The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910 Part 12

There are times when, upon nations as upon individuals, there comes a wave of evil tendency, which seems to them not evil, but good. Under its influence they do and think things which afterward amaze them in the retrospect. But such ill seasons are always balanced by the presence and opposition of those who desire good, whether from selfish or altruistic motives. And since good alone has a root, connecting it with the eternal springs of life, therefore in the end it prevails, and the movement of the race is on the whole, and in the lapse of time, toward better conditions.

England, during the Eighteenth Century, came under the influence of a selfish spirit which could not but lead her toward disaster, though at the time it seemed as if it promoted only prosperity and power. She thought she could strengthen her own life by restricting the natural enterprise and development of her colonies: that she could subsist by sucking human blood. She believed that by compelling the produce of America to flow toward herself alone, and by making America the sole recipient of her own manufactures, she must be immeasurably and continually benefited; not perceiving that the colonies could never reach the full limit of their productiveness unless freedom were conceded to all the impulses of their energy, or that the greater the number of those nations who were allowed freely to supply colonial wants, the greater those wants would become. Moreover, selfishness is never consistent, because it does not respect the selfishness of others; and England, at the same time that she was maintaining her own trade monopolies, was illicitly undermining the similar monopolies of other nations. She promoted smuggling in the Spanish West Indies, and made might right in all her dealings with foreign peoples. The a.s.siento--the treaty giving her exclusive right to supply the West Indian islands with African slaves--was actively carried out, and the slave-trade reached enormous proportions; it is estimated that from three to nine millions of Africans were imported into the American and Spanish colonies during the first half of the Eighteenth Century, yielding a revenue for their importation alone of at least four hundred million dollars. But the profit did not end there; for their labor on the plantations in the southern colonies (where alone they could be used in appreciable numbers) multiplied the production and diminished the cost of the articles of commerce which those colonies raised. There were individuals, almost from the beginning, who objected to slavery on grounds of abstract morality; and others who held that a converted African should cease to be a slave. But these opinions did not impress the bulk of the people; and laws were pa.s.sed cla.s.sing negroes with merchandise. "The trade is very beneficial to the country" was the stereotyped reply to all humanitarian arguments. The cruelties of transportation in small vessels were regarded as an unavoidable, if disagreeable, necessity; it was pointed out that the masters of slaves would be prompted by self-interest to treat them well after they were landed; and it was obvious that negroes, after a generation of captivity, were less remote from civilization than when fresh from Africa.

The good to balance this ill was supplied by the American colonies.

Their resistance to English selfishness may have been in part animated by selfishness of their own; but it none the less had justice and right behind it. In any argument on fundamental principles, the colonists always had the better of it. Their rights as free men and as chartered communities were indefeasible, were always a.s.serted, and never given up. They did not hesitate to disregard the more unjust of England's exactions and restrictions; it was only by such defiance that they maintained their life. And against the importation of slaves there was a general feeling, even among the Southern planters; because, not to speak of other considerations, they multiplied there to an alarming extent, and the fact that they cheapened production and lowered prices was manifestly as unwelcome to the planters as it was favorable to English traders.

But in order to be effective, the protest of a people--their enlightenment, their virtue and patriotism, their courage and philosophy, their firmness and self-reliance, their hatred of shams, dishonesty and tyranny--must be embodied and summed up in certain individuals among them, who may thus be recognized by the community as their representatives in the fullest sense, and therefore as their natural champions and leaders. America has never lacked such men, adapted to her need; and at this period they were coming to maturity as Franklin and Washington. They will be with us during the critical hours of our formative history, and we shall have opportunity to measure their characters. Meanwhile there is another good man deserving of pa.s.sing attention; not born on our soil, but meriting to be called, in the best sense, an American. In the midst of a corrupt and self-seeking age, he was unselfish and pure; and while many uttered pretty sentiments of philanthropy, and devised fanciful Utopias for the transfiguration of the human race, he went to work with his hands and purse as well as with his heart and head, and created a home and happiness for unhappy and unfortunate people in one of the loveliest and most fertile spots in the western world. If he was not as wise as Penn, he was as kind; and if his colony did not succeed precisely as he had planned it should, at any rate it became a happy and prosperous settlement, which would not have existed but for him. He had not fully fathomed the truth that in order to bestow upon man the best chance for earthly felicity, we must, after having provided him with the environment and the means for it, let him alone to work it out in his own way. But he had such magnanimity that when he found that his carefully-arranged and detailed schemes were inefficient, he showed no resentment, and did not try to enforce what had seemed to him expedient, against the wishes of his beneficiaries; but retired amiably and with dignity, and thus merited the purest grat.i.tude that men may properly accord to a man.

James Edward Oglethorpe was already five years old when the Eighteenth Century began. He was a Londoner by birth, and had a fortune which he did not misuse. He was a valiant soldier against the Turks; he was present with Prince Eugene at the capitulation of Belgrade; and he sat for more than thirty years in Parliament. He died at the age of ninety; though there is a portrait of him extant said to have been taken when he was one hundred and two. If long life be the reward of virtue, he deserved to survive at least a century.

The speculative fever in England had brought about much poverty; and debtors were lodged in jail in order, one might suppose, to prevent them from taking any measures to liquidate their debts. Besides these unhappy persons, there were many Protestants on the Continent who were persecuted for their faith's sake. England compa.s.sionated these persons, having learned by experience what persecution is; and did not offer any objection to a scheme for improving the lot of debtors in her own land, if any feasible one could be devised.

