CHAPTER II

COLONIAL RACE ELEMENTS

Doubtless the most fascinating topic in the study of races is that of the great men whom each race has produced. The personal interest surrounding those who have gained eminence carries us back over each step of their careers to their childhood, their parents, and their ancestry.[6] Pride of race adds its zest, and each race has its eulogists who claim every great man whose family tree reveals even a single ancestor, male or female, near or remote, of the eulogized race. Here is a "conflict of jurisdiction," and the student who is without race prejudice begins to look for causes other than race origin to which should be ascribed the emergence of greatness.

Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge[7] attempted, some years ago, to assign to the different races in America the 14,243 men eminent enough to find a place in "Appleton's Encyclopedia of American Biography." He prepared a statistical summary as follows:--

EMINENT AMERICANS

English 10,376 Scotch-Irish 1,439 German 659 Huguenot 589 Scotch 436 Dutch 336 Welsh 159 Irish 109 French 85 Scandinavian 31 Spanish 7 Italian 7 Swiss 5 Greek 3 Russian 1 Polish 1 ------ Total 14,243

When we inquire into the methods necessarily adopted in preparing a statistical table of this kind we discover serious limitations. Mr. Lodge was confined to the paternal line alone, but if, as some biologists assert, the female is the conservative element which holds to the type, and the male is the variable element which departs from the type, then the specific contribution of the race factor would be found in the maternal line. However, let this dubious point pass. We find that in American life two hundred years of intermingling has in many if not in most cases of greatness broken into the continuity of race. True, the New England and Virginia stock has remained during most of this time of purely English origin, but the very fact that in Mr. Lodge's tables Massachusetts has produced 2686 notables, while Virginia, of the same blood, has produced only 1038, must lead to the suspicion that factors other than race extraction are the mainspring of greatness.

It must be remembered that ability is not identical with eminence. Ability is the product of ancestry and training. Eminence is an accident of social conditions. The English race was the main contributor to population during the seventeenth century, and English conquest determined the form of government, the language, and the opportunities for individual advancement. During the succeeding century the Scotch-Irish and the Germans migrated in nearly equal numbers, and their combined migration was perhaps as great as that of the English in the seventeenth century. But they were compelled to move to the interior, to become frontiersmen, to earn their living directly from the soil, and to leave to their English-sprung predecessors the more prominent occupations of politics, literature, law, commerce, and the army. The Germans, who, according to Lodge, "produced fewer men of ability than any other race in the United States," were further handicapped by their language and isolation, which continue to this day in the counties of Pennsylvania where they originally settled. On the other hand, the Huguenots and the Dutch came in the first century of colonization. They rapidly merged with the English, lost their language, and hence contributed their full share of eminence. Finally, the Irish, Scandinavian and other races, inconspicuous in the galaxy of notables, did not migrate in numbers until the middle of the nineteenth century, and, in addition to the restraints of language and poverty, they found the roads to prominence preoccupied.

Besides the accident of precedence in time, a second factor distinct from race itself has contributed to the eminence of one race over another. The Huguenots and the French, according to Lodge's statistics, show a percentage of ability in proportion to their total immigration much higher than that of any other race. But the Huguenots were a select class of people, manufacturers and merchants, perhaps the most intelligent and enterprising of Frenchmen in the seventeenth century. Furthermore the direct migration from France to this country has never included many peasants and wage-earners, but has been limited to the adventurous and educated. Had the French-Canadians who represent the peasantry of France been included in these comparisons, the proportion of French eminence would have been materially reduced.

The same is true of the English. Although sprung from one race, those who came to America represented at least two grades of society as widely apart as two races. The Pilgrims and Puritans of New England were the yeomen, the merchants, the manufacturers, skilled in industry, often independent in resources, and well trained in the intellectual controversies of religion and politics. The Southern planters also sprang from a class of similar standing, though not so strongly addicted to intellectual pursuits. Beneath both these classes were the indentured servants, a few of whom were men of ability forced to pay their passage by service. But the majority of them were brought to this country through the advertisements of shipowners and landholders or even forcibly captured on the streets of cities or transported for crimes and pauperism. Though all of these classes were of the same race, they were about as widely divergent as races themselves in point of native ability and preparatory training.

