Resource Center OLLibrary
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of Abraham1 and attacked the French (1759).
In the terrible battle both commanders found the truth of
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the
words, "The paths of glory lead but to the
grave,"2 which Wolfe quoted to his brother
officers on the eve of the contest; for both were killed.
They met death as only heroes can. The English general
exclaimed when he heard that his men had gained the
hard-fought field, "Now, God be praised, I die in peace."
The French leader, when told that he must soon breathe
his last, said, "So much the better; I shall not live to
see the surrender of Quebec."|
1759-1763 ] |
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from Quebec to the Mississippi and New Orleans, belonged to
France. (Map, p. 111.)
When the sun went down the following day, France
had lost her hold on America forever. By the treaty of peace of
1763 the French king gave to England the whole of his possessions
on this continent. Of all the magnificent territory which he had
owned on this side the Atlantic he now had nothing left except a
small portion of the West Indies, and two little barren islands
(Miquelon and St. Pierre) off the coast of southern Newfoundland,
which the English permitted him to keep, to dry fish on.
The war settled the fact that America was not to
be an appendage of France, but was to become the home of the chief
part of the English-speaking race. Spain had owned Florida ever
since its discovery by Ponce de Leon (§ 18). She had fought
on the side of France against England: now that France was
defeated Spain was forced to give up Florida to Great Britain, who
held it for twenty years and then ceded it back to Spain
(1783).
Thus by the end of 1763 the British flag floated
over the whole eastern section of this continent, from the
Atlantic to the great river of the West, with the single exception
of New Orleans, which, with the Louisiana territory west of the
Mississippi, France had secretly transferred to Spain.
Another result of the treaty of 1763 was that
England (in order to make Spain a rival of France) now recognized
Spain's claim to the great province of Louisiana. This made the
Mississippi the western boundary of the American colonies, so that
none of them could henceforth claim territory extending to the
Pacific. (Maps, pp. 111, 170.)
144. Results of the Four English and French
Wars. The four great wars between the English and the French
in this country (§§ 134-136) had decisive results:
1. They united the inhabitants of the colonies
-- especially those north of the Carolinas -- and inspired them
with new strength.
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2. They trained thousands of resolute men in
the use of arms, taught them to face an enemy, and thus in a
measure prepared them for the War of Independence not many years
distant.
3. They removed all danger of attack by the
French and so made the colonists feel less need of British
protection.
4. They cleared the ground east of the
Mississippi of rival and hostile forces, and left it open for our
ancestors to lay -- when the right time should come -- the corner
stone of the United States.
145. The Thirteen Colonies in 1763; Growth
of the Country; Number and Character of the Population. The
growth of the colonies from the first permanent English
settlements in 1607 (§ 46) and 1620 (§ 73) to the end of
the French and Indian War, 1763 (§ 143), had been slow but
steady. When a gardener finds that a healthy young plant shows but
little progress, he is not discouraged. He says cheerfully, "It is
all right; it is making roots, and will last the longer." For a
century and a half the colonies had been "making roots," --
getting that firm hold so necessary for the future growth of a
free and powerful nation.
In 1763, when England made peace with France
(§ 143), the entire population of the thirteen colonies
probably did not greatly exceed half that of New York City now. Of
this about one sixth were negro slaves; every colony had some, but
by far the larger part were owned south of the Potomac. The
population was nearly all east of the Alleghenies. West of those
mountains the country was an almost unbroken wilderness. The
majority of the colonists, especially in Virginia and New England,
were English or of English descent. Next in number came the
Germans in Pennsylvania (§ 119), the Dutch in New York
(§ 59), the Irish and Scotch-Irish (§ 92), who had
settled to some extent in all of the colonies, and finally, the
descendants of the Huguenots, or French Protestants, most numerous
in South Carolina (§ 115).
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146. Language; Religion; Social Rank;
Cities; Trade. Nearly all of the colonists spoke English, and
nearly all were Protestants.1 Most of them had sprung
from the same social class in the mother country. A witty
Frenchman of that day said that the people of England reminded him
of a barrel of their own beer-froth on the top, dregs at the
bottom, but clear and sound in the middle. That energetic,
industrious, self-respecting middle class furnished the greater
part of the emigrants to this country.
