DURING the fifty years after Penn began his colony only two new English provinces were permanently organized in North America; these were Nova Scotia, conquered from the French in 1710, and Georgia, which was carved out of South Carolina in 1732. Placed on the northern and southern frontiers of the British dominions, these two colonies had a considerable political importance; but in point of population both remained insignificant throughout the provincial era. The story of colonial expansion during this period is, therefore, chiefly concerned with the development of the older colonies.

     Between 1690 and 1740 the population of the continental colonies increased from something over two hundred thousand to about one million. There was substantial growth in every colony, but the most decided increase came in the middle group. By about the middle of the eighteenth century Pennsylvania outstripped all the older colonies except

Virginia and Massachusetts, and in white population she was nearly equal to Virginia.¹

     The important natural increase of population was reinforced in most colonies by a large immigration, partly from England but more largely from Scotland, Ireland, and the continent of Europe. Comparatively few of these non-English settlers came to New England, though there were some French Huguenots and Scotch-Irish. With something of the old exclusive spirit, the later Puritans scrutinized jealously immigrants of alien faith and race, and thus, to the close of the colonial era, New England remained distinctly Puritan and English.²

     In New York the conditions seemed more favorable for growth by immigration. Its population at the beginning of the eighteenth century was more distinctly cosmopolitan than that of any other colony. The majority of its people were of Dutch descent, though in New York City the Dutch language and the Dutch church lost ground during the next half-century, and the young people came to “speak principally English and go only to the English church.” In other counties, like Albany, the Dutch language predominated, and it was difficult to find men sufficiently acquainted with English to serve as jurors. A community so varied in its racial and religious elements was apparently

Map Facing This Page: Part of North America, Simplified from Popple's Map (1733)

well adapted to attract the foreign immigrant.¹

     This opportunity was lost, however, largely because of the mistaken policy of the provincial authorities. The land legislation of New York was less liberal than that of other colonies, particularly Pennsylvania. The unfortunate experience of some Palatinate Germans who settled in New York during Queen Anne’s reign discouraged others of that nationality from coming to New York, and placed the province at a serious disadvantage in the competition with her neighbors to the south.²

     During the eighteenth century Pennsylvania was especially attractive to non-English immigrants from Europe. She offered land and citizenship on easy terms, and she adhered more consistently than any other colony to the principles of religious freedom. The result was a volume of immigration which profoundly influenced the subsequent history of the colony and the state.

     The first to come in considerable numbers were the Germans. Some of this nationality were among the earliest settlers of Pennsylvania, but their numbers were then comparatively small. The Germans first became important during the second decade of the eighteenth century, partly because of peculiar conditions in the mother-country, partly

through the action of the British government, and partly because of the liberal policy of the proprietary government.

     The treaties of Westphalia in 1648 failed to secure either the domestic or the international peace of the disintegrating German empire, and thousands of people belonging to various Protestant sects were led to seek refuge from persecution under a foreign flag. The great international wars of Louis XIV.’s reign also left their mark upon the unfortunate border regions of western Germany, especially in the Palatinate, which suffered severely from the French armies.

     To these persecuted Protestants the government of Queen Anne and her successors offered protection and religious freedom under the English flag, and the result was an immense immigration to England and her colonies. For their benefit Parliament enacted its first general naturalization law, which, though repealed three years later, gave to large numbers of them the rights of English subjects. A few Palatines were sent to Ireland, but the great majority found their way to America. In 1709 the Board of Trade sent a considerable colony of them to New York, where they were expected to devote their energies largely to the production of naval stores. They were dissatisfied, however, with the plans made for them, and after some serious disagreements with the provincial government, a considerable number of them left New

York for Pennsylvania. Others came directly from Europe, and about the same time a considerable body of Swiss Mennonites came into the colony.¹

     About 1727 the German and Swiss immigration began to assume large proportions, sometimes amounting to several thousand new arrivals in a single year. These immigrants included adherents of various Protestant sects: the Lutherans, the German Reformed, the Mennonites, the Dunkards, and finally the Moravians, perhaps the most attractive representatives of eighteenth-century Pietism.