The third and most important cause of eminence, apart from ancestry, is the industrial and legal environment. An agricultural community produces very few eminent men compared with the number produced where manufactures and commerce vie with agriculture to attract the youth. A state of widely diversified industrial interests is likely to create widely diversified intellectual and moral interests. Complicated problems of industry and politics stimulate the mind and reflect their influence in literature, art, education, science, and the learned professions. Most of all, equal opportunity for all classes and large prizes for the ambitious and industrious serve to stimulate individuals of native ability to their highest endeavor. It was the deadening effects of slavery, creating inequalities among the whites themselves, that smothered the genius of the Southerner whether Englishman, Huguenot, or Scotch-Irish, and it was the free institutions of the North that invited their genius to unfold and blossom.

These considerations lead us to look with distrust on the claims of those who find in race ancestry or in race intermixture the reasons for such eminence as Americans have attained. While the race factor is decisive when it marks off inferior and primitive races, yet, in considering those Europeans races which have joined in our civilization, the important questions are: From what social classes is immigration drawn? and, Do our social institutions offer free opportunity and high incentive to the youth of ability? In so far as we get a choice selection of immigrants, and in so far as we afford them free scope for their native gifts, so far do they render to our country the services of genius, talent, and industry.

=Incentives to Immigration.=--It is the distinctive fact regarding colonial migration that it was Teutonic in blood and Protestant in religion. The English, Dutch, Swedes, Germans, and even the Scotch-Irish, who constituted practically the entire migration, were less than two thousand years ago one Germanic race in the forests surrounding the North Sea. The Protestant Reformation, sixteen centuries later, began among those peoples and found in them its sturdiest supporters. The doctrines of the Reformation, adapted as they were to the strong individualism of the Germanic races, prepared the hearts of men for the doctrines of political liberty and constitutional government of the succeeding century. The Reformation banished the idea that men must seek salvation through the intercession of priests and popes, who, however sacred, are only fellow-men, and set up the idea that each soul has direct access to God. With the Bible as a guide and his own conscience as a judge, each man was accountable only to one divine sovereign.

From the standpoint of the age this doctrine was too radical. It tended to break up existing society into sects and factions, and to precipitate those civil and religious wars which ended in a Catholic or aristocratic reaction. When this reaction came, the numerous Protestant sects of the extremer types found themselves the objects of persecution, and nothing remained but to seek a new land where the heavy hand of repression could not reach them. Thus America became the home of numberless religious sects and denominations of these several races. From England came Congregationalists (the "Pilgrims"), Puritans, Quakers, Baptists; from Scotland and Ireland came Presbyterians; from Germany came Quakers, Dunkards, Pietists, Ridge Hermits, Salzburgers, and Moravians.

It is not to be inferred that religious persecution alone in the early colonial period caused emigration. In point of numbers commercial enterprise was probably equally influential. In Holland all religious sects were welcomed with a liberality far in advance of any other nation, and at the same time the Dutch people were the most advanced in the modern pursuits of trade and commerce. The Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam was therefore a business enterprise, and neither before nor after the conquest by the British was there any religious obstacle to the reception of other races and religions. In this respect New York differed widely from New England, where religious exclusiveness preserved the English race as a peculiar people until the middle of the nineteenth century. So diverse were the races in New York, and so liberal were the opportunities open to all, that Governor Horatio Seymour was able to say that nine men prominent in its early history represented the same number of nationalities. Schuyler was of Dutch descent, Herkimer of German, Jay of French, Livingston of Scotch, Clinton of Irish, Morris of Welsh, Hoffman of Swedish, while Hamilton was a West India Englishman and Baron Steuben a Prussian.[8]

