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TWO LECTURES

pistGrg 0f \i ^wkm flraon,

HENRY REED,
, LATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH HI5T0RT IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PEHNSTLTANIA.

PHILADELPHIA:
PAREY & MCMILLAN,
SDCCESSOES TO A, HART, i^tb CAREY & HART.
1856.

7.?«

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by
PARRY & McMillan,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern
District of Pennsylvania.

STEKBOTTPED BY L. JOHNSON AMD CO.
PHILADELPHIA.

Printed by T. E. & P. G. Collins.

INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.

These Lectures were written for the Smithsonian
Institute at Washington, and delivered there a few years
ago. At the time, they attracted great attention ; and
they are now reproduced in the hope that such a re
trospect as they afford of the Providential processes
which created the Union, may not be without interest
and use at a time when adverse sectional excitements en
danger it. They have no reference to party questions,
past or present. The historical review ends with the
establishment of the Union, and has no relation to what
has happened since. They therefore give offence to no
one, unless it be to those who, looking at the Union as
the mere creation of human agencies, are willing that

4 INTKODUCTOKY NOTICE.
fanaticisms and passions of one kind or another — ^the
weaknesses of our human nature — shall destroy it. To
such, the author did not speak. He humbly and in
telligently looked upon the Union as the blessed work
of God, and as such, loved and revered it.
W. B. R.
Philadelphia, July 17, 1856.

LECTUEE FIEST.

THE UNION.

FIRST LECTURE.
The Union originating in the Providential Government of the World — ^Illus
trations of Ancient and Modem History — European Colonization of America
— Saxondom — The Northmen — Spanish and Portuguese Colonization — Bull
of Alexander VI. — Tendency in English Colonies to local Self-government
and local Independence — The American element — Cabot's Discoveries — Sir
Humphrey Gilbert — Raleigh — The Pairy Queen and Virginia — French Colonial
Policy — The Atlantic Settlements — The Creation of the Materials for the Union.
My theme is the growth of the American
Union during the colonial era of our history.
In treating such a subject, it is my desire to say,
in the first place, that I shall purposely forbear
speaking of the Union as it now exists, with its
manifold and countless blessings, its present
estate, and its prospects. It is the retrospect
which I intend to turn to ; and in that retrospect
there is abundance both of admonition and en
couragement for all after-time, much to inspire
a thoughtful loyalty to the Union, and a deep
sense of responsibility for each generation com
ing to live within that Union and to transmit
it unimpaired to posterity, such as it has grown
to be, not by man's will or sagacity, but by the
providential government of the world.

8 THEUNION.
In speaking of history as making manifest
such providential government of the world, I do
but recognise and follow one of the highest
principles which we owe to the improved culture
of historical science in the present century. That
improvement is not alone in more laborious and
dutiful habits of research, in the more studious
use of original documents, but in a truer philo
sophy of history, not such as in a former age,
arrogating the title of philosophy, contracted its
vision within the scant range of scepticism, but a
philosophy which reverently traces on the annals
of the human race marks of more than human
agency, — an overruling Providence. As in that
which is especially denominated "sacred history"
the purposes of the Creator are expressly re
vealed, so in that which is styled, in contradis
tinction, '¦'¦profane history," as purposes of the
same Creator must needs exist, the thoughtful
student may gain at least some glimpses of them,
and yet refrain all the while from rash interpre
tation of the divine will in the guidance and
government of man and of the races of man to
whom the earth is parcelled out.
It becomes more practicable to trace these pro
vidential purposes when we look over long tracts
of time. The history of Rome, for instance, vidth
its twelve centuries of growth, and decay, and
ruin : — in one point of view, what is it but a pur
poseless record of strife, external and internal—

THE UNION. 9
conquest and the domestic feud of patrician and
plebeian— and ended, at last, like an unsubstan
tial pageant, leaving no influence behind it ? But,
in another point of view, it becomes a more in
telligible memorial of the life of a nation that
had a destiny to fulfil, an appointed work to do,
— to build up a system of law which should enter
into modern European and American jurispru
dence, and with its strong pagan power to pave
a path for Christianity to travel into the vast
regions which at one time were included within
Roman dominion.
!N"ow, turning to American history, and
especially that portion of it which is de
voted to the Union, it is possible, I believe,
to place the events in such combinations, to
discover in them such a concurrent tendency,
as to leave no room to question that those
events were controlled as the secondary causes
of the results to which form was given in
our system of government. From the latter
part of the last century, — from the year of
the adoption of the Constitution of the United
States of America, with its primary purpose
of forming a more ferfect union, — back into the
century of English colonization, — back still
earlier to the years of discovery, and even
earlier yet to those remote centuries in which
— many generations before Columbus or Cabot
— European eyes, we may believe, beheld this

10 THEUNION.
continent for the first time, — throughout that
long tract of time, there is, I do not fear to
say, a tendency, more or less visible, towards
the future results, and not least among those
results towards this Union. That tendency may
be traced both in what was frustrated and in
what has been achieved ; so that all things seem
to lead to this result, the predominance in North
America of one European race, and that the
race which speaks the English tongue. I thus
entitle it for the want of a better and briefer
name. The title "Anglo-Saxon" is hardly ade
quate or expressive enough for a breed of men
in whose veins there runs the mingled current
of Saxon and Norman blood, perhaps of ancient
British, Celtic, Roman, and Danish blood. From
the earliest time in which intercourse began be
tween the Eastern and Western hemispheres,
down to our own day, the great movement has
been the extension of what may be called Saxon-
dom, — a part of that larger movement, not con
fined to North America, but extending to Soutl>
ern Africa, to India from Ceylon to its northern
mountains, and to Australia and the islands in
the distant seas, — the movement which is carry
ing the language and the laws of our race widely
over the earth.
My present purpose is to look at this movement
as it has a connection with American history,
and especially with the Union; and, vsdthout

THEUNION. 11
attempting in any way to make historical facts
bend to hypothesis, to show that the history of
discovery, the history of colonization and of
colonial government, all establish this historical
truth, that the work of laying the foundation of
a great political system in North America was
reserved for the race that speaks the English
language, by whatever name we may choose to
call that race ; further, that, in order to develop
so essential a part of that system as the union
of a federal republic, the work was reserved for
the English race at a particular period of their
history in the mother-country. Thus it is to
remote causes that we are to trace that political
power which animates a government extending
from the lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, and from
the Atlantic to the Pacific.
It seems to me that there is no consideration
better calculated to deepen in the mind of every
reflecting citizen a reverence for the Union than
a just sense of its origin; and that is to be
acquired by the studious asking and answering
of this question. How was this Union formed ?
Has the origin of the Union a date — a day or a
year? Can we find its epoch — as of indepen
dence, or of the confederation, or of the Constitu
tion? "Was it done in convention? Did men
come together by some delegated authority and
deliberate in solemn council and ordain a Union ?
Never. It was the work of time, the natural

12 THE UNION.
consequence of events, a growth from circum
stances, or whatever other phrase may be used
as a substitute for an express acknowledgment
of a Providence in the destinies of mankind. It
is not possible to trace the Union to any pre
meditated plan, the idea of any one man, or the
concert of any body of men. You can find no
authority to pronounce it the direct product of
human foresight, of political vsdsdom and ex
perience. You cannot point to any day in our
history, and say that on such a day Union ex
isted, and on the day before there was nothing
of the kind. In truth, the Union was not made ;
it grew. It grew as the tree grows, planting its
roots deeper and deeper, and lifting its branches
stronger and stronger and higher and higher, its
vital forces coursing upward and outward to its
lightest leaf. The Union grew as the forest
grows, and the seed was not sown by man's
hand. This element of government is at the
same time an element of national character. It
is part of the life of Saxon liberty, and it came
with the Saxon race to be developed and ex
panded in a land which seems to have been
reserved to be the Saxon's heritage.
Whatever may have been accomplished when
European enterprise began its work on this con
tinent with those long-unknown or forgotten dis
coveries of the Scandinavian navigators, who, five
hundred years before Columbus, were the first to

