History of the United States | Page 4

in the person of two
boys. The group as a whole is beautifully symbolic of the westward
march of American civilization.
[Illustration: Photograph by Cardinell-Vincent Co., San Francisco
"THE NATIONS OF THE WEST"]

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES


PART I. THE COLONIAL PERIOD

CHAPTER I
THE GREAT MIGRATION TO AMERICA
The tide of migration that set in toward the shores of North America

during the early years of the seventeenth century was but one phase in
the restless and eternal movement of mankind upon the surface of the
earth. The ancient Greeks flung out their colonies in every direction,
westward as far as Gaul, across the Mediterranean, and eastward into
Asia Minor, perhaps to the very confines of India. The Romans,
supported by their armies and their government, spread their dominion
beyond the narrow lands of Italy until it stretched from the heather of
Scotland to the sands of Arabia. The Teutonic tribes, from their home
beyond the Danube and the Rhine, poured into the empire of the
Cæsars and made the beginnings of modern Europe. Of this great
sweep of races and empires the settlement of America was merely a
part. And it was, moreover, only one aspect of the expansion which
finally carried the peoples, the institutions, and the trade of Europe to
the very ends of the earth.
In one vital point, it must be noted, American colonization differed
from that of the ancients. The Greeks usually carried with them
affection for the government they left behind and sacred fire from the
altar of the parent city; but thousands of the immigrants who came to
America disliked the state and disowned the church of the mother
country. They established compacts of government for themselves and
set up altars of their own. They sought not only new soil to till but also
political and religious liberty for themselves and their children.
THE AGENCIES OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION
It was no light matter for the English to cross three thousand miles of
water and found homes in the American wilderness at the opening of
the seventeenth century. Ships, tools, and supplies called for huge
outlays of money. Stores had to be furnished in quantities sufficient to
sustain the life of the settlers until they could gather harvests of their
own. Artisans and laborers of skill and industry had to be induced to
risk the hazards of the new world. Soldiers were required for defense
and mariners for the exploration of inland waters. Leaders of good
judgment, adept in managing men, had to be discovered. Altogether
such an enterprise demanded capital larger than the ordinary merchant
or gentleman could amass and involved risks more imminent than he

dared to assume. Though in later days, after initial tests had been made,
wealthy proprietors were able to establish colonies on their own
account, it was the corporation that furnished the capital and leadership
in the beginning.
=The Trading Company.=--English pioneers in exploration found an
instrument for colonization in companies of merchant adventurers,
which had long been employed in carrying on commerce with foreign
countries. Such a corporation was composed of many persons of
different ranks of society--noblemen, merchants, and gentlemen--who
banded together for a particular undertaking, each contributing a sum of
money and sharing in the profits of the venture. It was organized under
royal authority; it received its charter, its grant of land, and its trading
privileges from the king and carried on its operations under his
supervision and control. The charter named all the persons originally
included in the corporation and gave them certain powers in the
management of its affairs, including the right to admit new members.
The company was in fact a little government set up by the king. When
the members of the corporation remained in England, as in the case of
the Virginia Company, they operated through agents sent to the colony.
When they came over the seas themselves and settled in America, as in
the case of Massachusetts, they became the direct government of the
country they possessed. The stockholders in that instance became the
voters and the governor, the chief magistrate.
[Illustration: JOHN WINTHROP, GOVERNOR OF THE
MASSACHUSETTS BAY COMPANY]
Four of the thirteen colonies in America owed their origins to the
trading corporation. It was the London Company, created by King
James I, in 1606, that laid during the following year the foundations of
Virginia at Jamestown. It was under the auspices of their West India
Company, chartered in 1621, that the Dutch planted the settlements of
the New Netherland in the valley of the Hudson. The founders of
Massachusetts were Puritan leaders and men of affairs whom King
Charles I incorporated in 1629 under the title: "The governor and
company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England." In this case the

law