Origins of the Thirteen Colonies

Origins of the Thirteen Colonies

Prior to the revolution of 1688-9 the only colony which contained a large non-British element in its white population was New York. There the Dutch predominated, and there was also a considerable proportion of Frenchmen. The other colonies were mainly peopled from the British Isles. New England was almost exclusively English. Pennsylvania contained a large Welsh element, and Catholic Irish were numerous there and in Maryland. Irishmen and Scotsmen were also to be found throughout the southern colonies. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, many Huguenots went from France to America, settling principally in New York, Virginia and South Carolina (Archibald, 1978). Exact or even approximate figures are not obtainable, but it seems clear that until the second decade of the eighteenth century the sum of all these emigrations was not sufficient to modify the predominantly British coloring of the American population. After 1709, however, a great German wave began to pour across the Atlantic. In that year no less than 13,000 persons from the Rhine country appeared in England seeking passage to the colonies. A few reached no further than Ireland, but the government, with a mercantile motive for expanding colonial population, favored the wishes of the remainder. Some Germans and Swiss went to North Carolina, many to the frontier regions of New York, and a still greater number to Pennsylvania, where they were sufficiently numerous to retain their own speech and customs. The German emigration to this colony long continued in large volume. Twenty years after its commencement thousands were still arriving annually: in 1739 and 1743 two German newspapers were founded in Pennsylvania (Akenson, 1985). Successive arrivals took service as "redemptioners" or indentured servants with established colonists of their own nationality (Lipset, 1963). Negroes were also sold into America at a much greater rate than during the seventeenth century. Upon those colonists of British descent changed environment and climate were beginning to work a subtle alteration of outlook and to weaken the ties of instinctive allegiance. In addition, the duration, hardship and expense of the Atlantic passage, coupled with the absence of all but the most primitive postal arrangements, formed a barrier to sunder those family ties which nowadays preserve the affection of the wandering Englishman for the land of his birth. The result was that insensibly the Americans became a distinct race (Lipset, 1968). "In 1660 the people of England and of the English colonies . . . formed parts of one nation; in 1760, this was no longer true. . . . In all that constitutes nationality, two nations now owed allegiance to the British crown" (Appleby, 1984).

Constitutional Machinery was of one general type throughout the colonies: each had a governor representing the crown; a council which advised the governor, assisted in legislation, and acted also as a supreme court of law; and a lower chamber or assembly composed of elected representatives. The methods of appointment to these offices were various. Connecticut and Rhode Island, having recovered their old seventeenth-century charters, appointed their own governors and councils (Lipset, 1968). In Pennsylvania, Maryland and the Carolinas the proprietors selected the governors subject to the royal veto. The Penn and Baltimore families had each lost their rights in 1689. The former recovered theirs two years afterwards, and the latter in 1715. Thereafter proprietary government continued, in name at least, in their respective colonies until British rule came to an end. In the Carolinas, on the other hand, the proprietors surrendered their rights to the crown, for the southern province in 1719, and for the northern in 1728. In the remaining colonies the governors were of royal appointment throughout the period under review. In the choice of the councilors also there was no strict uniformity. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island had locally elected councils. In the other colonies the crown or the proprietors had the principal share in the selection (Appleby, 1984). The assemblies were all popularly elected, although the franchise qualification varied. Generally it may be said that most freeholders possessed the vote. To maintain touch with the home government each colony sent one or more agents to reside in London, their duties being very similar to those of the consuls of foreign powers. In the negotiations and disputes which preceded the War of Independence some of these agents, notably Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, played a prominent part.