THE UNION. 13
behold these western shores, those obscure voy
ages left no abiding influence here. The North
man had no distinct destiny here ; and, idle as it
would be now to speculate on such a future as
there might have been if Scandinavian discovery
had been followed by conquest and settlement,
one cannot help thinking how fruitless would
have been the strife between the savage native
races and the fierce uncivilized barbarians of the
Northern seas. This land was not meant for the
Northman's home. The voyages of the eleventh
and twelfth centuries passed away, leaving no
trace behind them, and, what was more important,
leaving the land open to the enterprise of other
and distant generations who had a destiny here.
When, in the fifteenth century, the South of
Europe was stirred by the spirit of maritime
adventure, and Portugal took the lead in it, the
enterprise of that kingdom found a southern and
not a western direction, in the voyages along the
western coast of Africa, planned by that remark
able personage. Prince Henry, (a Plantagenet by
the mother's side, let me say in passing.) This
land was not given to the race of Portugal first,
though they were among modern discoverers.
When Spain slowly followed the career of
which the neighbouring kingdom had set the
example, and when Columbus had nearly crossed
the Atlantic, steering due westward to the con
tinent of North America, then only a few days'

14 THEUNION.
sail distant, a flight of birds, as is familiarly
remembered from the well-known story, were
seen winging their way across the course of the
vessels ; and the great navigator, following those
pilots of the air southwestward, lost the con
tinent, and the power of Spain was planted only
on the islands. As a flight of birds gave, accord
ing to the legend, augury for the first doings of
Rome's history, so in another way it has a place
in our earliest annals. Again, on his second
voyage, the path of Columbus lay among the
islands ; and when the papal power was invoked
to determine the disputes between Spain and
Portugal, respecting their rights of discovery,
and Alexander VI. adjudged his famous partition,
which seems to appropriate to these two con
tending powers all that was discovered and all
-that was to be discovered in the New World
— soon after this exercise of power, (more
than human by one less than human in the
crimes that have made the name of Borgia in
famous,) soon after, the sovereign of a country
which held slacker allegiance to Rome gave the
commission to the Cabots, and that authority,
which has been well styled " the oldest American
State paper," set the Saxon foot upon this soil,
the first of European feet to touch the continent.
The land was not meant, either by claim of dis
covery or by papal gift, to be the Spaniards'
home. The two small English vessels which had

THEUNION. 15
cleared from Bristol, " with authority to sail to
all parts of the east, west, and north, under the
royal banners and ensigns, to discover countries
of the heathen unknown to Christians, to set up
the king's banner there, to occupy and possess,
as his subjects, such places as they could subdue,
with rule and jurisdiction," coasting along per
haps some thirty degrees of latitude, from La
brador to Yirginia, gave to an English race their
title here. Thus early, within a very few years
after the beginning of western discovery in the
fifteenth century, was laid the foundation of
future dominion ; for, whatever other European
races might thereafter seek a home on this por
tion of the continent, it would be only for such
partial or temporary occupation as would sooner
or later be absorbed by the race which was
then, in that era, the first to touch the main
land. It was thus that the way was prepared
to make the country the heritage of that race
which speaks the English tongue, — a race in
whose institutions the name of people was
never lost, whether in their furthest antiquity
in the forests of Germany, or under Saxon,
Danish, or Norman rule, after their migration to
Britain, whether under the kingly confederacy
of the Saxon, or under the power of the strongest
Norman sovereigns, Plantagenet or Tudor; so
that, with the popular element ever present,
every political struggle has been either to regain

16. THE UNION.
something lost, or to expand and improve some
ancient right.
In studying the originating influences of our
institutions, political and judicial, there can be
no question, I believe, but that the first influence
is to be sought in the character of the race.
Powers and habits of thought and feeling come
to us with our blood, and extend to all who come
within the range of their influence. We have
but expanded what the Saxon began more than
a thousand years ago, before, indeed, the races
of the North had a history of their own or a place
in the history of the more civilized South. The
influence of race is most obvious when we think
of the inheritance of the common law, or such a
special tradition, from unknown origin, as the
trial by jury. My present purpose is to trace the
agency of the same principle, I mean the influence
of race, where it is less apparent, in that part of
our political system which is expressed by the
term "the Union," and then to follow it onward
through the processes of colonization and the
course of colonial government.
The question to be considered is, what element
was there in the Anglo-Saxon character and
institutions which, being transplanted to this
country, and being left to freer and more unre
strained action, would facilitate the formation of
a federal government — of a Unioij? Such an
element is to be found in the tendency to local self-

THE UNION. 17
government which is characteristic of the race,
and is conspicuous in the history of their institu
tions. This is a tendency the very reverse of that
which is described by such terms as " centraliza
tion" or "consolidation." Saxon freedom has, no
doubt, been held chiefly on the tenure of this
principle, that the central power of the State has
always recognised a great variety of local powers.
Even with regard to metropolitan influences,
how obvious is it that London has never been to
England what Paris has been and is to France,
whether royal, imperial, or republican France !
It has been justly said that " centralization and
active life pervading the whole body are hard to
reconcile ; he who should do this perfectly would
have established a perfect government. * * *
It seems to be a law that life cannot long go on
in a multitude of minute parts without union ;
nay, even without something of that very cen
tralization which yet, if not well watched, is so
apt to destroy the parts by absorbing their life
into its own ; there must be a heart in the political
as in the natural body to supply the extremities
continually with fresh blood." — (Arnold.)
Now, throughout the Avhole history of our race
— ^the race that speaks the English tongue here
and in England, during the threescore years of
our Constitution, during the brief existence of the
confederation, during the contentional colonial
period between 1763 and 1776, and during the
2

18 THE UNION.
earlier colonial times, or, in the mother-country,
during the various eras of the history of the race
there — it has been the combination of these two
principles — the principle of centralization and the
principle of local independence — that has distin
guished the race, that has made its power, its
safety, and its freedom. Political strength and
health have been in the just distribution and har
mony of these powers, having au archetype, it
may be said, in the tranquil and perpetual har
mony of the solar system — the noiseless on
goings of the stars. In the political system of
the Saxon — royal or republican — the danger has
ever been in any excess of either the centripetal
force on the one hand, or the centrifugal on the
other. Whatever variations there may have been
from time to time, this may, I believe, safely be
pronounced the great Saxon characteristic, — a
habit of local government, exercised in a certain
subordination, or rather relation, to a central
government. And farther, it would not be diffi
cult to discover in such distribution of power in
local institutions much of the discipline, the
training for more expanded opportunities of
government, which has helped onward what ap
pears to be the destiny of the race. Observe
how, after the Saxon occupation of Britain, the
conquered territory, small comparatively in ex
tent, was divided into several petty kino-doms, 
those loosely-compacted kingly commonwealths