     This strong infusion of alien influences was looked upon with some misgiving, and Penn’s secretary, Logan, suggested the danger of the province being transformed into a German colony. It was pointed out that the new-comers frequently squatted on their lands without making regular purchases from the proprietary agents, and that “being ignorant of our language and laws, and settling in a body together,” they formed “a distinct people from his Majesty’s subjects.” A German newspaper was founded at Germantown as early as 1739, and in 1743 another was issued in Philadelphia. In time the Germans became an important factor in colonial politics, uniting with the Quakers to form a conservative peace party in opposition to those

who were trying to establish an efficient military system.

     Some efforts were made to check the tide of immigration, or at least to regulate it. In 1727 the Pennsylvania council ordered masters of vessels to furnish lists of their passengers, and immigrants were required to declare their allegiance to the king and the proprietor. In 1729 a duty was imposed on the importation of foreigners and Irish servants. The act was repealed almost immediately, but the feeling which prompted the measure evidently persisted. The proprietary governors, however, usually desired to encourage immigration, and in 1755 a bill restricting it was defeated by the governor’s veto.¹

     More aggressive politically than the Germans were the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. This immigration first assumed importance a few years after the close of Queen Anne’s War, but it developed rapidly during the next two decades. The Scotch-Irish, like the Germans, were not regarded with unmixed satisfaction. During the early years they received liberal terms and were encouraged to form barrier settlements on the frontier. Logan found them as little disposed to pay for their land as some of the Germans had been; they were quoted as arguing that it was “against the laws of God and

nature that so much land should be idle while so many Christians wanted it to labour on, and to raise their bread.” They were also criticised for their tendency to embroil themselves with the Indians, and this aggressive and warlike spirit made them particularly objectionable to the Quakers, who tried to restrict their political influence by refusing them proportionate representation in the assembly.¹

     Many Germans and Scotch-Irish also found their way into New Jersey. One important German settlement in that colony was that of New Brunswick, which by 1750 had two German churches. The strength of the Scotch-Irish element in that colony may be seen in the rapid extension of the Presbyterian church.²

     This immigration impressed more strongly than ever upon the middle colonies that complexity in race and religion which had been characteristic of them from the first. Nowhere did this complexity find clearer expression than in the colonial churches. In New York City in the middle of the eighteenth century there were English, Dutch, French, German, and Jewish places of worship, besides a Presbyterian church which was affiliated with the established church of Scotland. Of twelve churches in Philadelphia, noted by Kalm during his stay there in 1749, at least seven represented non-English

elements in the life of the colony, including Swedish and German Lutherans, German Calvinists, a Moravian church where services were conducted both in English and German, and the “great house” of the Roman Catholics. Outside of Philadelphia there were several German communities, made up almost if not quite exclusively of members of a single religious body, as in the case of the German Baptists at Ephrata and the Moravians at Bethlehem.¹

     During the eighteenth century, the southern colonies also sought to encourage immigration, sometimes making religious concessions for this purpose. The French Huguenot immigration, which began some years before the revolution of 1689, continued for several years afterwards, and in Virginia and South Carolina these settlers were numerous enough to form several churches. In spite of their Calvinistic traditions they maintained, as a rule, friendly relations with the established Anglican church, and often united with it. Other Protestant settlers in South Carolina were not so friendly to these refugees, but the early antagonism gradually passed away.²

     Aside from the French Huguenots, the non-English immigration into the south was comparatively unimportant until the second quarter of the eighteenth century. Then the Scotch-Irish and the

Germans began to appear in force in the up-country of Virginia and especially in the Great Valley. In order to develop these settlements on the frontier, the royal government was willing to concede religious toleration. Under the leadership of their pioneer ministers, the Great Valley became, as it is to-day, a stronghold of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, standing out in marked contrast, sometimes in sharp antagonism, with the Anglican influence of the tide-water.¹

