The Story of the People for the People—Origin of the United States—English Oppression—Restriction of Commerce and Manufacture—Smuggling Induced—Diverse Views on Taxation—Separation of the Colonies—Congress at Albany—Franklin's Plan of Federation—Its Fate—Anecdote Told by Franklin.
THE United States of America came into existence on the Fourth of July, 1776. On that memorable day, with the signing of the Declaration of Independence, this great country began. With that day its history as a nation begins. But the full history of the United States takes us back to an earlier day. The Declaration had its causes, and we must always deal with causes before we can deal with results. In 1766, ten years before, there was not, so far as we know, a man in the American colonies who had dreamed of independence. Yet the causes from which independence were to come were then in full play, and ten years later thousands of men in arms were bravely fighting for liberty.
What had brought about this great change? Nothing but the folly of the government of Great Britain, which was blind to the indications in the air, and contemned alike the advice of wise counsellors at home and the complaints of angry colonists abroad.8The history of the United States begins with the story of these preceding events, for these were the seeds from which the great republic grew. In fact, before 1776 there was not only no United States, there was no American country; only a series of colonies, thirteen in all, existed, each a distinct commonwealth, with its own government and history. These colonies had only one strong connecting link; they were all under the control of an island beyond the seas, and all writhed under the heavy hand of this distant realm.
The mother country—as England was called—looked upon the colonies as sheep to be shorn, not as children to be fostered. England was a manufacturing land; America must not make anything for itself. England was a commercial nation; America must trade only with its marts. All raw material must be shipped to English ports, all finished goods brought from there, and the sound of hammer or rattle of loom on American shores was deemed little less than a crime.
No American ship dared sail, except at its own peril, to any port of the continent of Europe. No goods could be brought from these ports with the exception of the wines of Madeira and Portugal, which England could not supply to the lovers of these then favorite beverages. New England had made much money in trade with the West Indies, sending hither fish and lumber, and bringing thence sugar, rum, and molasses. This trade was long loaded with heavy duties, and was finally suppressed by order of George the Third.
These checks to freedom of commerce were not the whole restrictions on colonial industries. Manufacture in America, while not wholly forbidden, was closely circumscribed. In the great pine forests of Maine every tree tall enough and straight enough to serve as mast for a king's ship was held as the property of the Crown. No American ax must, on peril, touch those monarchs of the American forests. In Carolina, where also were vast forests of pine, the people were forbidden to make tar from the wood, or tar and turpentine from the sap, of those abundant trees.
Wool was then the great English staple, and woolen goods the leading English product. Therefore the colonists must make no woolen goods for themselves beyond such coarse homespun as they could weave in their homes. Even this slight privilege was deemed too much, and attempts were made to stop the humble spinning-wheel and cottage loom. As for home trade in such goods, it was strictly ordered that no woolen fabrics should be carried from one province to another. Every flock of sheep, spindle, and loom in America was looked upon as a direct injury to English industry, and no sailor from the mother land in want of clothing was permitted to buy more than forty shillings' worth of woolen goods in an American port. Even this small privilege seemed too much, and was finally taken away.
America was the home of the beaver, from whose fur were made the hats of that day, but England claimed the right to make these hats. There were American hatters, but none of these were allowed to take more than two apprentices, and those must be kept for seven years. No negro was permitted to make hats, and no hat could be taken for sale from one plantation to another.
The manufacture of iron was also against the law. Abundant as the raw material was, the colonists were forbidden, in great measure, to work their own iron in furnace and forge. To make a hobnail or a horseshoe was a breach of privilege. William Pitt himself, the friend of America, remarked: "America has no right to make a nail or a horseshoe without England's permission." We are further told that "to print an English Bible would have been an act of piracy."
While labor was thus restricted, foreign labor was forcibly brought in to compete with that of Americans. Thousands of slaves were annually forced upon the colonists against their wills. About all the privilege left to the colonists by English law was to live and breathe, farm and hunt, to produce raw material for English manufacture, and to consume English wares.
Yet it was not from these causes that the Revolution arose. The restrictions named caused irritation, but not rebellion. In fact, they were by no means as effective as England hoped to make them. In spite of edicts against manufacture, much of it went on, and trade between the provinces was not stopped in full by prohibitive edicts. As for foreign commerce, American ships sailed to ports prohibited by "orders in council," and brought goods home from foreign realms. To Europe and the West Indies sailed these ships, taking and bringing wares. Smuggling it was called; strong efforts were made to stop it, but it went on still; the colonial agents complained of their helplessness. In New Hampshire, we are told, the illicit traders "laughed at the orders of the Board of Trade." England had not ships nor customs officers enough to guard the thousands of miles of American coast.
The oppressive edicts of the English Government therefore failed largely in their effect, and it was not this indirect, but an effort at more direct, bleeding of the American people that brought on the Revolutionary War. So far only the merchants and manufacturers of England had been benefited. The government craved a share in this benefit, and proposed to obtain it by taxation. In their efforts to do so they caused the irritation that led to the Revolution.
