The Ifs of History Part 3

What would the New England country and the people have been like, if Champlain had never turned back from Plymouth Bay? We know from Benjamin Franklin's account what the progeny of the English settlers had become even as long ago as 1772. "I thought often," he wrote in that year, "of the happiness of New England, where every man is a freeholder, has a vote in public affairs, lives in a tidy, warm house, has plenty of good food and fuel, with whole clothes from head to foot, the manufacture perhaps of his own family. Long may they continue in this situation!" What the Canadian habitant is to-day, we know. Very often he is unable to read or write, and his material and moral condition very low. Even as late as 1837 the Canadian provinces were still arbitrarily ruled by royal governors, with appointed councils or upper houses which had a veto on all legislation. There was no self-rule, and the ma.s.s of the French people were illiterate and miserably poor.

Sieur Samuel de Champlain did a good day's work for English-speaking America, and the great free republic that was to be, when he pointed his prow northward and sailed away, out of sight of Cape Cod, in the summer of 1605.

CHAPTER IX

IF CHARLES II HAD ACCEPTED THE KINGSHIP OF VIRGINIA

Once at least the New World has furnished to the Old World a reigning, actual king; once, for thirteen years, a monarch, sitting on a throne in America, ruled thence an ancient kingdom in Europe. And twice this singular thing might have happened, with this time an enthroned sovereign on the banks of the James instead of on the sh.o.r.e of a Brazilian bay, if a certain king's son and king-to-be had been of a somewhat more venturing and less indolent disposition.

The occasion when the thing really happened was when Don John VI, King of Portugal, removed his royal throne and all the paraphernalia of government from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, in 1807 (being impelled thereto by an intrusive movement on the part of one Napoleon Bonaparte), and turned Portugal (after the withdrawal of the French) into an actual dependency of Brazil. This it remained until King John recrossed the Atlantic in 1820. Throughout that period the scepter bore sway from west to east, from America Europe-ward.

Very much the same thing would have occurred further north in the contingency to which I have referred; and if it had, a royalist or monarchist influence might have been laid upon the English colonies in America which would have colored their history and inst.i.tutions in a marked degree, even if their destiny had not been permanently affected.

When Charles I, King of England, was arrested, imprisoned, and put to death by the Parliament party in 1649, Virginia experienced a shock of shame and indignation. That colony had absolutely no sympathy with Cromwell and his party. It was in no sense or part Puritan. The Cavalier sentiment dominated it completely; for though the bulk of its inhabitants came out very poor, and were as far as possible from being "gentlemen," they were not at all of the material of which Roundheads were made; nor had they any influence in the government of the Province.

The General a.s.sembly represented the gentlemen of the colony, who were royalists to a man.

It is not surprising, therefore, that upon the receipt of the news of the execution of Charles I, the General a.s.sembly of Virginia lost no time in meeting and pa.s.sing an act in which the dead king's son, Charles II, was recognized as the rightful and reigning sovereign. Legal processes, and the machinery of the provincial government, continued to run in the king's name. In England, Cromwell was installed as Lord Protector. But Virginia refused to recognize him or his t.i.tle. At least one county of Virginia formally proclaimed Charles king, requiring "all his majesty's liege people to pray G.o.d to bless Charles the Second, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Virginia, New England and the Caribda Islands." This, I believe, was the first appearance of the term "King of Virginia," a t.i.tle which was destined to be heard again somewhat later.

Nor did the people content themselves with proclaiming Charles king. In 1650, Governor Berkeley sent Colonel Norwood to Holland to invite the prince to become the ruling sovereign of what Raleigh had called "the newe Inglishe Nation" on this side the water. Charles did not accept.

Nor did he frankly refuse. He had not the boldness to go to Virginia, but he was delighted with the chance to put on for a moment the manner and authority of a ruler. He sent Berkeley a new commission as governor, signed by himself as king, and gave Colonel Norwood a commission as treasurer of the colony. Both commissions were honored in Virginia.

The colony, indeed, with Barbadoes in the West Indies, virtually const.i.tuted itself the Dominion of King Charles the Second; and it is in memory of that a.s.sumption of the whole kingdom's prerogative, as the Virginians believe, that the state is called the Old Dominion to-day.

Nor did the people propose that their allegiance should remain merely nominal. They essayed actually to cut the connection with Cromwell's Commonwealth and maintain themselves as the sovereign remainder of the English realm. They succeeded in maintaining this position for a considerable time--until, that is, 1651, when Cromwell's government sent three ships of war to reduce the Virginians to submission. As all the princ.i.p.al settlements were within easy reach of navigable water, and had not developed sufficient back territory by means of which to support themselves, it was impracticable for them to hold out long; they were obliged to submit. Cromwell treated the province oppressively, and forbade the other colonies to trade with it.

It is not at all surprising that Virginia, which in the meantime had become the place of refuge of many more royalists, took steps to throw off the Puritan allegiance as soon as possible after Cromwell's death, and sought to antic.i.p.ate the restoration of the Stuarts. Sir William Berkeley, whom Cromwell had displaced with a Roundhead governor, was again called to the head of things by the people. He refused to a.s.sume the governorship at their mandate unless they gave him their solemn and formal promise to venture their lives and fortunes for King Charles II.