     In South Carolina the overthrow of the proprietary government was followed by vigorous efforts to stimulate immigration. A favorite plan at this period was that of laying out new townships and offering them to communities or groups of settlers. In this way the Scotch-Irish settlement of Williamsburg was formed, with a special guarantee of freedom of worship. Other similar communities were founded by Swiss, German, and Welsh settlers. Here, as in Pennsylvania, the new-comers tended to form on the frontiers communities with sympathies and interests quite different from those of the seaboard. It was not, however, until the period of the last French war that the great Scotch-Irish immigration into the Carolinas took place; and not until then did the mutual jealousy and antagonism of tide-water and back-country become a really important factor in their provincial politics.²

     A large proportion of the early American immigrants

belonged to the servant class. The best of them were the “redemptioners,” who sold their services for fixed terms of years in return for their passage money. Both in Pennsylvania and Maryland these white servants formed an important part of the industrial system; and many of them became, after their term of service, prosperous land-owners and useful citizens.

     A much less desirable kind of servants were the convicts. Under a parliamentary statute of 1717 certain classes of criminals might at the discretion of the court be transported to the colonies for a term of not less than seven years.¹ It has been estimated that some fifty thousand convicts were shipped from Great Britain and Ireland during the remainder of the colonial period. Maryland has the distinction of receiving more of them than any other single colony, and the convicts there formed the larger portion of the servant class. Several of the colonies attempted to check this introduction of servants, especially that of the Irish Catholics and the convicts. Such restrictive measures were, however, discouraged by the home government and frequently disallowed.²

     No other form of immigration during this period had so serious a meaning for the future of the

American people as that of the negro slaves. At the close of the seventeenth century the slaves constituted only a small minority of the population in all of the colonies except South Carolina. During the next fifty years this condition was radically changed through the development of the African slave-trade. The Royal African Company, which was chartered in 1672, carried on an increasing trade with monopoly privileges until, in 1698, Parliament admitted private merchants to a share in it. In 1713 the Asiento contract with Spain gave England a larger interest in this branch of commerce, which had the special favor of the crown. Between 1698 and 1707 some twenty-five thousand slaves were probably brought annually from Africa to America, and the number was increased after the Asiento privilege had been secured. The proportion which went to the continental colonies also increased. By the middle of the eighteenth century, there were about three hundred thousand slaves in British North America, so that they had increased at least twice as rapidly as the white population.¹

     This negro population was very unequally distributed. On the western shore of Narragansett Bay there was a small slave-holding aristocracy which had an important influence in the social and political life of Rhode Island; but in New England, generally, the negro population was insignificant. Of the

middle colonies, New York had the largest proportion of slaves, from one-sixth to one-seventh of the total population. There was even then a decided transition in this respect on passing southward from Pennsylvania into Maryland, where perhaps one - fourth of the people were slaves. In Virginia the proportion was probably about two-fifths, and in some Virginia counties, as well as in South Carolina, the negroes outnumbered the whites.¹

     As the slaves increased, their legal status was more carefully defined by legislation, and they were more sharply differentiated from the white servants. Stringent laws were enacted to prevent the intermixture of the races; and a Virginia statute classed negroes, for certain purposes, as real estate. The power of the master over his slave, though not absolute, was very great, especially in the south; in Virginia, for instance, manslaughter, as distinguished from wilful murder, was not punishable if committed by a master upon his slave. The testimony of a negro could not be accepted as evidence except against those of his own race, and special courts were provided for the trial of his more serious offences, “without the solemnitie of a jury.”²

     Opinions differed then, as now, regarding the actual grievances of the negro. Burnaby, who visited Virginia in 1759, thought slaves were very harshly treated; while Byrd, a somewhat fair-minded slave-owner, thought they were not worked so hard as the poorer people in other countries, and that cruelty was exceptional. The house-servants of the wealthy planters were doubtless well treated and even trained to a certain kind of refinement and dignity of manner. The conditions of the half-savage field-laborers were quite different, and the constant dread of slave insurrections showed how largely the servile relation depended upon the superior force and discipline of the dominant whites.¹

