Nation in a Nutshell | Page 7

Driven by persecution from their native
England, they took refuge in Holland; and from thence they sailed in
two small vessels, the Speedwell and the Mayflower on a July day in
1620, for the new world. One hundred Puritans thus crossed the ocean.
[Sidenote: Settlement at Plymouth.]
After a tempestuous voyage of sixty-three days, the Mayflower coasted

along Cape Cod, and landed, on the twenty-first day of December, at
Plymouth. The Speedwell had been forced to put back in a disabled
condition. Before landing, the Puritans made a solemn compact of
government, purely republican in form, and to this they afterwards
religiously adhered. In 1629 another English Puritan colony, called the
"Massachusetts Bay Colony," settled at Salem; and in the following
year came Governor John Winthrop, with eight hundred emigrants. The
Massachusetts Bay Colony, thus re-enforced, and now numbering not
far from one thousand souls, settled Boston and its neighborhood.
[Sidenote: New England Colonized.]
New Hampshire began to be settled three years after the landing of the
Pilgrims at Plymouth. Maine was colonized not much later. Vermont,
having been explored by Champlain in 1609, was settled some years
after. The Rhode Island colony was founded by Roger Williams and
five companions, driven from the Boston and Plymouth colonies in
succession, in 1636; and Connecticut first became the seat of a
settlement in 1635, the colonial constitution being adopted in 1630.
Next in point of time, Delaware was settled by parties of Swedes and
Finlanders in 1638, and was called "New Sweden." The province
passed into the hands of the Dutch of New Amsterdam, however, in
1655.
[Sidenote: European possessions in America.]
Thus, in a period of a little less than half a century, the whole of the
American coast had been acquired by, and was to a large degree under
the dominion of, five European nations. In 1655 the Spaniards held the
peninsula of Florida; the French were in possession of, or at least
claimed the right to, what are now the two Carolinas; the Dutch held
Manhattan Island, New Jersey, a narrow strip running along the west
bank of the Hudson, and a portion of Long Island; the Swedes were
established (soon to be deprived of it) in what is now Delaware, and a
part of what is now Pennsylvania, along the Delaware River; while the
English possessions far exceeded those of all the others put together,
including as they did nearly the whole of Virginia, a large share of
Maryland, all of New England, and the greater part of Long Island.
[Sidenote: William Penn.]
In the year 1681 all the Dutch possessions had been added to the
dominion of the English in America; and it was in this year that

William Penn, having received a grant of a large tract of land in what is
now Pennsylvania, sent out a colony, which settled on his grant. The
next year he came in person, assumed the governorship of the colony,
founded Philadelphia, and made his famous treaties with the Indians.
At the close of the seventeenth century the English dominion
comprised the whole coast, from Canada to the Carolinas; and it may
be fairly said that when the eighteenth century opened, the era of
colonization had reached its culmination, English civilization was
indelibly stamped on, and firmly planted in, the new continent. The
crystallizing process of a new and mighty nation had begun and was in
rapid progress.

IV.
THE COLONIAL ERA.
[Sidenote: England's Acquirements.]
The Colonial Era, intervening between the permanent colonization of
the Atlantic coast and the momentous time when the colonies united to
assert their independence, may be said to have been comprised within a
period of a little more than a century. In 1664 England had acquired
possession of the whole colonized territory from the Kennebec to the
southern boundary of South Carolina. Georgia was still unsettled, and
remained to be colonized some sixty years after by that good and
gallant General Oglethorpe, who forbade slavery to be introduced into
the province, and prohibited the sale of rum within its limits. Florida
was still held by the Spanish, the only continental power which then
had a foothold on the Atlantic border of what is now the United States.
[Sidenote: Colonial Progress.]
The century of settlement and growth which we call the Colonial Era
was full of hardship, romance, brave struggling with great difficulties,
fortitude, and alternate misfortune and success. As we look back upon
it from this distance, however, we do not fail to be struck with the
steady and certain progress made towards a compact and enduring
nationality. Even then the same variety of race and habits and
characteristics which the United States reveal to-day were to be
observed in the population which was scattered over the narrow strip of
territory extending a thousand miles