General Oglethorpe had devised one. He was then, according to our reckoning, a mature man of about seven-and-thirty; he had visited the prisons, and convinced himself that there was neither political economy nor humanity in this method of preserving the impecunious cla.s.s. Why not take them to America? Why not found a new colony there where men might dwell in peace and comfort, with the aim not of ama.s.sing wealth, but of living sober and useful lives? On the southern side of South Carolina there was a region fitted for such an enterprise, which, owing to its proximity to the Spanish colony at St. Augustine, had been vexed by border quarrels; but Oglethorpe, with his military experience, would be able to keep the Spaniards in their place with one hand, while he was planting gardens for his proteges with the other. Thus his colony would be useful on grounds of high policy, as well as for its own ends.

And in order additionally to conciliate the good will of the home government, controlled as it was by mercantile interests chiefly, the silk-worm should be cultivated there, and England thus saved the duties on the Italian fabrics. Should there be slaves in the new Eden?--On all accounts, No: first because slavery was intrinsically wrong, and secondly because it would lead to idleness, if not to wealth, among the colonists. For the same reason, land could only pa.s.s to the eldest son, or failing male issue, back to the state; if permission were given to divide it, or to sell it, there would soon be great landed properties and an aristocracy. Nor should the importation of rum be permitted, for if men have rum, they are p.r.o.ne to drink it, and drunkenness was incompatible with the kind of existence which the good General wished his colonists to lead. In a word, by removing temptations to vice and avarice, he thought he could make his people forget that such evils had ever belonged to human nature. But experiments founded upon the innate impeccability of man have furnished many comedies and not a few tragedies since the world began.

The Oglethorpe idea, however, appealed to the public, and became a sort of fashionable fad. It was commended, and after Parliament had voted ten thousand pounds toward it, it was everywhere accepted as the correct thing. The charter was given in June, 1732, and a suitable design was not wanting for the corporation seal--silkworms, with the motto, Non Sibi, sed Aliis. This might refer either to the colonists or to the patrons, since the latter were to receive no emoluments for their services, and the former were to work for the sake, in part at least, of vindicating the n.o.bility of labor. It is true that the silkworm is an involuntary and unconscious altruist; but we must allow some lat.i.tude in symbols; and besides, all executive and legislative power was given to the trustees, or such council as they might choose to appoint.

In November the general conducted his hundred or more human derelicts to Port Royal, and, going up the stream, chose the site for his city of Savannah, and laid it out in liberal parallelograms. While it was building he tented beneath a quartette of primeval pines, and exchanged friendly greetings and promises with the various Indian tribes who sent deputies to him. A year from that time, the German Protestant refugees began to arrive, and started a town of their own further inland. A party of Moravians followed; and the two Wesleys aided to introduce an exalted religious sentiment which might have recalled the days of the Pilgrims. For the present, all went harmoniously; the debtors were thankful to be out of prison; the religious folk were happy so long as they might wreak themselves on their religion; and the silk-culture paid a revenue so long as England paid bounties on it. But the time must come when the colonists would demand to do what they liked with their own land, and other things; when they would import rum by stealth and hardly blush to be found out; when some of the less democratically-minded decided that there were advantages in slaves after all; and when some of the more independent declared they could not endure oppression, and migrated to other colonies. After struggling a score of years against the inevitable, the trustees surrendered their trusteeship, and the colony came under the management of the Second George. Oglethorpe had long ere this retired to England, after having kept his promise of reducing the Spaniards to order; and at his home at Cranham Hall in Ess.e.x he continued to be the friend of man until after the close of the American Revolution.

The war with Spain, of which Oglethorpe's unsuccessful attack upon St.

Augustine and triumphant defense of his own place was but a very minor feature, raged for a while in the West Indies with no very marked advantage to either contestant, and then drew the other nations of Europe into the fray. Nothing creditable was being fought for on either side. England, to be sure, had declared war with the object of expunging Spain from America; but it had been only in order that she herself might replace Spain there as a monopolist. France came in to prevent England from enjoying this monopoly. The death of the Austrian king and a consequent dispute as to the succession added that power to the melee. Russia received an invitation to join, and this finally led to the Peace of Aix La Chapelle in 1748, which replaced all things in dispute just where they were before innumerable lives and enormous treasure had been expended. But the Eighteenth was a fighting Century, for it was the transition period from the old to the new order of civilized life.

The part borne by the American colonies in this struggle was quite subordinate and sympathetic; but it was not the less interesting to the Americans. In 1744 the Six Nations (as the Five had been called since the accession of the Tuscaroras) made a treaty of alliance with the English whereby the Ohio valley was secured to the latter as against the French--so far, that is, as the Indians could secure it. But the Pennsylvanians understood that more than Indian treaties would be needed against France, and as their country was likely to be among the first involved, they determined to raise money and men for the campaign. There were, of course, men in Pennsylvania who were not of the Quaker way of thinking; but even the Quakers forbore to oppose the measure, and many of them gave it explicit approval. The incident gains its chief interest however from the fact that the man most active and efficient in getting both the funds and the soldiers was Benjamin Franklin, the Boston boy, in whose veins flowed the blood of both Quaker and Calvinist, but who was himself of far too original a character to be either. He was at this epoch just past forty, and had been a resident of Philadelphia for some twenty years, and a famous printer, writer, and man of mark. He hit upon the scheme--which, like so many of his, was more practical than orthodox--of persuading dollars out of men's pockets by means of a lottery. He knew that, whatever a fastidious morality might protest, lotteries are friendly to human nature; and if there be any part of human nature with which Franklin was unacquainted, it has not yet been announced. Having got the money, his next care was for the men; and his plans resulted in a.s.sembling an organized force of ten or twelve thousand militiamen. But the energy and ingenuity of this incomparable Franklin of ours could be equaled only by his modesty; he would not accept a colonelcy, but shouldered his musket along with the rank and file; and doubtless the company to which he belonged forgot the labors of war in their enjoyment of his wit, humor, anecdotes, parables, and resources of all kinds.

