Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

B

Y THE terms of the Treaty of Paris, which closed the French and Indian war, the British domain in America was made to include the two Canadas and all the disputed territory in the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi. At this time the thirteen colonies occupied a narrow strip of country extending, with many breaks, along the Atlantic coast from Maine to Georgia. The boundaries of the colonies were by no means so nicely fixed as on the modern map. Many disputes arose from time to time over the exact lines that should separate colony from colony and as for their western limits, in accordance with the spirit of manifest destiny, several claimed unlimited extension across the continent, though in reality each was compelled to content itself with defending from the attacks of savages the scattered towns and hamlets along the seaboard. Fifty miles inland from the coast and the principal rivers of the Atlantic watershed the country was an unbroken wilderness. Albany and Schenectady were frontier towns, while the valleys of the Mohawk and the Genesee were still the hunting-grounds of the Iroquois. Hemmed in on the one hand by the French and their savage allies, and on the other by the Atlantic, the people of the several colonies had been held together by the need of some social relations and by the necessity of mutual protection.

The population of the colonies in 1763 was 2,500,000, of which about one fifth was made up of negro slaves. Of the free population New England contained nearly a third, that is, some 600,000; and Massachusetts herself, during the war then just past, had maintained 7,000 men under arms. Boston, the largest city, was a town of 18,000 or 20,000 people; but for a long time the population had been stationary, owing, no doubt, to the growing rivalry of New York and Philadelphia. The streets of Boston are described by an Englishman as open and well paved; "and on the whole," he says, "it has much the air of some of our best towns in England." The arts and sciences were further advanced here than elsewhere on the American continent, and Harvard College, already a hundred years old, had a European reputation. Indeed, through

out all New England the proverbial Puritan character had been greatly modified. The early New Englanders had been people of exceptionally strong characters and of lofty morals; strictly sabbatarian; rigidly orthodox; averse to all questionable amusements and indulgences; hard, stubborn, and self-sacrificing. In whatever way we may judge them, we must admit that they possessed the characteristics of a conquering race. Though sometimes frightfully mistaken, the Puritan probably possessed more humane instincts than other people of his age. Even in that portion of New England where the Blue Laws were fabled to have existed, the servant, the slave, and the dumb beast were better protected than in other sections of the Colonies. A score

of witches were probably executed in England to one in Massachusetts, yet Salem witchcraft and the terribly stern measures taken to stamp out its supposed existence are noted the world over as a peculiar blot upon the history of New England.

The blame of the evil reputation that New Englanders so long enjoyed rests principally with one man, the Reverend Samuel Peters, who published in London in 1781 his "General History of Connecticut." In this remarkable work Peters (who, by the way, had been driven from the Colony because of his Tory proclivities) introduced to the world his "Blue or Bloody Laws," which, although emanating largely from the fertility of his own vivid imagination, he alleged to have actually existed and to have been enforced down to his own day. No revenge was ever more successful than that which this outcast took upon the Colony which had repudiated him and his politics; for even to-day people cite the Blue Laws with seriousness, always calling to mind and enlarging upon those that seem especially absurd. Even the would-be poet has paraphrased the sabbatarian customs of these stern oldtime New Englanders into an imperative statement of law:

"And let it be enacted further still

That all the people strict observe our will:
Five days and half shall men, and women too,
Attend their business and their mirth pursue;
But after that, no man without a fine
Shall walk the streets or at a tavern dine.

One day and half 'tis requisite to rest
From toilsome labor and a tempting feast.
Henceforth let none, at peril of their lives,
Attempt a journey or embrace their wives.
No barber, foreign or domestic bred,
Shall e'er presume to dress a lady's head;
No shop shall spare, half the preceding day,
A yard of ribbon or an ounce of tea."

But, whatever had been the sternness and austerity of early New England life, there had naturally been a great change in a hundred years, although down to 1763 some traces of these characteristics still survived. A traveller of that day has described the people as follows:

"The gentry of both sexes are hospitable and good natured; but it is somewhat constrained by formality and preciseness. Even the women, though easiness of carriage is peculiarly characteristic of their nature, appear here with more stiffness and reserve than in the other colonies. They are formed with symmetry, are handsome, have fair and delicate complexions, but are said universally to have very indifferent teeth.»

