Social And Political Progress

Colonial life, crowded as it was with hard and unremitting toil, left

scant leisure for the cultivation of the arts and sciences. There was

little money in private purses or public treasuries to be dedicated to

schools, libraries, and museums. Few there were with time to read long

and widely, and fewer still who could devote their lives to things that

delight the eye and the mind. And yet, poor and meager as the

intell ctual life of the colonists may seem by way of comparison, heroic

efforts were made in every community to lift the people above the plane

of mere existence. After the first clearings were opened in the forests

those efforts were redoubled, and with lengthening years told upon the

thought and spirit of the land. The appearance, during the struggle with

England, of an extraordinary group of leaders familiar with history,

political philosophy, and the arts of war, government, and diplomacy

itself bore eloquent testimony to the high quality of the American

intellect. No one, not even the most critical, can run through the

writings of distinguished Americans scattered from Massachusetts to

Georgia--the Adamses, Ellsworth, the Morrises, the Livingstons,

Hamilton, Franklin, Washington, Madison, Marshall, Henry, the Randolphs,

and the Pinckneys--without coming to the conclusion that there was

something in American colonial life which fostered minds of depth and

power. Women surmounted even greater difficulties than the men in the

process of self-education, and their keen interest in public issues is

evident in many a record like the Letters of Mrs. John Adams to her

husband during the Revolution; the writings of Mrs. Mercy Otis Warren,

the sister of James Otis, who measured her pen with the British

propagandists; and the patriot newspapers founded and managed by women.





THE LEADERSHIP OF THE CHURCHES



In the intellectual life of America, the churches assumed a role of high

importance. There were abundant reasons for this. In many of the

colonies--Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New England--the religious impulse

had been one of the impelling motives in stimulating immigration. In all

the colonies, the clergy, at least in the beginning, formed the only

class with any leisure to devote to matters of the spirit. They preached

on Sundays and taught school on week days. They led in the discussion of

local problems and in the formation of political opinion, so much of

which was concerned with the relation between church and state. They

wrote books and pamphlets. They filled most of the chairs in the

colleges; under clerical guidance, intellectual and spiritual, the

Americans received their formal education. In several of the provinces

the Anglican Church was established by law. In New England the Puritans

were supreme, notwithstanding the efforts of the crown to overbear their

authority. In the Middle colonies, particularly, the multiplication of

sects made the dominance of any single denomination impossible; and in

all of them there was a growing diversity of faith, which promised in

time a separation of church and state and freedom of opinion.



The Church of England



Virginia was the stronghold of the English

system of church and state. The Anglican faith and worship were

prescribed by law, sustained by taxes imposed on all, and favored by the

governor, the provincial councilors, and the richest planters. "The

Established Church," says Lodge, "was one of the appendages of the

Virginia aristocracy. They controlled the vestries and the ministers,

and the parish church stood not infrequently on the estate of the

planter who built and managed it." As in England, Catholics and

Protestant Dissenters were at first laid under heavy disabilities. Only

slowly and on sufferance were they admitted to the province; but when

once they were even covertly tolerated, they pressed steadily in, until,

by the Revolution, they outnumbered the adherents of the established

order.



The Church was also sanctioned by law and supported by taxes in the

Carolinas after 1704, and in Georgia after that colony passed directly

under the crown in 1754--this in spite of the fact that the majority of

the inhabitants were Dissenters. Against the protests of the Catholics

it was likewise established in Maryland. In New York, too,

notwithstanding the resistance of the Dutch, the Established Church was

fostered by the provincial officials, and the Anglicans, embracing about

one-fifteenth of the population, exerted an influence all out of

proportion to their numbers.



Many factors helped to enhance the power of the English Church in the

colonies. It was supported by the British government and the official

class sent out to the provinces. Its bishops and archbishops in England

were appointed by the king, and its faith and service were set forth by

acts of Parliament. Having its seat of power in the English monarchy, it

could hold its clergy and missionaries loyal to the crown and so

counteract to some extent the independent spirit that was growing up in

America. The Church, always a strong bulwark of the state, therefore had

a political role to play here as in England. Able bishops and far-seeing

leaders firmly grasped this fact about the middle of the eighteenth

century and redoubled their efforts to augment the influence of the

Church in provincial affairs. Unhappily for their plans they failed to

calculate in advance the effect of their methods upon dissenting

Protestants, who still cherished memories of bitter religious conflicts

in the mother country.



