A School History of the United States Part 10

The French and Indian War:

1754-1763. The struggle for final possession.

1758. The capture of Louisburg.

1759. The capture of Quebec.

1760. The capture of Montreal.

1763. The French abandon America.

CHAPTER IX

LIFE IN THE COLONIES IN 1763

%91. Things unknown in 1763.%--Had a traveler landed on our sh.o.r.es in 1763 and made a journey through the English colonies in America, he would have seen a country utterly unlike the United States of to-day.

The entire population, white man and black, freeman and slave, was not so great as that of New York or Philadelphia or Chicago in our time. If we were to write a list of all the things we now consider as real necessaries of daily life and mark off those unknown to the men of 1763, not one quarter would remain. No man in the country had ever seen a stove, or a furnace, or a friction match, or an envelope, or a piece of mineral coal. From the farmer we should have to take the reaper, the drill, the mowing machine, and every kind of improved rake and plow, and give him back the scythe, the cradle, and the flail. From our houses would go the sewing machine, the daily newspaper, gas, running water; and from our tables, the tomato, the cauliflower, the eggplant, and many varieties of summer fruits. We should have to destroy every railroad, every steamboat, every factory and mill, pull down every line of telegraph, silence every telephone, put out every electric light, and tear up every telegraphic cable from the beds of innumerable rivers and seas. We should have to take ether and chloroform from the surgeon, and galvanized iron and India rubber from the arts, and give up every sort of machine moved by steam.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Lamp and sadiron]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Postrider (Footnote: From an old print, 1760)]

%92. State of the Arts, Sciences, and Industry.%--The appliances left on the list, because in some form they were known to the men of 1763, would now be thought crude and clumsy. There were printing presses in those days,--perhaps fifty in all the colonies. But they were small, were worked by hand, and were so slow that the most expert pressman using one of them could not have printed so much in three working days as a modern steam press can run off in five minutes. There was a general post, and Benjamin Franklin was deputy postmaster-general for the northern district of the colonies. But the letters were carried thirty miles a day by postriders on horseback, and there were never more than three mails a week between even the great towns. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday a postrider left New York city for Philadelphia.

Every Monday and Thursday another left New York for Boston. Once each week a rider left for Albany on his way to Quebec. On the first Wednesday of each month a packet boat sailed from New York for Falmouth, England, with the mail, and this was the only mail between Great Britain and her American colonies. We put electricity to a thousand uses; but in 1763 it was a scientific toy. Franklin had just proved by his experiment with the kite that lightning and electricity were one and the same, and several other men were amusing themselves and their hearers by ringing bells, exploding powder, and making colored sparks. But it was put to no other use. If we take up a daily newspaper published in one of our great cities and read the column of wants, we find in them twenty occupations now giving a comfortable living to millions of men. Yet not one of these twenty existed in 1763. The district messenger, the telegraph operator, the typewriter, the stenographer, the bookkeeper, the canva.s.ser, the salesman, the commercial traveler, the engineer, the car driver, the hackman, the conductor, the gripman, the brakeman, the electrician, the lineman, the elevator boy, and a host of others, follow trades and occupations which had no existence in the middle of the eighteenth century.

Run away, the 23d of this Instant _January_, from _Silas Crispin_ of _Burlington_, Taylor, a Servant Man named _Joseph Morris, _by Trade a Taylor, aged about 22 Years, of a middle Stature, swarthy Complexion, light gray Eyes, his Hair clipp'd off, mark'd with a large pit of the Small Pox on one Cheek near his Eye, had on when he went away a good Felt Hat, a yelowish Drugget Coat with Pleits behind, an old Ozenbrigs Vest, two Ozenbrigs Shirts, a pair of Leather Breeches handsomely worm'd and flower'd up the Knees, yarn Stockings and good round toe'd Shoes. Took with him a large pair of Sheers crack'd in one of the Bows & mark'd with the Word [_Savoy_]. Whoever takes up the said Servant, and secures him so that his Matter may have him again, shall have _Three Pounds_ Reward besides reasonable Charges, paid by me _Silas Griffin._

From a Philadelphia newspaper

%93. Labor.%--On the other hand, if we take up a newspaper of that day and read the advertis.e.m.e.nts, we find that a great deal of what existed then does not exist now. The newspapers were published in a few of the large towns, and appeared not every day, but once a week. In the largest of them would be from seventy-five to eighty advertis.e.m.e.nts, setting forth that such a merchant had just received from England or the West Indies a stock of new goods which he would sell for cash; that the _Charming Nancy_ would sail in a few weeks for Londonderry in Ireland, or for Barbados, or for Amsterdam in Holland, and wanted a cargo; that a tract of land or a plantation would be sold "at vendue," or, as we say, at auction; that a reward of five pistoles would be paid for the arrest of "a l.u.s.ty negroe man" or an "indented servant" or an "apprentice lad,"

who had run away from his owner or master. Very rarely is a call made for a mechanic or a workman of any sort.