These New Englanders of the upper classes were usually engaged in trade or commerce. Not only did their ships do their own carrying trade, but the commerce between England and the West Indies was largely in their hands. Rum and molasses, sugar and slaves, comprised the cargoes of most of the New England vessels. With English restrictions there had grown up also an immense system of smuggling; and of this illegitimate trade Newport was the notorious centre, although prominent men in other places were also engaged in the business. John Hancock's uncle, for instance, is said to have made a fortune by importing contraband tea from St. Eustatius in hogsheads marked "Molasses."

Most of the New Englanders of the seaport towns were engaged directly in commerce or fishing: so inhospitable was the land that they were driven to the sea for employment and for wealth. From every little port ships put forth for the whale or cod fisheries, carrying the skippers whose lives, perhaps, were to be given to their vocation. For the long whaling voyages the "lay" system, by which every member of the crew, from the master of the vessel down to the cook and the cabin boy, shared proportionately in the profits, tempted the enterprise and inflamed the greed of every possible adventurer. The deck of the whaling-ship was the great school where the young men of

the towns along the New England seaboard underwent the strictest discipline and acquired the habit of subordination. No Norse viking or sea rover ever bent a bolder oar or swept rougher and stormier seas than these gallant men, who almost exterminated the whale in the North and South Atlantic, then crossed the Pacific, and finally followed him into his remotest haunts in the Arctic and Antarctic oceans. The cod fisheries were even larger and more staple; and many of these small captains, having, after a series of prosperous voyages, accumulated enough to last them comfortably the rest of their lives, returned to the well-remembered scenes of their native villages, or the ports from which they formerly sailed, and settled quietly there, living for the rest of their days in comparative affluence, the envy of their neighbors, who were forbidden the idle luxury of the members of this "codfish aristocracy." Readers of Miss Sarah Orne Jewett's delightful stories of some of the old New England coast towns will readily recall her charming descriptions of the homes of some of these retired shipmas

ters.

Hand in hand with shipbuilding went lumbering. Then, as now, the sawmill was the pioneer of civilization. The life of a lumber camp has always had its peculiar deprivations and its exhilarating experiences which are nowhere else to be found. In colonial days the great white pines over two feet in diameter were reserved for masts, which were then made in one piece, for the royal navy. Nothing more exciting, perhaps, has ever been seen in the lumber woods of any land than the dragging to the waterside of one of these great pines, a hundred or a hundred and twenty-five feet in length. They were usually drawn over the snow by seventy-five or eighty yoke of oxen, with a driver to every yoke; and since it was very difficult to start so many beasts at once, the immense train, once under way, was never allowed to stop, however long and hard the road. If an ox became exhausted with hunger or fatigue, he was cut out of the yoke, but the train went on without a moment's pause.

But the typical New England life was to be found in the small villages that abounded in every colony. The houses of the minister and the schoolmaster, with the little shops of the tradesmen, formed the nucleus around which the farm-houses

were clustered with more or less density. The village streets, overhung with arching elms, were kept in tolerable order by the fence-viewers, the hog-reeves, and other town officials. The houses were usu

ally very plain, the outsides unpainted and the floors uncarpeted, but everything inside and out was kept scrupulously neat and clean. During the day the house was lighted through little windows which swung back and forth on hinges like doors. When darkness came on, what light the inmates of the house enjoyed was furnished by home-made candles or dips," » which, however, were only used with the greatest economy. The place of furnace and cook-stove was supplied by an enormous fireplace which covered half the side of the room, so large that on summer evenings the children could look up through it and see the stars above. Up this great flue in winter time ascended fully half the heat from the burning logs on the hearth,- and, still worse, usually not more than half the smoke.

The boys and girls of these villages, if not the best, were certainly the most numerous product of New England soil. Without exception they were brought up to hard work; but they also had their times for play, which they enjoyed in much the same manner as country children of these later days. Their school days took up an important part of the time, for throughout New England the public school was to be found in every hamlet. Even in the most rural districts there were two months of school in the winter for the boys, and two months in the summer for the girls. A woman usually presided at the summer session, but each winter saw the advent of the divinity student who took this way of eking out the expenses of a course at Harvard or Yale. The curriculum of these district schools was very simple: reading, writing, and arithmetic, with the making of change, were usually taught with more or less thoroughness. The village schools perhaps added courses in Greek, Latin, and good manners.

Reading was taught from the famous "New England Primer," a book of the deepest religious tone. Two thirds of the twenty-four pictures in the book represent Bible scenes, accompanied by couplets or triplets in rhyme, as, for instance:

"In Adam's fall We sinnéd all: "

or this:

"Zaccheus he

Did climb a tree Our Lord to see."