After so much waste and folly as had marked the conduct of the war in Europe, it is good to hear the tale of the capture of Louisburg. It was an adventure which gave the colonists merited confidence in themselves, and the character of the little army, and the management of the campaign, were an excellent and suggestive dress rehearsal of the great drama of thirty years later. The army was a combination of Yankees with arms in their hands to effect an object eminently conducive to the common welfare. For Louisburg was the key to the St. Lawrence, it commanded the fisheries, and it threatened Acadia, or rather Nova Scotia, which was inhabited chiefly by Bretons, liable to afford succor to their belligerent brethren. The fort had been built, after the close of the former war, by those who had preferred not to live under the government of the House of Hanover, on the eastern extremity of the island called Cape Breton, itself lying northeast of the Nova Scotian promontory. The site was good for defense, and the fortifications, scientifically designed, were held to be impregnable. Had Louisburg rested content with being strong, it might have been allowed to remain at peace; but at the beginning of the war, and before the frontier people in Nova Scotia had heard of it, a French party swooped down from Louisburg on the settlement at Canso (the gut between Cape Breton and Nova Scotia), destroyed all that was destructible, and carried eighty men as prisoners of war to their stronghold. After keeping them there during the summer, these men were paroled and went to Boston. This was a mistake on the Louisburgers' part; for the men had made themselves well acquainted with the fortifications and the topography of the neighborhood, and placed this useful information at the disposal of William Shirley, a lawyer of ability, who was afterward governor of the colony, and a warrior of some note. It was Shirley's opinion that Louisburg must be taken, and the idea immediately became popular. It was the main topic of discussion in Boston, and all over New England, during the autumn and winter; Ma.s.sachusetts decided that it could be done, and that she could do it, though the help of other colonies would be gladly accepted. Yet the feeling was not unanimous, if the vote of the legislature be a criterion; the bill pa.s.sed there by a majority of one. Be that as it may, once resolved upon, the enterprise was pushed with ardor, not unmingled with prayer--the old Puritan leaven reappearing as soon as deeds of real moment were in the wind. In every village and hamlet there was excitement and preparation--the warm courage of men glad to have a chance at the hated fortress, and the pale bravery of women keeping down the heavy throbbing of their hearts so that their sons and husbands might feel no weakness for their sakes.

The fishermen of Marblehead, used to face the storms and fogs of the Newfoundland Banks; the farmers and mechanics, who could hit a Bay shilling (if one could be found in that era of paper money) at fifty paces; and the hunters, who knew the craft of the Indians and were inured to every fatigue and hardship--finer material for an army was never got together before: independent, bold, cunning, handy, inventive, full of resource; but utterly ignorant of drill, and indifferent to it. Their officers were chosen by themselves, of the same rank and character as they; their only uniforms were their flintlocks and hangers. They marched and camped as nature prompted, but they had common-sense developed to the utmost by the exigencies of their daily lives, and they created, simply by being together, a discipline and tactics of their own; they even learned enough of the arts of fortification and intrenchment, during the siege, to serve all their requirements. They had the American instinct to break loose from tradition and solve problems from an original point of view; they laughed at the jargon and technicalities of conventional war, but they had their own pa.s.swords, and they understood one another in and out.

The carpenters and other mechanics among them carried their skill along, and were ever ready to put it in practice for the general behoof. Most of them left wives and children at home; but "Suffer no anxious thoughts to rest in your mind about me," writes his wife to Seth Pomeroy, who had sent word to her that he was "willing to stay till G.o.d's time comes to deliver the city into our hands":--"I leave you in the hands of G.o.d," added she; and subjoined, by way of village gossip, that "the whole town is much engaged with concern for the expedition, how Providence will order the affair, for which religious meetings every week are maintained." We can imagine those meetings, held in the village meeting-house, with an infirm old veteran of King William's War to lead in prayer, and the benches occupied by the women, devout but spirited, with the little children by their sides. What hearty prayers: what sighs irrepressibly heaving those brave, tender bosoms; what secret tears, denied by smiles when the face was lifted from the clasping hands! Righteous prayers, which were fulfilled.

Over three thousand men went from Ma.s.sachusetts alone; New Hampshire added five hundred, and more than that number arrived from Connecticut, after the rest had gone into camp at Canso. The three hundred from little Rhode Island came too late. Other colonies sent rations and money. But the four thousand were enough, with Pepperel of Kittery for commander, and a good cause. They set out alone while the Cape Breton ice still filled the harbors; for Commodore Warren of the English fleet at Antigua would not go except by order from England--which, however, came soon afterward, so that he and his ships joined them after all before hostilities began. The expedition first set eyes on their objective point on the day before May day, 1745.

The fortress bristled with guns of all sizes, and the walls were of enormous thickness, so that no cannon belonging to the besiegers could hope to make a breach in them. But the hearts of the garrison were less stout than their defenses; and when four hundred cheering volunteers approached a battery on sh.o.r.e, the Frenchmen spiked their guns and ran away.