Three subjects of dispute were of continual recurrence -- the salaries of the governor and royal officials, the right of colonies to issue paper money, and the right of the crown to veto colonial legislation (Lipset, 1963). It was a settled principle of the home administration that once a colony was fairly established it should defray the salaries of the officials appointed to govern it. In the West Indies this principle had been enforced, not without loud complaint on the part of the planters. In the American colonies a long struggle on the point ended with the defeat of the central government. The salary argument erupted most fiercely in Massachusetts. It started under Sir William Phipps, the earliest governor chosen under the new charter of 1691. He and his heirs were ordered from home to exact a fixed and enduring salary of at least £1000 a year (Archibald, 1978). The colonial leaders progressively refused compliance. They were careful to lift the struggle to the plane of principle by making voluntary and temporary grants often exceeding the amount demanded. But on the principle they were adamant, and however generously they provided for their governor they would do so only for a year at a time, reserving the right to cut off supplies should they see fit. In the power of the purse lay the real freedom of an elective assembly; lacking that it might sink to the status of a debating society (Appleby, 1984). The Commons of England had fought the battle and won it in the seventeenth century, and they were now disinclined to share the victory with the American colonists. But the latter succeed also by their stable perseverance. Consecutive governors, getting no money from home, established temporary grants in non-payment of a permanent salary, and beneath Jonathan Belcher, who was elected in 1729; the central government eventually gave way and concurred with the colonial view (Lipset, 1968). In New York and other colonies the same principle prevailed, although the salary question was interwoven with other issues and not clearly isolated as in Massachusetts. Political opinion in England never truly faced the deeper implication of the dispute-that colonial freedom was incompatible with subordination to the will of the mother-country. From the contemporary viewpoint we who take satisfaction in the determination of Elyot and Hampden cannot rationally denounce the colonial leaders who endeavored for related objects (Shenkman, 1988).

On the question of paper currency the British government occupied a sounder position. Owing to the balance of trade being continually adverse to the colonies they suffered always from a deficiency of the precious metals (Parsons, 1951). In consequence they were tempted to issue paper money at times when extraordinary expenditure was necessary (Lipset, 1968). Some colonies, notably Rhode Island, did this to excess, and their currency became heavily depreciated. This in its turn had unfavorable effects upon commerce, and led the mercantile interest at home to complain. The home authorities passed Acts of Parliament and issued instructions to the governors to curb what was undoubtedly an abuse. But here again the colonial assemblies had usually the last word and the views of British statesmen were only partially enforced.

The vetoing of colonial legislation was a source of perpetual ill feeling. Throughout the period the crown sought to exercise overseas the right which it had allowed to fall into abeyance in England. Sometimes governors received instructions in advance to disallow certain classes of legislation. More usually the veto was imposed at home when the acts of the colonial assemblies came up for review (Myrdal, 1944). The legislation which was vetoed was in most cases of a type which sought, directly or indirectly, to subvert the operation of the imperial laws of trade; and again the principle at stake was that of colonial liberty as opposed to mercantile subordination. The colonists did not deny the crown's right to veto. They found means of circumventing it by passing temporary Acts and renewing them as often as they fell to the ground, relying upon the fact that an interval of two or three years commonly elapsed before the decision of the home government was promulgated. 1 The outcome of all these trials of strength emphasized the unsatisfactory nature of representative government unaccompanied by full responsibility of the executive officers to the assembly (Shenkman, 1988). 2 It illustrated also the chronic weakness, rather than the tyranny, of the British administration, which was continually asserting powers theoretically justifiable but incapable of enforcement (Appleby, 1992).

The project of federating the colonial governments had first appeared when the New Englanders banded themselves together for common defense in the time of Charles I. James II. had pursued it from a very different point-of-view when he consolidated the northern and middle colonies under Sir Edmund Andros (Appleby, 1984). The high-handed proceedings of Andros and his master rendered the Americans averse from any future plans of federation imposed from without, and the social and religious differences between the various regions long prevented the rise of any motion to union from within. All had their disagreements with the home government, but none had sufficient sympathy with their neighbors to fight their battles in common. Nevertheless, the French peril from 1689 onwards rendered co-ordination at least of military effort desirable, and plans were discussed from time to time which, whilst themselves abortive, kept alive the idea of union which bore fruit at length in the Philadelphia Congress of 1774. In all these plans the initiative came from the British government or its representatives; the royal officials in fact were almost the only men in America who showed any interest in the matter (Akenson, 1985). In the time of William III. Penn suggested a colonial congress, and the Board of Trade, on the representation of the colonial governors, proposed to appoint a captain general of the combined military forces of the northern colonies. The chartered colonies, however, declined to agree to what they considered an infringement of their liberties. Again in 1721 the Board in a report to the crown recommended the creation of a governor-general of America, with trading concessions as a bait to secure the colonists' compliance. But Walpole's reign of quieta non-movere was setting in and nothing came of the proposal. A like fate befell another memorandum from the Board five years later, suggesting a consolidation on autocratic lines accompanied by a stamp tax to pay the expenses of the new government (Lipset, 1963). The most promising attempt at federation came in 1754 when the French menace was again becoming acute. In that year representatives from all but two of the colonies met at Albany to treat with the chiefs of the Five Nations. Benjamin Franklin proposed to the meeting a plan of union whereby a president general was to be appointed by the crown and a grand council of forty-eight was to be elected by the colonies. This body was to take charge of Indian affairs and military defense, with power to raise money for those purposes. The representatives approved of the scheme, but the colonial assemblies, jealous of their own authority, all refused to ratify it.