More than half the book is made up of Scripture passages, selections from the Creed, some of Watts's hymns, and the whole of the catechism, which one hundred and twenty divines had spent five years in preparing. Among other attractions for the children was John Cotton's "Spiritual Milk for American Babes," which contained exhortations not to lie, not to cheat at play, not to use rough words or to call bad names, not to be a dunce, and to love school.

While these little New Englanders did not enjoy the festivities of Christmastide like their friends of Virginia and the other Southern colonies, nor the New Year's Day of the children of New York, they still had their own peculiar day into which they crowded much of the anticipation and joy of their youthful Thanksgiving Day - when, as a son of New England has written—

natures.

-" from East and from West, From North and from South come the Pilgrim and guest, When the gray-haired New-Englander sees round his board The old broken links of affection restored,"

- filled in New England, in large measure, the place taken in other colonies by the holidays just mentioned. But while the children were allowed to play their games and to eat immoderately of roast turkey and pumpkin pie, to the older people the day had its solemn side, and their assembly in the meeting-house upon that day to acknowledge their gratitude to God for the blessings that had been bestowed upon them was one of the most sacred and solemn occasions of the year.

The minister who led these Thanksgiving services, and who preached in the bare and unpretentious meeting-house every Sunday in the year, was by far the most important person in the community. In no other section of the country had religion so firm a hold upon the minds and affections of the people. From the days of the landing of the Pilgrims the parson had been looked upon with profound reverence and respect. He was not as other men were: he was the just man made perfect, the oracle of divine will, the sure guide to truth. It was considered a delectable privilege to sit patiently on the rough board benches while the preacher,

with husky voice and with streams of perspiration running down his face, watched for the third time the hour-glass run its course. In such a community the authority of the reverend man was almost supreme. To speak disrespectfully of him, to jeer at his sermons, or to laugh at his odd ways, was sure to bring down upon the head of the offender a heavy fine. His advice was sought in matters of state, nor did he hesitate to give unasked his opinion in regard to political affairs in the Colony. When, with each recurring year, the annual election sermon came around, he exerted all his eloquence to set forth the equality of all men and the beauties of a pure democracy; and taxed his learning to defend his politics with passages from the Bible and quotations from the classic writers of Greece and Rome.

The people who gathered to hear this good man, and who accepted his words as the voice of God, came not only from the little village, but on foot or horseback from miles around as well. They were, for the most part, in moderate financial circumstances, neat in habit, and fairly well educated. Both sexes, old and young, worked hard, were frugal and thrifty, and, as a rule, rigid in morals. The hardest life in all the colonies, perhaps, was that of the New England farmer. The land was as barren as it is to-day, and his methods of agriculture were with difficulty made to bring him in a bare subsistence. His corn and rye were put in without ploughing, for the old New England plough required six oxen to drag it through the stubborn soil. He had no good staple product to export, although experiments had been tried with everything from cotton to coffee. Potatoes did fairly well, but they were in little demand, owing to the prevailing belief that one who ate of them every day would die in seven years. If he lived near the seacoast and fertilized his land with fish, he must watch the fields for weeks to keep off the scavenging wolves. If he lived in the back country, the squirrels were liable to carry off his entire crop of corn. His grain was sowed broadcast, cut with a scythe, and threshed on the barn floor with a flail. His every act of planting and reaping was governed by the almanac and the signs of the zodiac. Even wood that was to keep was cut in the new of the moon, while kindling must

be cut in its wane. So small were his profits that he found it necessary to make at home almost every article of use, from the shingles that covered his house to the boots that he wore upon his feet. But of these necessities of life the wants of himself and his family were small. His food was of the simplest and served in the coarsest of dishes: beef and pork, salt fish, dried apples, bread and vegetables, composed his staple diet year in and year out. Tea was the universal beverage at meals, but a large part of it was homemade. In the language of the old ballad the New England housewife could sing:

"We can make liquor to sweeten our lips,

Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips. The bread was usually of rye or Indian meal. "Only the minister," wrote Josiah Quincy, "lives on white bread, for brown bread gives him the heartburn, and he could not preach on it." In this simple fare we may recognize some trace of the world-famous baked beans and brown bread which now of a Sunday morning are to be found on half the breakfasttables of New England.