The siege lasted six weeks, with unusually fine weather. In the intervals of attacks upon the island battery, which resisted them, the men hunted, fished, played rough outdoor games, and kept up their spirits; and they pounded Louisburg gates with their guns; but no advantage was gained; and a night-attack, in the Indian style, was discovered prematurely, and nearly two hundred men were killed or captured. Finally, there seemed to be nothing for it but to escalade the walls, Warren--who had done nothing thus far except prevent relief from approaching by sea--bombarding the city meanwhile. It hardly seems possible the attempt could have succeeded; at best, the losses would have been enormous. But at the critical moment, depressed, perhaps, by having witnessed the taking of an incautious French frigate which had tried to run the blockade, what should the French commander do but hang out a white flag! Yes, the place had capitulated! The gates that could not be hammered in with cannon-b.a.l.l.s were thrown open, and in crowded the Yankee army, laughing, staring, and thanking the Lord of Hosts for His mercies. Truly, it was like David overcoming Goliath, without his sling. It was a great day for New England; and on the same day thirty years later the British redcoats fell beneath the volleys on Bunker Hill.

The French tried to recapture the place next year, but storms, pestilence and other disasters prevented; and the only other notable incident of the war was the affair of Commander Knowles at Boston in 1747. He was anch.o.r.ed off Nantasket with a squadron, when some of his tars deserted, as was not surprising, considering the sort of commander he was, and the charms of the famous town. Knowles, ignorant of the spirit of a Boston mob, impressed a number of wharfmen and seamen from vessels in the harbor; he had done the same thing before in England, and why not here? But the mob was on fire at once, and after the timid governor had declined to seize such of the British naval officers as were in the town, the crowd, terrible in its anger, came thundering down King Street and played the sheriff for itself. The hair of His Majesty's haughty commanders and lieutenants must have crisped under their wigs when they looked out of the windows of the coffee-house and saw them. In walks the citizens' deputation, with scant ceremony: protests are unavailing: off to jail His Majesty's officers must straightway march, leaving their bottles of wine half emptied, and their chairs upset on the sawdusted floor; and in jail must they abide, until those impressed Bostonians have been liberated. It was a wholesome lesson; and among the children who ran and shouted beside the procession to the prison were those who, when they were men grown, threw the tea into Boston Harbor.

In 1748 the Peace was made, and the Duke of Newcastle, a flighty, trivial and faithless creature, gave place to the strict, honest, and narrow Duke of Bedford as Secretary of the Colonies. The colonies had been under the charge of the Board of Commissioners, who could issue what orders they chose, but had no power to enforce them; and as the colonial a.s.semblies slighted their commands except when it pleased them to do otherwise, much exasperation ensued on the Commissioners' part.

The difficulties would have been minimized had it not been the habit of Newcastle to send out as colonial officials the offscourings of the British aristocracy: and when a British aristocrat is worthless, nothing can be more worthless than he. The upshot of the situation was that the colonists did what they pleased, regardless of orders from home; while yet the promulgation of those orders, aiming to defend injustices and iniquities, kept up a chronic and growing disaffection toward England. So it had been under Newcastle, who had uniformly avoided personal annoyance by omitting to read the constant complaints of the Commissioners; but Bedford was a man of another stamp, fond of business, granite in his decisions, and resolved to be master in his department. It was easy to surmise that his appointment would hasten the drift of things toward a crisis. England would not tamely relinquish her claim to absolute jurisdiction over her colonies. But the bulwarks of popular liberty were rising in America, and every year saw them strengthened and more ably manned. English legislative opposition only defined and solidified the colonial resistance. What was to be the result? There would be no lack of English statesmen competent to consider it; men like Pitt, Murray and Townshend were already above the horizon of history. But it was not by statesmanship that the issue was to be decided. Man is proud of his intellect; but it is generally observable that it is the armed hand that settles the political problems of the world.

There were in the colonies men of ability, and of consideration, who were traitors to the cause of freedom. Such were Thomas Hutchinson, a plausible hypocrite, not devoid of good qualities, but intent upon filling his pockets from the public purse; Oliver, a man of less ability but equal avarice; and William Shirley, the scheming lawyer from England, who had made America his home in order to squeeze a living out of it. These men went to England to promote the pa.s.sage of a law insuring a regular revenue for the civil list from the colonists, independent of the latter's approval; the immediate pretext being that money was needed to protect the colonies against French encroachments.

The several a.s.semblies refused to consent to such a tax; and the question was then raised whether Parliament had not the right to override the colonists' will. Lord Halifax, the First Commissioner, was urgent in favor of the proposition; he was an ignorant, arbitrary man, who laid out a plan for the subjugation of the colonies as lightly and willfully as he might have directed the ditch-digging and fence-building on his estates. Murray, afterward Lord Mansfield, held that Parliament had the requisite power; but in the face of the united protest of the colonies, that body laid the measure aside for the present. Meanwhile the conditions of future trouble were preparing in the Ohio Valley, where French and English were making conflicting claims and planting rival stations; and in Nova Scotia, where the town of Halifax was founded in an uninviting fir forest, and the project was mooted of transporting the French Acadians to some place or places where they would cease to const.i.tute a peril by serving as a stage for French machinations against the English rule.

Another and final war with France was already appearing inevitable; the colonists must bear a hand in it, but they also were at odds with England herself on questions vital to their prosperity and happiness.