Another colony to which all races and religions were welcomed was Pennsylvania. William Penn established this colony both as a refuge for the persecuted Quakers of England and as a real estate venture. He was the first American to advertise his dominions widely throughout Europe, offering to sell one hundred acres of land at two English pounds and a low rental. His advertisements combined humanity and business, for they called attention to popular government and universal suffrage; equal rights to all regardless of race or religious belief; trial by jury; murder and treason the only capital crimes, and reformation, not retaliation, the object of punishment for other offences. Thus Pennsylvania, although settled a half century later than the Southern and Northern colonies, soon exceeded them in population. Penn sent his agents to Germany and persuaded large numbers of German Quakers and Pietists to cast their lot in his plantation, so that in twenty years the Germans numbered nearly one-half the population. Again, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Louis XIV overran the Palatinate and thousands of Germans fled to England, the English government encouraged their migration to America. In one year four thousand of them, the largest single emigration of the colonial period, embarked for New York, but their treatment was so illiberal that they moved to Pennsylvania, and thenceforth the German migration sought the latter colony. These people settled at Germantown, near Philadelphia, and occupied the counties of Bucks and Montgomery, where they continue to this day with their peculiar language, the "Pennsylvania Dutch." Not only William Penn himself, but other landowners in Pennsylvania and also the shipowners advertised the country in Germany, and thousands of the poorer sort of Germans were induced to indenture themselves to the settlers to whom they were auctioned off by the ship captains in payment for transportation. Probably one-half of all the immigrants of the colonial period came under this system of postpaid transportation, just as at the present time nearly two-thirds come on prepaid tickets. It was in Pennsylvania that the largest portion of the Scotch-Irish settled, and before the time of the Revolution that colony had become the most populous and most diversified of all the colonies. It was the only colony, except Maryland, that tolerated Roman Catholics, and with all phases of the Christian religion and all branches of the Teutonic and Celtic races, Pennsylvania set the original type to which all of America has conformed, that of race intermixture on the basis of religious and political equality.

=The Scotch-Irish.=--It has long been recognized that among the most virile and aggressive people who came to America in colonial times, and who have contributed a peculiar share to the American character, are the Scotch-Irish. Their descendants boast of their ancestry and cite long lists of notables as their coderivatives. Yet until recent years it has been the misfortune of the Scotch-Irish to have escaped historical investigation; for American history has been written chiefly in New England, whose colonial Puritans forbade them in their midst. In fact, from the earliest settlement, the Scotch-Irish have been pioneers and men of action. They have contributed to America few writers and artists, but many generals, politicians, and captains of industry. In literature they claim two eminent names, Irving and Poe; but in the army, navy, politics, and business they claim John Paul Jones, Perry, Andrew Jackson, Winfield Scott, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, Stonewall Jackson, George B. McClellan, Alexander Hamilton, John C. Calhoun, James G. Blaine, Jefferson Davis, Thomas Benton, Hendricks, John G. Carlisle, Mark Hanna, William McKinley, Matthew S. Quay, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Horace Greeley, Henry Watterson, and hundreds alike famous in the more strenuous movements of American life.

A paradoxical fact regarding the Scotch-Irish is that they are very little Scotch and much less Irish. That is to say, they do not belong mainly to the so-called Celtic race, but they are the most composite of all the people of the British Isles. They are called Scots because they lived in Scotia, and they are called Irish because they moved to Ireland. Geography and not ethnology has given them their name. They are a mixed race through whose veins run the Celtic blood of the primitive Scot and Pict, the primitive Briton, the primitive Irish, but with a larger admixture of the later Norwegian, Dane, Saxon, and Angle. How this amalgamation came about we may learn from the geography of Scotland.

The Highlands of Scotland begin at the Grampian Hills and the Lowlands extend south from this line to the British border, and include the cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. The Scotch-Irish came from that southwestern part of the Lowlands which bulges out toward Ireland north of the Solway Firth. Over these Lowland counties, bounded by water and hills on three sides, successive waves of conquest and migration followed. First the primitive Caledonian or Pict was driven to the Highlands, which to this day is the Celtic portion of Scotland. The Briton from the south, pressed on by Roman and then by Teuton, occupied the country. Then Irish tribes crossed over and gained a permanent hold. Then the Norwegian sailors came around from the north, and to this day there are pure Scandinavian types on the adjacent islands. Then the Saxons and Angles, driven by the Danes and Normans, gained a foothold from the east, and lastly the Danes themselves added their contingent. Here in this Lowland pocket of territory, no larger than a good-sized American county, was compounded for five hundred years this remarkable amalgam of races.

A thousand years later, after they had become a united people and had shown their metal in the trying times of the Reformation, they furnished the emigrants who displaced the Irish in the north of Ireland. James I, whom Scotland gave to England, determined to transform Catholic Ireland into Protestant England, and thereupon confiscated the lands of the native chiefs in Ulster and bestowed them upon Scottish and English lords on condition that they settle the territory with tenants from Scotland and England. This was the "great settlement" of 1610, and from that time to the present Ulster has been the Protestant stronghold of Ireland. In 1901 the population of Ulster was 44 per cent Catholic, 23 per cent Episcopalian, and 27 per cent Presbyterian, an ecclesiastical division corresponding almost exactly to the racial division of Irish, English, and Scotch. During the whole of the seventeenth century--the first century of this occupation--the Catholics and Episcopalians were in a much smaller proportion than these figures show for the present time, and the relative increase in Irish and Episcopalians during the eighteenth century was closely connected with the migration of the Scotch to America.

