Calvert and Penn Part 1

Calvert and Penn.

by Brantz Mayer.

It is a venerable and beautiful rite which commands the Chinese not only to establish in their dwellings a Hall of Ancestors, devoted to memorials of kindred who are dead, but which obliges them, on a certain day of every year, to quit the ordinary toils of life and hasten to the tombs of their Forefathers, where, with mingled services of festivity and worship, they pa.s.s the hours in honoring the manes of those whom they have either loved or been taught to respect for their virtues.

This is a wholesome and enn.o.bling exercise of the memory. It teaches neither a blind allegiance to the past, nor a superst.i.tious reverence for individuals; but it is a recognition of the great truth that no man is a mere isolated being in the great chain of humanity, and that, while we are not selfishly independent of the past, so also, by equal affinity, we are connected with and control the fate of those who are to succeed us in the drama of the world.

The Time that merges in Eternity, sinks like a drop in the ocean, but the deeds of that Time, like the drop in the deep, are again exhaled and fitted for new uses; so that although the Time be dead, the acts thereof are immortal--for the achieved action never perishes. That which was wrought, in innocence or wrong, is eternal in its results or influences.

This reflection inculcates a profound lesson of our responsibility. It teaches us the value of a.s.sembling to look over the account of the past; to separate the good from the false; to winnow the historical harvest we may have reaped; to survey the heavens, and find our place on the ocean after the storm. And if such conduct is correct in the general concerns of private life, how much more is it proper when we remember the duty we owe to the founders of great principles,--to the founders of great states,--of great states that have grown into great nations! In this aspect the principle rises to a dignity worthy our profoundest respect.

History is the garnered treasure of the past, and it is from the glory or shame of that past, that nations, like individuals, take heart for the coming strife, or sink under irresistible discouragement.

Is it not well, then, that we, the people of this large country, divided as we are in separate governments, should a.s.semble, at proper seasons, to celebrate the foundations of our time-honored commonwealths; and, while each state casts its annual tribute on the altar of our country, each should brighten its distinctive symbols, before it merges their glory in that great constellation of American nations, which, in the political night that shrouds the world, is the only guiding sign for unfortunate but hopeful humanity!

When the Reformation in England destroyed the supremacy of the Roman Church, and the Court set the example of a new faith, it may readily be supposed, that the people were sorely taxed when called on to select between the dogmas they had always cherished, and those they were authoritatively summoned to adopt. The age was not one either of free discussion or of printing and publication. Oral arguments, and not printed appeals, were the only means of reaching the uncultivated minds of the ma.s.ses, and even of a large portion of the illiterate gentry and aristocracy. If we reflect, with what reverence creeds are, even now, traditionally inherited in families, we must be patient with their entailed tenure in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The soul of nations cannot be purged of its ancestral faith by Acts of Parliament.

There may be submission to law, external indifference, hypocritical compliance, but, that implicit adoption and correspondent honest action, which flow from conscientious belief, must spring from sources of very different sanct.i.ty.

When the world contained only one great Christian Church, the idea of Union betwixt that Church and the State, was not fraught with the disgusts or dangers that now characterize it. There were then no sects.

All were agreed on one faith, one ritual, one interpretation of G.o.d's law, and one infallible expositor; nor was it, perhaps, improper that this law--thus ecclesiastically expounded and administered in perfect national unity of faith--should be the rule of civil and political, as well as of religious life. Indeed, it is difficult, even now, to separate the ideas; for, inasmuch as G.o.d's law is a law of life, and not a mere law of death--inasmuch as it controls all our relations among ourselves and thus defines our practical duty to the Almighty--it is difficult, I repeat, to define wherein the law of man should properly differ from the law of G.o.d. Mere morality--mere political morality,--is nothing but a b.a.s.t.a.r.d policy, or another name for expediency, unless it conforms in all its motives, means and results, to religion. In truth, morality, social as well as political, to be vital and not hypocritical, must be religion put into practical exercise. This is the simple, just, and wise reconciliation of religion and good government, which I humbly believe to be, ever and only, founded upon Christianity. But it was a sad mistake in other days, to confound a Primitive Christianity and the dogmas of a Historical Church. Unfortunately for the ancient union of Church and State, this great identification of the true christian action of the civil and ecclesiastical bodies, was but a mere fiction, so far as religion was concerned, and a fact, only so far as power was interested. Christianity ever has remained, and ever will remain, the same radiant unit; but a church, with irresponsible power--a church which, at best, is but an aggregation of human beings, with all the pa.s.sions, as well as all the virtues of our race--soon, necessarily, abandons the purity of its early time, and grows into a vast hierarchy, which, founding its claims to authority on divine inst.i.tution, sways the world, sometimes for good and sometimes for evil, with a power suited to the a.s.serted omnipotence of its origin.