THE UNION. 19
which were to form the heptarchy ; and again,
how each of these was parcelled out into those
various divisions, the counties, shires, hundreds,
tithings, and other partitions, the origin of which
perplexes the antiquarian. The old Saxon spirit
of local independence and authority animated
the local institutions, assemblies, tribunals of
various kinds, vsdth an energy that never could
have been developed under a strongly-controlling
central power.
When the Norman conqueror sought to com
plete the subjugation of England, by introducing
the laws and institutions of his own country and
a rigorous establishment of the feudal system,
all this Saxon variety of law, of usage, of man
ners, and of men, was a perpetual hinderance,
which it was part of the conquest to do away
with. The conqueror's strong hand was laid on
the free diversities which the Saxon had been
used to of old, for conquest, dominion, empire
demanded more of a submissive uniformity ; and
accordingly, as an instance of it, we find the con
queror introducing, for the administration of
justice, an office unknown to the Saxon, — the
office of chief-justiciar. The biographer of the
English Chief-Justices remarks, in the opening
sentence of his work : —
" The office of Chief-Justice, or Chief-Justiciar,
was introduced into England by William the
Conqueror, from Normandy, where it had long

20 THE UNION.
existed. The functions of such an officer would
have ill accorded with the notions of our Anglo-
Saxon ancestors, who had a great antipathy to
centralization, and prided themselves upon en
joying the rights and the advantages of self-
government. * * * "Iu Normandy, the interference of
the supreme government was much more active
than in England ; and there existed an officer
called Chief-Justictar, who superintended the
administration of justice over the whole duke
dom, and on whom, according to the manners of
the age, both military and civil powers of great
magnitude were conferred." Lord Campbell
adds in a note : — " It is curious to observe that,
notwithstanding the sweeping change of laws
and institutions introduced at the conquest, the
characteristic difference between Frenchmen and
Englishmen, in the management of local affairs,
still exists after the lapse of so many centuries ;
and that, while with us parish vestries, town
councils, and county sessions are the organs of
the petty confederated republics into which Eng
land is parcelled out ; in France, whether the form
of government be nominally monarchical or re
publican, no one can alter the direction of a road,
build a bridge, or open a mine, without the au
thority of the ' ]Ministre des Fonts et Chaussees.'
In Ireland, there being much more Celtic than
Anglo-Saxon blood, no self-reliance is felt, and

THEUNION. 21
a disposition prevails to throw every thing upon
the government."
This Saxon characteristic is to be discovered
not only in the number but also in the diversity
of local institutions, arising from diversity of
character and traditional influences. Although
in the course of time — many centuries — such
diversities have been smoothed down by many
assimilating processes, perhaps no country on
the face of the earth, within so narrow a space,
presents so great a variety of customs as England
continues to do. Habits, manners, the tenure
of land, rules of inheritance, display a free variety
strongly contrasted with the servile uniformity of
governments with stronger controlling central
powers. Usages which appertain to the North
Briton are unknown to the South Briton, — the
man of Kent, or Cornwall, or Wales. The cities
and towns have a variety of municipal power
and privilege resting on the authority of imme
morial usage.
The origin of all this diversity, in which there
has been developed so much of practical power,
is to be traced to the same cause which has trans
mitted it to America, — the mode in which the
land was occupied by the successive races who
came to its shores. The Roman conquerors and
colonists, the continued migrations of the Saxons,
the abiding incursions of the Danes, the conquest
by the Norman, each brought and left an influ-

22 THEUNION.
ence, a set of laws or customs at the least ; and
in the after-ages, no tyranny was strong enough
or senseless enough, no revolution was rash
enough, to attempt that worst of all revolutionary
havoc, total obliteration of the past, the absolute
subjugation of local variety and independence.
Such diversity may possibly offend the merely
speculative mind, which is apt to crave that which
is squared and levelled to a more theoretic exact
ness and completeness ; but it is the power which
has been disciplined by such diversity, and the
freedom that accompanies it, which has spread
the race over the earth, and has engendered our
Union. It is well known that in material nature,
in the lower orders of creation, considerable
uniformity is met with ; but that the higher we
ascend the more diversity is found. A great
modern historical philosopher adopted, as a lead
ing principle in his science, this truth, that "as
in organic beings the most perfect life is that
which animates the greatest variety of numbers,
so among States that is the most perfect in which
a number of institutions originally distinct, being
organized each after its kind into centres of na
tional life, form a complete whole."
Now I believe that it is possible to show that
during the whole of our colonial era, during what
may be called the primitive period of our political
institutions, the whole course of events tended
to the establishment of this principle thus philo-

THE UNION. 23
sophically stated by Niebuhr. I mean to say
explicitly, that the providential government of
the doings of men on this portion of the world,
and with reference to this portion of the world,
from the discovery of it onwards to the adoption
of the Constitution of the United States, has led
on to what has been described as the highest
form of political life, a republican system includ
ing the principle of distributed local government,
in the parlance familiar to us, "a Federal Re
public," or, in the philosophical language of the
historian whom I just quoted, " a complete whole,
formed of a number of institutions," originally
distinct, organized each after its kind into centres
of life. I am aware that it may sound presump
tuous to speak confidently of the purposes of the
providential government over the world, or over
portions of it, or over the movements of this or
that race. But when the principle of a provi
dential government of the human race is recog
nised, as it must be by every mind whose belief
has advanced beyond the confines of absolute
atheism, and also when, during a long course of
years, — near three hundred years in the case to
which I wish to apply the principle, — you can trace
a correspondence between the events of such a
period and a final result, I do not know why we
need fear to affirm that those events were provi
dentially controlled and guided to that result.
This conviction is further strengthened when we

24 THEUNION.
can perceive beyond such result adequate conse
quences, can see how that result was in the future
to be productive of good. The evidence of such
consequences is in the knowledge that the form
of government which alone renders popular in
stitutions compatible with extent of territory is
that form which has its origin in this ancient
element of Saxon local self-government. Who
can question that it is such a political system
that has expanded this republic from its primitive
circumscription to its present extent, so that that
which at first reached not far beyond the sound
of the Atlantic became enlarged beyond the
mountains, then beyond the Mississippi, and
now, having crossed the second great mountain-
range of the continent, has on its other border
the sound of the earth's other great ocean? I
know of no grander traditional influence to be
observed in history than this simple Saxon cha
racteristic element and the mighty issues of it
now manifest around us, the connection between
this principle of local government obscurely re
cognised in the ancient fatherland of the Saxon,
carried thence to England to be combined with
the central power of a constitutional monarchj'^,
and now a living principle here, helping, by the
harmony of State rights and federal energy, to
extend and perpetuate the republic.
On an occasion like the present, I do not pro
pose to attempt to enter into the details of Ame-

THEUNION. 25
rican colonization, or to dwell upon the familiar
story of our early history, but rather to use
them only so far as it may be necessary to illus
trate the principle I have endeavoured to set
forth. A rapid review of colonial events,
brought into a new connection and concentered
on one principle, will, I hope, answer the purpose
of maintaining the historical argument which I
desire to submit to you. There is perhaps
nothing in our early history which now appears
more remarkable to us than the long delay on
the part of the English government, or the Eng
lish people, in making use of the title which
the right of discovery had given them to the
soil of America. It presents a curious blank of
nearly a century before any attempt was made to
occupy or to colonize the newly-discovered land,
and more than a century before a permanent
settlement was accomplished.
It has been remarked, that the only imme
diate result of Cabot's voyage and discovery of
the continent was the importation into England
from America of the first turkeys that had ever
been seen in Europe. Such was the beginning
of the immense commerce between England and
America. For a long time the right of disco
very seemed a barren title ; and it is a noticeable
fact that while it was the first of the Tudor
kings whose commission authorized Cabot to
set up the English banner here, it was the last

