CHAPTER II.

Early colonial Settlements in North America.-Character of the People very nearly identical. — Similitude of Customs, Language, Religion, Laws, and Mode of Life.-No Conflict of Sentiment then between the Colonists of the North and South in regard to African Slavery.—Testimony of Mr. Greeley on this Point.-Kindly social and commercial Intercourse between the Colonists North and South. Their united Defense of the infant American Settlements against Indian Violence and the hostile French.-Early Suggestion of a confederate Union between all the British Colonies in North America.-Strange Interpretation of a Portion of the Language of the Declaration of Independence. -Mr, Jefferson's important Statement as to the Action of the Confederate Congress in regard to Slavery at the Time the Declaration was adopted. Mr. Webster's important Recital of historic Facts connected with this Subject in his 7th of March Speech.

THOSE who are best acquainted with the early history of our forefathers upon the American Continent will be most inclined to concur in the opinion that, though the various colonial settlements effected by them were made under circumstances which upon a superficial view might be regarded as materially different, and though the course of historic events in these settlements was not uniformly similar, yet that, in regard to all those influences which were to impart a distinctive character to infant communities, there were no such radical diversities as, to a philosophic mind, would have been held worthy, in the least degree, of grave and thoughtful consideration. In all the colonies the same language predominated. In all of them the same religion prevailed, and in most of them the same

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form of that religion. The same literature was in all of them the source of intellectual cultivation and of refinement in manners. In all of them it was necessary to employ the same means of warding off the violence of the savage tribes who encompassed them; of felling and displacing the great trees which overshadowed the surface of the wilderness in which their primeval huts were established, and of reducing the virgin soil to a state fitted for profitable culture. The growth of the various colonies, whether by natural increase or by immigration from abroad, was for many years nearly the same. The social usages and customs which sprang up in the different settlements were, from the operation of similar causes, very nearly identical. Even in their relations with the mother country the same resemblances were apparent; in all of them the imperial power of the British government was, in somewhat varying forms, very distinctly acknowledged, and enforced, also, with a marked uniformity. At different periods while the colonial condition continued, the same collisions with the authority of the parent country occurred, and with substantially similar results. Even in relation to a matter which some assert to have supplied grounds for an essential discrimina tion among the residents of the different colonies-to wit, the introduction of slaves from Africa, it will be found, on examination, that many of those who have most freely written and spoken upon this subject have been guided far more by fanciful conjectures, put in action by an eager desire of sectional ascendency, than by a proper and becoming regard for the deductions of sober historic truth. Without dwelling on a subject the prominent topics con

nected with which have been already thoroughly exhausted by innumerable disputants, most of whom are too furious to be fair, and too much interested to be honest, I shall content myself with quoting a pregnant paragraph from a work of great respectability, which has recently issued from the press, and with the author of which I shall be always glad to agree when I shall be able to do so without disparagement to my own conscientious convictions. Mr. Greeley, in "The American Conflict," expresses himself thus: "The austere morality and democratic spirit of the Puritans ought to have kept their skirts clear from the stain of human bondage. But, beneath all their fierce antagonism, there was a certain kinship between the disciples of Calvin and those of Loyola. Each were ready to suffer and die for God's truth as they understood it, and neither cherished any appreciable sympathy or consideration for those they esteemed God's enemies, in which category the savages of America and the heathen negroes of Africa were so unlucky as to be found. The Puritan pioneers of New England were early involved in desperate life or death struggles with their aboriginal neighbors, in whom they failed to discover those poetic and fascinating traits which irradiate them in the novels of Cooper and the poems of Longfellow. Their experience of Indian ferocity and treachery, acting upon their theologic convictions, led them early and readily to the belief that these savages, and, by logical inference, all savages, were children of the devil, to be subjugated, if not extirpated, as the Philistine inhabitants of Canaan had been by the Israelites under Joshua. Indian slavery, sometimes forbidden by law, but usually tolerated,

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if not entirely approved by public opinion, was among the early usages of New England; and from this to negro slavery-the slavery of any variety of pagan barbarisms-was an easy transition.

That the slaves in the mainly confined to the

Eastern colonies were few, and sea-ports, does not disprove this statement. The harsh climate, the rocky soil, the rugged topography of New England, presented formidable, though not impassable barriers to slaveholding. Her narrow patches of arable soil, hemmed in between bogs and naked blocks of granite, were poorly adapted to cultivation by slaves. The labor of the hands without the brain, of muscle divorced from intelligence, would procure but a scanty livelihood on those bleak hills. He who was compelled for a subsistence to be by turns farmer, mechanic, lumberman, navigator, and fisherman, might possibly support one slave, but would be utterly ruined by half a dozen. Slaveholding in the Northern States was rather coveted as a social distinction, a badge of aristocracy and wealth, than resorted to with any idea of profit or pecuniary advantage."

Under such circumstances as have been stated, it is certainly not at all surprising that constant friendly intercourse, both social and commercial, was cultivated between the various American colonies, whether in the northern or southern divisions of the continent; that they should have cordially aided each other in repulsion of Indian hostilities; that, under the advice and protection of the parent country, they should have sturdily cooperated in the defense of all colonial territory against invasions from abroad, and in even attempting the con

quest of adjoining territory belonging to France, in what is now known as Canada, at the period when the kings of France and of Great Britain were warring for exclusive dominion on this continent. Nor should we be astonished, either, to find that, long before the Declaration of American Independence in the year 1776, there should have been more than one attempt to bring about a confederation of the American colonies under the protection of the British crown.

It is sufficiently apparent, one would think, that, up to the era of our deliverance from British rule, no fancied heterogeneousness of institutions, or fixed repugnances of opinion or sentiment, seriously divided those whose posterity were destined soon to form a still closer compact of union, and, by the common dangers and sufferings of a long and sanguinary war, to become endeared to each other by ties of the most solid and enduring character. Such is the unconquerable truth of history, let him deny it who may.

It has been contended by some, of late, that the Declaration of Independence itself asserted a fundamental principle of universal application even at the time of its adoption, which was understood by our forefathers as drawing a serious line of distinction between those citizens of the newly-formed American Union who were then friendly to the continued existence of African slavery, and those who were unfriendly to it; and as the greater part of the former have been constantly located in the states of the South, it has been sagely inferred that a permanent conflict of sentiment between slaveholders and non-slaveholders was thus recognized from the beginning, and