But the idea of honest union between church and state was naturally destroyed, in the minds of all right thinking persons, from the moment that there was a secession from the Church of Rome. The very idea, I a.s.sert, was destroyed; for the Catholic Princes and the sects into which Protestants divided themselves, began an internecine war, which, in effect, not only forever obliterated supremacy from the vocabulary of ecclesiastical power, but almost destroyed, by disgracing, the religion in whose name it perpetrated its remorseless cruelties.

The social as well as religious anarchy consequent upon the Reformation, was soon discerned by the statesmen of England, who took council with prudent ecclesiastics, and, under the authority of law, erected the Church of England. In this new establishment they endeavored to subst.i.tute for Romanism, a new ecclesiastical system, which, by its concessions to the ancient faith, its adoption of novel liberalities, its compromises and its purity, might contain within itself, sufficient elements upon which the adherents of Rome might gracefully retreat, and to which the Reformers might either advance or become reconciled. This scheme of legislative compromise for a national religion, was doubtless, not merely designed as an amiable neutral ground for the spiritual wants of the people, but as the nucleus of an inst.i.tution which would gradually, if not at once, transfer to the Royalty of England, that spiritual authority which its sovereigns had found it irksome to bear or to control when wielded by the Pope.

The architects of this modern faith were not wrong in their estimate of the English people, for, perhaps, the great body of the nation willingly adopted the new scheme. Yet there were bitter opponents both among the Catholics and Calvinists, whose extreme violence admitted no compromise, either with each other, or with the Church of England. For them there was no resource but in dumbness or rebellion; and, as many a lip opened in complaint or attempted seduction, the legislature originated that charitable and reconciling system of disabilities and penalties, which a pliant judiciary was not slow in enforcing with suitable rigor. While the Puritan could often fairly yield a sort of abstinent conformity which saved him from penalties, the Roman Catholic, who adhered faithfully and conscientiously to his ancestral church, made no compromise with his allegiance. Accordingly, on him, the unholy and intolerant law fell with all its persecuting bane.

"About the middle of the reign of Queen Elizabeth there arose among the Calvinists, a small body, who bore nearly the same relation to them, which they bore to the great body of the Reformed; these were ultra Puritans, as they were ultra Protestants. These persons deemed it their religious duty to separate themselves entirely from the church, and, in fact, to war against it. The principle upon which they founded themselves, was, that there should be no national church at all, but that the whole nation should be cast in a mult.i.tude of small churches or congregations, each self-governed, and having only, as they believed, the officers of which we read in the New Testament,--pastor, teacher, elder and deacon."[1]

Such was the ecclesiastical and political aspect of England, and of a part of Scotland, about the period when the First James ascended the British throne. As there is nothing that so deeply concerns our welfare as the rights and duties of our soul, it is not at all singular to find how quickly men became zealous in the a.s.sertion of their novel privileges, as soon as they discovered that there were two ways of interpreting G.o.d's law, or, at least, two modes of worshiping him,--one wrapped in gorgeous ceremonial, the other stripped in naked simplicity,--and that the right to this interpretation or worship was not only secured by law, but was inherent in man's nature. Personal interests may be indolently neglected or carelessly pursued. It is rare to see men persecute each other about individual rights or properties.