     In the north, the most familiar examples of real or imaginary slave insurrections are the so-called “negro plots” of 1712 and 1741 in New York, in both of which the danger was grossly exaggerated. Both of these “plots” were followed by severe measures of repression; and in the panic of 1741, on rather doubtful evidence, fourteen negroes were burned at the stake and eighteen were hanged. In the southern colonies the large negro population made the danger much more real, and the proximity of hostile Spaniards and Indians was an additional source of embarrassment in South Carolina. The most important actual outbreak took place in South Carolina

in 1739; but the prevalent feeling is shown by the elaborate patrol system of the province.¹

     The evils of the system were recognized even in the south. William Byrd expressed his sympathy with the efforts of the Georgia trustees to prohibit slavery in their new colony, emphasizing the danger of insurrections and the depressing influence of slave-labor upon the whites. The southern colonies tried to protect themselves from an excessive slave population by a number of acts imposing prohibitory or retaliatory duties; but these acts were frequently disallowed by the crown.²

     Some efforts were made to instruct and Christianize the slaves. Eliza Lucas, of South Carolina, who afterwards married Chief-Justice Pinckney, mentions “a parcel of little Negroes whom I have undertaken to teach to read”;³ and considerable efforts were also made to Christianize the negroes. The theory that baptism might work emancipation caused some anxiety at first; but it was expressly denied by provincial statutes and in a formal declaration by the bishop of London. Both in the northern and the southern colonies negroes became members of churches, though their inferior status

was marked by their being confined to a special corner or gallery.¹

     The ethical aspect of slavery was rarely considered. Though comparatively few slaves were held in New England, this was largely the result of economic considerations, and some of the most prominent and respected merchants of Boston and Newport were deeply involved in the slave-trade. Here and there, however, the moral objection found expression.

     In 1688 the Germantown Quakers protested against slave-holding by Friends as contrary to the golden rule and a scandal to the society; and during the next half-century there were similar protests. Nevertheless, many of the Quakers continued to hold slaves, and no positive action was taken against slavery by the “Yearly Meeting” of the society until 1758. Perhaps the finest expression of antislavery feeling during this period was judge Sewall’s Selling of Joseph. Without neglecting the economic argument against slavery, he lays the emphasis upon religious and ethical considerations: “These Ethiopians, as black as they are; seeing they are the Sons and Daughters of the First Adam, the Brethren and Sisters of the Last Adam and the Offspring of God; They ought to be treated with a Respect agreeable.”²

     As late as 1750 the south had scarcely any real urban centres. In Maryland the seat of government, Annapolis, was hardly more than a village; and Baltimore had hardly a hundred inhabitants. In Virginia, Williamsburg had been made the capital and had some public buildings which attracted attention, but its permanent inhabitants were few. Richmond was not laid out as a town until about the close of this period. Norfolk, at the entrance of Chesapeake Bay, was described by William Byrd in 1728 as having “most the ayr of a Town of any in Virginia.” The principal places of North Carolina were mere country villages. South Carolina, alone of all the southern colonies, had a real urban centre in Charleston, which, more than any other town in America, concentrated in itself the economic, social, and political activity of the colony to which it belonged.¹

     In the middle colonies two important centres of population grew up at Philadelphia and New York. Philadelphia, in the first sixty years of its history, developed into a town of about thirteen thousand people and was still growing rapidly when Kalm visited it a few years later. Only a few miles away was the thriving settlement of Germantown with its one street, “near two English miles long,” and its four churches, two English and two German. The growth of New York was less rapid; in 1703

it had about five thousand inhabitants, white and black; in 1741 the number had increased to about twelve thousand, and during this decade it stood next to Boston and Philadelphia. There were no other large towns in the middle colonies; but New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania each had a few other substantial places. Parts of this middle region were so well occupied with Europeans, that according to a contemporary witness, “few parts of Europe are more populous.”¹

