent to Spain, Portugal, and Italy, the net proceeds of which with the freight is remitted to Great Britain; the other f being such as is over-salted, sunburnt, and broken, and thereby rendered unfit for any market in Europe is sent to the Islands in the West Indies, first to the English Islands, which cant consume more than -j, the remaining I is sent to the French foreign islands, in return for which we receive Molasses and a small proportion of ordinary sugars. This valuable branch of trade and nursery of seamen almost if not wholly depends on our trade to the foreign islands in the West Indies."

hibitive duty upon trade with the French islands.

In carrying on their diversified trade the colonists observed the regulations laid down by the mother country only so far as they were forced to. Exemptions from the requirements of the restrictive acts in the form of special licenses were oftentimes issued, and in many cases the laws were not rigidly enforced. So essential to the general prosperity of the empire was the prosperity of the New England trade, and so dependent was it in turn upon the trade with the French islands, that the Molasses Act was never strictly enforced.

There is no doubt that irregular trade or smuggling was carried on to a fairly large extent ; even if it had not been tolerated by the British it would have been difficult to prevent on account of the great length of the colonial coast-line with its many bays and creeks which made careful patrol almost impossible. It has been said that the colonists smuggled whenever it was to their interest to do so; it is also said that the colonies flourished by reason of neglect. There may be an element of truth in these assertions, but the larger truth is that the colonies were flourishing with the rest of the British Empire, not in spite of the restrictive policy, but because they were a part of this great successful commercial organization. An important factor in colonial prosperity seems to have been that the lack of capital inevitable in an early stage of industrial development was to a large extent supplied by British credit. Many merchants in the colonies traded with the British merchants whose supply of capital enabled them to extend the necessary credit for the Americans to carry on their trade.

Expansion had brought the coloth^ nists into contact and into conflict French with the Indians, which led to demands upon the home Government for more adequate provision for defense. Expansion also brought them into rivalry and into conflict with the French and led the colonists into taking a more and more important part in the plans of imperial expansion. When William III, immediately after his accession to the English throne in 1689, joined the Grand Alliance against Louis XIV, the American colonists took a minor part in what they called "King William's War." Again they shared in the War of the Spanish Succession, which they called "Queen Anne's War" (1701- 1714), and in the War of the Austrian Succession ( 1 740-1 748), which they called "King George's War."

This was not merely a matter of duty on the part of the colonists ; self-interest required their participation. At first they were mostly concerned about the North Atlantic fisheries, and aggressive actions on their part were directed largely to the breaking of French and to the establishing of British control. The question continued to be a big factor in the years and in the wars that followed, but expansion brought the Americans and the British as well to a realization of the fact that there was a larger question involved, and that the rivalry between the French and British in America was actually a struggle for the possession of a continent. Military instinct, aided by the more or less accidental location of their first settlements upon the St. Lawrence, had shown the French the advantage of seizing the more important strategic points to control the interior of the continent, and had accordingly led them to establish a series of forts on the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Great Lakes as well as on the St. Lawrence. On the other hand the British had characteristically encouraged settlement and as the middle of the eighteenth century was approaching they were organizing colonizing companies for the purpose of settling the Ohio Valley.

When the inevitable struggle In Europe was renewed in the Seven Years War (i 756-1 763), the fighting had already been going on in

America for over a year, growing out of the eagerness on the part of both contestants to seize the headwaters of the Ohio. The British continental colonies contained over a million souls, the French less than a hundred thousand. The outcome was a foregone conclusion; and as the war had begun, so before peace was reached in Europe the fighting had ended in America with the capture of Montreal by the British in 1760.

The changed character of the struggle in America, or at least the appreciation by the colonists of the importance of its issue to them, was shown by the fact that they no longer designated it as their sovereign's war, but as the "French and Indian War." Their self-interest was also shown by the fact that when their immediate aims seemed likely of achievement, when the headwaters of the Ohio were assured to their possession, and the fisheries were evidently to remain under their control, the colonists did not hesitate to engage in what should really have been regarded as treasonable trade with the enemy. They supplied the French with provisions which the British troops could have used, and they "cynically justified it on the ground that they were making money out of the enemy."