Charles Carleton Coffin - Old Times in the Colonies

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2019 OK Publishing

EAN 4064066051990

The settlement of our country was the beginning of a new era in human affairs. The people of England, ever since the days of King John, when the barons compelled him to sign the Magna Charta in the meadow of Runnymede, had struggled against tyranny; and when the emigrants sailed across the Atlantic to rear their homes in Virginia and New England, it was the transplanting of liberty to a continent where everything was new, and where the conditions that surrounded them were wholly unlike those of the Old World.

This volume is an outline of some of the principal events that transpired during the colonial period of our country, and portrays the hardships and sufferings of those who laid the foundations of a new empire. It will show how the Old World laws, habits, and customs were gradually changed; how the grand ideas of Freedom and the Rights of Man took root and flourished. It covers the period from the discovery and settlement of America to the Revolutionary War. In 1876 I wrote a volume entitled The Boys of 76 a narrative of the battles of the Revolution, and of the trials and devotion of our fathers in establishing the independence of the United States. While preparing that work, I discovered that there was no volume in existence that would give the young people of our country an idea of the struggles of men in England and Europe against the tyranny of emperors, kings, popes, archbishops, bishops, and inquisitors; to supply that want, I wrote a second volume, entitled The Story of Liberty, which traced a chain of events through a period of five hundred years, from the signing of the Magna Charta to the settlement of Jamestown and Plymouth. This volume, therefore, fills the gap between the others in time, and together they make a series, not of general history, but an outline history of the progress of ideas.

I desire to call your attention to a few things which will be made plain in this volume. You will notice that the beginning of the history of our country is clear and distinct, while the beginnings of the histories of other countries are obscured by tradition or made doubtful by fable. Our early history is definite; the early history of other lands uncertain.

The history of a nation is like the flowing of a river; there are many rivulets starting wide apart, which unite to swell the ever-deepening stream. Many of the fountain-heads of American history are in England and Europe; and in order to obtain a correct view of what transpired in the colonies, we must cross the Atlantic and follow the rivulets to their sources. The tracing of the relationship of one event to another, and showing their effect upon the human race, is the philosophy of history, and by studying the philosophy we are able to arrive at some conclusion as to its meaning.

You will notice how, through priority of discovery, Spain, France, and England claimed various sections of this continent, and how conflicting claims led to a great struggle between England and France for supremacy; that it was a conflict between two races, two languages, two religions, two systems of laws, two distinct civilizations; that great ideas were behind the struggle. In the opening chapter you will read how John and Sebastian Cabot sailed along the northern coasts, how Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence; the closing pages will picture a battle on the Plains of Abraham. It was an engagement which lasted only a few minutes, yet it was one of the great decisive battles of the world momentous in its results. John and Sebastian Cabot, Cartier, Champlain, the Kings of France and England, the Pope, Ignatius Loyola, the Jesuits, Oliver Cromwell, the Pilgrims of the Mayflower, the Puritans, are as inseparably connected with that battle as William Pitt, James Wolfe, and the Marquis de Montcalm. The history of the entire colonial period leads up to it.

You will notice that the forces of Nature the turning of the earth upon its axis, the flowing of the Gulf Stream, the contour of mountain ranges, the courses of the rivers, have had a far-reaching influence upon the history of our country. The rivers were the highways along which the Indians paddled their canoes to fall upon the settlers along which the armies of England and France marched to engage in battle. Mountains were barriers, stopping awhile the progress of civilization, and also shielding the colonies from attack. Not only these, but the order of the Pope forbidding people to eat meat on Fridays, saints days, and during Lent, but granting permission to eat fish, the desire of the people of Europe to wear hats made from the glossy fur of the beaver, the love for tobacco, their ideas of holding men in slavery, are forces that have had much to do in shaping the history of our country.

The longing for adventure, the hunger for gold, led to the settlement of Virginia. Through convictions of duty and obligations to God, the Pilgrims were driven from England to Holland, and across the Atlantic, to begin self-government, and to give to the world the ideal of a written constitution. The hatred of the Puritans to the ritual of the Church of England, the determination of the bishops and archbishops to compel them to conform to it, are great fountain-heads of history. The inner light which illumined the soul of George Fox, the stern convictions of Roger Williams, of his obligation to conscience, are forces which give direction to the course of events. All the motives by which men are actuated their passions, affections, religious convictions, the selfish ends are part and parcel of the grand drama of Time.

I have spoken of the meaning of history. Surely it has a meaning, else what are we living for? Whichever way we turn in the material world we find things needful for our use, and we think of them as Gods forethoughts, and as designed for our welfare. If there is design in the material world, there must be some meaning to history, some ultimate end to be accomplished. In The Story of Liberty, and in this volume, you will see how Tyranny and Wrong have fought against Liberty and Justice; how that banner which the barons flung to the breeze at Runnymede, inscribed with the rights of man, which Cromwell bore amidst the carnage of Marston Moor, which waved from the mast-head of the Mayflower when that lone vessel crossed the Atlantic, has never been trailed in the dust in this Western World; but Tyranny and Wrong have gone down before it. Through the colonial period there was an advance of principles which are eternal in their nature. All through those years conditions and influences were preparing men for self-government. Men die, generations come and go, but ideas live on. When the world was ready for it, and not before, the American Revolution came, with the announcement that all men are created free and equal, and endowed with inalienable rights.

Through all the narratives of wars, massacres, and bloodshed, you will see Right, Justice, and Liberty ever advancing. Old Times in the Colonies, therefore, is not an unmeaning record of events, but the story of the rise of a great nation, the growth of individual liberty, the coming in of constitutional government in this Western World the history of the first period in the new era in human affairs.

As you peruse these pages, the conviction, I trust, will come that, under the power of great ideas, our country is leading the human race in its march toward a state of society inexpressibly grand and glorious.