Slavery No new country ever has enough cheap labor and this is especially true of new agricultural communities where land is cheap and plentiful. The demand for cheap labor in Virginia, as in most of the colonies, was first met by the development of the system of white servitude, which made its appearance early and grew rapidly. Throughout the seventeenth century it was the main source of labor in the southern colonies. In 1683 there were nearly 12,000 white servants in Virginia and only 3000 slaves. The Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 gave England a monopoly of the slave trade with the Spanish colonies and the surplus slaves were dumped on the British colonies. Under this policy slavery grew by leaps and bounds until, by the middle of the eighteenth century, the number of slaves in Virginia was rapidly approaching that of the entire white population, 120,000 blacks to 173,000 whites. In South Carolina the blacks outnumbered the whites. In 1750 negro slavery was recognized by law in every North American colony and the total slave population was about 300,000. The slave population of New England was too small, except in Rhode Island, to be of any special economic or social significance. In the middle colonies the largest number of slaves was to be found in New York, where they formed between one sixth and one seventh of the population. The distribution of the slave population was determined almost entirely by economic conditions. While the evils of slavery were recognized the only outspoken opposition to the system came from the Quakers of Pennsylvania. Many of the most prominent and respected merchants of Boston and Newport were engaged in the slave traffic. Great excitement arose in New York in 1712 and again in 1741 over the alleged discovery of "negro plots" and on the latter occasion fourteen slaves were burned at the stake and eighteen were hanged. Development of industry in New Eng land and the middle colonies In the North there were few large estates to be found except along the Hudson, but even these failed to develop a real plantation system. In the northern colonies there was from the first a much greater variety of industries. The middle colonies produced beef, pork, grain, and other food products. In New England the main industries were shipbuilding, fisheries, and the manufacture of rum. All the colonies depended largely upon England for their clothing and other manufactured goods. There was, however, sufficient progress made in manufactures to arouse the jealousy of English merchants. As early as 1698 Parliament undertook to check the woolen industry in New England, and later restrictions were placed on the hat industry and on the manufacture of iron. the West Indies In the commerce of the colonies the Indian fur trade played an important part from the first, and the intense Trade with rivalry between the several colonies and between the English and the French frequently led to serious Indian troubles. The Indian trade was always difficult to regulate. In commerce by sea New England always held the lead. Her fisheries which were early developed formed the basis of her trade with foreign countries. The most important trade carried on by New England, however, was with the West Indies. In addition to fish, lumber, and horses, provisions and a few British manufactures were exported. In return the New Englanders brought back sugar and other West Indian products and large quantities of molasses for the New England distilleries. New England rum was consumed all through the colonies and a large amount was shipped to the coast of Guinea, where it was exchanged for negro slaves who were sold in the West Indies and in the American colonies. Massachusetts and Rhode Island were largely engaged in this trade. In 1721 the Board of Trade called attention to the fact that the New Englanders were buying a large part of their sugar and molasses from the French and Dutch colonies, and in 1731, the British merchants and sugar planters petitioned Parliament for relief. This led to the celebrated Molasses Act of 1733, which placed prohibitory duties on foreign sugar, molasses, and rum imported into the English colonies. This act encountered great opposition in the northern colonies and it was persistently violated. Piracy Piracy was very common in the early years of the eighteenth century, especially in the West Indies, but there were several notorious characters who infested the shores of America. Among them the best known were Captain William Kidd, Teach or Thatch, commonly known as Black Beard, and Steve Bonnet. Kidd was sent out by Lord Bellomont, governor of New York, to capture pirates, but ended by turning pirate himself. He was finally seized, sent to England for trial, and executed. In 1718 Governor Spotswood of Virginia sent an expedition in search of Black Beard which engaged in a pitched battle with him on the coast of North Carolina. Black Beard and several of his accomplices were killed. In the same year Bonnet and several of his followers were captured by an expedition sent out by the governor of South Carolina, were tried and executed. A little later another battle took place off Charleston in which several pirates were captured and afterwards convicted and put to death. Domestic commerce was seriously hampered by the lack of a colonial currency. There was almost no English money in the colonies, and the Spanish silver which came The lack of in through the New England trade with the West a colonial Indies was limited in amount and rated differently in the different colonies. In Virginia tobacco was the regular currency, even salaries of colonial officials being fixed by statute in so many thousand pounds of tobacco. Ware currency house receipts formed a convenient circulating medium. The Virginia planter bought all his supplies through the London merchant to whom he shipped his tobacco. The merchant credited him on his books with the amount realized from the crop, and the planter drew on this credit as on a bank account. In many of the colonies the system of primitive barter still continued. Massachusetts was the first colony to issue paper money. This was done to meet the expenses of the expedition against Quebec in 1690. The English Church was established in Virginia from the first and that colony continued to be its main stronghold The during the eighteenth century. It was not definitely established by law in any of the other colonies until the Revolution of 1688. Virginia had always been under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London and his authority over the other colonies had been recognized in a general way. The Bishop of London was a member of the Board of Trade, though he did not attend its sessions unless notified that some ecclesiastical matter was to come up. The Anglican Church occupied a peculiar status in America. No bishop ever set foot in the colonies prior to the American Revolution, and an Episcopal Church without a bishop is something of an anomaly. This defect was partially remedied by the appointment of representatives of the bishop known as commissaries, but a commissary was granted only a small share of episcopal authority. The first American commissary was James Blair, who was sent to Virginia shortly after the Revolution of 1689. Blair greatly strengthened the Church by disciplining the clergy and by bringing over new ministers to fill the vacant parishes. His greatest work was the founding of William and Mary College in 1693. In the New England colonies the Anglican Church had to struggle for its existence. Except in Rhode Island the Congregational churches were supported by public taxation. In Massachusetts the Church of England had been tolerated since 1660 only at the express command of The Church the king, and the first church was established in New in Boston in 1686. The rigid Puritanism of the England early days, however, was being somewhat relaxed and the Congregational Church suffered from division into a conservative and a progressive faction. Under these conditions Quakers, Baptists, and Episcopalians began to make headway and demanded exemption from taxes levied for the support of the Congregational Church. By 1730 they had been partially relieved of this burden in both Massachusetts and Connecticut. The complete separation of Church and State in these colonies did not take place, however, until long after the American Revolution. Many of the colonial governors were men of scholarly tastes, and urged the needs of education upon the attention of the colonial assemblies. The Anglican Church Education also exerted its influence in favor of education. Blair in Virginia and Bray in Maryland were both very active in this cause, and Dean Berkeley, afterwards famous as bishop and philosopher, came to America for the purpose of founding a college and lived for three years at Newport, Rhode Island. He was disappointed in his plans and returned to England, but he made gifts of books to both Harvard and Yale. Harvard College was founded in 1638. There was no other college founded in America until 1693 when Blair secured a royal charter for the College of William The foundand Mary. Blair was its first president and held ing of the office for fifty years. Williamsburg where colleges it was located also became the capital of the colony and a center of social and political influence. The need of a college in Virginia had been less felt than in New England, as the more frequent intercourse with the mother country |