Yet, such is not the case when a right or an interest is the religious property of a mult.i.tude. Then, community of sentiment or of risk, bands them together in fervent support, and when the thing contended for is based on conscience and _eternal_ interest, instead of personal or _temporary_ welfare, we behold its pursuit inflame gradually from a principle into a pa.s.sion,--from pa.s.sion into persecution, until at length, what once glimmered in holy zeal, blazes in bigoted fanaticism.

Thus, all persecutors may not, originally, be bad men, though their practices are wicked. The very liberty of conscience which freemen demand, must admit this to be possible in the conduct of those who differ from us most widely in faith and politics.

Religious Conscience, therefore, is the firmest founder of the right of forming and a.s.serting Free Opinions; and when it has securely established the great fact of Religious Freedom, it at once, as an immediate consequence, realizes Political Freedom, which is nothing but the individual right independently to control our personal destinies, as well as to shape our conscientious spiritual destinies. The right of free judgment a.s.serts that Christianity put into vital exercise, in our social or national relations, is, in fact, the essence of pure democracy. It is liberty of action that produces responsibility--it is equal responsibility that makes us _one_ before the law. To teach man the humility and equality of his race, _as rights_; and to ill.u.s.trate the glorious lesson that from the cottage and cabin have sprung the intellects that filled the world with light, it pleased the Almighty to make a stable the birth-place of our Redeemer, and a manger his lowly cradle!

When the valiant men of olden times had checked the corporate system of theology in England and Germany, and established their right, at least, _to think_ for themselves; and when the Reformation had subsequently received a countercheck in Germany, England and France,--the stalwart, independent worshippers, who could no longer live peacefully together within their native realms, began to cast about for an escape from the persecutions of non-conformity and the mean "tyranny of incapacitation."

The Reformation was the work of the early part of the sixteenth century.

The close of the fifteenth had been signalized by the discovery of America, and by the opening of a maritime communication with India. The East, though now accessible by water, was still a far distant land. The efforts of all navigators, even when blundering on our continent, were, in truth, not to find a new world, but to reach one already well known for the richness of its products, and the civilization of its people.

But distant as it was, it presented no field for colonization. It was the temporary object of mercantile and maritime enterprise, and although colonial lodgments were impracticable on its far off sh.o.r.es, it nevertheless permitted the establishment of factories which served, in the unfrequent commerce of those ages, as almost regal intermediaries between Europe and Asia.

But the Western World was both nearer, and, for a while, more alluring to avarice and enterprise. It was not a civilized, populous, and warlike country like the East, but it possessed the double temptation of wealth and weakness. The fertility of the West Indies, the reports of prodigious riches, the conquests of Cortez and Pizzaro, the emasculated semi-civilization of the two Empires, which, with a few cities and royal courts, combined the anomaly of an almost barbarous though tamely tributary people--had all been announced throughout Europe. Yet, the bold, brave and successful Spaniard of those days contrived for a long while to reap the sole benefit of the discovery. What he effected was done by _conquest_. _Colonization_, which is a gradual settlement, either under enterprise or persecution, was to follow.

The conquest and settlement of the Southern part of this continent are so well known, that it is needless for me to dwell on them; but it is not a little singular that the very first effort at what may strictly be called colonization, within the present acknowledged limits of the United States, was owing to the spirit of persecution which was so rife in Europe.

The Bull of the Pope, in its division of the world, had a.s.signed America to Spain. Florida, which had been discovered by Ponce de Leon, and the present coast of our Republic on the Gulf of Mexico, were not, in the sixteenth century, disputed with Spain by any other nation. Spain claimed, however, under the name of Florida, the whole sea-coast as far as Newfoundland and even to the remotest north, so that, so far as _a.s.serted_ ownership was involved, the whole of our coast was Spanish domain.

The poor, persecuted, weather-beaten Huguenots of France, had been active in plans of Colonization for escape from the mingled imbecility and terrorism of Charles IX. They saw that it was not well to stay in the land of their birth. The Admiral de Coligny, one of the ablest leaders of the French Protestants, was zealous in his efforts to found a Gallic empire of his fellow subjects and sufferers on this continent. He desired, at least, a refuge for them; and in 1562, entrusted to John Ribault, of Dieppe, the command of an expedition to the American sh.o.r.es.