Puritanism in New England



If the established faith made for imperial

unity, the same could not be said of Puritanism. The Plymouth Pilgrims

had cast off all allegiance to the Anglican Church and established a

separate and independent congregation before they came to America. The

Puritans, essaying at first the task of reformers within the Church,

soon after their arrival in Massachusetts, likewise flung off their yoke

of union with the Anglicans. In each town a separate congregation was

organized, the male members choosing the pastor, the teachers, and the

other officers. They also composed the voters in the town meeting, where

secular matters were determined. The union of church and government was

thus complete, and uniformity of faith and life prescribed by law and

enforced by civil authorities; but this worked for local autonomy

instead of imperial unity.



The clergy became a powerful class, dominant through their learning and

their fearful denunciations of the faithless. They wrote the books for

the people to read--the famous Cotton Mather having three hundred and

eighty-three books and pamphlets to his credit. In cooeperation with the

civil officers they enforced a strict observance of the Puritan

Sabbath--a day of rest that began at six o'clock on Saturday evening and

lasted until sunset on Sunday. All work, all trading, all amusement, and

all worldly conversation were absolutely prohibited during those hours.

A thoughtless maid servant who for some earthly reason smiled in church

was in danger of being banished as a vagabond. Robert Pike, a devout

Puritan, thinking the sun had gone to rest, ventured forth on horseback

one Sunday evening and was luckless enough to have a ray of light strike

him through a rift in the clouds. The next day he was brought into court

and fined for "his ungodly conduct." With persons accused of witchcraft

the Puritans were still more ruthless. When a mania of persecution swept

over Massachusetts in 1692, eighteen people were hanged, one was pressed

to death, many suffered imprisonment, and two died in jail.



Just about this time, however, there came a break in the uniformity of

Puritan rule. The crown and church in England had long looked upon it

with disfavor, and in 1684 King Charles II annulled the old charter of

the Massachusetts Bay Company. A new document issued seven years later

wrested from the Puritans of the colony the right to elect their own

governor and reserved the power of appointment to the king. It also

abolished the rule limiting the suffrage to church members, substituting

for it a simple property qualification. Thus a royal governor and an

official family, certain to be Episcopalian in faith and monarchist in

sympathies, were forced upon Massachusetts; and members of all religious

denominations, if they had the required amount of property, were

permitted to take part in elections. By this act in the name of the

crown, the Puritan monopoly was broken down in Massachusetts, and that

province was brought into line with Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New

Hampshire, where property, not religious faith, was the test for the

suffrage.



Growth of Religious Toleration



Though neither the Anglicans of

Virginia nor the Puritans of Massachusetts believed in toleration for

other denominations, that principle was strictly applied in Rhode

Island. There, under the leadership of Roger Williams, liberty in

matters of conscience was established in the beginning. Maryland, by

granting in 1649 freedom to those who professed to believe in Jesus

Christ, opened its gates to all Christians; and Pennsylvania, true to

the tenets of the Friends, gave freedom of conscience to those "who

confess and acknowledge the one Almighty and Eternal God to be the

creator, upholder, and ruler of the World." By one circumstance or

another, the Middle colonies were thus early characterized by diversity

rather than uniformity of opinion. Dutch Protestants, Huguenots,

Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians, New Lights, Moravians, Lutherans,

Catholics, and other denominations became too strongly intrenched and

too widely scattered to permit any one of them to rule, if it had

desired to do so. There were communities and indeed whole sections where

one or another church prevailed, but in no colony was a legislature

steadily controlled by a single group. Toleration encouraged diversity,

and diversity, in turn, worked for greater toleration.



The government and faith of the dissenting denominations conspired with

economic and political tendencies to draw America away from the English

state. Presbyterians, Quakers, Baptists, and Puritans had no hierarchy

of bishops and archbishops to bind them to the seat of power in London.