26 THEUNION.
of the Tudor sovereigns who sought to make
her title here a reality by planting English
homes; and indeed the whole dynasty passed
away without any thing permanent being
achieved. Doubtless, the delay was salutary.
It was propitious for the future; and perhaps
we can conceive how it was so when we recall
the character of Tudor dominion and the spirit
of the age. It was not the temper of that
dynasty to give the colonial free-agency (it
might almost be called independence) which
was to prove the germ of republican nation
ality. It was not the spirit of that age to ask
for so large power of local government as by
a later generation was quietly assumed and ex
ercised. The ancient Saxon element of local
self-government could not well have been trans
planted here while the strong rule of the Tudor
was centralizing so much about the throne; and
therefore (I speak of it as an inference in the
logic of history) the whole sixteenth century
passed away and the land was still the natives' ;
for, when the year 1600 came, there was not an
English family, no English man or woman, on
this continent, unless perchance there was wan
dering somewhere some survivor of Raleigh's
lost colony.
It would be vain now to speculate upon the
infiuence which might have been exercised on
the destinies of our country if that which was

THEUNION. 27
the perishable colonization of the sixteenth
century had been permanent. But a know
ledge of what was attempted, and of the man
ner of it, serves to show that it would have
been different in character, and therefore in its
influences, from the later colonization.
When, in 1578, Sir Humphrey Gilbert ob
tained from Queen Elizabeth letters patent,
authorizing him to discover and colonize re
mote and heathen lands, — the first grant of the
kind ever made by an English sovereign, — there
was conferred upon him almost a monopoly of
the right of colonization, with privileges and
authorities for the government of his designed
colonies of almost indefinite extent, and with
a prohibition upon all persons attempting to
settle within two hundred leagues of any place
which he or his associates should occupy dur
ing the space of six years. While we may
deplore the adverse fortunes of this brave
voyager, — his baffied enterprises and the pious
heroism of his dark perishing in the mid-At
lantic, — it is not to be lamented that a scheme
of colonization so vice-regal in its character
should not have been accomplished. The same
comment may be made on the grant to Sir
Walter Raleigh, — which was of prerogatives and
jurisdiction no less ample, — to end, after re
peated efforts and the well-known expeditions
which he sent out to the New World, in disap-

28 THEUNION.
pointment and a name ; for all that has proved
perpetual from those enterprises is the word
"Virginia," — a title given, for a considerable
time, to an almost indefinite region of America.
Let me here take occasion to state that some
recent investigations of the State records in Eng
land, and particularly a hitherto unnoticed entry
on the close-roll of the statutes of Elizabeth,
have established the fact that another illustrious
public man of those times — Sir Philip Sidney —
had turned his earnest and active mind to Ame
rican discovery, and probably contemplated a
voyage in his own person to the Western hemi
sphere. That he did so as early as 1582 — which
was earlier than the voyages equipped by Ra
leigh — is a fact the evidence of which has but
very lately been discovered, and was published,
for the first time, only in the month of February,
1850. It appears that Sidney obtained from Sir
Humphrey Gilbert, under the queen's patent to
him, a right to discover and take possession of
three millions of acres in America. The grant
was large enough to be almost indefinite, and is
another instance to illustrate the policy of colo
nization which prevailed in that day.
Although Sidney's meditated enterprise was
relinquished, it is pleasing to find associated
with the early plans of American colonization
the name of one who has left so matchless a
memory, — the scholar, statesman, poet, the

THE UNION, 29
fi-iend of poets, the soldier whose early death
was mourned by a nation, — a death memorable
with its last deed of heroic charity, when, put
ting away the cup of water from his own lips,
burning as they were with the thirst of a bleed
ing death, he gave it to a wounded soldier with
those famous words, eloquent in their simplicity,
"Thy necessity is yet greater than mine."
Permit me to extend this digression a little
further to notice an American allusion which
occurs in the English literature of the same
period in which Sir Philip Sidney flourished.
When, in 1590, Spenser gave to the world the
first part of "The Faerie Queene," he dedicated
that wondrous allegory to "The most high,
mighty, and magnificent Empresse, renouned for
pietie, virtue, and all gracious government,
Elizabeth, by the grace of God, Queen of Eng
land, France, and Ireland, and Virghnia." Yes,
there stands the name of that honoured State, —
then, as it were, the name of British America ;
and, while there is many a reason for the lofty
spirit of her sons, the pulse of their pride may
beat higher at the sight of the record of the
"Ancient Dominion" on the first page of one
of the immortal poems of our language.
To return to my subject. It can readily be
perceived that such schemes of colonization as
were planned during the reign of Elizabeth —
Sir Humphrey Gilbert's, Sir Philip Sidney's, Sir

30 THE UNION.
Walter Raleigh's — could hardly have resulted
otherwise than in the establishment of vast
feudal principalities, to continue under rulers
who would have been no less than viceroys, or
to be resumed under the immediate sovereignty
of the throne. Such occupation of the land
could scarce have led on, by any natural
sequence and series of events, to a popular
government, — still less to a political system in
which the element of "Union" would exist.
There would not have been enough of partition.
There would not have been enough of either
the spirit or the privilege of distinct and sepa
rate colonization, — the establishment of com
munities independent of each other, destined
in a later age to grow so naturally into Union.
Colonization then would have been too much
like that of France in Canada, — something far
more regular and uniform and imposing in ap
pearance as an afiair of State, but fraught with
no such momentous power of development as
was latent in the freer Saxon method. There
would have been far less of that "wise and salu
tary neglect" which Mr. Burke spoke of when, in
his speech on conciliation with America, he
said, "The colonies, in general, owe little or
nothing to any care of ours. They are not
squeezed into this happy form by the con
straints of watchful and suspicious government;
but, through a wise and salutary neglect, a

THE UNION. 31
generous nature has been suffered to take her
own way to perfection." It was, indeed, "a
wise neglect." But let me add that it was a
wisdom which cannot, with accuracy, be pre
dicated of a passive, negative, neglectful State
policy, but of the providential guidance of the
race by which there was bestowed upon them
the freedom of self-discipline, of political power
and expansion. It sounds like a paradox and a
contradiction; but it is an obvious truth that
the first element of union is separation, — dis
tinctiveness of existence and of character. The
history of union begins not with unity, but with
the creation of such separate existences as in the
future may, by some process of assimilation
and connection, become united but not consoli
dated, — forming a complete whole, the portions
of which do not lose their distinct organization.
Passing onward from the perishable colo
nization of Queen Elizabeth's times to that
which proved permanent, it is apparent that
it did take that form, and direction, and cha
racter, the natural though distant results of
which are to be seen in what is now around us.
This holds good of the whole period of English
colonization in America, from James the First
to George the Second, — a century and a quarter;
from the arrival of the first permanent colony
in Virginia, and the building of Jamestown,

82 THEUNION.
(1607,) down to Oglethorpe's settlement of
Georgia, in 1732.
The grant to Sir Walter Raleigh having be
come void by his attainder, British America
was again in the king's gift, — and that king the
first of the Stuarts. Now, although the notions
of royal prerogative which were cherished by
the Stuarts were as high as those of the Tudors,
still, the relative position of the sovereign was
changed, for the progress of constitutional go
vernment had developed new sentiments of alle
giance and new powers of resistance. The
seventeenth century, which, in fact, may be
called the century of American colonization, for
it comprehends nearly all of it, was more pro
pitious than the previous century to the planting
of colonies destined to grow to a republic. The
process of partition now began, — giving scope
to the ancient Saxon principle of local govern
ment. It was at first, as is well known, a
simple, twofold partition ; for, when King
James the First granted the patent for the ter
ritory stretching from the 34th to the 45th
degree of latitude, he divided it between the
two companies, the Southern or London com
pany, and the Northern or Plymouth company.
By virtue of these grants, and the settiements
under them, the country was parcelled out into
two great divisions, soon known by the familiar

THEUNION. 33
designations of Virginia for the former and
New England for the latter.
I do not propose on an occasion like this to
trace the detailed series of grants and settle
ment: it is enough for the present to remark
that the course of colonization was a continued
process of partition ; so that in 1732, at the time
of the Georgia settlement, the strip of territory
along the coast of the Atlantic which then
formed British America was divided into the
thirteen colonies, — a colonial system fashioned
into thirteen distinct political communities.
This was not merely territorial partition.
Political and social varieties distinguished the
colonies. This was a consequence of what was
a remarkable peculiarity in the English settle
ment of America, that colonization was indi
vidual enterprise, receiving the sanction but not
the support or assistance of the government.
No colony in the seventeenth century, to which
period they nearly all belonged, had any direct
aid from king or Parliament. The solitary ex
ception occurred in a parliamentary^ grant of
aid to the Georgia colony. Colonization, which
was individual enterprise, partook of the variety
of individual character and motive — of the dif
ferent and even conflicting principles, civil and
ecclesiastical — which were dominant or depressed
at different periods of the seventeenth century.