The first soil of this virgin hemisphere that was baptised by the tread of refugees flying from the terrors of the future hero of St.

Bartholomew--of men who were seeking freedom from persecution for the sake of their religion--was that of South Carolina. Ribault first visited St. John's River, in Florida, and then slowly coasted the low sh.o.r.es northward, until he struck the indenture where Hilton-Head Island, and Hunting and St. Helen's Islands are divided by the entrance into the ocean of Broad River at Port Royal.

It was a beautiful region, where venerable oaks shadowed a luxuriant soil, while the mild air, delicious with the fragrance of forest-flowers, forever diffused a balmy temperature, free alike from the fire of the tropics and the frost of the north. Here, in this pleasant region, he built Fort Carolina, and landed his humble colony of twenty persons who were to keep possession of the chosen land.

But Frenchmen are not precisely at home in the wilderness. They require the aggregation of large villages or cities. The Frenchman is a social being, and regret for the loss of civil comforts soon spoils his vivacious temper, and fills him with discontent. Accordingly, dissensions broke forth in the colony soon after the departure of Ribault for France; and, most of the dissatisfied colonists, finding their way back to Europe as best they could, the settlement was broken up forever.

Yet, Coligny was not to be thwarted. In 1564, he again resolved to colonize Florida, and entrusted Laudonniere--a seaman rather than a soldier, who had already visited the American coasts,--with three ships which had been conceded by the king. An abundance of colonists, not disheartened by the failure of their predecessors, soon offered for the voyage, and, after a pa.s.sage of sixty days, the eager adventurers hailed the American coast. They did not go to the old site, marked as it was by disaster, but nestled on the embowered banks of the beautiful St.

John's, or, as it was then known--"The River of May."

But the French of that era, when in pursuit of qualified self-government or of any principle, either civil or religious, were not unlike their countrymen of the present time. They found it difficult to make enthusiasm subordinate to the mechanism of progress, and to restrain the elastic vapor which properly directed gives energy to humanity, but which heedlessly handled destroys what it should impel or guide.

Religious enthusiasm is not miraculously fed by ravens in the wilderness. Coligny's emigrants were improvident or careless settlers.

Their supplies wasted. They were not only gratified by the sudden relief from royal oppression, but the removal of a weight, gave room for the display of that secret avarice, which, more or less, possesses the hearts of all men. They had heard of the Spaniard's success, and were seized with a pa.s.sion for sudden wealth. They became discontented with the toil of patient labor and slow accretion. Mutiny ripened into rebellion. A party compelled Laudonniere to suffer it to embark for Mexico; but its two vessels were soon employed in piratical enterprises against the Spaniards. Some of the reckless insurgents fell into the hands of the men they a.s.sailed, and were made prisoners and sold as slaves, while the few who escaped, were, on their return, executed by orders of Laudonniere.

The main body of the colonists who had either remained true to their duty or were kept in subjection, had, meanwhile, become greatly disheartened by these occurrences and by the failing supplies of their settlement, when they were temporarily relieved by the arrival of the celebrated English adventurer--Sir John Hawkins. Ribault soon after came out from France to take command, and brought with him new emigrants, seeds, animals, agricultural implements, and fresh supplies of every kind.

These occurrences, it will be recollected, took place in Florida, within the ancient claim of Spain. It is true that the country was a wilderness; but Spain still a.s.serted her dominion, though no beneficial use had been made of the neglected forest and tangled swamp. At this epoch, a certain Pedro Melendez de Aviles--a coa.r.s.e, bold, b.l.o.o.d.y man, who signalized himself in the wars in Holland against the Protestants, and was renowned in Spanish America for deeds which, even in the loose law of that realm, had brought him to justice, was then hanging about the Court of Philip II. in search of plunder or employment. He perceived a tempting "mission" of combined destruction and colonization in the French Protestant settlement in Florida; and, accordingly, a compact was speedily made between himself and his sovereign, by which he was empowered, in consideration of certain concessions and rights, to invade Florida with at least five hundred men, and to establish the Spanish authority and Catholic religion.