In the welter of events of the next few years we find a mingling of conditions deliberately created (with a view, on England's part, of checking the independent tendencies of the Americans and of forcing tribute from them) and of unforeseen occurrences due to fortuitous causes beyond the calculation and control of persons in power. Finally, the declaration of war against France in 1756--though it had unofficially existed at least two years before--and its able management by the great Pitt, enabled England to dictate a peace in 1763 giving her all she asked for in Europe and the East, and the whole of the French possessions in America, besides islands in the West Indies. Her triumph was great; but she did not foresee (though a few acute observers did) that this great conquest would within a few years fall into the hands of the colonists, making them potentially the greatest of nations. At the era of the Revolution, the white inhabitants in the colonies numbered about two millions, and the black about half a million.

In 1754, the French had upward of sixty posts west of the Alleghanies, and were sending expeditions to drive out whatever Englishmen could be found. The Indian tribes who believed themselves to own the land were aroused, and appealed to the Americans to a.s.sist them; which the latter were willing to do, though not for the Indians' sake. Virginia was especially concerned, because she claimed beyond the western mountains, and had definite designs in that direction. In order to find out just what the disposition of the French might be, Robert Dinwiddie, a Scot, governor of Virginia, selected a trustworthy envoy to proceed to the French commanders in the disputed districts and ask their purposes. His choice fell upon George Washington, a young man of blameless character, steady, courageous and observant, wise in judgment and of mature mind, though he was but one and twenty years of age. He was the son of a Virginia planter, had had such schooling as his neighborhood afforded until he was sixteen, and had then begun life as a surveyor--a good calling in a country whose inhabitants were daily increasing and whose lands were practically limitless. Life in the open air, and the custom of the woods and hills, had developed a frame originally powerful into that of a tall and hardened athlete, able to run, wrestle, swim, leap, ride, as well as to use the musket and the sword. His intellect was not brilliant, but it was clear, and his habit of thought methodical; he was of great modesty, yet one of those who rise to the emergency, and are kindled into greater and greater power by responsibilities or difficulties which would overwhelm feebler or less constant natures.

None would have been less likely than Washington himself to foretell his own greatness; but when others believed in him he was compelled by his religious and conscientious nature to act up to their belief. The marvelous selflessness of the man, while it concealed from him what he was, immeasurably increased his power to act; to do his duty was all that he ever proposed to himself, and therefore he was able to concentrate his every faculty on that alone. The lessons of experience were never thrown away upon him, and his faith in an overruling Providence rendered him calm at all times, except on the rare occasions when some subordinate's incompetence or negligence at a critical moment caused to burst forth in him that terrific wrath which was more appalling to its object than the guns of a battery. There was always great personal dignity in Washington, insomuch that nothing like comradeship, in the familiar sense, was ever possible to any one with him; he was totally devoid of the sense of humor, and was therefore debarred from one whole region of human sympathies which Franklin loved to dwell in. It is one of the marvels of history that a man with a mind of such moderate compa.s.s as Washington's should have gained the reputation, which he amply deserved, of being the foremost American of his age, and one of the leading figures in human annals. But, in truth, we attach far too much weight to intellect in our estimates of human worth. Washington, was competent for the work that was given him to do, and that work was one of the most important that ever fell to the lot of a man. Faith, firmness, integrity, grasp, simplicity, and the exceptional physical endowment which enabled him to support the tremendous fatigues and trials of his campaigns, and of the opposition he encountered from selfish and shortsighted politicians in Congress--these qualities were almost sufficient to account for Washington. Almost, but perhaps not quite; there must have been in addition an inestimable personal equation which fused all into a harmonious individuality that isolates him in our regard: a wholeness, which can be felt, but which is hardly to be set down in phrases.

Washington's instructions required him to proceed to Venango and Waterford, a distance of more than four hundred miles, through forests and over mountains, with rivers to cross and hostile Indians to beware of; and it was the middle of November when he set out, with the most inclement season of the year before him. Kit Gist, a hunter and trapper of the Natty b.u.mppo order, was his guide; they laid their course through the dense but naked forests as a mariner over a sullen sea.

Four or five attendants, including an interpreter, made up the party.

Day after day they rode, sleeping at night round a fire, with the snow or the freezing rain falling on their blankets, and the immense silence of the winter woods around them. On the 23d of the month they came to the point of junction between two great rivers--the Monongahela and the Alleghany. A wild and solitary spot it was, hardly visited till then by white men; the land on the fork was level and broad, with mighty trees thronging upon it; opposite were steep bluffs. The Alleghany hurried downward at the rate a man would walk; the Monongahela loitered, deep and gla.s.sy. Washington had acted as adjutant of a body of Virginia troops for the past two or three years, and he examined the place with the eyes of a soldier as well as of a surveyor. It seemed to him that a fort and a town could be well placed there; but in the pure frosty air of that ancient forest, untenanted save by wild beasts, there was no foreshadowing of the grimy smoke and roar, the flaring smelting-works, the crowded and eager population of the Pittsburgh that was to be.

Having fixed the scene in his memory, Washington rode his horse down the river bank, and plunging into the icy current, swam across. On the northwest sh.o.r.e a fire was built, where the party dried their garments, and slept the sleep of frontiersmen.

