confederacy, which should upon a given day strike all the English forts upon the frontier a deadly blow, and sweep away in a common ruin every English family west of the mountains. The plot was constructed with the White man's skill and the Red man's cunning. The 7th of May, 1763, was named as the day of destruction. But when the time came the impatient savage tribes were unable to act in perfect concert, and ultimate failure was the consequence, though the immediate result was terribly disastrous.

Pontiac reserved for himself the most difficult task of all-the capture of Detroit. But in the hour of impending doom, woman's love interposed to save the garrison from butchery. An Indian girl of the Ojibwa nation, came to the fort with a pair of moccasins for

Major Gladwyn, the commandant, and in parting with him manifested unusual agitation and distress. She was seen to linger at the street corner, and the sentinel summoned her to return to the major's quarters. There, after much persuasion and many assurances of protection, she yielded to his urgent inquiries into the cause of her grief and revealed the plot. When Pontiac's band on the following day attempted to gain the fort by treachery, they found every soldier and citizen under arms and ready to receive them. Then followed a protracted siege, and the savage horde was finally driven off. But

in all other quarters the attacks were attended with the most fatal results. On the 16th of May Fort Sandusky was taken and burned, and the garrison butchered by a band of Wyandots. A few days later Fort St. Joseph suffered a similar fate at the hands of the Pot-tawattamies. On the 29th of the month Fort Mackinaw was taken and its defenders nearly all murdered by the Chippeways. One outpost after another was captured and burned, until by the middle of summer every English fort in the West, except Niagara, Fort Pitt and Detroit, had fallen into the hands of the savages. But in the mean time rumors of a treaty between France and England were borne to the Red men; and they, becoming alarmed at their own atrocities, began to sue for peace. The confederacy crumbled into nothing. Every tribe seemed as anxious to avoid the consequences as it had been to take up the hatchet. Pontiac and his band of Ottawas held out for two years longer; then, abandoned by his followers, he fled to the Illinois, among whom he was finally killed in a drunken brawl at the Indian town of Cahokia, opposite St. Louis.

For three years after the fall of Montreal the war between France and England lingered on the ocean. The English fleets were everywhere victorious. On the 10th of February, 1763, a treaty of peace was made at Paris. All the French possessions in North America eastward of the Mississippi from its source to the river Iberville, and thence through Lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain to the Gulf of Mexico, were surrendered to Great Britain. At the same time Spain, with whom England had been at war, ceded East and West Florida to the English Crown. As reciprocal with this provision France was obliged to make a cession to Spain of all that vast territory west of the Mississippi, known as the Province of Louisiana. By the sweeping provisions of this treaty the French king lost his entire possessions in the New World. Thus closed the French and Indian War, one of the most important in the history of mankind. By this conflict it was decided that the decaying institutions of the Middle Ages should not prevail in the West; and that the powerful ( language, laws and liberties of the English race should be planted for ever in the vast domains of the New World.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

CONDITION OF THE COLONIES.

EFORE entering upon the stirring events of the Revolution, it will be of interest to glance at THE GENERAL CONDITION OF THE AMERICAN COLONIES. There were thirteen of them: four in New England, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire; four Middle Colonies,-New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware; five Southern,-Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia. All had grown and prospered. The elements of power were everywhere present. A willful, patriotic, and vigorous race of democrats had taken possession of the New World. Institutions unknown in Europe, peculiar to the West, made necessary by the condition and surroundings of the colonies, had sprung up and were taking deep root in American soil.

According to estimates made for the year 1760 the population of the colonies amounted to a million six hundred and ninety-five thousand souls. Of these about three hundred and ten thousand were blacks. Massachusetts was at this period perhaps the strongest colony, having more than two hundred thousand people of European ancestry within her borders. True, Virginia was the most populous, having an aggregate of two hundred and eighty-four thousand inhabitants, but of these one hundred and sixteen thousand were Africans, slaves. Next in strength stood Pennsylvania with a population of nearly two hundred thousand; next Connecticut with her hundred `and thirty thousand people; next Maryland with a hundred and four thousand; then New York with eighty-five thousand; New Jersey not quite as many; then South Carolina, and so through the feebler colonies to Georgia, in whose borders were less than five thousand inhabitants, including the negroes.