An expedition, numbering under its banner more than twenty-five hundred persons, was soon prepared. After touching, with part of these forces, on the Florida coast, in the neighborhood of the present river Matanzas, the adventurer sailed in quest of the luckless Huguenots, whose vessels were soon descried escaping seaward from a combat for which they were unprepared. For a while, Melendez pursued them, but abandoning the chase, steered south once more, and entering the harbor on the coast he had just before visited, laid the foundations of that quaint old Spanish town of ST. AUGUSTINE, which is the parent of civic civilization on our continent. Ribault, meanwhile, who had put to sea with his craft, lost most of his vessels in a sudden storm on the coast, though the greater part of his companions escaped.

But Melendez, whose ships suffered slightly from this tempest, had no sooner placed his colonists in security, at St. Augustine, than he set forth with a resolute band across the marshy levels which intervened between his post and the St. John's. With savage fury the reckless Spaniard fell on the Huguenots. The carnage was dreadful. It seems to have been rather slaughter than warfare. The Huguenots, unprepared for battle, little dreamed that the wars of the old world would be transferred to the new, and vainly imagined that human pa.s.sion could find victims enough for its malignity without crossing the dangerous seas. Full two hundred fell. Many fled to the forest. A few surrendered, and were slain. Some escaped in two French vessels that fortunately still lingered in the harbor. The wretches who had been providentially saved from the wreck, were next followed and found by this Castilian monster. "Let them surrender their flags and arms," said he, "and thus placing themselves at my discretion, I may do with them what G.o.d in his mercy desires!" Yet, as soon as they yielded, they were bound and marched through the forest to St. Augustine, and, as they approached the fort which had been hastily raised on the level sh.o.r.es, the sudden blast of a trumpet was the signal for the musketeers to pour into the crowd a volley that laid them dead on the spot. It was a.s.serted that these victims of reliance on Spanish mercy, were ma.s.sacred, "not as Frenchmen, but as Lutherans;"--and thus, about nine hundred Protestant human beings, were the first offering on the soil of our present Union to the devilish fanaticism of the age.

But the b.l.o.o.d.y deed was not to go unrevenged. A bold Gascon, Dominic de Gourgues, in 1567, equipped three ships and set sail for Florida. He swooped down suddenly, like a falcon on the forts at the mouth of the St. John's, and putting the occupants to the sword, hanged them in the forest, inscribing over their dangling corpses, this mocking reply to the taunt at the Lutherans: "I do this not as unto Spaniards and sailors, but as unto murderers, robbers and traitors!"

The revenge was merciless; and thus terminated the first chapter in the history of religious liberty in America. BLOOD stained the earliest meeting between Catholic and Protestant on the present soil of our Union!

The power of Spain, the unattractiveness of our coast, the indifferent climate, and the failure to find wealthy native nations to plunder, kept the northern part of our continent in the back ground for the greater part of a century after the voyages of Columbus and Cabot. There were discouragements at that time for mercantile or maritime enterprise, which make us marvel the more at the energy of the men who with such slender vessels and knowledge of navigation, tempted the dangers of unknown seas.

Emigration from land to land, from neighboring country to neighboring country, was, at that epoch, a formidable enterprise; what then must we think of the hardihood, or compulsion, which could either tempt or drive men, not only over conterminous boundaries, but across distant seas?

Feudal loyalty and the strong tie of family, bound them not only to their local homes, but to their native land. The l.u.s.ty sons of labor were required to till the soil, while their stalwart brethren, clad in steel, were wandering on murderous errands, over half of Europe, fighting for Protestantism or Catholicity. Adventure, then, in the shape of colonization, must hardly be thought of, from the inland states of the old world; and, even from the maritime nations, with the exception of Spain and Portugal, we find nothing worthy of record, save the fisheries on the Banks, the small settlements of the French in Acadia and along the St. Lawrence, and the holy efforts of Catholic Missionaries among the Northern Indians. If we did not know their zeal to have been Christian, it might almost be considered romantic.