[Ill.u.s.tration: From a Philadelphia newspaper]

The reason for this was two fold. In the first place, negro slavery existed in all the thirteen colonies. In the second place, there were thousands of whites in many of the colonies in a state of temporary servitude, which was sometimes voluntary and sometimes involuntary.

Those who served against their will were convicts and felons, not only men and women who had been guilty of stealing, cheating, and the like, but also forgers, counterfeiters, and murderers, who were transported by thousands from the English prisons to the colonies and sold into slavery or service for seven or fourteen years.[1] Advertis.e.m.e.nts are extant in which the masters from whom such servants have run away warn the people to beware of them.

[Footnote 1: One act of Parliament, for instance, provided that persons sentenced to be whipped or branded might, if they wished, escape the punishment by serving seven years in the colonies, and never returning to England. Another allowed convicts sentenced to death to commute the sentence by serving fourteen years.]

But all "indented" or bond servants were not criminals. Many were reputable persons who sold themselves into service for a term of years in return for transportation to America. Others, generally boys and young women, had been kidnaped and sold by the persons who stole them.

%94. Indentured Servants.%--In the case of such as came voluntarily, carefully drawn agreements called indentures would be made in writing.

The captain of the ship would agree to bring the emigrant to America.

The emigrant would agree in return to serve the captain three or five years. When the ship reached port, the captain would advertise the fact that he had carpenters, tailors, farmers, shoemakers, etc., for sale, and whoever wanted such labor would go on board the ship and for perhaps fifty dollars buy a man bound to serve him for several years in return for food, clothes, and lodging. Not only men, but also women and children, were sold in this way, and were known as "indented servants,"

or "redemptioners," because they redeemed their time of service with labor. Their lot seems to have been a hard one; for the young men were constantly running away, and the newspapers are full of advertis.e.m.e.nts offering rewards for their arrest.

What we call the workingman, the day laborer, the mechanic, the mill hand, had no existence as cla.s.ses. The great corporations, railroads, express companies, mills, factories of every sort, which now cover our land and give employment to five times as many men and women as lived in all the colonies in 1763, are the creatures of our own time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Wigs and wig bag]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Flax wheel]

%95. No Manufacturers.%--For this state of things England was largely to blame. For one hundred years past every kind of manufacture that could compete with the manufactures of the mother country had been crushed by law. In order to help her iron makers, she forbade the colonists to set up iron furnaces and slitting mills. That her cloth manufacturers might flourish, she forbade the colonists to send their woolen goods to any country whatever, or even from one colony to another. Under this law it was a crime to knit a pair of mittens or a pair of socks and send them from Boston to Providence or from New York to Newark, or from Philadelphia across the Delaware to New Jersey. In the interest of English hatters the colonists were not allowed to send hats to any foreign country, nor from one colony to another, and a serious effort was made to prevent the manufacture of hats in America.

People in this country were obliged to wear English-made hats. Taking the country through, every saw, every ax, every hammer, every needle, pin, tack, piece of tape, and a hundred other articles of daily use came from Great Britain.

Every farmhouse, however, was a little factory, and every farmer a jack-of-all-trades. He and his sons made their own shoes, beat out nails and spikes, hinges, and every sort of ironmongery, and constructed much of the household furniture. The wife and her daughters manufactured the clothing, from dressing the flax and carding the wool to cutting the cloth; knit the mittens and socks; and during the winter made straw bonnets to sell in the towns in the spring.

Even in such towns as were large enough to support a few artisans, each made, with the help of an apprentice, and perhaps a journeyman, all the articles he sold.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hand loom[1]]

%96. The Cities.%--If we take a map of our country and run over the great cities of to-day, we find that except along the seacoast hardly one existed, in 1765, even in name. Detroit was a little French settlement surrounded with a high stockade. New Orleans existed, and St.

Louis had just been founded, but they both belonged to Spain. Mobile and Pensacola and Natchez and Vincennes consisted of a few huts gathered about old French forts. There was no city, no town worthy of the name, in the English colonies west of the Alleghany Mountains. Along the Atlantic coast we find Portsmouth, Boston, Providence, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Alexandria, Williamsburg, Charleston, Savannah, and others of less note. But the largest of these were mere collections of a few hundred houses ranged along streets, none of which were sewered and few of which were paved or lighted. The watchman went his rounds at night with rattle and lantern, called out the hours and the state of the weather, and stopped and demanded the name of every person found walking the streets after nine o'clock. To travel on Sunday was a serious and punishable offense, as it was on any day to smoke in the streets, or run from house to house with hot coals, which in those days, when there were no matches, were often used instead of flint and steel to light fires.

[Footnote 1: From an old loom in the National Museum, Washington.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Colonial mansion in Charleston]

Travel between the large towns was almost entirely by sailing vessel, or on horseback. The first stagecoach-and-four in New England began its trips in 1744. The first stage between New York and Philadelphia was not set up till 1756, and spent three days on the road.