The trouble did not lie in the mere fact of taxation. The Americans recognized their obligations to the mother country, and would not have objected to meet those obligations in cash. Their objection was not to the fact, but to the mode. England proposed to levy money from the colonies in one way; America proposed to furnish it in another, and the two ways did not agree. The colonists were ready to vote a supply of money to England in their own assemblies. The English Government claimed the right to fix the supply through act of Parliament. They would not even give the colonists a voice in the vote by admitting their representatives to Parliament. No colonial rights in the matter were admitted, and George III. and his advisors posed as arbitrary rulers of the Americans and sole judges of the question at issue.
It was from the controversy on this subject that rebellion arose. But the consideration of it belongs to a later date in our story, and must wait its time. In the present chapter we have still another phase of the American question with which to deal.
The colonies, as we have said, were separate and distinct, with few interests in common, each pursuing its own course and making its own history. Each had grown from a root of its own, New England from Puritanism, New York from Knickerbockerism, Pennsylvania from Quakerism, Maryland from Catholicism, Virginia from paternalism, etc. They had developed in special lines, were diverse in laws, customs, and beliefs, and differed considerably in degree of freedom. The New England colonies were the most independent, the southern colonies the least so. Some were governed largely from abroad; some mainly at home. The New England colonies had united into a federation, a sort of inchoate federal republic; but each of the others stood alone.
For a federation to arise, a community of interests must exist. There was one such common interest, that of resistance to the oppressive edicts of the English Government. And about the middle of the century there arose another, that of defense against the encroachments of the French and their Indian allies. For years, at intervals, they had been at war with the English colonies, and were now vigorously pushing their way south and west. It was this that brought about the first step towards a general colonial federation.
In June, 1754, a congress of all the colonies north of the Potomac met at Albany, N. Y., called together by the representatives of the Crown, to confer with the chiefs of the Six Nations of Indians and to consider means of defense against the French. There were here twenty-five of the leading men of the colonies and a considerable group of Indian chiefs.
Among the latter, Hendricks, the famous Mohawk chief, gave his opinion freely and shrewdly as to the status of affairs.
"Look at the French," he said; "they are men; they are fortifying everywhere. But, we are ashamed to say it, you are like women, without any fortification. It is but one step from Canada here, and the French may easily come and turn you out-of-doors."
This was wise advice, and had its weight. But there were men there who saw deeper than the Indian sachem, and among these was a delegate from Pennsylvania, by name Benjamin Franklin. "We must unite or be overcome," he said. Before leaving home he wrote an article to this effect for his newspaper, the Gazette, and put over it the picture of a snake cut into thirteen pieces, the first letter of the name of a colony on each piece, and under it the motto, in large capitals, JOIN OR DIE. On his way to Albany he drew a plan for the union of the colonies, and on reaching Albany offered it to the consideration of the congress.
He found that others had come with the same idea. Other plans besides his were offered, but his was preferred, and, after twelve days' debate, was unanimously approved.
Franklin's plan was strikingly like that which afterwards made an American nation. It proposed a federal government, with Philadelphia, the largest and most central city, for its capital. The law-making body was to be a grand council, sitting annually, but elected every three years. The executive was to be governor-general, appointed by the Crown, and with the power of veto over the acts of the council. Each colony was to preserve its home government, but the central government was to have control of general affairs, and the power to make laws, levy taxes, enlist soldiers, make treaties, and the like general duties.
The plan was a good one, but it was in advance of its time. It took too much power from the colonies—so they thought. It gave too much power to the colonies—so England thought. Adopted unanimously by the congress, it was criticized out of existence when it reached the home tribunals.
"Its fate was singular," says Franklin; "the assemblies did not adopt it, as they all thought there was too much prerogative in it; and in England it was thought to have too much of the democratic."
And so it fell dead, and the colonies remained uncombined. But the time was to come when an expansion of this idea would be the law of the land, and Franklin, with whom it was born, was to live to aid its growth and help ably and wisely in its fruition.
Franklin made other propositions to the congress: One of these was to plant one or more powerful colonies in the west, beyond the Alleghanies, which, he thought, would form an effectual barrier to the advance of the French. That winter Franklin spent much time in Boston, where he talked his plan over with Governor Shirley. The governor showed him in return the English plan, which was that the governors of all the colonies should meet and take the necessary measures for defense, and draw on the British treasury for the whole expense; the treasury9to be repaid by a tax laid on the colonies by an act of Parliament. This proposition was vigorously objected to by Franklin. His objections may be summed up in the phrase which afterwards became the war note of the colonies: "No taxation without representation."
This chapter may fitly close with a story told by Franklin himself, in regard to the hostile relations existing between the colonial lawmakers and their governors. Governor Morris, who represented the proprietors in Pennsylvania, found the Quakers of the assembly anything but the quiet and demure body which their code of ethics led him to expect. The governor was arbitrary, the members resolute, controversies were endless, and in them Franklin and the governor came often into conflict.
But outside the assembly they were good friends, and the governor showed his friendly feeling by inviting his vigorous opponent to dinner, when Governor Morris said, in jest, that he much admired the idea of Sancho Panza, who, when it was proposed to give him an island, asked that it might be a settlement of blacks, as then, if he could not agree with his people, he might end the difficulty by selling them.
"Franklin," said a friend of the governor, "why do you continue to side with those rascally Quakers? Had you not better sell them? The governor would give you a good price."
"The governor," answered Franklin, with quiet satire, "has not blacked them enough yet."