CHAPTER XIV

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THE CONTINENTAL COLONIES FROM 1700 TO 1750.

118. References.

Bibliographies.--Avery, III. 426-446; Greene, _Provincial America_, ch. xix.; Winsor, V. _passim_.

Historical Maps.--Nos. 3 and 4, this volume (_Epoch Maps_, Nos. 3, 4); MacCoun, and school histories already cited.

General Accounts.--Avery, III. chs. x.-xxvii.; G. Bancroft, II. 212-565; Channing, II. chs. xi.-xix.; Doyle, V.; G. Eggleston, _Eighteenth Century_; Frothingham, _Rise of Republic_, ch. iv.; Greene, as above; Hildreth, II. chs. xxii.-xxvii.; Lodge, _Colonies_; E. Sparks, _Expansion of American People_; Wilson, _American People_, II. chs. i.-iii; Winsor, V. chs. ii.-vi.

Special Histories.--Political: L. Kellogg, _Colonial Charter_; Channing, _Town and County Government_; A. Cross, _Anglican Episcopate_; Greene, _Provincial Governor_; C. Bishop, _Elections in American Colonies_; A. McKinley, _Suffrage Franchise_; McCrady, _South Carolina_.--Economic: Weeden, _Economic History_; E. Lord, _Industrial Experiments_; G. Beer, _Commercial Policy_; R. Paine, _Ships and Sailors of Old Salem_.--Nationalities: L. Fosdick, _French Blood in America_; J. Rosengarten, _French Colonists and Exiles_; S. Cobb, _Palatines_; F. Diffenderfer, _German Immigration_; L. Bittinger, _Germans in Colonial Times_, and _German Religious Life_; Sachse, _German Sectarians_; Wayland, _German Element_; C. Hanna, _Scotch-Irish_; McLean, _Scotch Highlanders_.--Financial: D. Dewey, _Financial History_, ch. i.; A. Davis, _Currency in Massachusetts Bay_; F. McLeod, _Fiat Money in New England_; C. MacFarlane, _Pennsylvania Paper Currency_; W. Shaw, _Currency_.--Taxation: F. Jones, _Taxation in Connecticut_.--Press: L. Schuyler, _Liberty of Press_; L. Rutherford, _Zenger_.--See also F. Dexter, _Population in Colonies_, and state histories.

Contemporary Accounts.--Hutchinson, _History of Massachusetts Bay_; Falckner, _Curieuse Nachricht von Pennsylvania_ (1702); Madam Knight, _Journal_ (1704); Fontaine, _Diary_ (1710-1716); Mittelberger, _Journey to Pennsylvania_ (1750-1754); Franklin, _Autobiography_; Woolman, _Journal_.

119. Population (1700-1750).

Sidenote: Phases of common development.

Up to 1700 the history of each colony is the history of a unit; the impulse of colonization came in successive waves, but each little commonwealth had its own interests, its own struggles, and looked forward to its own future. From 1700 to 1750, though the separate life and history of each colony continued, there were perceptible certain great phases of common development, which will be briefly outlined.

Sidenote: Growth of population.

Although disturbed by wars with the French and Indians, by domestic political quarrels, and by disputes with the mother country regarding the regulation of commerce and manufactures, there was a steady growth of population in British North America during the first half of the seventeenth century. The rewards of industry were sufficient, coupled with considerable religious and political freedom, to entice a continuous, though fluctuating, immigration from England and the continent of Europe. In New England, where the English stock was practically unmixed with foreign blood, the rate of progress was less pronounced than in Pennsylvania and the South, which were largely recruited from other races. In 1700, the population of New England was something, over one hundred and five thousand. By the beginning of the French and Indian War (1754) it was a little less than four hundred thousand, New Hampshire having forty thousand, Massachusetts and Maine two hundred thousand, Rhode Island forty thousand, and Connecticut a hundred and ten thousand. The middle colonies commenced the century with fifty-nine thousand; but by 1750 this had, chiefly owing to the exceptionally rapid growth of Pennsylvania after 1730, increased to three hundred and fifty-five thousand, of which New York contained ninety thousand, New Jersey eighty thousand, and Pennsylvania and Delaware one hundred and eighty-five thousand. In the Southern group there was a population of eighty-nine thousand in 1700, which had grown to six hundred and twenty-five thousand in 1763, not counting Georgia, settled in 1733, which in twenty years had acquired a population of five thousand; Maryland had a hundred and fifty-four thousand, chiefly Englishmen, but there was a liberal admixture of Germans and people of other nationalities. Virginia had nearly three hundred thousand, of whom the blacks were now in the majority. North Carolina, important in numbers only, had ninety thousand, of whom twenty per cent were slaves; South Carolina had eighty thousand, the blacks outnumbering the whites by two or three to one. The total for the thirteen colonies in 1750 is about thirteen hundred and seventy thousand.

120. Attacks on the Charters (1701-1749).

Sidenote: Attack on the New England charters.

