America in 1776

Before completing our historical review of the colonial period of America, a description of the general condition of the colonies at the close of this era will be of interest, as indicative of the work in nation-making which had been achieved within the less than two centuries since the settlement of the British colonies. We select from Harper & Brothers' "First Century of the Republic" some passages from Eugene Lawrence's ably-written paper on "Colonial Progress."

FIFTY-ONE doubtful and divided men, of infinite variety in opinions, education, and character, met in the hot days of July, 1776, in that plain room at Philadelphia where was decided the chief event of modern history, to found a republic. They were about to reverse all the inculcations of recent experience, and to enter at once upon a new era of uncertainty. From all the models of the past they could borrow little, and they overleaped barriers that had affrighted all former legislators. Not Cromwell and Hampden, not the plebeians of Rome and the Demos of Athens, not the Republicans of Venice nor the Calvinists of Holland and Geneva, had ventured upon that tremendous stride in human progress that would alone satisfy the reformers of America. Educated in the strict conceptions of rank and caste which even Massachusetts had cultivated, and Virginia carried to a ludicrous extreme, they threw aside the artificial distinction forever, and declared all men equal. .

At the founding of the republic the colonists were accustomed to boast that their territory extended fifteen hundred miles in length, and was already the seat of a powerful nation. But of this vast expanse the larger part even along the sea-coast was still an uninhabited wilderness. Although more than a century and a half had passed since the first settlements in Massachusetts and Virginia, only a thin line of insignificant towns and villages reached from Maine to Georgia. In the century since the Declaration of Independence a whole continent has been seamed with railroads and filled with people; but the slow growth of the preceding century had scarcely disturbed the reign of the savage on his native plains. On the coast the province of Maine possessed only a few towns, and an almost unbroken solitude spread from Portland to the St. Lawrence. A few hardy settlers were just founding a State among the Green Mountains destined to be the home of a spotless freedom. In New York, still inferior to several of its fellow-colonies in population, the cultivated portions were confined to the bay and shores of the Hudson. The rich fields of the Genesee Valley and the Mohawk were famous already, but the savages had checked the course of settlement. . Pennsylvania, a frontier State, comparatively populous and wealthy, protected New Jersey and Delaware from their assaults; but Pittsburg was still only a military post, and the larger part of the population of the colony was gathered in the neighborhood of the capital. Woods, mountains, and morasses filled up that fair region where now the immense wealth of coal and iron has produced the Birmingham of America.

The Southern colonies had grown with more rapidity in population and wealth than New York and Pennsylvania. Virginia and the Carolinas had extended their settlements westward far into the interior. Some emigrants had even wandered to western Tennessee. Daniel Boone had led the way to Kentucky. A few English or Americans had colonized Natchez, on the Mississippi. But the settlers in Kentucky and Tennessee lived with rifle in hand, seldom safe from the attacks of the natives, and were to form in the war of independence that admirable corps of riflemen and sharp-shooters who were noted for their courage and skill from the siege of Boston to the fall of Cornwallis. The Virginians were settled in the Tennessee mountains long before the people of New York-had ventured to build a village on the shores of Lake Erie or the Pennsylvanians crossed the Alleghanies. But still even Virginia is represented to us about this period as in great part a wilderness. . In the North the line of cultivated country must be drawn along the shores of the Hudson River, omitting the dispersed settlements in two or three inland districts. The Delaware and a distance of perhaps fifty miles to the westward included all the wealth and population of Pennsylvania. The Alleghanies infolded the civilized portions of Virginia, and North and South Carolina cannot be said to have reached beyond their mountains. So slowly had the people of North America made their way from the sea-coast. .

Of the inland country very little was known, while the region beyond the Mississippi was "a land of fable, where countless hosts of savages were believed to rule over endless plains and to engage in ceaseless battles." Long afterwards it was supposed that the waters of the Missouri might extend to the Pacific.