34 THE UNION.
This, it seems to me, is well worthy of notice,
that no century of English history, either earlier
or later, was so calculated to give character — •
and varied character, too — to the colonies, as
that which was the century of colonization, —
the Seventeenth. It was an age in which the
activity of the nation, theretofore busy in other
directions, was turned to questions of govern
ment. The thoughts of men were anxious
and occupied, — not with questions respecting
the succession of this or that branch of a royal
family, but with the principles that lie at the
very foundation of government, the limits of
power, and the rights and duties of the sub
ject. It was an age — ^better than any other
in the annals of the mother-country — fitted
to send, along with the sons who left her to
seek a distant home, the dutiful spirit of loy
alty, willing obedience to law, and the dutiful
spirit of freedom, — the two great principles of
constitutional government. There was political
variety, as well as social; for the colonial go
vernments, although all bearing a resemblance
to the government of the mother-country, had
those distinctive characteristics by which they
are classified into the Royal, the Proprietary,
and the Charter governments.
It seems strange that the colonial policy of
one kingdom should admit of such a diversity.

THE UNION. 35
that, in some, the king's control was perpetually
present; in others it was transferred to lords-
proprietary, subjects to whom was given the
half-kingly power of palatines ; and in others so
free were the charters that the people, for a long
time after the royal authority was wholly abro
gated by independence, asked no change in
them. Strange as such colonial diversity ap
pears, it was far more favorable to the future
results than any uniform system of govern
ment. I have endeavoured to show that a principle,
which may safely be said to be a characteristic
of our race in all regions of the earth, has been
brought hither to become a great element in our
national system ; and, further, that throughout
the whole period of discovery and colonization,
whatever was adverse to that principle was
checked or frustrated ; while, on the other hand,
the tendency of events was to the steady de
velopment of that principle, — the creation of the
materials for Union.

LECTUEE SECOND.

SECOND LECTURE.
The Growth of the Colonial Union — Relations to England as " Home" — The Old
French War— Travelling in the Colonies — Washington, Quincy, Heed, and
Dicliinson— The Colonial Post-office— Pranklin— The New Bngland Confede
racy of 1G38 — Geographical Peculiarities — Rivers and Mountains — Contrast
with European Physical Partition — The Protector Cromwell — Endicott's In
terview — The early Political Congresses — The Mission to Canada in 1775 —
French Canadians— The Swedes on the Delaware — The Dutch in New Tork —
Religious Sympathies and Antipathies — Louisburg — The Albany Congress of
1754 — Conclusion— The Union the Work of God.
Having considered the partition of British
America into the several colonial governments,
I propose now to ask your attention to the
events and influences which combined without
consolidating them: — in other words, the for
mation, or, more properly, the growth, of the
Union. For this process there were needed
two powers of an opposing nature, — a central
izing and a repulsive power ; the former to give
connection, the latter to preserve the distinctive
local organization.
Let me remark, by way of introduction, that
in studying the history of the Union the mind
is peculiarly exposed to that unconscious delu
sion, so frequent in historical studies, which con
sists in allowing notions and impressions of the
present time to enter inappropriately into our
37

38 THEUNION.
estimate of the past. It is thus that we often
deceive ourselves with unperceived anachron
isms. The complicated framework of our po
litical system has been for more than half a
century acquiring strength and solidity by its
actual working and by the imperceptible pro
cesses of time. There are the countless inter
changes arising from an active commercial
spirit; the progress of ' the arts is speeding
and facilitating intercourse to an extent never
dreamed of in the olden time; there are the
thousands of social affinities of interest and
affection by which fellowship is created and con
firmed between various and remote sections of
the country. Conceive for an instant the possi
bility of a knowledge of the written intercom
munication, on any one day, transmitted by the
agency of the post-office or the electric telegraph :
what a story it would tell of strong and incalcu
lable affinity, — political, commercial, social, — of
community of traffic and of feeling, precious and
far-reaching ! So habitually familiar to us is all
this, that when we turn to an early era of our
history we are apt, unawares, to carry our present
associations back where they do not belong.
Familiar as we are in our day and generation
with the recurrence and easy gathering of con
ventions, composed of delegates from all parts
of the Union, for every variety of purpose, 

THEUNION. 39
ecclesiastical and political, scientific, educational,
commercial, agricultural, and fanatical, — we are
prone to underrate the difficulties of intercourse
in former times of more laborious travelling.
In the early colonial period the colonies took
little heed of each other. There was inter
dependence between a colony and the mother-
country, but not between one colony and another.
This was, perhaps, a consequence of the policy
which was restriction on the commerce and
manufactures of the colonies. It was, in a
great measure, in accordance, too, with the feel
ings of the colonists, for Old England long had
a place in their hearts ; but what was New Eng
land to Virginia, or Virginia to New England ?
"Home" was the significant and endearing title
which continued to be applied, with a perma
nence of habit that is remarkable, to the mother-
country. When the news of the great fire in
London, in 1666,- reached Massachusetts, sub
scriptions of money were made throughout the
colony for the relief of the sufferers.
It appears, too, both from documentary history
and from private correspondence, how limited
was the intercourse between the inhabitants of
the different colonies. In the biographies of
men whose movements are of sufficient conse
quence to be traced and recorded, but few in
stances of the kind can be collected. Washing-

40 THE UNION.
ton, in 1756, travelled as far eastward as Boston,
and in the next year he visited Philadelphia ; but
both these visits were occasioned by peculiar de
mands of a public nature connected with the Old
French War, — ^the first, for the purpose of a per
sonal interview with the commander-in-chief.
Governor Shirley ; the second, to attend a con
ference of governors and officers, summoned by
Lord Loudoun. These are, I believe, the only
occasions, before the beginning of the Revolu
tion, when he attended the Congress of 1774,
that Washington went to the northern or middle
provinces. Mr. Quincy's visit to the middle and
southern colonies, immediately before the Revo
lution, was (as is obvious from the record of it)
an undertaking of quite an unusual character..
In 1773, writing home from Charleston, he speaks
of " this distant shore." No other instance occurs
now to my recollection, except a visit to Boston
of two of the Philadelphia patriots, — John Dick
inson and Joseph Reed, — a few years before the
war of independence. Even as late as the meet-,
ing of the first general Congress, — that, I mean,
of 1774, — there is much, it appears to me, in the
private letters and other contemporary evidence
of that period which shows that when the dele
gates to that Congress assembled they came
together very much as strangers to each other
personally, and representing, too, communities

