The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863

In 1762, 'upward of six hundred German emigrants, men, women, and children, consisting of Wurtzburghers and Palatines, all Protestants, who were brought here by one Colonel Stumpel, with a promise to be immediately settled in America,' were landed in England, and charitably aided to go to South Carolina. In 1766, I read of Florida, 'the principal town is Pensacola, and as many of the French, who inhabited here before the treaty, have chose to become British subjects for the sake of keeping their estates,' that more foreigners were added to the Southern colonies.

Mr. Pickett, whose history of Alabama was published at Charleston, S. C., in 1851, adds, 'a company of forty Jews, acting under the broad principle of the charter, which gave freedom to all religions, save that of the Romish Church, landed at Savannah. Much dissatisfaction, both in England and America, arose in consequence of these Israelites, and Oglethorpe was solicited to send them immediately from the colony. He, however, generously permitted them to remain, which was one of the wisest acts of his life, for they and their descendants were highly instrumental in developing the commercial resources of this wild land.' 'The colony of Georgia had prospered under the wise guidance of Oglethorpe. The colonists, being from different nations, were various in their characters and religious creeds. Vaudois, Swiss, Piedmontese, Germans, Moravians, Jews from Portugal, Highlanders, English, and Italians were thrown together in this fine climate, new world, and new home.'

Even Virginia was not entirely English. Barber's account of the State (p. 451) says of the valley of the Shenandoah:

'The eastern part of the valley being conveniently situated for emigrants from Pennsylvania, as well as from lower Virginia, the population there came to be a mixture of English Virginians and German and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. The German Pennsylvanians, being passionate lovers of fat lands, no sooner heard of the rich valleys of the Shenando and its branches, than they began to join their countrymen from Europe in pouring themselves forth over the country above Winchester. Finding the main Shenando mostly preoccupied, they followed up the north and south branches on both sides of the Massanutten, or Peaked Mountain, until they filled up all the beautiful vales of the country for the space of sixty miles. So completely did they occupy the country, that the few stray English or Irish settlers among them did not sensibly affect the homogeneousness of the population.'

And again:

'The first settlements of this portion of the valley were made by the Scotch Irish, with a few original Scotch among them. They settled in the neighorhoods around Martinsburg, in Berkely county, Winchester, and almost the entire counties of Orange and Guilford. The same race went on into North Carolina, and settled in the counties of Orange and Guilford, especially in the northern and middle parts of the latter county.'

Beverley writes (p. 228):

'The French refugees sent in thither by the charitable exhibition of his late majesty King William, are naturalized by a particular law for that purpose. In the year 1699 there went over about three hundred of these, and in the year following about two hundred more, and so on, till there arrived in all between seven and eight hundred men, women, and children, who had fled from France on account of their religion.'

Bishop Meade (ii. 75) writes:

'That twelve Protestant German families, consisting of about fifty persons, arrived, April 17th, in Virginia, and were therein settled near the Rappahannock river. That in 1717, seventeen Protestant German families, consisting of about fourscore persons, came and set down near their countrymen. And many more, both German and Swiss families, are likely to come there and settle likewise.'

This report was made in 1720.

These facts show in the clearest manner that a great percentage of the inhabitants of the seceding States are not of English origin. Even the English were not all Cavalier and Episcopalian. The London Magazine, in an 'Account of the British Plantations,' says:

'What contributed much more toward the establishment of the colony, was their granting a plenary indulgence to people of all religions, as by their charter they were empowered to do; for by this great numbers of dissenters were induced to sell their estates in England and transport themselves and families to Carolina; so that by the year 1670 a numerous colony was at once sent out.'

One last consideration, of possible impurity of blood, and I will proceed to examine the antecedents of those colonists who were of English blood.

In 1853, a memoir of James Fontaine was published, accompanied by letters from members of his family. He was a Huguenot, who had settled in Virginia, and his descendants have been among the most distinguished of her citizens.

The letters of his sons to relatives in England are very instructive. I quote from one from Peter Fontaine, dated March 2, 1756, in which he regrets that the English had not intermarried with the Indians:

'But here methinks I can hear you observe, 'What! Englishmen intermarry with Indians?' But I can convince you that they are guilty of much more heinous practices, more unjustifiable in the sight of God and man (if that indeed may be called a bad practice); for many base wretches among us take up with negro women, by which means the country swarms with mulatto bastards, and these mulattoes, if but three generations removed from the black father or mother, may, by the indulgence of the laws of the country, intermarry with the white people, and actually do every day so marry.'

This is the testimony of a Virginian gentleman, made a century ago; I do not care to more than point to the possible infusion of other than English blood into the veins of the gentlemen who desire to adopt the Cavalier as their national device.