This promise was given him by the unanimous voice of the electors.

Berkeley then proceeded to proclaim Charles "King of England, Scotland, France, Ireland and Virginia." Virginia was once more the sole existing segment of the king's dominion. In Virginia, and in Virginia only, processes and doc.u.ments were issued in his name.

Charles was therefore really king in Virginia, though in very fact he was still living a lazy and rather low life in the Dutch towns, or eating, as a guest, the bread of the French and Spanish n.o.bility. The Virginians, however, were not at all content with having set up a mere paper sovereignty for him. Berkeley had kept in touch, by letter and through messengers, with Charles, and had sent word to him, in Holland, before the Commonwealth had fallen, that he would raise his standard in Virginia if the king would give his consent. Once more he offered him a Virginian crown. Richard Lee was sent to Holland with a proposition from Berkeley to take the field for the king. It was even proposed that Charles should come to Virginia and set up his throne there.

The king once more sent cordial thanks to the Virginians. But he did not accept their proposition. We can imagine that along one side of his nature it appealed to him, and on the other and commanding side it was quite unwelcome; that is to say, while it must have inflamed somewhat his ambition to be king once more and have done with the eating of the bread of others, it was quite in conflict with his natural indolence and moral cowardice. His first attempt to a.s.sert his kingship, when, on the field of Worcester, he was ignominiously defeated by Cromwell, had sickened him with all proceedings having the stamp of energy upon them.

As a matter of fact, it would have been perfectly safe for him to raise his standard and set up his throne in Virginia. But he would not venture it. He would remain on the Continent and await the turn of events.

Ere long events made him king in England. The Commonwealth fell to pieces when there was no longer a strong hand to guide it. Charles landed shabbily, even squalidly, at Dover, almost sneaking into the country, instead of coming in triumph from Virginia, with a kingly New World in his hand, as he might have done if he had accepted Berkeley's invitation.

If, after his defeat at Worcester, he had taken advantage of Virginia's first proffer and of French a.s.sistance, and raised his flag in America, Charles might have affected the world's history very materially. There was no time when the Puritans were not in a minority in England. They held down the majority for a time because they had developed a superior military capacity, and had a splendid, resolute army. But to the nucleus of a brilliant Cavalier command in the New World, the more vigorous English royalists might have rallied. A court at Williamsburg, which was then and for a long time afterward the capital of Virginia, would have meant a royal court in London much sooner than it really arrived, and would have caused the Commonwealth to leave a fainter and narrower mark upon the history of England than in the event it did leave.

Meantime, what a brilliant court would have a.s.sembled around the gay and talkative monarch at Williamsburg! Already the Lees, the Washingtons, the Berkeleys, and many others of the "first families," were established in Virginia. Charles would probably have been happy in the easy, light-hearted atmosphere of the plantations. There were no Puritans there to bother him. Virginia had made its own laws against Puritan practices--and enforced them.

Never was a monarch who would have been better pleased with having about him actual slaves--men and women whose bodies he would have owned. His sway must have spread northward as far as the border of the French possessions, for though New England was Puritan, it bent reluctantly to the sway of the Commonwealth, seeming to scent in the Roundhead sovereignty a kind of rival that threatened to take over its half-won autonomy. A kingship exercised in America would probably have suited the men of New England very well.

In all likelihood the throne would in due time have been transferred to the mother country. But its erection here, even for a few years, must have infused into the character of the Americans generally a larger element of monarchicalism than fell to their lot as it was. Virginia would hardly have fallen off so readily into colonial republicanism as it did in 1774-1776. English neglect of a really royalist Virginia sowed the seed of Virginian rebellion. If Virginia had not supported Ma.s.sachusetts, shoulder to shoulder, there could not have been an American Revolution. Charles did not know how far he let Virginia go when he rebuffed Berkeley's emissaries.

The sentiment of personal loyalty to the crown remained strong in the colonies up to the very outburst of the Revolution. The Americans dissolved the relation of subject and sovereign with regret. If they had ever had a king whom they could call their own, the interest enkindled and perpetuated by his presence might very well have turned the scale in 1776 and prevented the withdrawal of the colonies.

CHAPTER X

IF ADMIRAL PENN HAD PERSISTED IN DISOWNING HIS SON WILLIAM

When an English father, irascible and opinionated, disowns and turns out of doors a son who has not only disobeyed him but proved false to the traditions and obvious interests of the family, he is very apt to adhere to his action. A very great deal turned upon a case, once, in which an English father, after making a very firm show of disowning his son, at last relented and took him back to his heart.

Pennsylvania, to wit, turned upon it; and all the amazing success of William Penn's great experiment in colonization. There has never been anything quite like that success in the world's history, for the great trek of the already established American population in the nineteenth century was a readjustment, an extension, rather than a colonization in the true sense. The planting of Pennsylvania was a true colonization.