Neither did they look to that metropolis for guidance in interpreting

articles of faith. Local self-government in matters ecclesiastical

helped to train them for local self-government in matters political. The

spirit of independence which led Dissenters to revolt in the Old World,

nourished as it was amid favorable circumstances in the New World, made

them all the more zealous in the defense of every right against

authority imposed from without.





SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES



Religion and Local Schools



One of the first cares of each Protestant

denomination was the education of the children in the faith. In this

work the Bible became the center of interest. The English version was

indeed the one book of the people. Farmers, shopkeepers, and artisans,

whose life had once been bounded by the daily routine of labor, found in

the Scriptures not only an inspiration to religious conduct, but also a

book of romance, travel, and history. "Legend and annal," says John

Richard Green, "war-song and psalm, state-roll and biography, the mighty

voices of prophets, the parables of Evangelists, stories of mission

journeys, of perils by sea and among the heathen, philosophic arguments,

apocalyptic visions, all were flung broadcast over minds unoccupied for

the most part by any rival learning.... As a mere literary monument, the

English version of the Bible remains the noblest example of the English

tongue." It was the King James version just from the press that the

Pilgrims brought across the sea with them.



For the authority of the Established Church was substituted the

authority of the Scriptures. The Puritans devised a catechism based upon

their interpretation of the Bible, and, very soon after their arrival in

America, they ordered all parents and masters of servants to be diligent

in seeing that their children and wards were taught to read religious

works and give answers to the religious questions. Massachusetts was

scarcely twenty years old before education of this character was

declared to be compulsory, and provision was made for public schools

where those not taught at home could receive instruction in reading and

writing.



Outside of New England the idea of compulsory education was not regarded

with the same favor; but the whole land was nevertheless dotted with

little schools kept by "dames, itinerant teachers, or local parsons."

Whether we turn to the life of Franklin in the North or Washington in

the South, we read of tiny schoolhouses, where boys, and sometimes

girls, were taught to read and write. Where there were no schools,

fathers and mothers of the better kind gave their children the rudiments

of learning. Though illiteracy was widespread, there is evidence to show

that the diffusion of knowledge among the masses was making steady

progress all through the eighteenth century.



Religion and Higher Learning



Religious motives entered into the

establishment of colleges as well as local schools. Harvard, founded in

1636, and Yale, opened in 1718, were intended primarily to train

"learned and godly ministers" for the Puritan churches of New England.

To the far North, Dartmouth, chartered in 1769, was designed first as a

mission to the Indians and then as a college for the sons of New England

farmers preparing to preach, teach, or practice law. The College of New

Jersey, organized in 1746 and removed to Princeton eleven years later,

was sustained by the Presbyterians. Two colleges looked to the

Established Church as their source of inspiration and support: William

and Mary, founded in Virginia in 1693, and King's College, now Columbia

University, chartered by King George II in 1754, on an appeal from the

New York Anglicans, alarmed at the growth of religious dissent and the

"republican tendencies" of the age. Two colleges revealed a drift away

from sectarianism. Brown, established in Rhode Island in 1764, and the

Philadelphia Academy, forerunner of the University of Pennsylvania,

organized by Benjamin Franklin, reflected the spirit of toleration by

giving representation on the board of trustees to several religious

sects. It was Franklin's idea that his college should prepare young men

to serve in public office as leaders of the people and ornaments to

their country.



Self-education in America



Important as were these institutions of

learning, higher education was by no means confined within their walls.

Many well-to-do families sent their sons to Oxford or Cambridge in

England. Private tutoring in the home was common. In still more families

there were intelligent children who grew up in the great colonial school

of adversity and who trained themselves until, in every contest of mind

and wit, they could vie with the sons of Harvard or William and Mary or

any other college. Such, for example, was Benjamin Franklin, whose

charming autobiography, in addition to being an American classic, is a

fine record of self-education. His formal training in the classroom was

limited to a few years at a local school in Boston; but his

self-education continued throughout his life. He early manifested a zeal

for reading, and devoured, he tells us, his father's dry library on

theology, Bunyan's works, Defoe's writings, Plutarch's Lives, Locke's

On the Human Understanding, and innumerable volumes dealing with

secular subjects. His literary style, perhaps the best of his time,

Franklin acquired by the diligent and repeated analysis of the

Spectator. In a life crowded with labors, he found time to read widely

in natural science and to win single-handed recognition at the hands of

European savants for his discoveries in electricity. By his own efforts

he "attained an acquaintance" with Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish,

thus unconsciously preparing himself for the day when he was to speak

for all America at the court of the king of France.