THEUNION. 41
strange to each other but finding more conge
niality than they had anticipated.
In thus noticing individual intercouse, as illus
trative of the times, there is one case, indeed,
which I have not spoken of, because it is clearly
exceptional, and must so be considered in judging
of the personal intercommunication during the
colonial period. I refer to the case of Dr. Frank
lin. Boston-born and Philadelphia^bred, he had,
no doubt, in consequence, a less provincial feel
ing, a more expanded sense of citizenship, which
was favored too by the course and opportunities
of his remarkable career, his personal activity,
and his official positions. No man had so much
to do with various colonies ; for, not to speak of
his wanderings in boyhood, we find him, under
his appointment in 1753 as Postmaster-General
for America, travelling in his one-horse wagon
from Pennsylvania into New England ; — again,
in conference with delegates from seven of the
colonies at the Albany Congress of 1754, busy
at Boston with Governor Shirley ; at Philadelphia
with a Massachusetts commissioner, and all in
quick succession ; in Maryland acting as a sort of
unofficial quartermaster for General Braddock ;
at a later period of colonial history, in England,
uniting the agencies of Pennsylvania, Massachu
setts, and Georgia. Now, although undoubtedly
the formation of the Union is to be traced to

42 THEUNION.
causes of deeper import than any individual in
fluences, I cannot but think that such various
and extended intercourse as Dr. Franklin's must
have aided in no small degree in bringing about
that community of civic feeling which at length
took the shape of political union. Sagacious,
practical, affable, a man of the people in the best
sense of the term, led by official duties hither
and thither through the land, brought into busi
ness-relations vdth the highest and the humblest
functionaries, governors and generals and village
postmasters, Franklin cannot but be regarded as
an instrument imperceptibly and unconsciously
doing the work of union. His case was, however,
an exception to the ordinary intercourse among
the inhabitants of the several colonies, and as an
exception proving what we are apt to lose sight
of, that the formation of the Union was a slow,
a laborious, and reluctant process. Happily so,
for thus it gained a strength which no hasty or
premature coalition ever could have acquired.
The period of transition from the original state
of political severalty to the present political com
bination may be described as a space of time not
shorter than a century and a half, making the
computation from the first distinct effort at
union, the original suggestion in 1637 of that
little local coalition styled " The New England
Confederacy," down to the Declaration of Inde-

THEUNION. 43
pendence ; or, if a later date be preferred, when
in 1789 the Union was made "more 'perfect" by the
adoption of the present Constitution. During
this long period the processes of combination
were going on silently, imperceptibly, seldom
thought of, and never fully appreciated ; advances
sometimes made, and then the cause retrograd
ing; the power of attraction prevailing at one
time, and the power of repulsion at another;
connection at one period looked to for security,
and again shunned and resisted as concealing
danger. It is not without interest to observe that there
was nothing in the physical character of the
country, with all its variety of soil and climate,
which presented impediments in the formation
of the Union. There was no natural frontier at
any part of the territory occupied by the settle
ments which were for a long time limited to
the country extending from New Hampshire to
Georgia, and bounded by the ocean and the first
great range of mountains.
Rivers flowing north and south are thought to
be most influential upon civilization, perhaps by
connecting the climate and soil of different lati
tudes. When our territory was expanded to
receive the whole valley of the Mississippi, we
can look back to the long and difficult negotia
tions respecting the navigation of that river,

44 THE UNION.
when its banks were held by different powers, as
indicating that Nature fitted it for a great high
way for one people, and to bind them strongly
together forever.
No bay or river interposed a dangerous or diffi
cult navigation ; indeed, the great rivers, the
Delaware, the Susquehanna, the Hudson, and
the Connecticut, each flowing through the terri
tory of several colonies, served by their free
navigation to facilitate the intercourse of the
colonists. There was no such mountain-inter
section as would cut off by a natural barrier one
portion of the country from another, such as has
been observed in Italy, where only a few years
ago, a Neapolitan naturalist, making an excursion
to one of the highest of the Central Apennines,
found medicinal plants growing in the greatest
profusion which the Neapolitans were regularly
in the habit of importing from other countries,
as no one suspected their existence within their
own kingdom.
Looking to the physical character of the con
tinent in relation to the subject of social and
political union, I may allude to another consi
deration as affecting our national progress and
permanence. It has been observed by a distin
guished French naturalist that mountain-ranges
which run east and west establish much more
striking differences with regard to the dwellers

THE UNION. 45
on the opposite sides than those ranges which
extend north and south, — a statement conflrmed
by observation through the history of mankind.
The Scandinavian Alps have not prevented the
countries on both sides being occupied by a
people of common descent, while the feeble bar
rier of the Cheviot Hills and the Highlands has
served to keep the Anglo-Saxon and the Celt
apart even in a period of advanced civilization.
The Spaniards and the Italians differ more from
their neighbours across the mountains extending
east and west than the former from the Portu
guese, or the Piedmontese from the Proven9als.
Of this physical law of civilization and the des
tiny of races the most remarkable illustration is
perhaps to be found in the separation, which con
tinued through so many centuries of ancient
history, of the races that occupied the northern
coasts of the Mediterranean and the races that
dwelt in Central Europe. There is no more
remarkable fact in the history of mankind ; and
the barrier which so wondrously preserved this
separation between populous nations compara
tively so near to each other was that east and
west mountain-range, which extends from the
western extremity of the Pyrenees, at the shores
of the Atlantic, eastward to the shores of the
Caspian. It was a partition that remained un
broken by either the southern or the northern

46 THEUNION.
race, with rare and only partial exceptions, until
at length the time arrived for those vast irrup
tions by which a new civilization was to take the
place of the ancient and the Roman. The appli
cation of this law of Nature to our own race
occupying this continent is manifest, and it is
of momentous interest in connection with the
origin, the extension, and the pei-petuity of the
Union. The mountain-ranges, great and small,
extend in a northwardly and southwardly direc
tion, but none in that direction which seems to
have a power for partition over the races of men.
It is only conventional lines running east and west
that perplex the nation.
The physical character of the territory occu
pied by these colonies which were to become
the thirteen United States was favourable to
the establishment of Union. Further, it may
be regarded as favourable to the same result
that during the colonial period no addition of
territory took place which might have intro
duced an incongruous element, — unmanageable
material to be brought into union. In making
this remark, I have especially in my thoughts
the failure of Cromwell's plan for securing his
then recent conquest of Jamaica by co-operation
with Massachusetts in planting a New England
colony there. The Protector's proffered gift of
a West India island was declined by the prac-

THEUNION. 47
tical good sense of the General Court of the
colony; and thus the community which was
destined to grow in compact strength on their
own soil was saved from being parted into two
communities with the ocean between them.
The interview between Cromwell and Leveret,
the agent of the colony, as narrated by the latter
in his despatch to Governor Endicott, (Decem
ber 20, 1666,) is curiously characteristic on the
one hand of that intense and deep policy which
is part of the mystery of the Protector's cha
racter, and, on the other, of the keen, clear
sighted common sense of the representative of
the colony.
"At my presenting," writes Leveret, "your
letter of the 1st of December, 1656, to his High
ness, he was pleased to inquire of New Eng
land's condition, and what news as to the
business of Jamaica ; to which I gave answer
according to the advice received. By his resent
thereof, together with what I had from him the
18th November, he manifested a very strong
desire in him for some leading and considerable
company of New England men to go thither ;
for at that time he was pleased to express that
he did apprehend the people of New England
had as clear a call to transport themselves
from thence to Jamaica, as they had from Eng
land to New England, in order to their bettering
4

48 THEUNION.
their outward condition, God having promised
his people should be the head and not the tail ;
besides that design hath its tendency to the
overthrow of the man of sin ; and withal was
pleased to add, that though the people had been
sickly, yet it was said to be a climacterical year ;
that Others had been to view the place, as Nevis
people, who, upon liking, were gone down ; and
Christopher's people were upon motion; and
he hoped, by what intelligence he had from
Captain Gookin, that some considerable num
bers would go from New England. His High
ness was pleased to hear me in what I objected.
As to the bettering our outward condition,
though we had not any among us that had to
boast, as some particulars in other plantations,
of raising themselves to great estates, yet take
the body of the people, and, all things con
sidered, they lived more comfortably like Eng
lishmen than any of the rest of the plantations.
To which his Highness replied that they were
more industrious : what then would they be in a
better country ? To which I added, that there
were now in New England produced to bespeak
us a Commonwealth greater than in all the Eng
lish plantations besides ; the which his Highness
granted. I, objecting the contrariety of spirits,
principles, manners, and customs of the people
of New England, to them that were at the island

THE UNION.