We now proceed to examine the social position, prior to the emigration, of those Englishmen who did in a certain degree colonize the present Slave States, and in a much greater degree colonize New England. I must confess having long wondered at the persistent statement of Englishmen that the citizens of the United States were the offspring of the vagabonds and felons of Europe. Having examined the history of the families of New England with much interest, and finding therein no confirmation of this idea, I had held it but the outbreak of prejudice and ignorance. Yet since the present rebellion has caused so much inquiry into the antecedents of the Southerners, I find that the assertion is well founded, but that it concerns those who have hitherto been loudest in their claims to a distinguished ancestry.

I find among the items of monthly intelligence in the London Magazine, the records of felons sentenced to transportation to his majesty's plantations in America, and often the different colonies named. I find a calculation incidentally made, about 1750, that 500 culprits were hung annually in Great Britain—and bloody as the circuits then were, I cannot believe that less than ten times that number annually received the questionable charity of expatriation. I will give a few extracts to show the foundation upon which Southern society has been erected.

In October, 1732, '68 men and 50 women, felons convict, were carried from Newgate to Black Fryars, and put on board a lighter to be carried down the river to be shipped on board the Cæsar, off of Deptford, for transportation to Virginia.' January, 1736: 'This morning 140 felons convict for transportation, were carried from Newgate, and shipped for the plantations, and 18 likewise from the new gaol at Southwark.' In May, 106 were also so shipped. In 1738, 126 were shipped at one time 'for the plantations.' In 1739, 127 were shipped 'to America.' In 1741, 9 of the felons on board a ship lying at Blackwall, 'to be transported to Virginia,' made a bold dash to escape. In May, 1747, 'We are informed that several large ships sailed lately from Liverpool with the rebel prisoners, under a strong convoy to Virginia and Maryland, and other of his majesty's plantations, which makes the whole of what have been transported upward of 1,000.' In January, 1749, 'the 'Laura,' with 135 convicts, bound to Maryland, was cast away.' In 1754, Mr. Stewart was the contractor to transport convicts 'to America.' In 1758, '63 men and women transports were sent from Newgate on board the ship 'Trial,' bound to Maryland, and 45 from the new gaol, Southwark.' Later in the same year, 53 'for America'—36 men and 20 women 'for the plantations.' In 1761, a ship sails with 8 men and 27 women 'convicts to America.' In October, '27 women and 18 men from Newgate, 14 from the new gaol, and 62 from the country gaols, were transported to America this month.' In 1762, 36 women and 5 men convicts were shipped 'to America;' '62 convicts were embarked for Maryland.'

In 1766, I find: 'The above observation occurred to my mind a few days ago, on seeing the convicts pass along to the water side, in order to be shipped for America, with fifes playing before them, 'Through the wood, laddie,' '—as an evidence that the practice was then in force and a matter of course.

In a 'Tour through the British Plantations,' published in this magazine, in 1755, which contains a good account of each colony, I read of Virginia that under Sir Edwyn Sandys, 'there were 12,000 acres laid off for the use of the company, and 100 tenants or planters sent to be placed thereon; and 3,000 acres for the support of the Governor, for the planting of which 100 more men were sent; and what was now become absolutely necessary, there were no less than 90 young women, of a healthful constitution, and unspotted reputation, sent out to be married to the planters, instead of diseased and profligate strumpets, as is now the ridiculous practice.... Thus the company and colony began to be in a thriving way: but now they began to be oppressed by the Government here, for in November they were ordered to send over to Virginia, at their own charge, 100 felons or vagabonds, then it may be supposed in prison, which they were obliged to comply with.'

The same writer says of Maryland:

'The convicts that are transported here sometimes prove very worthy creatures and entirely forsake their former follies; but the trade has for some time run in another channel; and so many volunteer servants come over, especially Irish, that the other is a commodity much blown over. Several of the best planters, or their ancestors, have, in the two colonies,¹⁴ been originally of the convict class, and therefore are much to be praised and esteemed for forsaking their old courses.'

In 1751 (p. 293) is printed the following:

'A LETTER LATELY PUBLISHED IN VIRGINIA

'Sir: When we see our papers filled continually with accounts of the most audacious robberies, the most cruel murders, and infinite other atrocities perpetrated by convicts transported from Europe, what melancholy, what terrible reflections must it occasion! What will become of our posterity? These are some of thy favors, Britain! Thou art called our mother country; but what good mother ever sent thieves and villains to accompany her children; to corrupt some with their infectious vices, and murder the rest? What father ever endeavored to spread the plague in his family! We do not ask fish, but thou givest us serpents, and worse than serpents! In what can Britain show a more sovereign contempt for us, than by emptying their gaols into our settlements, unless they would likewise empty their offal upon our tables? What must we think of that board, which has advised the repeal of every law we have hitherto made to prevent this deluge of wickedness overwhelming us; and with this cruel sarcasm, that these laws were against the public utility, for they tended to prevent the improvement and well peopling of the colonies! And what must we think of those merchants, who, for the sake of a little paltry gain, will be concerned in importing and disposing of these abominable cargoes?'