Lesser lights than Franklin, educated by the same process, were found

all over colonial America. From this fruitful source of native ability,

self-educated, the American cause drew great strength in the trials of

the Revolution.





THE COLONIAL PRESS



The Rise of the Newspaper



The evolution of American democracy into a

government by public opinion, enlightened by the open discussion of

political questions, was in no small measure aided by a free press. That

too, like education, was a matter of slow growth. A printing press was

brought to Massachusetts in 1639, but it was put in charge of an

official censor and limited to the publication of religious works. Forty

years elapsed before the first newspaper appeared, bearing the curious

title, Public Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestic, and it had not

been running very long before the government of Massachusetts suppressed

it for discussing a political question.



Publishing, indeed, seemed to be a precarious business; but in 1704

there came a second venture in journalism, The Boston News-Letter,

which proved to be a more lasting enterprise because it refrained from

criticizing the authorities. Still the public interest languished. When

Franklin's brother, James, began to issue his New England Courant

about 1720, his friends sought to dissuade him, saying that one

newspaper was enough for America. Nevertheless he continued it; and his

confidence in the future was rewarded. In nearly every colony a gazette

or chronicle appeared within the next thirty years or more. Benjamin

Franklin was able to record in 1771 that America had twenty-five

newspapers. Boston led with five. Philadelphia had three: two in English

and one in German.



Censorship and Restraints on the Press



The idea of printing,

unlicensed by the government and uncontrolled by the church, was,

however, slow in taking form. The founders of the American colonies had

never known what it was to have the free and open publication of books,

pamphlets, broadsides, and newspapers. When the art of printing was

first discovered, the control of publishing was vested in clerical

authorities. After the establishment of the State Church in England in

the reign of Elizabeth, censorship of the press became a part of royal

prerogative. Printing was restricted to Oxford, Cambridge, and London;

and no one could publish anything without previous approval of the

official censor. When the Puritans were in power, the popular party,

with a zeal which rivaled that of the crown, sought, in turn, to silence

royalist and clerical writers by a vigorous censorship. After the

restoration of the monarchy, control of the press was once more placed

in royal hands, where it remained until 1695, when Parliament, by

failing to renew the licensing act, did away entirely with the official

censorship. By that time political parties were so powerful and so

active and printing presses were so numerous that official review of all

published matter became a sheer impossibility.



In America, likewise, some troublesome questions arose in connection

with freedom of the press. The Puritans of Massachusetts were no less

anxious than King Charles or the Archbishop of London to shut out from

the prying eyes of the people all literature "not mete for them to

read"; and so they established a system of official licensing for

presses, which lasted until 1755. In the other colonies where there was

more diversity of opinion and publishers could set up in business with

impunity, they were nevertheless constantly liable to arrest for

printing anything displeasing to the colonial governments. In 1721 the

editor of the Mercury in Philadelphia was called before the

proprietary council and ordered to apologize for a political article,

and for a later offense of a similar character he was thrown into jail.

A still more famous case was that of Peter Zenger, a New York publisher,

who was arrested in 1735 for criticising the administration. Lawyers who

ventured to defend the unlucky editor were deprived of their licenses to

practice, and it became necessary to bring an attorney all the way from

Philadelphia. By this time the tension of feeling was high, and the

approbation of the public was forthcoming when the lawyer for the

defense exclaimed to the jury that the very cause of liberty itself, not

that of the poor printer, was on trial! The verdict for Zenger, when it

finally came, was the signal for an outburst of popular rejoicing.

Already the people of King George's province knew how precious a thing

is the freedom of the press.