For many years the New England charters were in imminent danger of annulment, the purpose apparently being to place the colonies under a viceregal government. Those of Connecticut and Rhode Island were the liberal documents granted to them early in their career; electing their own governors, they were practically independent of the mother-country, and the general movement against the charters had these two especially in view. From 1701 to 1749, the charters were seriously menaced at various times; but on each occasion the astute diplomacy of the colonial agents in England succeeded in warding off the threatened attack. Worthy of especial mention in this connection are Sir Henry Ashurst, the representative of Connecticut, and Jeremiah Dummer, his successor. In 1715, at a time when it was proposed to annex Rhode Island and Connecticut to the unchartered royal province of New Hampshire, Dummer issued his now famous Defence of the American Charters, in which he forcibly argued,--(1) That the colonies "have a good and undoubted right to their respective charters," inasmuch as they had been irrevocably granted by the sovereign "as premiums for services to be performed." (2) "That these governments have by no misbehavior forfeited their charters," and were in no danger of becoming formidable to the mother-land. (3) That to repeal the charters would endanger colonial prosperity, and "whatever injures the trade of the plantations must in proportion affect Great Britain, the source and centre of their commerce." (4) That the charters should be proceeded against in lower courts of justice, not in parliament. Dummer's presentment of the case was regarded by the friends of the colonies as unanswerable, and was largely instrumental in causing an ultimate abandonment of the ministerial attack on the New England charters.

Sidenote: The Carolinas become royal provinces.

In 1728, as a consequence of popular disturbances in the Carolinas, a writ of _quo warranto_ was issued against the charter, and the proprietors sold their interests to the Crown. A royal governor was now sent out to each province. Heretofore, North Carolina had been nominally ruled by a deputy serving under the South Carolina governor.

121. Settlement and Boundaries (1700-1750).

Sidenote: Boundary disputes.

Boundary disputes were a constant source of intercolonial irritation. There were long and vexatious boundary wrangles between Connecticut and her neighbors, Rhode Island, New York, and Massachusetts. In 1683 an agreement reached between Connecticut and New York was the basis of the present line, surveyed in 1878-1879; it was 1826 before the final survey between Connecticut and Massachusetts; the quarrel between Connecticut and Rhode Island was protracted and heated, the line between them not being definitively established until 1840. Wentworth, the first royal governor of New Hampshire (1740-1767), made large land-grants, which overlapped territory claimed by New York, and thus brought on a protracted boundary controversy between those two provinces. Patents covering both sides of Lake Champlain were alike issued by New York and New Hampshire; the settlers east of the lake organized in revolt, under the cognomen of Green Mountain Boys, and were preparing to set up a government of their own, when the Revolution broke out, and in 1777 the unacknowledged government of Vermont was formed. A settlement of the boundary was not reached until Vermont was admitted to the Union (1791). The boundary disputes of New York with Massachusetts and Connecticut were settled prior to the Revolution. In 1737 a boundary commission adopted the present line between Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The same commission established the present western boundary of Maine. In a contest between Massachusetts and Rhode Island, the former claimed a portion of the latter's territory, on the ground that it was included in the old Plymouth patent; but in the final settlement Rhode Island retained possession. The Penn and Baltimore families long wrangled over the boundaries between Pennsylvania and Maryland. An agreement was reached in 1732, and ratified by a convention in 1760: under its terms, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, two eminent London mathematicians, ran the famous "Mason and Dixon line" (1767), separating the southern colonies from the northern. The boundary line between the Carolinas was not defined until 1735-1746. To the north and west, English boundary disputes with the French led to protracted and harassing wars; while to the south, Georgia's claims clashed with those of the Spaniards in Florida, and during the war between Spain and England occasion was taken by Oglethorpe (1740), governor of Georgia, to invade Spanish territory (page 262, § 117).

Sidenote: Spotswood's enterprising spirit.

No man of his time was more energetic in pushing the confines of settlement and encouraging development than Governor Spotswood of Virginia (1710-1722), a stalwart soldier who had fought under Marlborough. He built iron furnaces, introduced German vine-growers, made peace with the Indians, and established several excellent mission schools for them upon the frontier; under his administration the fur-trade spread far inland, and he did much to extend topographical knowledge of Virginia by fostering exploration.

Sidenote: The mountain borderers.

The Shenandoah valley, opened to settlement by Spotswood, became, after 1730, a notable home for Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, driven by English persecution from their home in Ulster. They were by this time coming over to America in two steady streams, one pouring in at Philadelphia, and the other at Charleston, S. C. Those arriving at Philadelphia pushed westward to the mountains, and drifting southwestward through the long parallel valleys of the Alleghany range, met in the Shenandoah and kindred valleys those of their brethren who had gone up into the hills of Carolina. It was from these frontier valley homes that the migration into Kentucky and Tennessee proceeded a generation later, led by such daring spirits as Boone, Sevier, and Robertson.

122. Schemes of Colonial Union (1690-1754).

Sidenote: Governmental plans.

Schemes for a union of the colonies, to provide for the common defence and settle intercolonial differences, were numerous enough, after the example set by the New England Confederacy (