49

or on any other plantations that could remove
thither, so not like to cement, his Highness
replied that were there considerable persons that
would remove from thence, they should have
the government in their hands, and be strength
ened with the authority of England, who might
be capable of giving check to the ill and vicious
manners of aU." — Hutchinson's History, vol. i. p.
176. We need not now speculate what might have
been the effect on a people who had this con
sciousness of much that bespake them a common
wealth, had they been tempted away from their
own stern clime and soil to dwell in a tropical
island ; but of this we may be assured, when we
look forward to the subsequent career of that
people, that it was happily provided that they
should remain compact at home.
In like manner, at a later period of our his
tory, all the efforts which at the beginning of
the Revolutionary struggle were made to bring
the other British provinces into co-operation
with the thirteen colonies proved utterly in
effectual. It vrill be remembered, that when
the first General Congress met in 1774 and
deliberated on plans of peaceful resistance to
the obnoxious policy of the mother-country, it
was a matter of solicitude to increase and fortify
that resistance by enlarging the sphere of it. It

50 THEUNION.
must be borne in mind that all that was then
aimed at was colonial redress ; to that, and not
to independence, did the first Congress direct its
thoughts, its words, its action. The events of
that time followed in such quick succession,
leading so rapidly on to Independence, and now
seen to be so rapidly connected with such a
result, that we are apt to forget that independent
existence as a nation was not, for some time
after the contest began, aimed at, or even de
sired. The heart of the people felt and avowed
a sincere and natural reluctance to break away
from an ancient allegiance. Thus contemplating
a continuance of the colonial condition and not
looking beyond it, the desire was to render
colonial resistance as effective as possible, by
bringing as large an amount of it as possible to
bear on the ministry and parliament. Accord
ingly, repeated exertions were made to induce
all the colonies to make common cause. The
Congress, composed at first of the delegations
of twelve colonies, from New Hampshire to
South Carolina, appealed to the other colonies, —
Nova Scotia, St. Johns, — and earnestly and ur
gently to Canada. The addresses to these
British provinces fill a large space in the journal
of the first Congress. The hope was that all
British America might be brought to think,
feel, and to act in unison in a cause then

THE UNION. 51
regarded as a temporary one, — simply colonial
redress, the restoration of a former colonial
policy with which the colonist was content.
And here let me remark in passing that this
attempted policy of general colonial co-operation
appears to me to explain both the use and the
disuse of a term which for several years was a
very familiar one, but afterwards became obso
lete in our political vocabulary and for a long
time has had only a historical significance. I
refer to the word "continental," as employed both
formally and familiarly in the titles " The Con
tinental Congress," "the Continental Army," and,
in a phrase of less agreeable association, " the
Continental currency." The term was an appro
priate one when it was meditated to make the
colonial resistance coextensive with the British
communities on the continent; and such was
the plan when the word came into use ; and it
passed into disuse when it was at length ascer
tained that such enlarged co-operation was not
to be accomplished, but that out of the conflict
there was to arise a new nationality, not coexten
sive with the continental extent of British power
in America.
The second Congress— I mean that of 1775 —
clung to the same hope and the same policy of
colonial combination on the most enlarged
scale; and this feeling continued even after the

52 THEUNION.
beginning of hostilities. Again did Congress
address to the non-participant provinces elabo
rate appeals and invitations ; again did they
communicate arguments to Canada to demon
strate the hidden perils of the Quebec Bill, to
show the superiority of the common law over
the civil law, to expound religious toleration,
persuading the French Canadian that Roman
Catholic and Protestant might dwell together
securely and harmoniously as in the cantons of
Switzerland. Nay, further, the Congress indulged the ex
pectation of even more than cis- Atlantic opposi
tion, for it sent its voice from Philadelphia
across the sea to the people of Ireland. In the
earliest scheme of confederation, — that sub
mitted to Congress by Dr. Franklin, in July,
1 1775, — one of the articles expressly provided for
i the admission of Ireland, the West India Islands,
! Quebec, St. John's, Nova Scotia, Bermudas, and
East and West Floridas, into the "Association,"
which was 'then relied upon as a means of
colonial redress.
Besides the appeals and the invitations ad
dressed to the Canadians, there was a hope that
a successful invasion of Canada might bring the
population there into that support of the com
mon colonial cause for which the other means
had failed. Accordingly, the expedition under

THEUNION. 63
Montgomery, in the winter of 1775-76, had a
purpose additional to mere conquest, — that of
gaining the support and the assistance of their
fellow-colonists. Still clinging to this object. Congress resorted
to one other and the last attempt, — an embassy
to speak in person to the Canadian, — the com
mission, composed of Dr. Franklin, Charles
Carrol, and Samuel Chase, taking with them for
their coadjutors a Roman Catholic priest, the
Rev. John Carrol, (afterwards Archbishop of
Baltimore,) and equally pacific agents, — a printer
and a French translator.
All these efforts, — addresses made and made
again, invasion, the embassy of commissioners, —
all proved utterly unavailing in bringing to those
early Congresses any co-operation from other
British provinces. The addresses were not
responded to, probably were hardly heeded ; the
military expeditions failed, and the commis
sioners found no audience. The printer who
accompanied Dr. Franklin and the other com
missioners proved of no avail, in consequence
of an unanticipated but fatal obstacle, and that
was that reading was a very rare accomplish
ment with the French Canadian population.
Quebec was not more impregnable to Mont
gomery than were the minds of the Canadians
to Franklin and a printing-press.

54 THEUNION.
These schemes for more extended colonial
combination — begun in 1774, continued during
1775 and into 1776 — all came to naught; and
now we can see, what was not visible to those
who conceived those schemes, how happy it was
that they did come to naught. I do not mean
to question or to disparage the sagacity of those
colonial ' statesmen who during three years
persevered in those schemes and the various
methods of accomplishing them. Judged with
relation to the objects aimed at, those schemes
were wise and patriotic ; but the objects were
only colonial opposition, and the combination
which was contemplated was only to be a tem
porary one, to cease whenever the colonial
grievances should cease. But in God's govern
ment over the destinies of the race and country
other and greater results were in reserve, — inde
pendence, nationality, union ; and, considered
with relation to such results, I repeat it was most
happy that all attempts to bring about Canadian
combination proved absolutely fruitless. It was
only eleven years before, let it be remembered,
that Canada had been transferred, by conquest
and the treaty of Paris, from French to British
dominion. A province so recently . foreign in
laws, in language, in the various social elements,
must needs have proved an incongruous, if not
a discordant, member iu such a union as was on