Conducted now by the Delawares, they crossed low-lying, fertile lands to Logstown, where they got news of a junction between French troops from Louisiana and from Erie. Arriving in due season at Venango, Washington found the French officer in command there very positive that the Ohio was theirs, and that they would keep it; they admitted that the English outnumbered them; but "they are too dilatory," said the Frenchman, staring up with an affectation of superciliousness at the tall, blue-eyed young Virginian. The latter thanked the testy Gaul, with his customary grave courtesy, and continued his journey to Fort Le Boeuf. It was a structure characteristic of the place and period; a rude but effective redoubt of logs and clay, with the muzzles of cannon pouting from the embrasures, and more than two hundred boats and canoes for the trip down the river. "I shall seize every Englishman in the valley," was the polite a.s.surance of the commander; but, being a man of pith himself, he knew another when he saw him, and offered Washington the hospitalities of the post. But the serious young soldier had no taste for hobn.o.bbing, and returned at once to Venango, where he found his horses unavailable, and continued southward on foot, meeting bad weather and deep snow. He borrowed a deerskin shirt and leggins from the tallest of the Indians, dismissed his attendants, left the Indian trail, and struck out for the Forks by compa.s.s, with Gist as his companion. A misguided red man, hoping for glory from the white chief's scalp, prepared an ambush, and as Washington pa.s.sed within a few paces, pulled the trigger on him. He did not know that the destiny of half the world hung upon his aim; but indeed the bullet was never molded that could draw blood from Washington. The red man missed; and the next moment Gist had him helpless, with a knife at his throat. But no: the man who could pour out the lives of his country's enemies, and of his own soldiers, without stint, when duty demanded it, and could hang a gallant and gently nurtured youth as a spy, was averse from bloodshed when only his insignificant self was concerned. Gist must sulkily put up his knife, and the would-be a.s.sa.s.sin was suffered to depart in peace. But in order to avoid the possible consequences of this magnanimity, the envoy and his companion traveled without pausing for more than sixty miles. And then, here was the Alleghany to cross again, and no horse to help one. Swimming was out of the question, even for the iron Washington, for the river was hurtling with jagged cakes of ice.

A day's hacking with a little hatchet cut down trees enough--not apple trees--to make a raft, on which they adventured; but in mid-stream Washington's pole upset him, and he was fain to get ash.o.r.e on an island. There must they pa.s.s the night; and so cold was it, that the next morning they were able to reach the mainland dry shod, on the ice.

What was crossing the Delaware (almost exactly twenty-three years afterward) compared to this? Washington was destined to do much of his work amid snow and ice; but for aught anybody could say, the poles or the equator were all one to him.

In consequence of his report a fort was begun on the site of Pittsburgh, and he was appointed lieutenant-colonel to take charge of it, with a hundred and fifty men, and orders to destroy whomsoever presumed to stay him. Two hundred square miles of fertile Ohio lands were to be their reward. An invitation to other colonies to join in the a.s.sertion of English ownership met with scanty response, or none at all. The idea of a union was in the air, but it was complicated with that old bugbear of a regular revenue to be exacted by act of Parliament, which Shirley and the others still continued to press with hungry zeal; while the a.s.semblies were not less set upon making all grants annual, with specifications as to person and object. While the matter hung in the wind, the Virginians were exposed to superior forces; but in the spring of 1754 Washington, with forty men, surprised a party under Jumonville, defeated them, killed Jumonville, and took the survivors prisoners. Washington was exposed to the thickest showers of the bullets; they whistled to him familiarly, and "believe me," he a.s.sured a correspondent, "there is something charming in the sound."

His life was to be sweetened by a great deal of that kind of charm.

But the French were gathering like hornets, and the Lieutenant-colonel must needs take refuge in a stockaded post named Fort Necessity, where his small force was besieged by seven hundred French and Indians who, in a nine hours' attack, killed thirty of his men, but used up most of their own ammunition. A parley resulted in Washington's marching out with all his survivors and their baggage and retiring from the Ohio valley. The war was begun; and it is worth noting that Washington's command to "Fire!" on Jumonville's party was the word that began it.

But still the other colonists held off. The Six Nations began to murmur: "The French are men," said they; "you are like women." In June, 1754, a convocation or congress of deputies from all colonies north of the Potomac came together at Albany. Franklin was among them, with the draught of a plan of union in his ample pocket, and dauntless and deep thoughts in his broad mind. He was always far in advance of his time; one of the most "modern" men of that century; but he had the final excellence of wisdom which consists in never forcing his contemporaries to bite off more than there was reasonable prospect of their being able to chew. He lifted them gently up step after step of the ascent toward the stars.

Philadelphia is a central spot (this was the gist of his proposal), so let it be the seat of our federal government. Let us have a triennial grand council to originate bills, allowing King George to appoint the governor-general who may have a negative voice, and who shall choose the military officers, as against the civil appointees of the council.

All war measures, external land purchases and organization, general laws and taxes should be the province of the federal government, but each colony should keep its private const.i.tution, and money should issue only by common consent. Once a year should the council meet, to sit not more than six weeks, under a speaker of their own choosing.--In the debate, the scheme was closely criticised, but the suave wielder of the lightning gently disarmed all opponents, and won a substantial victory--"not altogether to my mind"; but he insisted upon no counsel of perfection. England, and some of the colonies themselves, were somewhat uneasy after thinking it over; mutual sympathy is not created by reason. England doubted on other grounds; a united country might be more easy to govern than thirteen who each demanded special treatment; but then, what if the federation decline to be governed at all?

