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

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      Ireland.

      In the North the Revolution was largely a movement of various Calvinist communities. The few Episcopalians in New England and the more numerous adherents of that church in New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland were almost all Loyalists. In Virginia, however, and further to the south the numerous Church of England planter class took the American side and as a result retained their leadership as an aristocracy down to the time of the Civil War. Even at the time of the Revolution this church contributed more than its quota of leaders. Of fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, thirty-four are classified as Episcopalians, twelve as Congregationalists, five as Presbyterians, two Quakers, one Baptist and one Roman Catholic. Of the Continental Congress which ratified this Declaration, nearly two-thirds are said to have been Episcopalians.

      In the North following the expulsion of the Loyalists, the Church of England was left prostrate, and it was some time after the Revolution before it was successfully reorganized and was definitely designated as the Protestant Episcopal Church to become, after a century, the fashionable church of the Atlantic seaboard. The Protestant Episcopal Church has never had any substantial hold in the Middle or Far West and even today it is there largely a missionary church with a tendency towards ritualism, which has checked its normal development.

      The Roman Catholic population of the colonies was negligible. In 1790 out of a white population of a little over 3,000,000, there were not more than 35,000 Catholics in the United States. This number included 5000 Negroes and some Germans. They were located for the most part in Maryland and Pennsylvania, showing that the South Irish Catholics had not come over in appreciable numbers during Colonial times. Many of the colonies legislated against Roman Catholics.

      The Revolution itself was political and social, carrying to an extreme development the political theories of the English Whigs. The distrust of officialdom in power, engendered by the Revolution, led to all manner of constitutional and legal restrictions, in place of a reliance on the personal character of office holders as in England.

      During Colonial times two distinct types of population developed. First, the older communities along the tidewater districts, closely in touch with Europe and having a long tradition of culture and wealth. Second, a type grew up on the frontier which from the very beginning showed itself intolerant of the control of the older and richer settlements. This found its expression in Shays's Rebellion in West Massachusetts in 1786-87, in the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania in 1794, and, still earlier, in 1770, when the "Regulators" in North Carolina were in open rebellion. After the Revolution this tendency became more and more marked until the then West under Andrew Jackson took over the control of the country and, with many unfortunate results, carried Jefferson's ideals to an extreme.

      The Revolution emphasized this second attitude of mind and resulted in the loss, by expulsion, of some of the best Nordic blood in the country. The Loyalists from Boston, for instance, comprised many of the oldest and most distinguished families. The representative families of that city today are not descended wholly from the aristocratic Colonial families, but largely from the population of the small towns and villages in its neighborhood. It is said that a total of eighty to a hundred thousand Loyalists left the colonies and went to Canada and England and to the English West Indies.

      New England to a greater extent than any other colony had been at war with France and her Canadian Indians for the best part of one hundred and fifty years, but the memory of this prolonged and bloody struggle was obliterated by the Revolution. In its place there arose in America a sentiment for France, caused largely by the romantic personality of Lafayette, which survives to this day. The Jeffersonian emotional sympathy with the French Revolution also played a large part. The fact nevertheless is that we had a naval war in 1798 with the French, although no formal war was declared. It was caused by French depredations on American commerce, resulting in several duels between American and French frigates. All this is conveniently forgotten or ignored in some of our school text-books.

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      The earliest permanent settlements of importance in New England were around Massachusetts Bay, and in Virginia along navigable streams. From such centers settlements spread up and down the coast until all the desirable lands accessible to salt water became occupied. In New England the coasts of southern Maine, of Rhode Island, and of Connecticut were quickly occupied. Migration then went overland from Massachusetts Bay, westward to the Connecticut River. This was our first real northern frontier, and it took more than a century to populate southern and western New England.

      The settlement of Connecticut westward was blocked by the colony of New York, while the Indians delayed the advance of Massachusetts to the north. Connecticut in turn threw out colonies at an early date, such as Newark in New Jersey in 1666.

      Vermont was not settled until just before the Revolution, owing to the danger from the Indians and a serious dispute between New Hampshire and New York as to its ownership. At the time of the Revolution it was a typical frontier with all of its bad features. At that time it was about as rough and tough as Kentucky or Tennessee. After the Revolution some of the best of its population migrated to western New York, along with settlers from all over New England who went for the most part through Vermont.

      Early in the eighteenth century nearly all the desirable lands within reach of salt water had been occupied from New Jersey southward, and later coming immigrants were forced back into the uplands of the West beyond the so-called Fall Line at which the Atlantic rivers cease to be navigable.

      New York interposed an absolute bar to westward migration because the Iroquois Indians held almost all the fertile lands to the west of the Hudson River. The east bank of the Hudson was more or less filled up with New Englanders and the west bank with its undesirable lands was turned over to late coming immigrants, chiefly Germans. The Dutch population of New York was but small. The total population of the colony at the time of its seizure by England in 1664 was little more than 10,000 and there were already many English among them.

      The English settlers occupied both banks of the Delaware around Philadelphia, forcing the later-coming Germans and Ulster Scots to the west. The Swedish settlement along the river was trifling and was soon absorbed. There is very little trace of it left in place or personal names. On the upper reaches of the Delaware River, in Pennsylvania, and in New York, there were some small settlements of French Huguenots, who suffered severely from Indian depredations during the Revolution.

      Delaware and the country east of Chesapeake Bay are purely English, as was Maryland, except that western Maryland was really part of western Pennsylvania and western Virginia.

      Virginia itself was the mother of States and in Colonial times extended in fact, as other colonies did in theory, to the Mississippi, without mentioning claims to the South Sea. The tidewater population of Virginia differed profoundly from that of the western part of the State, including the Shenandoah Valley, which was settled largely from western Pennsylvania.

      There was a marked difference between the settlement of New England and that of Virginia. To New England the earliest settlers brought their women and families, while in Virginia the early arrivals were nearly all males. Women were afterwards sent over by the shipload, but this was only during the early days of the colony.

      Like Virginia, North Carolina in Colonial times extended nominally to the Mississippi. Its population lacked the tidewater aristocrats of the Old Dominion and contained many Scots, straight from the Highlands, who, strangely, took the British side during the Revolution, as well as a very large number of Ulster Scots in the western mountains, and in the counties which were afterwards Tennessee.

      Kentucky and Tennessee were both settled from the colonies СКАЧАТЬ