With these quotations I would leave the subject to the consideration of every unprejudiced judgment. Is it not for the Southerner, even for the Virginian, to produce further evidence of his Cavalier descent before it can be allowed? We see abundant proofs, taken from authorities in no way connected with the present inimical feelings of the North and South, that a very large portion of the English colonists consisted of transported felons. To this direct evidence—which can only be rebutted by evidence of the extinction of the descendants of this class and the infusion of an equal amount of gentle blood—we have thus far only the fact of the presence of a very few good families, and the boasts of prejudiced partisans.

And now, after having indicated the grounds for a careful criticism of Southern claims, let me assert the claims of New England, not to gentle blood, but to a purely English ancestry. Here we come at once upon solid ground, and the authorities are numerous and trustworthy. Genealogy has, for the past ten or twelve years, been a favorite study in New England; and, as Sir Bernard Burke writes, 'for ten or twelve years before the civil conflict broke out … Massachusetts was more genealogical than Yorkshire, and Boston sustained what London never did, a magazine devoted exclusively to genealogy.' The history of different families, the records of nearly all the older towns, the colonial records, have all been placed in print. Many of these books are larger than any English works on the subject, and are monuments of patient industry. After such researches we may claim to speak intelligently of our ancestry, and to point to the proofs of our assertions. In one work, contained in four volumes, covering two thousand five hundred pages, Mr. Savage has attempted to record the names of the settlers of New England and of two generations of their descendants. Imperfect as such an attempt may be, what other section of our country or any nation can pretend to such a knowledge of its antecedents? I give the result of his twenty years' study in his own words:

'From long and careful research I have judged the proportion of the whole number living here in 1775, that deduce their origin from the kingdom of England, i.e., the southern part of Great Britain, excluding also the principality of Wales, to exceed ninety-eight in a hundred.'

'A more homogeneous stock cannot be seen, I think, in any so extensive a region at any time, since that when the ark of Noah discharged its passengers on Mount Ararat, except in the few centuries elapsing before the confusion of Babel.'

So much for the idle slander that New England has no records nor homogeneity.

As to the other alleged stigma of Puritanism. Could Virginia maintain her claim to a Cavalier ancestry instead of failing on even a superficial scrutiny, the contrast attempted to be drawn between Puritan and Cavalier is based on a fallacy. When these colonies were established, the distinction was a political one as clearly as the succeeding divisions of Whig and Tory. In those days the gentry were the leaders—the Puritan was as much a gentleman in the technical English sense as the Cavalier. To take an instance which will strike our Virginia friends, who quote the Fairfaxes and Washingtons: Lord Fairfax, the Puritan, married the daughter of Lord Vere, 'a zealous Presbyterian and disaffected to the king.' Their daughter married the gay Cavalier, duke of Buckingham.

The Washingtons were connections, and rather humble ones, of the Spencers. Yet the latest account of the families show Henry Lord Spencer 'standing by the side of the Lords Northumberland and Essex, and the other noblemen who were afterward the leaders of the Parliament during the civil war.'

Puritan and Cavalier! The phrase only means that those, both of gentry and yeomanry, who had sufficient brains to understand liberty, and the courage to fight for it, combined and forever broke the chains of royal or oligarchical oppression. If the gentry were a minority in the party, so much the less reason to boast of such an ancestry.

Still, as no point in a contest should be thrown away, let it be avowed that Puritanic New England could always display a greater array of 'gentlemen by birth' than Virginia, or even the entire South. This is said deliberately, because we know whereof we speak. If the fact be of service in any way, it can easily be substantiated. A list of such names as I can at present remember is longer than any list I have been able to collect from Southern publications. These are, Adams, Amory, Anderson, Appleton, Belcher, Bond, Bowdoin, Bromfield, Browne, Burrill, Chauncy, Chester, Chute, Checkley, Clark, Clarke, Cotton, Coolidge, Corwin, Cradock, Davenport, Downing, Dudley, Dummer, Eyre, Fairfax, Foxcroft, Giffard, Jaffrey, Jeffries, Johnson, Hawthorne, Herrick, Holyoke, Hutchinson, Lawrence, Lake, Lechmere, Legge, Leverett, Lloyd, Lowell, Mascarene, Mather, Miner, Norton, Oliver, Pepperell, Phips, Phippen, Prince, Pynchon, Saltonstall, Sears, Sewall, Thornton, Usher, Vassall, Ward, Wendell, Wetmore, Wilson, Winslow, Winthrop, Wyllys.