Meanwhile, there was the federation; and Franklin, looking westward, foresaw the Nineteenth Century.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Death of General Braddock]

Doubtless, however, outside pressure would be necessary to re-enforce the somewhat lukewarm sentiment among the colonies in favor of union. A review of their several conditions at this time would show general prosperity and enjoyment of liberty, but great unlikenesses in manners and customs and private prejudices. Virginia, most important of the southern group, showed the apparent contradiction of a people with republican ideas living after the style of aristocrats; breeding great gentlemen like Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Patrick Henry, who were to be leaders in the work of founding and defending the first great democracy of the world. Maryland was a picturesque princ.i.p.ality under the rule of a dissolute young prince, who enjoyed a great private revenue from his possessions, and yet interfered but little with the individual freedom of his subjects. Pennsylvania was administering itself on a basis of sheer civic equality, and was absorbing from Franklin the principles of liberal thought and education. New York was so largely tinged with Dutchmanship that it resented more than the others the authority of alien England, and fought its royal governors to the finish. New England was an aggregation of independent towns, each a little democracy, full of religious and educational vigor. In Delaware, John Woolman the tailor was denouncing slavery with all the zeal and arguments of the Garrisons of a century later. These were incongruous elements to be bound into a f.a.got; but there was a policy being consolidated in England which would presently give them good reason for standing together to secure rights which were more precious than private pet traditions and peculiarities. Newcastle became head of the English government; he appointed the absurd Duke of c.u.mberland, captain-general of the English army, to the direction of American military affairs; and he picked out an obstinate, ruffianly, stupid martinet of a Perthshire Scotchman, sixty years old and of ruined fortunes, to lead the English forces against the French in America.

Braddock went over armed with the new and despotic mutiny bill, and with directions to divest all colonial army officers of their rank while in his service. He was also to exact a revenue by royal prerogative, and the governors were to collect a fund to be expended for colonial military operations. This was Newcastle's notion of what was suitable for the occasion. In the meantime Shirley, persistently malevolent, advocated parliamentary taxation of the colonies and a congress of royal governors; and to the arguments of Franklin against the plan, suggested colonial representation in Parliament: which Franklin disapproved unless all colonial disabilities be removed, and they become in all political respects an integral portion of England.

During the discussion, the colonies themselves were resisting the royal prerogative with embarra.s.sing unanimity. Braddock, on landing and finding no money ready, was exceeding wroth; but the helpless governors told him that nothing short of an act of Parliament would suffice; possibly not even that. Taxation was the one cry of every royal office-holder in America. What sort of a tax should it be?--Well, a stamp-tax seemed the easiest method: a stamp, like a mosquito, sucks but little blood at a time, but mosquitoes in the aggregate draw a great deal. But the stamp act was to be delayed eleven years more, and then its authors were to receive an unpleasant surprise.

There was a strong profession of reluctance on both the French and English side to come formally to blows; both sent large bodies of troops to the Ohio valley, "but only for defense." Braddock was ready to advance in April, if only he had "horses and carriages"; which by Franklin's exertions were supplied. The bits of dialogue and comment in which this grizzled nincomp.o.o.p was an interlocutor, or of which he was the theme, are as amusing as a page from a comedy of Shakespeare.

Braddock has been called brave; but the term is inappropriate; he could fly into a rage when his brutal or tyrannical instincts were questioned or thwarted, and become insensible, for a time, even to physical danger. Ignorance, folly and self-conceit not seldom make a man seem fearless who is a poltroon at heart. Braddock's death was a better one than he deserved; he raged about the field like a dazed bull; fly he could not; he was incapable of adopting any intelligent measures to save his troops; on the contrary he kept reiterating conventional orders in a manner that showed his wits were gone. The bullet that dropped him did him good service; but his honor was so little sensitive that he felt no grat.i.tude at being thus saved the consequences of one of the most disgraceful and willfully incurred defeats that ever befell an English general. The English troops upon whom, according to Braddock, "it was impossible that the savages should make any impression," huddled together, and shot down their own officers in their blundering volleys. In the narrow wood path they could not see the enemy, who fired from behind trees at their leisure. Half of the men, and sixty-three out of the eighty-six officers, were killed or wounded. In that h.e.l.l of explosions, smoke, yells and carnage, Washington was clear-headed and alert, and pa.s.sed to and fro amid the rain of bullets as if his body were no more mortal than his soul. The contingent of Virginia troops--the "raw American militia," as Braddock had called them, "who have little courage or good will, from whom I expect almost no military service, though I have employed the best officers to drill them":--these men did almost the only fighting that was done on the English side, but they were too few to avert the disaster.

The expedition had set out from Turtle Creek on the Monongahela on the ninth of July--twelve hundred men. The objective point was Fort Duquesne, "which can hardly detain me above three or four days,"

remarked the dull curmudgeon. No scouts were thrown out: they walked straight into the ambuscade which some two hundred French and six hundred Indians had prepared for them. The slaughter lasted two hours; there was no maneuvering. Thirty men of the three Virginia companies were left alive; they stood their ground to the last, while the British regulars "ran as sheep before hounds," leaving everything to the enemy.

Washington did whatever was possible to prevent the retreat from becoming a blind panic. When the rout reached the camp, Dunbar, the officer in charge there, destroyed everything, to the value of half a million dollars, and ran with the rest. Reviewing the affair, Franklin remarks with a demure arching of the eyebrow that it "gave us Americans the first suspicion that our exalted ideas of the prowess of British regular troops had not been well founded."

It was indeed an awakening for the colonists. For all their bold resistance to oppression, they had never ceased to believe that an English soldier was the supreme and final expression of trained and disciplined force; and now, before their almost incredulous eyes, the flower of the British army had been beaten, and the b.l.o.o.d.y remnant stampeded into a shameful flight by a few hundred painted savages and Frenchmen. They all had been watching Braddock's march; and they never forgot the lesson of his defeat. From that time, the British regular was to them only a "lobster-back," more likely, when it came to equal conflict with themselves, to run away than to stand his ground.

