Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II | Page 2

expansion and eventual statehood. The first free school in America is credited to their initiative, and they were tolerant of other religions than their own, but they planted no other seeds from which a great State could grow.
As Coligny before him had sought to plant in Florida a colony of French Huguenots, so Raleigh, who had served under that great captain in the religious wars of the Continent, sought to found in Virginia a Protestant state. Much private wealth and many of his best years were given by Raleigh to the furtherance of a noble ambition, but all to futile immediate results. Raleigh's work, however, like all good work nobly done, was not lost. Out of his failure at Roanoke came English successes in later years--John Smith at Jamestown, the Pilgrims at Plymouth.
Oldest of permanent English settlements in America is Jamestown, but the English failures at Cuttyhunk and Kennebec antedate it by a few years, and the failure at Roanoke by a quarter of a century. At Jamestown, ten years after the arrival of the first settlers, a legislative assembly was organized--a minature parliament, modeled after the English House of Commons, and the first legislative body the new world ever knew. Here, too, in Jamestown began negro slavery in the United States, and in the same, or the next, year. Thus legislative freedom and human slavery had their beginning in America at the same time and in the same place.
Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, next among the English settlements, followed in due time the failure of Gosnold at Cuttyhunk and the description of New England John Smith wrote and printed in 1614 after a voyage of exploration along her coast. After several years Plymouth contained only about 300 souls, but the Bay colony, founded ten years later, increased rapidly. By 1634 nearly 4,000 of Winthrop's followers had arrived, many of them college graduates. From this great parent colony went forth Roger Williams to Rhode Island, Hooker to Hartford, Davenport to New Haven, so that by the middle of the seventeenth century five English colonies had been planted within the borders of New England.
Long after all these came the Maryland and Pennsylvania settlements, founded by Lord Baltimore and William Penn as lords proprietor, owners of vast tracts of land and possessing privileges more extensive than ever before were bestowed on British subjects. In the new century arrived Oglethorpe, with his insolvent debtors, soon to find Spaniards from St. Augustine hostile to his enterprise. But Oglethorpe was a soldier as well as a colonizer; he had served in Continental wars, and, after laying siege to St. Augustine further aggressions from that source ceased.
Thus at last, in the New World, the English race, their flag, their language and their laws, had displaced the Spaniards in that world-important contest for dominion and power, of which the second issue was soon to be fought out on many bloody fields with France.
F.W.H.

CONTENTS
VOL. II--THE PLANTING OF THE FIRST COLONIES
INTRODUCTION. By the Editor
THE FOUNDING OF ST. AUGUSTINE AND THE MASSACRE BY MENENDEZ (1562-1565):
I. The Account by John A. Doyle
II. Mendoza's Account
SIR WALTER RALEIGH'S VIRGINIA COLONIES (1584-1587):
I. The Account by John A. Doyle
II. The Return of the Colonists with Sir Francis Drake. By Ralph Lane
III. The Birth of Virginia Dare. By John White
BARTHOLOMEW GOSNOLD'S DISCOVERY OF CAPE COD (1602):
I. By Gabriel Archer, One of Gosnold's Companions
II. Gosnold's Own Account
THE FOUNDING OF JAMESTOWN (1607). By Captain John Smith
THE FIRST AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY (1819). By John Twine, its Secretary
THE ORIGIN OF NEGRO SLAVERY IN AMERICA:
I. In the West Indies (1518). By Sir Arthur Helps
II. Its Beginnings in the United States (1620). By John A. Doyle
NEW ENGLAND BEFORE THE PILGRIM FATHERS LANDED (1614). By Captain John Smith
THE FIRST VOYAGE OF THE "MAYFLOWER" (1620). By Governor William Bradford
THE FIRST NEW YORK SETTLEMENTS (1623-1628). By Nicolas Jean de Wassenaer
THE SWEDES AND DUTCH IN NEW JERSEY (1627). By Israel Acrelius
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY (1627-1631). By Governor Thomas Dudley
HOW THE BAY COLONY DIFFERED FROM PLYMOUTH. By John G. Palfrey
LORD BALTIMORE IN MARYLAND (1633). By Contemporary Writers
ROGER WILLIAMS IN RHODE ISLAND (1636). By Nathaniel Morton
THE FOUNDING OF CONNECTICUT (1633-1636). By Alexander Johnston
WITCHCRAFT IN NEW ENGLAND (1647-1696). By John G. Palfrey
THE ENGLISH CONQUEST OF NEW YORK (1664). By John H. Brodhead
BACON'S REBELLION IN VIRGINIA (1676). By an Anonymous Writer
KING PHILIP'S WAR (1676). By William Hubbarrd
THE FOUNDING OF PENNSYLVANIA:
I. Penn's Account of the Colony (1684)
II. Penn's Treaty with the Indians (1683). His Own Account
III. The Reality of Penn's Treaty. By George E. Ellis
THE CHARTER OAK AFFAIR IN CONNECTICUT (1682). By Alexander Johnston
THE COLONIZATION OF LOUISIANA (1699). By Charles E.T. Gayarré
OGELETHORPE IN GEORGIA (1733). By Joel Chandler Harris

THE PLANTING OF THE FIRST COLONIES
1562-1733
THE FOUNDING OF ST. AUGUSTINE AND THE MASSACRE BY MENENDEZ
(1562-1565)
I.
THE ACCOUNT BY JOHN A. DOYLE[1]
In 1562 the French Huguenot party, headed by Coligny, made another attempt[2]