For one hundred years the Scotch multiplied in Ulster and had no dealings with the remnants of the Irish, whom they crowded into the barren hills and whom they treated like savages. They retained their purity of race, and although when they came to America they called themselves Irish and were known as Irish wherever they settled, yet they had no Irish blood except that which entered into their composition through the Irish migration to Scotia fifteen hundred years before.

Yet, though they despised the Irish, they could not escape the unhappy fate of Ireland. The first blow came in 1698, nearly one hundred years after their settlement. English manufacturers complained of Irish competition, and the Irish Parliament, a tool of the British crown, passed an act totally forbidding the exportation of Irish woollens, and another act forbidding the exportation of Irish wool to any country save England. Their slowly growing linen industry was likewise discriminated against in later years. Presbyterian Ulster had been the industrial centre of Ireland, and these acts nearly destroyed her industry. Next Queen Anne's Parliament adopted penal laws directed against Roman Catholics and Presbyterians, and the Test Act, which compelled public officials to take the communion of the Established Church, deprived the entire Scotch population of self-government. Nevertheless they were compelled to pay tithes to support the Established Church to which they were opposed. Lastly, the hundred-year leases of the tenants began to run out, and the landlords offered renewals to the highest bidders on short leases. Here the poverty-stricken Irish gained an unhappy revenge on the Scotch who had displaced them of their ancestral lands, for their low standard of living enabled them to offer rack-rents far above what the Scotch could afford. No longer did religion, race pride, or gratitude have a part in holding Ulster to Protestant supremacy. The greed of absentee landlords began to have full sway, and in the resulting struggle for livelihood, hopeless poverty was fitter to survive than ambitious thrift.

The Scotch tenants, their hearts bitter against England and aristocracy, now sought a country where they might have free land and self-government. In 1718 it is stated that 4200 of them left for America. After the famine of 1740 there were 12,000 who left annually. Altogether, in the half century just preceding the American Revolution, 200,000[9] persons, or one-third of the Protestant population of Ulster, are said to have emigrated, and the majority came to America. This was by far the largest contribution of any race to the population of America during the eighteenth century, and the injustice they suffered at the hands of England made them among the most determined and effective recruits to the armies that won our independence.

Before the Scotch-Irish moved to America the Atlantic coast line had been well occupied. Consequently, in order to obtain land for themselves, they were forced to go to the interior and to become frontiersmen. They found in Massachusetts a state church to which they must conform in order to be admitted to citizenship. But what they had left Ireland to escape they would not consent in a new country to do. The Puritans were willing that they should occupy the frontier as a buffer against the Indians, and so they took up lands in New Hampshire, Vermont, Western Massachusetts, and Maine. Only a few congregations, however, settled in New England--the bulk of the immigrants entered by way of Philadelphia and Baltimore and went to the interior of Pennsylvania surrounding and south of Harrisburg. They spread through the Shenandoah valley and in the foothill regions of Virginia and North and South Carolina. Gradually, they pushed farther west, across the mountains into Western Pennsylvania about Pittsburg, and into Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. In all of these regions they fought the Indians, protected the older inhabitants from inroads, and developed those pioneer qualities which for one hundred years have characterized the "winning of the West."

The Scotch-Irish occupied a peculiar place in the new world. More than any other race they served as the amalgam to produce, out of divergent races, a new race, the American. The Puritans of New England, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, the Cavaliers of Virginia, were as radically different as peoples of different races, and they were separated from each other in their own exclusive communities. The Germans were localized in Pennsylvania and Maryland, the Dutch in New York, but the Scotch-Irish "alone of the various races in America were present in sufficient numbers in all of the colonies to make their influence count; and they alone of all the races had one uniform religion; had experienced together the persecutions by state and church which had deprived them at home of their civil and religious liberties; and were the common heirs to those principles of freedom and democracy which had been developed in Scotland as nowhere else. At the time of the American Revolution there were ... in all above five hundred settlements scattered over practically all the American colonies."[10] Trained as they were in the representative democracy of the Scottish kirk, thrown on their own resources in the wilderness, mingling with the pioneers of many other races, they took the lead in developing that Western type which in politics and industry became ultimately the American type; yet they retained their original character, and the American to-day is more at home in Glasgow than in London.