1750.]

Social and Economic.

19

sels was employed; they were built in the colonies north of Virginia, and most of them in New England. The vessels themselves were often sold abroad. With the proceeds of the exports the colonists bought the manufactured articles which they prized. Under the Navigation Acts these ought all to have come from England; but French silks, Holland gin, and Martinique sugar somehow found their way into the colonies. The colonists and the home government tried to establish new industries by granting bounties. Thus the indigo culture in South Carolina was begun, and many unsuccessful attempts were made to start silk manufactures and wine raising. The method of stimulating manufactures by laying protective duties was not unknown; but England could not permit the colonies to discriminate against home merchants, and had no desire to see them establish by protective duties competitors for English manufactures. Nevertheless, Pennsylvania did in a few cases lay low protective duties. Except for the sea-faring pursuits of the Northern colonies, the whole continental group was in the same dependent condition. The colonists raised their own food and made their own clothes; the surplus of their crops was sent abroad and converted into manufactured goods.

Slave trade.

10. Colonial Slavery.

In appearance the labor system of all the colonies was the same. Besides paid white laborers, there was everywhere a class of white servants bound without wages for a term of years, and a more miserable class of negro slaves. From Nova Scotia to Georgia, in all the West Indies, in the neighboring French and Spanish colonies, negro slavery was in 1750 lawful, and appeared to flourish. Many attempts had been made by colonial legislatures to cut off or to tax the importation of

slaves. Sometimes they feared the growing number of negroes, sometimes they desired more revenue. The legislators do not appear to have been moved by moral objections to slavery. Nevertheless, there was a striking difference between the sections with regard to slavery. In all the colonies north of Maryland the winters were so cold as to interfere with farming, and some different winter work had to be provided. For such variations of labor, slaves are not well fitted; hence there were but two regions in the North where slaves were profitably employed as field-hands,

The sections.

on Narragansett Bay and on the Hudson: elsewhere the negroes were house or body servants, and slaves were rather an evidence of the master's consequence than of their value in agriculture. In the South, where land could be worked during a larger portion of the year, and where the conditions of life were easier, slavery was profitable, and the large plantations could not be kept up without fresh importations. Hence, if any force could be brought to bear against negro slavery it would easily affect the North, and would be resisted by the South; in the middle colonies the struggle might be long; but even there slavery was not of sufficient value to make it permanent.

agitation.

Such a force was found in a moral agitation already under way in 1750. The Puritans and the Quakers both Anti-slavery upheld principles which, if carried to their legitimate consequences, would do away with slavery. The share which all men had in Christ's saving grace was to render them brethren hereafter; and who should dare to subject one to another in this earthly life? The voice of Roger Williams was raised in 1637 to ask whether, after "a due time of trayning to labour and restraint, they ought not to be set free?" "How cursed a crime is it," exclaimed old Sewall in 1700, "to equal men to beasts! These Ethiopians, black as they are, are sons

1750.]

Slavery.

21

and daughters of the first Adam, brethren and sisters of the last Adam, and the offspring of God." On “2d mo. 18, 1688," the Germantown Friends presented the first petition against slavery recorded in American history. By 1750 professional anti-slavery agitators like John Woolman and Benezet were at work in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and many wealthy Quakers had set free their slaves. The wedge which was eventually to divide the North from the South was already driven in 1750. In his great speech on the Writs of Assistance in 1761, James Otis so spoke that John Adams said: "Not a Quaker in Philadelphia, or Mr. Jefferson of Virginia, ever asserted the rights of negroes in stronger terms."

CHAPTER II.

EXPULSION OF THE FRENCH (1750-1763).

11. References.

Bibliographies. Winsor's Narrative and Critical History, v.

560-622.

Historical Maps. - No. 2, this volume (Epoch Maps, No. 5); Scudder's School History of the United States, p. 135; Labberton's Historical Atlas, lxiii.; Hinsdale's Old Northwest, 38, 63 (republished from MacCoun's Historical Geography); Gardiner's School Atlas, No. 45; Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, frontispiece; Gilman's United States, p. 124; Oldmixon's British Empire (1741); Mitchell's Map (1755); Evans's Map (1755).

General Accounts. Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. iii. chaps. xxiii., xxiv.; vol. iv. (last revision, ii. 419–565); Hildreth's History of the United States, ii. 433-513; Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. ii. chap. viii. ; vol. iii. chap. x.; Hinsdale's Old Northwest, chap. v.; Bryant and Gay's Popular History of the United States, iii. 254-328; Green's History of the English People, iv. 166-218; Holmes's Annals of America, ii. 41-123; Grahame's History of the United States, vols. iii., iv., book x.; Chalmers's Revolt of the American Colonies, vol. ii. book ix. chap. xx.; Pitkin's Political and Civil History of the United States, i. 138-154.

Special Histories. - Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe (2 vols.), latest and best detailed account; G. Warburton's Conquest of Canada, (1849); T. Mante's History of the Late War (1772); Weeden's Economic and Social History of New England, vol. ii. chaps. xvi., xvii.

Contemporary Accounts. - John Knox's Historical Journal [1757-1760]; Pouchot's Mémoires (also in translation); Works of Franklin (especially on the Albany Congress); Washington's Works (especially his narrative of his Western experiences in Sparks's edition, ii. 432-447).

12. Rival Claims in North America (1690-1754).

Internation

23

"THE firing of a gun in the woods of North America brought on a conflict which drenched Europe in blood." In this rhetorical statement is suggested the al rivalry. result of a great change in American conditions after 1750. For the first time in the history of the colonies the settlements of England and France were brought so near together as to provoke collisions in time of peace. The attack on the French by the Virginia troops under Washington in 1754 was an evidence that France and England were ready to join in a struggle for the possession of the interior of the continent, even though it led to a general European war.

guments.

The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle of 1748 (Colonies, § 112) had not laid down a definite line between the French and Legal ar- the English possessions west of the mountains. According to the principles of international law observed at the time of colonization, each power was entitled to the territory drained by the rivers falling into that part of the sea-coast which it controlled. The French, therefore, asserted a prima facie title to the valleys of the St. Lawrence and of the Mississippi (§ 2); if there was a natural boundary between the two powers, it was the watershed north and west of the sources of the St. John, Penobscot, Connecticut, Hudson, Susquehanna, Potomac, and James. On neither side had permanent settlements been established far beyond this irregular ridge. This natural boundary had, however, been disregarded in the early English grants. Did not the charter of 1609 give to Virginia the territory "up into the land, from sea to sea, west and northwest"? (Colonies, § 29.) Did not the Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Carolina grants run westward to the "South Sea"? And although these grants had lapsed, the power of the king to make