Not only did it amount to the creation of a great and model commonwealth, full-fledged, with a composite new-world population, in twenty or even ten years' time, but it furnished the keystone to the arch of states that const.i.tuted the American republic in the next century after Penn's settlement.

Philadelphia led the American towns in the seven years of the Revolution. It was their capital commercially as well as politically. It supplied most of the sinews of war. Without Robert Morris's $1,400,000, all of which came from Philadelphia, the final and crucial campaign of the war could not have been fought. More than that, without just the sort of commonwealth that Pennsylvania had already become, standing in the center of things--cosmopolitan, independent of royalist or aristocratic influence, populous, well-to-do, democratic, steady--it is hard to see how the Revolution could have been undertaken at all.

But for the incident which permitted Penn's settlement, the vast territory which afterward const.i.tuted Pennsylvania would have become merely an extension of New York, or of New Jersey, or of Maryland, or of Virginia, or of all of them. The chances are that its resources would have been exploited by slave labor. The greater part of the state might have remained slave territory up to 1861. In any case its development would have been much more slow, its peopling much less rapid. Not only must Indian wars have checked growth, but the spectacle of the arrival of five hundred thousand stalwart Germans, the creation of the largest city in the colonies within fifty years, and the upbuilding, in that time, of a trade from the Delaware River that employed more than five hundred ships and seven thousand sailors, could never have been presented.

The part which Pennsylvania began to play from the moment of Penn's arrival, and which it still plays, in American affairs, was directly dependent upon Penn's character and genius, and, for a long time, upon his wealth and social position. Without the wealth which William Penn inherited from his father, Admiral Sir William Penn, he could not have organized his Pennsylvania Society, nor bought the site of Philadelphia.

Without the position, as well as the wealth, which he inherited, he could not, in the first place, have aspired to the acquaintance with and confidence of King Charles II; and these were absolutely essential to the extraordinary charter, in behalf of a despised and distrusted people, which Penn received at the king's hands.

Had Penn always been in this favorable position? We shall see. The admiral, his father, was a good churchman and a conservative man. King Charles held him in very high estimation. The son was brilliant, and of n.o.ble character. He was sent to Oxford University; and what was the father's astonishment, after the boy had been there some little time, to hear that he had joined the despised and persecuted sect of the Quakers!

This was very much as if, at the present day, the son and heir of a great multi-millionaire should join, not merely the Socialists, but the Anarchists at Paterson!

Sir William raved and scolded. The son only grew more firm in the faith.

Sir William endured much; but finding the young man actually inclined to address the king as "thou," he told him that if he committed this impropriety, or "thee-ed" and "thoued" either him, the admiral, or the Duke of York, he would disown him, and cut him off without a shilling.

On the very first opportunity after this, young William addressed King Charles as "thou!" The king, having a more than royal sense of humor, made a jest of the matter, but Sir William did not. He was as good as his word. He turned his son out of doors, and bade him begone. The youth went abroad, and took up for a time a very much discredited existence.

He had already been expelled from the university.

Here, for a time, the fate of Pennsylvania certainly trembled in the balance. It was quite within the outraged admiral's power to make the ban permanent. If he had done so, there would never have been a Quaker-German commonwealth in America.

It is known that the son accepted his banishment as permanent. But his mother did not. She pleaded with the father for his forgiveness. She reminded him of the boy's great natural goodness, his brilliancy, his affectionateness. He would, Lady Penn maintained, recover from his distemper of Quakerism. She begged her husband, before it was too late, to relent and recall him.

At length, moved by this appeal and the promptings of his own heart, the admiral called the young man home. Once or twice afterwards he was on the point of a more radical banishment of him. But, fortunately for the New World, Sir William's heart was soft after all. The son was reestablished in his good graces. After the admiral's death, in 1670, it was found that he had bequeathed all his wealth to the son, and, owing to the son's influence, the Quakers improved their position not a little, and in due time Penn organized and put through the Pennsylvania experiment. But King Charles took good care to inform him that the name "Pennsylvania," officially bestowed on the colony, was not in honor of the founder, but in compliment to the admiral, his father.

Narrow as this contingency may have been, since so great an event depended on the impulse of one man, it was after all a moral contingency, and not due of physical accident, as so many others have been. It is the more impressive for this reason. It is good to know that a few heartbeats the more, in the breast of a man who can be kind as well as hot-tempered, may create a mighty empire.

CHAPTER XI

IF THE BOY GEORGE WASHINGTON HAD BECOME A BRITISH MIDSHIPMAN

One summer day, in 1746, a British ship of war lay in the Potomac River below the place where the city of Washington now stands. The officers of the ship had been visiting at Mount Vernon, which was the residence of Major Lawrence Washington, adjutant-general of Virginia.

No vessel of the royal navy entered the Potomac River without a visit on the part of its officers to Major Washington's house. He had been in the king's service at the siege of Cartagena and elsewhere. Admiral Vernon was his friend; Major Washington's estate on the Potomac had been named after the admiral. Lawrence Washington's acquaintance with the men of both army and navy was wide, and his popularity among them great. A visit to his hospitable residence, where he entertained them with true Virginian lavishness, was always a bright spot in any naval officer's life at that day.