Thanks to the schools, few and scattered as they were, and to the

vigilance of parents, a very large portion, perhaps nearly one-half, of

the colonists could read. Through the newspapers, pamphlets, and

almanacs that streamed from the types, the people could follow the

course of public events and grasp the significance of political

arguments. An American opinion was in the process of making--an

independent opinion nourished by the press and enriched by discussions

around the fireside and at the taverns. When the day of resistance to

British rule came, government by opinion was at hand. For every person

who could hear the voice of Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, there were a

thousand who could see their appeals on the printed page. Men who had

spelled out their letters while poring over Franklin's Poor Richard's

Almanac lived to read Thomas Paine's thrilling call to arms.





THE EVOLUTION IN POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS



Two very distinct lines of development appeared in colonial politics.

The one, exalting royal rights and aristocratic privileges, was the

drift toward provincial government through royal officers appointed in

England. The other, leading toward democracy and self-government, was

the growth in the power of the popular legislative assembly. Each

movement gave impetus to the other, with increasing force during the

passing years, until at last the final collision between the two ideals

of government came in the war of independence.



The Royal Provinces



Of the thirteen English colonies eight were

royal provinces in 1776, with governors appointed by the king. Virginia

passed under the direct rule of the crown in 1624, when the charter of

the London Company was annulled. The Massachusetts Bay corporation lost

its charter in 1684, and the new instrument granted seven years later

stripped the colonists of the right to choose their chief executive. In

the early decades of the eighteenth century both the Carolinas were

given the provincial instead of the proprietary form. New Hampshire,

severed from Massachusetts in 1679, and Georgia, surrendered by the

trustees in 1752, went into the hands of the crown. New York,

transferred to the Duke of York on its capture from the Dutch in 1664,

became a province when he took the title of James II in 1685. New

Jersey, after remaining for nearly forty years under proprietors, was

brought directly under the king in 1702. Maryland, Pennsylvania, and

Delaware, although they retained their proprietary character until the

Revolution, were in some respects like the royal colonies, for their

governors were as independent of popular choice as were the appointees

of King George. Only two colonies, Rhode Island and Connecticut,

retained full self-government on the eve of the Revolution. They alone

had governors and legislatures entirely of their own choosing.



The chief officer of the royal province was the governor, who enjoyed

high and important powers which he naturally sought to augment at every

turn. He enforced the laws and, usually with the consent of a council,

appointed the civil and military officers. He granted pardons and

reprieves; he was head of the highest court; he was commander-in-chief

of the militia; he levied troops for defense and enforced martial law in

time of invasion, war, and rebellion. In all the provinces, except

Massachusetts, he named the councilors who composed the upper house of

the legislature and was likely to choose those who favored his claims.

He summoned, adjourned, and dissolved the popular assembly, or the lower

house; he laid before it the projects of law desired by the crown; and

he vetoed measures which he thought objectionable. Here were in America

all the elements of royal prerogative against which Hampden had

protested and Cromwell had battled in England.






The colonial governors were generally surrounded by a body of

office-seekers and hunters for land grants. Some of them were noblemen

of broken estates who had come to America to improve their fortunes. The

pretensions of this circle grated on colonial nerves, and privileges

granted to them, often at the expense of colonists, did much to deepen

popular antipathy to the British government. Favors extended to

adherents of the Established Church displeased Dissenters. The

reappearance of this formidable union of church and state, from which

they had fled, stirred anew the ancient wrath against that combination.



The Colonial Assembly



Coincident with the drift toward

administration through royal governors was the second and opposite

tendency, namely, a steady growth in the practice of self-government.

The voters of England had long been accustomed to share in taxation and

law-making through representatives in Parliament, and the idea was early

introduced in America. Virginia was only twelve years old (1619) when

its first representative assembly appeared. As the towns of

Massachusetts multiplied and it became impossible for all the members of

the corporation to meet at one place, the representative idea was

adopted, in 1633. The river towns of Connecticut formed a representative

system under their "Fundamental Orders" of 1639, and the entire colony

was given a royal charter in 1662. Generosity, as well as practical

considerations, induced such proprietors as Lord Baltimore and William

Penn to invite their colonists to share in the government as soon as any

considerable settlements were made. Thus by one process or another every

one of the colonies secured a popular assembly.