By the middle of the eighteenth century the people of the American colonies had to a certain extent assumed a national character; but they were still strongly marked with the peculiarities which their ancestors had brought from Europe. In New England, especially in Massachusetts and Connecticut, the principles and practices of Puritanism still held universal sway. On the banks of the Hudson the language, manners, and customs of Holland were almost as prevalent as they

had been a hundred years before. By the Delaware the Quakers were gathered in such numbers as to control all legislation, and to prevent serious innovations upon the simple methods of civil and social organization introduced by Penn. On the northern bank of the Potomac, the youth

ful Frederick, the sixth Lord Baltimore, a frivolous and dissolute governor, ruled a people who still conformed to the order of things established a hundred and thirty years previously by Sirs George and Cecil Calvert. In Virginia, mother of States and statesmen, the people had all their old peculiarities; a somewhat haughty demeanor; pride of ancestry; fondness for aristocratic sports; hospitality; love of freedom. The North Carolinians were at this epoch the same rugged and insubordinate race of hunters that they had always been. The legislative assembly, in its controversies with Gov

ernor Dobbs, manifested all the intractable stubbornness which characterized that body in the days of Seth Sothel. In South Carolina there was much prosperity and happiness. But there, too, popular liberty had been enlarged by the constant encroachment of the legislature upon the royal prerogative. The people, mostly of French descent, were as hot-blooded and jealous of their rights as their ancestors had been in the times of the first immigrations. Of all the American colonies Georgia had at this time least strength and spirit. Under the system of government established at the first the commonwealth had languished. Not until 1754, when Governor Reynolds

assumed control of the colony, did the affairs of the people on the Savannah begin to flourish. Even afterwards, something of the indigence and want of thrift which had marked the followers of Oglethorpe still prevailed in Georgia. Nevertheless, after making allowance for all these differences of colonial character, a considerable degree of American unity had been attained; inter-colonial relations were well established; and the people were far less antagonistic and sectional than they had been.

In matters of education New England took the lead. Her system of free schools extended everywhere from the Hudson to the Penobscot. Every village furnished facilities for the acquirement of knowledge. So complete and universal were the means of instruction that in the times preceding the Revolution there was not to be found in all New England an adult, born in the country, who could not read and write. Splendid achievement of Puritanism! In the Middle Colonies education was not so general; but in Pennsylvania there was much intelligent activity among the people. Especially in Philadelphia did the illustrious Franklin scatter the light of learning. South of the Potomac educational facilities were irregular and generally designed for the benefit of the wealthier classes. But in some localities the means of enlightenment were well provided; institutions of learning sprang up scarcely inferior to those of the Eastern provinces, or even of Europe. Nor should the private schools of the colonial times be forgotten. Many men-Scottish reformers, Irish liberals, and French patriots-despising the bigotry and intolerance of their countrymen, fled for refuge to the New World, and there by the banks of the Housatonic, the Hudson, the Delaware, the Potomac, the Ashley, and the Savannah, taught the lore of books and the lesson of liberty to the rugged boys of the American wilderness. Among the Southern colonies Virginia led the van in matters of education; while Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia lagged behind. Previous to the Revolution nine colleges worthy of the name had been established in the colonies. These were Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, Princeton, King's (now called Columbia), Brown, Queen's (afterwards called Rutgers), Dartmouth, and Hampden and Sydney. In 1764 the first medical college was founded, at Philadelphia.

Of the printing-press, that other great agent and forerunner of civilization, the work was already effective. As early as 1704 the Boston News-Letter, first of periodicals in the New World, was published in the city of the Puritans; but fifteen years elapsed before another experiment of the same sort was made. In 1721 the New `England Courant, a little sheet devoted to free thought and the ex