I insert this list only for the benefit of those who have yielded to the claims of Virginia through ignorance on points which are peculiarly the care of genealogists. It can easily be extended, and every year, as our records are more fully examined, it will increase.

If we leave the dry details, which I have presented simply as indications of the method in which this question can be discussed, and regard the problem in a more general view, it is surprising to see how theory and fact agree. The United States are essentially English to-day, despite the millions of foreigners which have been absorbed into its population. The tendency of its citizens has been toward a democracy, and yet not toward anarchy and lawlessness. The throes of a gigantic revolution have not sufficed to outweigh the instinctive love of law and order peculiar to the English race. Though events unforeseen by the authors of the Federal Constitution have called for exercises of power, obscurely permitted perhaps by that instrument, yet unknown to former practice, still there has been no popular convulsion at the North, no armed outbreak, no phrensy of mob power. There is as yet no such thing known as an American mob.

When we inquire what controlling influence has impressed this form upon the national character, the enemies of the predominant party instinctively show that it is New England. Not the comparatively limited New England of 1863, but the New England stock and influence which has invigorated nearly every State of the Union. In their ignorance of the past, these revilers of New England have been blindly attacking a greater fact than they were aware of. Not only is nearly a third part of our native-born population the offspring of the New England of the Revolution, but long before that time the intermixture had commenced. Whitehead's 'New Jersey' (p. 159) quotes Governor Burnet's letter, written in 1729:

'The people of New Jersey (being generally of New England extraction, and therefore enthusiasts) would consider the number of planters, etc., as a repetition of the same sin as David committed in numbering the people.'

The History of Dorchester, Massachusetts, quotes a letter from the Secretary of Georgia, in 1755, in relation to a colony from that town, in which he says:

'I really look upon these people moving here to be one of the most favorable circumstances that could befall the colony.'

It is added:

'This settlement has furnished Georgia with two governors, two of its most distinguished judges, the theological seminary of South Carolina and Georgia with an able professor, the Methodist Episcopal Church with an influential and pious bishop, the Presbyterian and Baptist Churches of that State with many of their ablest and most useful ministers; and six of her sons have been called to professorial chairs in collegiate institutions.'

The first attempt at colonizing the Mississippi delta was made by the Lymans, Dwights, and their associates from Connecticut. New York received a constant accession from New England long before 1775.

Here, then, history and theory both agree. New England, colonized by Englishmen, homogeneous in a remarkable degree, has been the only thoroughly pure nationality within our territories. The few stray Englishmen of education in the Southern colonies, the much greater number of convicts, the increasing immigration of French, Irish, Scotch, and German settlers, have not only failed to overwhelm this compact and thoroughly alive minority, but have been formed and moulded into shape by it. In protesting against New England, the Vallandighams and Coxes are only proving the nullity of 'expunging resolutions.' 'Can they make that not to be which has been?' Until they can recall the past, annihilate the past inhabitants of these States, and from stones raise up some other progenitors for the present generation, they cannot destroy the influence of New England.

And yet we are called upon to believe that the race which has thus done the greatest work of the past two centuries was the random aggregation of opposite and mongrel races, the offspring of ignorance, poverty, and crime. We are to believe that while the pure blood of English gentlemen in Virginia has produced not only the gentlemanly vices of pride, treachery, and falsehood in the leaders, but the ignoble faults of crime and debasement in the 'poor trash'—that some occult influence of climate has advanced an entire community at the North far above the position of its progenitors—that while the gentle Cavalier has been overcome by the seductive charms of luxury and repose, the ignoble Puritan has thrown off his degrading antecedents, and has obtained the control of the allied races. The servant has become the master, the scum of all nations has overpowered the choicest offspring of that race which Macaulay terms 'the hereditary rulers of mankind.'

These conclusions, so eminently logical and convincing, we must believe, or we must doubt the pure blood of the aristocracy of the Slave States.

Is it not more reasonable to believe, as facts daily prove, that New England was colonized from the hardiest and best portion of the English stock? That our ancestors, accepting the state of English society as a fact, neither invited nor repelled the accession of the gentry. That many of that class did join in the enterprise, and that, where they were worthy, they received the slight preference which is accorded to personal advantages of any sort. That the bulk of the colonists were separated from this class by slight barriers, that many of them were excluded only by a want of the necessary property to maintain the position, and that on this new territory these distinctions were speedily forgotten—not because the higher class deteriorated, but because the lower, having but a slight advance to make, soon stood on an actual equality with them.

If the sympathy of England were now as desirable and as strongly expected as it was two years ago, I might urge the matter further. As it is, it seems sufficient to overthrow the claims of Southerners, based upon false pretences, and supported only by unblushing effrontery, and to refute the slanders which have been thrown upon an entire section of the loyal States.