It is true that in the provision for popular elections, the suffrage was

finally restricted to property owners or taxpayers, with a leaning

toward the freehold qualification. In Virginia, the rural voter had to

be a freeholder owning at least fifty acres of land, if there was no

house on it, or twenty-five acres with a house twenty-five feet square.

In Massachusetts, the voter for member of the assembly under the charter

of 1691 had to be a freeholder of an estate worth forty shillings a year

at least or of other property to the value of forty pounds sterling. In

Pennsylvania, the suffrage was granted to freeholders owning fifty acres

or more of land well seated, twelve acres cleared, and to other persons

worth at least fifty pounds in lawful money.



Restrictions like these undoubtedly excluded from the suffrage a very

considerable number of men, particularly the mechanics and artisans of

the towns, who were by no means content with their position.

Nevertheless, it was relatively easy for any man to acquire a small

freehold, so cheap and abundant was land; and in fact a large proportion

of the colonists were land owners. Thus the assemblies, in spite of the

limited suffrage, acquired a democratic tone.



The popular character of the assemblies increased as they became engaged

in battles with the royal and proprietary governors. When called upon by

the executive to make provision for the support of the administration,

the legislature took advantage of the opportunity to make terms in the

interest of the taxpayers. It made annual, not permanent, grants of

money to pay official salaries and then insisted upon electing a

treasurer to dole it out. Thus the colonists learned some of the

mysteries of public finance, as well as the management of rapacious

officials. The legislature also used its power over money grants to

force the governor to sign bills which he would otherwise have vetoed.



Contests between Legislatures and Governors



As may be imagined, many

and bitter were the contests between the royal and proprietary governors

and the colonial assemblies. Franklin relates an amusing story of how

the Pennsylvania assembly held in one hand a bill for the executive to

sign and, in the other hand, the money to pay his salary. Then, with sly

humor, Franklin adds: "Do not, my courteous reader, take pet at our

proprietary constitution for these our bargain and sale proceedings in

legislation. It is a happy country where justice and what was your own

before can be had for ready money. It is another addition to the value

of money and of course another spur to industry. Every land is not so

blessed."



It must not be thought, however, that every governor got off as easily

as Franklin's tale implies. On the contrary, the legislatures, like

Caesar, fed upon meat that made them great and steadily encroached upon

executive prerogatives as they tried out and found their strength. If

we may believe contemporary laments, the power of the crown in America

was diminishing when it was struck down altogether. In New York, the

friends of the governor complained in 1747 that "the inhabitants of

plantations are generally educated in republican principles; upon

republican principles all is conducted. Little more than a shadow of

royal authority remains in the Northern colonies." "Here," echoed the

governor of South Carolina, the following year, "levelling principles

prevail; the frame of the civil government is unhinged; a governor, if

he would be idolized, must betray his trust; the people have got their

whole administration in their hands; the election of the members of the

assembly is by ballot; not civil posts only, but all ecclesiastical

preferments, are in the disposal or election of the people."



Though baffled by the "levelling principles" of the colonial assemblies,

the governors did not give up the case as hopeless. Instead they evolved

a system of policy and action which they thought could bring the

obstinate provincials to terms. That system, traceable in their letters

to the government in London, consisted of three parts: (1) the royal

officers in the colonies were to be made independent of the legislatures

by taxes imposed by acts of Parliament; (2) a British standing army was

to be maintained in America; (3) the remaining colonial charters were to

be revoked and government by direct royal authority was to be enlarged.



Such a system seemed plausible enough to King George III and to many

ministers of the crown in London. With governors, courts, and an army

independent of the colonists, they imagined it would be easy to carry

out both royal orders and acts of Parliament. This reasoning seemed both

practical and logical. Nor was it founded on theory, for it came fresh

from the governors themselves. It was wanting in one respect only. It

failed to take account of the fact that the American people were growing

strong in the practice of self-government and could dispense with the

tutelage of the British ministry, no matter how excellent it might be or

how benevolent its intentions.