The Conquest of a Continent; or, The Expansion of Races in America. Grant Madison

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      IV THE NORDIC SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA

       Table of Contents

      Before considering the question of the origin of the English settlers of the Atlantic seaboard, it is important to understand the motives that actuated the newcomers.

      The impelling motive of the settlers who crossed the ocean to America from the earliest Colonial times down to 1880 was land hunger, and just as we speculate in stocks today, so down to one hundred years ago our ancestors speculated in lands on the frontier.

      It is difficult to realize the extent to which the ownership of the land in Europe was monopolized, largely through the exercise of Royal favor, by the upper classes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This established English tradition and practice, brought to America by the early settlers, coupled with the favoritism of the royal governors in land grants, was one of the causes which led to the Revolution. After the American victory much land was confiscated on the plea that the owners were Loyalists.

      The distribution of free land in the United States came substantially to an end about 1880, when the public domain became exhausted. Up to that date, the immigration into America had been assimilated readily. Certain exceptions will be dealt with later. Practically all of it was from northwestern Europe, and the immigrants came mostly of their own volition. It took some degree of enterprise to leave home, cross the Atlantic, and establish oneself in a new country amid strange surroundings. Settling new land meant clearing the forests and destroying the game, as well as buying off or fighting the Indians, whose ideas about land ownership were vague. To the frontiersman in early days, the term "a clearing" was synonymous with "a settlement."

      Religious motives and the desire for political and economic independence, of course, were also great factors in the Pilgrim and Puritan migration to New England from 1620 to 1640.

      The New England Puritans represented only a part and relatively a small part of the exodus from England. They were pure English from the most Anglo-Saxon part of England and consisted largely of yeomen and the lesser gentry, who found the religious and political conditions in England under the Stuarts intolerable for freemen. They were essentially dissenters, who refused to bend the knee to prelate or to king.

      In 1640, under the Commonwealth the Puritans seized the reins of government in England and only permitted the return of royalty in 1660 under conditions which established for all time the supremacy of Parliament. In fact, during the Commonwealth the power of Parliament had become so great that many of the best minds of England felt that a restoration of the monarchy was needed as a check.

      The settlers of New England may be regarded as essentially rebels against established religion and established authority when the religion and authority were not of their own choosing. This non-conformist spirit persisted in the successive new frontiers as they were settled by New Englanders. The early New England settlers of western New York and the old Northwest Territory gave birth to an astonishing number of new sects, religions, "isms," and communities, ranging all the way from Mormonism to Shakers and the Oneida Community. They were, however, law-abiding in their own way and murders and crimes of violence were relatively infrequent.

      This is in sharp contrast to the southern frontiersmen, who were and are addicted to killings and physical violence. That, however, is chiefly true of the inhabitants of the Appalachian valleys, who always have been lawless. The dissent and predisposition to rebellion among the New Englanders dates back to the Puritans in England and the lawlessness and violence of the Ulster Scots to the endless border warfare on the Scottish frontier. The southern frontiersman was originally a Presbyterian, but he found his religion too intellectual for isolated communities and turned in many cases to the more emotional creeds of the Methodist and Baptist. The hatred of England by the Ulster Scotch frontiersmen dated back to the unjust and oppressive interference with their industries in the north of Ireland, as well as to a deep-seated impatience of all authority.

      After the Revolution this hatred of authority was transferred to the tidewater aristocrats and was accentuated by the debtor complex, which has characterized all our frontiers.

      The character of the frontier from the very beginning remained the same. Each generation of the restless, the discontented and the failures pushed West, carrying with them some of the fine qualities of the original settlers of the seaboard, but more often developing a new complex of intolerance for the restraints and usages of the older communities.

      There is an amusing and significant evolution of these traits in families who settled around Massachusetts Bay and then moved to the Connecticut Valley; thence to Vermont, western New York, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, and Los Angeles, where they now flourish.

      At the time of the Revolution the intense hatred in New England of the mother country was due partly to a desire to confiscate the lands of the Loyalists and partly to that which they considered unfair restrictions on their overseas trade, as well as to an unwillingness to being taxed to pay a part of the great cost of conquering Canada.

      The net result of these forces was a widespread anti-British and, later, anti-governmental complex, which has characterized our country ever since. In contrast to England and to Canada, СКАЧАТЬ