%97. The Three Groups of Colonies.%--It has always been usual to arrange the colonies in three groups: 1. The Eastern or New England Colonies (New Hampshire, Ma.s.sachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut).

2. The Middle Colonies (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware). 3. The Southern Colonies (Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia). Now, this arrangement is good not only from a geographical point of view, but also because the people, the customs, the manners, the occupations, in each of these groups were very unlike the people and the ways of living in the others.

[Ill.u.s.tration: New England mansion]

%98. Occupations in New England.%--In New England the colonists were almost entirely English, though there were some Scotch, some Scotch-Irish, a few Huguenot refugees from France, and, in Rhode Island, a few Portuguese Jews. As the climate and soil did not admit of raising any great staple, such as rice or tobacco, the people "took to the sea."

They cut down trees, with which the land was covered, built ships, and sailed away to the Grand Banks off Newfoundland for cod, and to the whale fisheries for oil. They went to the English, Dutch, and Spanish West Indian Islands, with flour, salt meat, horses, oxen; with salted salmon, cod, and mackerel; with staves for barrels; with onions and salted oysters. In return, they came back with sugar, mola.s.ses, cotton, wool, logwood, and Spanish dollars with which the New England Colonies paid for the goods they took from England. They went to Spain, where their ships were often sold, the captains chartering English vessels and coming home with cargoes of goods made in England. Six hundred ships are said to have been employed in the foreign trade of Boston, and more than a thousand in the fisheries and the trade along the coast.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dutch House at Albany[1]]

[Footnote 1: From an old print.]

Farming, outside of Connecticut, yielded little more than a bare subsistence. Manufactures in general were forbidden by English law.

Paper and hats were made in small quant.i.ties, leather was tanned, lumber was sawed, and rum was distilled from mola.s.ses; but it was on homemade manufactures that the people depended.

%99. Occupations in the Middle Colonies.%--In the Middle Colonies the population was a mixture of people from many European countries. The line of little villages which began at the west end of Long Island and stretched up the Hudson to Albany, and out the Mohawk to Schenectady---the settled part of New York--contained Englishmen, Irishmen, Dutchmen, French Huguenots, Germans from the Rhine countries, and negroes from Africa. The chief occupations of those people were farming, making flour, and carrying on an extensive commerce with England, Spain, and the West Indian Islands.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Shoes worn by Palatines in Pennsylvania]

In New Jersey the population was almost entirely English, but in Pennsylvania it was as mixed as in New York. Around Philadelphia the English predominated, but with them were mingled Swedes, Dutch, Welsh, Germans, and Scotch-Irish. Taken together, the Germans and the Scotch-Irish far outnumbered the English, and made up the ma.s.s of the population between the Schuylkill and the Susquehanna rivers. Both were self-willed and stubborn, and they were utterly unable to get along together peaceably, so that their settlements ran across the state in two parallel bands, in one of which whole regions could be found in which not a word of English was spoken. Indeed, then, and long after the nineteenth century began, the laws of Pennsylvania were printed both in English and in German. The chief occupation of the people was farming; and it is safe to say that no such farms, no such cattle, no such grain, flour, provisions, could be found in any other part of the country.

Lumber, too, was cut and sold in great quant.i.ties; and along the frontier there was a lively fur trade with the Indians. At Philadelphia was centered a fine trade with Europe and the West Indies. Had it not been for the action of the mother country, manufactures would have flourished greatly; even as it was, iron and paper were manufactured in considerable quant.i.ties.

%100. Occupations in the Southern Colonies.%--South of Pennsylvania, and especially south of the Potomac River, lay a region utterly unlike anything to the north of it. In Virginia, there were no cities, no large towns, no centers of population. At an early day in the history of the colony the legislature had attempted to remedy this, and had ordered towns to be built at certain places, had made them the only ports where ships from abroad could be entered, had established tobacco warehouses in them, had offered special privileges to tradesmen who would settle in them, and had provided that each should have a market and a fair. But the success was small, and Fredericksburg and Alexandria and Petersburg were straggling villages. Jamestown, the old capital, had by this time ceased to exist. Williamsburg, the new capital, was a village of 200 houses. There was no business, no incentive in Virginia to build towns.

The planters owned immense plantations along the river banks, and raised tobacco, which, when gathered, cured, and packed into hogsheads, was rolled away to the nearest wharf for inspection and shipment to London.

In those early days, when good roads were unknown and wagons few, shafts were attached to each hogshead by iron bolts driven into the heads, and the cask was thus turned into a huge roller. With each year's crop would go a long list of articles of every sort,--hardware, gla.s.s, crockery, clothing, furniture, household utensils, wines,--which the agent was instructed to buy with the proceeds of the tobacco and send back to the planter when the ships came a year later for another crop. The country abounded in trees, yet tables, chairs, boxes, cart wheels, bowls, birch brooms, all came from the mother country. The wood used for building houses was actually cut, sent to England as logs to be dressed, and then taken back to Virginia for use.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Tobacco rolling[1]]