     In New England, town life had, of course, been relatively important from the first; and during the first half of the eighteenth century Boston held its place as the most considerable centre of population and trade on the continent, though the number of its inhabitants probably did not much exceed twenty thousand. Second in importance among the New England towns was Newport, which grew very rapidly after the peace of Utrecht. Along the coast from New Hampshire to New York were such considerable port towns as Portsmouth, Salem, New London, and New Haven. In New England even more than in the middle colonies the prosperity of the large towns rested upon what was, according to the standards of that day, a fairly compact surrounding population.²

     More important, on the whole, than the formation of a few urban centres was the gradual recession of the frontier. The rapidity of this movement varied greatly at different points along the seaboard, but the final result was a surprise to European observers. One traveller remarked that in most places one might travel “about a hundred and twenty English miles from the seashore before you reach the first habitations of the Indians “; or spend half a year in the seaboard towns without seeing an Indian.¹

     On the extreme north the frontier still extended to the coast. Only a few years after the peace of Utrecht another Indian outbreak, inspired by the Jesuit Rale and known as Lovewell’s war (1722-1725), checked the advance of settlement north and east. In 1743 the town of Brunswick, in Maine, was one of a little group of exposed frontier settlements and military posts extending only a short distance beyond the Kennebec. In New Hampshire there was a movement of settlers up the Merrimac valley to Concord, and settlements were also formed on the east bank of the Connecticut River. The first English occupation beyond the river, in what is now Vermont, was Fort Dummer, built in 1724, near the present site of Brattleboro. Farther south, the Massachusetts pioneers moved forward after Queen Anne’s War across the Connecticut valley into the Berkshire region, first occupied about

1725; and the line of settlement was soon carried close to the present western boundary of the state.¹ In New York, the movement into the interior was comparatively slow. In 1740, as in 1690, the population of the province was confined almost wholly to Long Island and to narrow lines of settlement on both banks of the Hudson between New York City and Albany. A few weak German settlements were formed in the Mohawk valley; and on Lake Ontario there was the isolated post of Oswego.

     The rapidly growing population of Pennsylvania made possible a more substantial advance. By 1744 there were considerable settlements of Germans and Scotch-Irish in the Susquehanna valley, including the substantial town of Lancaster. On the upper Schuylkill, Reading had developed by 1752 to a place of one hundred and thirty dwellings; and in 1740 the Moravians advanced the frontier towards the north by the founding of Bethlehem in the Lehigh valley.²

     More interesting still was the westward movement in the southern colonies. At the close of the seventeenth century the estate of William Byrd the elder, at the falls of the James, on the present site of Richmond, occupied an isolated frontier

position and was exposed to Indian attacks. Within the next fifty years, and especially during the latter half of that period, population moved west and up the great rivers, the York, the Rappahannock, and the James, to the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge. Finally, the southward course of the Scotch-Irish and Germans from Pennsylvania into the Great Valley beyond the Blue Ridge brought a population which required the organization of new county governments. In 1738 the counties of Augusta and Frederick were organized, both in the territory west of the Blue Ridge.¹

     In the Carolinas there was a similar development though somewhat later in time. When the first royal governor of North Carolina, Burrington, began his administration in 1731 almost the whole population was to be found close to the coast below the falls of the rivers, from the Roanoke southward to the Cape Fear. Twenty years later Governor Johnston, reporting on the rapid increase of population, especially from Pennsylvania, said that thousands had already come in; they were settling mainly in the west and had nearly reached the mountains. In South Carolina also the back settlements had been only slightly extended before 1730; but during the next decade settlements of Scotch-Irish, Germans, Swiss, and Welsh were made in the middle region between the tide-water and

the up-country. Finally, in the fifties, the main stream of Scotch-Irish immigration made its way into the up-country.¹