In clothing, also, the New Englander was the most economical man of his time. On Sundays and state occasions he might possibly wear a suit of broadcloth or corduroy, which lasted him a lifetime and at his death went down with his acres to his eldest son: but the ordinary suit in which he did his every-day work, which went with him as inseparably as a second nature, the suit by which his neighbors could tell him as far away as the eye could reach, was made of the famous homespun linsey-woolsey, only less strong and inflexible than leather itself.

Yet, notwithstanding these many hardships, the New England farmer raised a family of strong and intelligent children, provided them with the necessities of life and with a tolerable education, and sometimes even managed to lay up a little money besides. How he was able to do this is explained in a letter from one old farmer, who says:

"My farm used to give me and my family, year in and out, a hundred and fifty silver dollars, for I never spent more than ten dollars, which was for salt, nails, and the like. Nothing to wear, to eat, or to drink was purchased, for my farm furnished all.»

Without question we may say that one well-to-do family to-day spends enough

each year to defray the entire expenses of a New England village of the olden time, -schoolmaster, constable, and maintenance of highways included.

lated.

But if the living of the New Englander was poor, his thinking was on a somewhat higher plane. Often in his house might be found several good books, including the "Pilgrim's Progress," "Paradise Lost," and Vattel's "Law of Nations," all of which, from the Bible to the almanac, were diligently read and carefully assimiAlthough the newspaper, with its vision of events at home and beyond the sea, occasionally came into his hands, yet for the most part he lived in the small world of his immediate acquaintance, and naturally became narrow and opinionated. Many of his views he inherited with his religion. He held it, for instance, to be an abomination to read a novel, to sing a comic song, or to eat a dinner cooked on Sunday: yet sometimes he condescended to play a game of checkers with his wife or to pass an hour with his children at fox and geese. His conscience, moreover, did not smite him when he drank palm tea at a quilting-bee, or listened with unfeigned satisfaction to the achievements of his better half at a spinning-match.

He

drank ale and cider at the apple-parings, and laughed as loudly as anyone when at the corn-husking the lucky finder of the red ear kissed his favorite daughter; but the moment the fiddles were produced he went home to his pipe and his sermons, or to a long talk with the schoolmaster.

To strangers these people appeared rather reserved, but kind and hospitable. The monotony of their lives made the visit of a stranger a great event; and even at the public taverns they were inclined to insist on the rule of "references given and taken" to an extent that gave them a reputation throughout the other colonies for undue inquisitiveness. A colonial writer records:

"One gentleman of Philadelphia who was travelling through New England, having met with many impertinences from this extraordinary turn of character, at length fell upon an expedient almost as extraordinary to get rid of them. He had observed that when he went into an ordinary inn every individual of the family had a question or two to propose to him relative to his history; and that, till each

was satisfied, there was no possibility of securing any refreshment. He therefore, the moment he went into any of these places, inquired for the master, the mistress, the man-servants, and the maid-servants, and, having assembled them together, he began in this manner: 'Worthy people, I am B. F., of Philadelphia; by trade a printer, and a bachelor; I have some relations in Boston to whom I am going to make a visit; my stay will be short, and I shall then return and follow my business as a prudent man ought to do. This is all I know of myself, and all that I can possibly inform you of. I beg, therefore, that you will have pity upon me and my horse and give us both some refreshments.>>>

It is easy for us to recognize in this genial humorist the author of "Poor Richard's Almanac," himself New England born, but grown mellow from contact with a larger world.

All in all, though the tone of life was somewhat sedate, and though the older people had a lurking distrust of enjoyment, the young people of New England had many amusements that might well be envied. There were husking-bees and house-raisings, country parties and spinning-matches, gatherings for quiltings and apple-parings, all of which were entered into with zest by the young people of these New England farms. That all New England life was not ascetic may be inferred from the programme of a ball at Norwich, Connecticut, which was attended by ninety-two guests who danced no less than forty-five minuets, seventeen hornpipes, fifty-two contra-dances and ninetytwo jigs.

The striking characteristic of colonial New England society as a whole was its democratic nature. The average contentment of its people was as high, and the young people enjoyed life fully as well, in New England as anywhere else on the American continent: and the strenuousness of endeavor necessary to the struggle for existence among the hill farms or the waves of a rocky and storm-bound coast brought forth a sturdy ruggedness of character, both of manhood and womanhood, which has proven a mighty factor in the whole life of the American people from colonial times down to the very present. C. W. TOOKE.

URBANA, ILL.

« AnteriorContinuar »