Soon after the return of De Gourgues from his revengeful exploit, the report of the daring deed and its provocation, was spread over Europe, and excited the people's attention to America more eagerly than ever.

Among those who were attracted to the subject, was a British gentleman, whose character and misfortunes have always engaged my sincere admiration.

Sir Walter Raleigh was the natural offspring of the remarkable age in which he lived. We owe him our profoundest respect, for it was Sir Walter who gave the first decided impulse to our race's beneficial enjoyment of this continent. It was his fortune to live at a time of great and various action. The world was convulsed with the throes of a new civilization, and the energy it exhibited was consequent upon its long repose. It was an age of transition. It was an age of coat and corselet--of steel and satin--of rudeness and refinement,--in which the antique soldier was melting into the modern citizen. It was the twilight of feudalism. Baronial strongholds were yielding to munic.i.p.al independence. Learning began to teach its marvels to the ma.s.ses; warfare still called chivalrous men to the field; a spirited queen, surrounded by gallant cavaliers, sat on a dazzling throne; adventurous commerce armed splendid navies and nursed a brood of hardy sailors; while the mysterious New World invited enterprise to invade its romantic and golden depths. It was peculiarly an age of thought and action; and is characterized by a vitality which is apparent to all who recollect its heroes, statesmen, philosophers and poets.

Sir Walter Raleigh was destined, by his deeds and his doom, to bring this northern continent, which we are now enjoying, into prominent notice. He was the embodiment of the boyhood of our new world. In early life he had been a soldier, but the drift of his genius led him into statesmanship. He was a well known favorite of the Virgin Queen. A spirit of adventure bore him across the Atlantic, where, if the occasion had offered, he would have rivalled Cortez in his courageous hardihood, and outstripped him in his lukewarm humanity. He became a courtier; and, mingling in the intrigues of the palace, according to the morals of the age, was soon too great a favorite with his sovereign to escape the dislike of men who beheld his sudden rise with envy. From the palace he pa.s.sed to prison; and, scorning the idleness which would have rusted so active an intellect, he prepared that remarkable History of the World, wherein he concentrated a ma.s.s of rare learning, curious investigation, and subtle thought, which demonstrate the comprehensive and yet minute character of his wonderful mind. A volume of poems shows how sweetly he could sing. The story of his battles, discloses how bravely he could fight. The narrative of his voyages proves the boldness of his seamanship. The calmness of his prison life teaches us the manly lesson of endurance. The devotion of his wife, denotes how deeply he could love; while his letters to that cherished woman--those domestic records in which the heart divulges its dearest secrets--teem with proofs of his affection and Christianity. Indeed, the gallantry of his courtiership; the foresight of his statecraft; the splendid dandyism of his apparel; the wild freedom and companionship of his forest life, show how completely the fop and the forager, the queenly pet and loyal subject, the author and the actor, the n.o.ble and the democrat, the soldier and the scholar, were, in the age of Elizabeth and James, blent in one man, and that man--Sir Walter Raleigh.

Do we not detect in this first adventurous and practical patron of North America, many of the seemingly discordant qualities which mingle so commonly in the versatile life of our own people? If the calendar of courts had its saints, like the calendar of the church, well might Sir Walter have been canonized as protector of the broad realm for which the brutal James made him a martyr to the jealousy and fear of Spain.[2]

Queen Elizabeth was the first British Sovereign who built up that maritime power of England which has converted her magnificent Island--dot as it is, in the waste of the sea--into the wharf of the world. She was no friend of the Spaniards, and she had men in her service who admired Spanish galeons. Wealth, realized in coin, and gold or silver, in bulk, were tempting merchandize in frail vessels, which sailors, half pirate, half privateer, might easily deliver of their burden. It was easier to rob than to mine; and, while Spain performed the labor in the bowels of the earth, England took the profit as a prize on the sea! Such were some of the elements of maritime success, which weakened Spain by draining her colonial wealth, while it enriched her rival and injured the Catholic sovereign.