The colonists indeed, except during the short period of Pitt's ministry, were extremely backward in defending their own territory against the French. To this Massachusetts and Connecticut were honorable exceptions (Archibald, 1978). The others, as a rule, expected the imperial government to take all necessary measures by land as well as by sea. In time of peace tiny detachments of the British army were stationed in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New York and South Carolina. On the outbreak of war the government began by requesting the colonies to call out their militias in addition (Appleby, 1984). New York, although comparatively wealthy and exposed to attack, usually haggled and procrastinated until the time for action had passed. The Quaker colonies had religious motives for standing aloof, although after the outbreak of the Seven Years' War the Quaker politicians of Pennsylvania withdrew from public affairs in order to allow their fellows a free hand in carrying out measures they could not themselves approve. Virginia found a few men for the operations against Fort Duquesne, but was parsimonious in paying and supplying them. The more southerly colonies, with their preponderance of slave labor, were never in a position to turn out large forces (Akenson, 1985). In general the colonies were slow to move, and when they did so, were often unwilling to trust their men out of their own jurisdiction. Under Pitt's sympathetic leadership they did better. He gave colonial officers an equal status with regulars of the same rank, and he explained fully his policy and his needs. In 1760, the year of the final assault upon Canada, the colonies contributed 16,000 men, of whom Massachusetts provided 5,000, Connecticut 4,000, Virginia 1000, and Maryland and the Carolinas nil (Appleby, 1992). After the fall of Canada the colonists' enthusiasm died away. They failed to provide the expected numbers for the West Indian campaign of 1762, and although they shared in the capture of Havana, the movement against Louisiana had to be given up. One authority holds that the colonial attitude was largely responsible for the retrocessions of territory at the Treaty of Paris. It was plain that the Americans would take little share in garrisoning the new acquisitions, and the magnitude of the national debt rendered it imperative to cut down military outlay at home (Myrdal, 1944).

The colonization of Georgia, the last of the thirteen states founded under British rule, was taken in hand in 1732 (Lipset, 1963). It originated in philanthropic motives, somewhat suggestive of the doctrines of Hakluyt a hundred and fifty years before. General James Oglethorpe was concerned at the unhappy fate of men committed to debtors' prisons, and came to the conclusion that a specially organized colony was needed to give such characters a fresh start in life. The government was favorable to his scheme because it desired to set up a buffer to protect the plantations of South Carolina from Spanish incursions. Oglethorpe and his associates therefore obtained a charter making them proprietors of the coast between the Savannah and Altamaha rivers, that is, between Carolina and Florida (Appleby, 1984). In January, 1733, he crossed the Atlantic with his first party of emigrants, and founded the town of Savannah in a good military position upon the river of that name. Oglethorpe lived for some years in his colony, directing its early efforts and striving to render it a means of the moral reformation of its inhabitants. Some of his ideas were unsuitable to the local conditions. He allotted the land in very small parcels, which could not be worked as economically as the great estates in South Carolina. He also attempted to prohibit slavery, but the settlers were long found means of evading this rule (Parsons, 1951). The Spaniards in Florida were of course hostile, and there was much desultory fighting with them in the early years. This led to no decisive results except the general retardation of the colony's progress. The proprietary grant had been made terminable after twenty-one years, that is, in 1753. Before that date, however, the promoters saw the control of the undertaking slipping from their grasp, and were glad to resign their rights (Akenson, 1985). In 1751 Georgia became a crown colony. By 1760 its white population was about 6000 in numbers, principally engaged in rice cultivation.