Instead of throwing themselves into the arms of France, however, the colonists loyally addressed themselves to helping King George out of his sc.r.a.pe; and though they would not let him tax them, they hesitated not to tax themselves.

Pennsylvania raised fifty thousand pounds, and Ma.s.sachusetts sent near eight thousand men to aid in driving the French from the northern border. Acadia's time had come. Though the descendants of the Breton peasants, who dated their settlement from 1604, had since the Peace of Utrecht nominally belonged to England, yet their sentiments and mode of life had been unaltered; Port Royal had been little changed by calling it Annapolis, and the simple, old-fashioned Catholics loved their homes with all the tenacity of six unbroken generations. Their feet were familiar in the paths of a hundred and fifty quiet and industrious years; their houses nestled in their lowly places like natural features of the landscape; their fields and herds and the graves of their forefathers sweetened and consecrated the land. They were a chaste, industrious, homely, pious, but not an intellectual people; and to such the instinct of home is far stronger than in more highly cultivated races. They had prospered in their modest degree, and multiplied; so that now they numbered sixteen thousand men, women and children. During the past few years, however, they had been subjected to the unrestrained brutality of English administration in its worst form; they had no redress at law, their property could be taken from them without payment or recourse; if they did not keep their tyrant's fires burning, "the soldiers shall absolutely take their houses for fuel."

Estate-t.i.tles, records, all that could identify and guarantee their ownership in the means and conditions of livelihood, were taken; even their boats and their antiquated firearms were sequestrated. And orders were actually given to the soldiers to punish any misbehavior summarily upon the first Acadian who came to hand, whether or not he were guilty of, or aware of, the offense, and with absolutely no concern for the formality of arrest or trial. In all the annals of Spanish brutality, there is nothing more disgraceful to humanity than the systematic and enjoined treatment of these innocent Bretons by the English, even before the consummating outrage which made the whole civilized world stare in indignant amazement.

It is a matter for keen regret that men born on our soil should have been even involuntarily a.s.sociated with this episode. The design was kept a secret from all until the last moment; but one could wish that some American had then committed an act of insubordination, though at the cost of his life, by way of indicating the detestation which all civilized and humane minds must feel for such an act. The colonists knew the value of liberty; they had made sacrifices for it; they had felt the shadow of oppression; and they might see, in the treatment of the Acadians, what would have been their fate had they yielded to the despotic instincts of England. The best and the worst that can be said of them is that they obeyed orders, and looked on while the iniquity was being perpetrated.

The force of provincials and regulars landed without molestation, and captured the feeble forts with the loss of but twenty killed. The Acadians agreed to take the oath of fidelity, but stipulated not to be forced to bear arms against their own countrymen. General Charles Lawrence, the lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, replied to their plea that they be allowed to have their boats and guns, that it was "highly arrogant, insidious and insulting"; and Halifax, another of the companions in infamy, added that they wanted their boats for "carrying provisions to the enemy"--there being no enemy nearer than Quebec. As for the guns, "All Roman Catholics are restrained from having arms, and are subject to penalties if arms are found in their houses."--"Not the want of arms, but our consciences, would engage us not to revolt,"

pleaded the unhappy men.--"What excuse can you make," bellows Halifax, "for treating this government with such indignity as to expound to them the nature of fidelity?" The Acadians agreed to take the oath unconditionally: "By British statute," they were thereupon informed, "having once refused, you cannot after take the oath, but are popish recusants." Chief-justice Belcher, a third of these British moguls, declared they obstructed the progress of the settlement, and that all of them should be deported from the province. Proclamation was then made, ordering them to a.s.semble at their respective posts; and in the morning they obeyed, leaving their homes, to which, though they knew it not, they were never to return. "Your lands and tenements, cattle of all kinds, and livestock of all sorts, are forfeited to the crown,"

they were told, "and you yourselves are to be removed from this province." They were kept prisoners, without food, till the ships should be ready. Not only were they torn from their homes, but families were separated, sons from their mothers, husbands from their wives, daughters from their parents, and, as Longfellow has pictured to us, lovers from one another. Those who tried to escape were hunted by the soldiers like wild beasts, and "if they can find a pretext to kill them, they will," said a British officer. They were scattered, helpless, friendless and dest.i.tute, all up and down the Atlantic coast, and their villages were laid waste. Lord Loudoun, British commander-in-chief in America, on receiving a pet.i.tion from some of them written in French, was so enraged not only at their pet.i.tioning, but that they should presume to do so in their own language, that he had five of their leading men arrested, consigned to England, and sent as common seamen on English men-of-war. No detail was wanting, from first to last, to make the crime of the Acadian deportation perfect; and only an Irishman, Edmund Burke, lifted his voice to say that the deed was inhuman, and done "upon pretenses that, in the eye of an honest man, are not worth a farthing." But Burke was not in Parliament until eleven years after the Acadians were scattered.

The incident, from an external point of view, does not belong to the history of the United States. Yet is it pertinent thereto, as showing of what enormities the English of that age were capable. Their entire conduct during this French war was dishonorable, and often atrocious.

Forgetting the facts of history, we often smile at the grumblings of the Continental nations anent "Perfidious Albion" and "British gold."

But the acts committed by the English government during these years fully justify every charge of corruption, treachery and political profligacy that has ever been brought against them. It was a strange age, in which a great and n.o.ble people were mysteriously hurried into sins, follies and disgraces seemingly foreign to their character. It was because the people had surrendered their government into alien and shameless hands. They deserved their punishment; for it is nothing less than a crime, having known liberty, either to deny it to others, or for the sake of earthly advantage to consent to any compromise of it in ourselves.