In none of the colonies was there a titled
aristocracy holding land and established by law, as in Europe. In
Virginia, however, the great plantations were usually handed down
to the eldest son, after the English fashion. America had men of
intelligence and wealth, but no lords; she had learned and
influential clergymen, but, outside of certain royal provinces
(§ 147), she had no bishops.
Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Charleston
were the chief cities, yet even Philadelphia, then the largest,
had only about twenty thousand inhabitants, and not one of these
cities published a daily paper and did not until more than twenty
years later.2
The foreign trade of the country was prosperous.
The South exported tobacco, rice, indigo, tar, and turpentine; the
North, fish, lumber, furs, and iron. New England built and sold so
many sailing vessels that the ship carpenters of Great Britain
complained that the Americans were ruining their business.
Manufactories were comparatively few. England
treated her colonies in a broader and more generous spirit than
any other nation in Europe, but she wished, so far as practicable,
to compel the Americans to buy all their goods from her. On this
account she endeavored to prevent them from weaving a yard of fine
woolen cloth, casting an iron pot, or printing a copy of the
1 The greatest
number of Catholics were in Maryland; there they may have
constituted a fifteenth of the population.
2 The Boston News Letter, 1704
(weekly), was the first regular newspaper published in America.
The American Daily Advertiser, Philadelphia, 1784, is said
to have been the first daily.
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Bible. Furthermore, England passed laws, like the Navigation
Acts (§ 54), to compel the colonists to confine all their
most profitable commerce to English ports. On the other hand,
England paid the colonists liberal premiums or bounties for
exporting such products as indigo, and "naval stores" such as
hemp, tar, pitch, turpentine, rosin, and masts for vessels.
Besides this England bought all the tobacco they wanted to sell
and also purchased a good deal of their iron. The people of this
country did not openly dispute the right, or supposed right, of
the mother country to restrict their trade; but they smuggled
goods, especially tea, wines, silks, and other luxuries, from
Europe; and the customhouse officers at Philadelphia, New York,
and Boston winked at the landing of such articles.
147. Government of the Colonies; Law; Unity
of the People. The colonies did not all have the same form of
government. Connecticut and Rhode Island held charters, by which
they practically managed their own affairs in their own way. Eight
of the remaining colonies were royal provinces1 ruled
by governors appointed by the King; the three others, Pennsylvania
with Delaware (§ 120) and Maryland (§ 100), were
governed by their proprietors, the descendants of William Penn and
of Lord Baltimore.
All the colonies had legislative assemblies
elected by the people; by means of these assemblies they levied
their own taxes and had the chief voice in making their own
laws.2 In New England all matters of public interest
were openly and fearlessly discussed in town meeting; in Virginia,
county meetings were held occasionally for the same purpose. Every
white man in the thirteen colonies had the right to trial by jury
and to the protection given by the common law of England (§
44).
The colonists, though loyal to the King, were
full of sturdy independence of character. Some of them adopted a
flag (1775) on which was a rattlesnake coiled ready to strike, and
the words,
1 Massachusetts had
a charter, but could make only such laws as her Governor,
appointed by the King, saw fit to approve.
2 The laws enacted by the colonial
assemblies required the Governor's approval, except in Rhode
Island and Connecticut, where the people elected the Governor and
could legislate, if they chose, without his
consent.
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"DON'T TREAD ON ME"; that flag
expressed what their real spirit had always been. Though
there was but little communication between the colonies,
yet they were essentially one people, -- they spoke the
same language, they appealed for justice to the same
general law, they held, with some few exceptions, the
same religion. |
poor.
The mass of the people lived simply but comfortably. The
farmhouses were generally built of huge timbers covered
with rough, unpainted clapboards, often with the upper
story projecting, so that in case of an attack by Indians
the owner could fire down on the savages and give them a
reception they would remember.