THEUNION. 55
the eve of completion between the thirteen
colonies. The very fact that it was necessary
for Congress to cause the addresses to Canada
to be translated into French is of itself enough
to show how little congeniality there would have
been for the perpetual purpose of union. When,
therefore, Canadian sympathy and co-operation
were invoked, "a wiser spirit" was at work to
make that invocation of no effect.
While the addition of these incongruous mate
rials was happily prevented, it must not be for
gotten that the portion of the continent which
was to be the soil of the Union already included
within its bounds — ^indeed, in its very centre —
elements equally foreign and unsuited to natural
combination ; for, almost contemporaneous vrith
the settlement of Virginia and of New England,
in the first quarter of the seventeenth century,
Hudson's voyage had created the claim of Hol
land, and the grant by the States-General to the
Dutch West India Company planted their settle
ment along the banks of the Hudson. Thus
was introduced into the very heart of the land
a hostile element; for England and Holland
were at strife in the East Indian commercial set
tlements, in which region the massacre of the
English traders, at Amboyna, occurred about
the same period.
Another occupation — foreign, but less antago-

56 THE UNION.
nistic — was that which connects with American
history the name of one of the wisest and no
blest of Europe's continental kings, the states
man and soldier, Gustavus Adolphus, of Swe
den ; a company of whose subjects settled, it
will be remembered, on the banks of the Dela
ware. Settlements such as these, by two of the great
European powers, and on most important sec
tions of the continent, were unpropitious to any
progress of union among the British colonies;
for the foreign and unfriendly occupation was
interposed between the northern and the south
ern settlements, — an occupation held, too, by one
of these foreign powers for wellnigh half a cen
tury, and during all that time ambitious of
larger colonial dominion, and actively aggres
sive. For the removal of these impediments to our
union there was needed the strong control of
conquest. In one respect that process was sim
plified, as if the course of things was so guided
as to leave behind as little as possible of ill
blood and rankling recollections. There was
engendered no animosity between the Swedes
and the English colonists ; for it was Holland
that did the work of conquest and subjugated
the little Swedish colony on the banks of the
Delaware.

THE UNION. 57
For England there was, therefore, left only
one colonial adversary; and the adverse element
of a foreign occupation of a considerable and
important part of the continent was done away
by the result of the war between England and
Holland ; the treaty of Breda, and the final ces
sion of the territory, thus establishing English
colonial dominion in uninterrupted occupation
of the whole extent of the country which was
thereafter to be in union.
It would, perhaps, not be easy now to mea
sure the sense of repugnance which survived in
the minds of the conquered Dutch colonists;
the natural reluctance at the transfer, by con
quest, of their allegiance ; the compulsory iden
tification with a people who had other laws and
usages, and another language. But, whatever
these feelings may have been, they met soon
with what must have been a most unlooked-for
alleviation in the course of events in Europe;
for it was only twelve years after the Dutch colo
nists in America passed under British do
minion, that their native country, Holland, gave
a sovereign to Great Britain, and thus the
throne of their conquerors was filled by one of
their countrymen, him who had been their
Stadtholder, their Prince of Orange. Thus
British rule became less of • foreign rule to
them ; and thus the Revolution of 1688 may be

58 THE UNION.
referred to as having contributed a harmonizing
influence to the progress of the American
Union. The Dutch dominion in America, adverse as
it was to union in one respect, by parting the
northern from the southern English colonies, in
another respect exerted an influence favourable
to colonial combination. It was not only the
presence of hostile Indian tribes on the New
England frontier, but it was also the neighbour
hood of the Dutch, "that prompted the first
effort of colonial union, — that of the united colo
nies of New England," which had its beginning
in 1643, the first "confederacy," — the first time
the word "confederacy" was used, in America.
It was the first of these combinations, serving
to show how it was a sense of common danger,
the sense of strength and security in united
action, which, by slow and safe gradations, was
to bring the several colonies into union, dis
closing, from time to time, how natural it would
be for the sentiment of social union, which all
the while, no doubt, however unrecognised at
the time, was growing strong, to be converted
into political union ; how the sense of brother
hood, of a community of citizenship, would im
perceptibly prepare itself . to assume political
form and consistency.
I cannot pause to comment on that early con-

THEUNION. 59
federacy, its principles, its system, and its uses.
It purported to be "a perpetual league of friend
ship and amity;" and it contained provision for
its enlargement by the admission of other colo
nies into the confederacy with the four colo
nies who were the contracting parties. Limited
as this confederacy was in the number of its
members, cautiously restricted as it was in its
powers, and close and pressing as the dangers
were, five years were consumed in the plan
ning of it; perpetual as it professed to be, it
lasted no more than about forty years. No
other colony was added to it; and, as the
dangers which suggested it passed away, the con
federacy lost its interest, and when its existence
ceased incidentally with the abrogation of the
New England charters, in the reign of James H.,
no effort was made to renew it. The old Saxon
principle of distinctive local government was at
work even within the narrow circuit of these
kindred Puritan colonies, and no adequate
motive for union presented itself. There are
traces of mutual jealousies there. Especially
was there jealousy of the centralizing authority
of Massachusetts. This feeling was manifest in
the solicitude on the part of the Plymouth
colony to preserve its separate existence. It
breaks out in the bitter humour of a not very
felicitous pun on the Bay colony, in a despatch

60 THE UNION.
from the Plymouth agent to the Plymouth
, governor, when, writing from London in 1691,
he says, "All the frame of Heaven moves upon
one axis, and the whole of New England's in
terest seems designed to be loaden on one bot
tom, and her particular motion to be concentric
to the Massachusetts tropic. You know who
are wont to trot after the bay horse." — Wiswall
to Hinckly, Nov. 5, 1691; Hutch., i. 365.
In the New England confederacy, unanimity
in religious creed was an essential principle of
political concord, — an impediment to the progress
of union, if the confederacy had continued; for
admission was refused to their dissenting fellow-
colonists of Rhode Island. The Puritan clergy
who went to Virginia were ejected for non-con
formity; and it was only about twenty years
before William Penn obtained the charter for
Pennsylvania, and came with his Quaker follow
ers, that the "Friends" who ventured into New
England were scourged under the law against
"vagabond Quakers," and the sterner penalty
of death inflicted.
If at an early period sectarian animosity was
burning lines of division between the colonists,
the now tolerant Christianity of a later time
contributed largely to the more accordant results
of blending the communities together. Each
Christian society was at length enabled peace-

THEUNION. "61
fully to commune with its own brotherhood in
other sections of the country, and thus eccle
siastical sympathy became one of the means by
which the way was prepared for civil and po
litical sympathies. The inhabitants of different
and distant colonies became members of one
household in their faith, thus learning, perhaps,
how they might become members of one po
litical family. Among the churches of the
church of England in the colonies, no ecclesias
tical union in one collective representative as
sembly was formed until after the peace of 1783.
The Presbyterians, feeling the want of eccle
siastical combination, as appears from a circular
letter of the ministers and elders at Philadelphia,
began, in 1764, to take measures to effect a
union of their scattered forces.
I turn now to another and very different in
fluence of union, which is to be discovered in
the military colonial combinations. On repeated
occasions the authorities of the colonies — go
vernors and commissioners — were brought into
connection for conference respecting hostilities,
offensive as well as defensive. It was upon
such an occasion, in 1690, at New York, that
the word "Congress" first has a place in our his
tory. But, besides such occasional conferences,
the colonists were brought together in joint
military service, to know each other the better

62 THEUNION.
thereby. This kind of association may be traced
as an influence of union, more or less operative
on different occasions, from the times of what
were called "King William's War" and "Queen
Anne's War," at the close of the seventeenth
and at the beginning of the eighteenth century,
down to the peace of Paris, in 1763, at the end
of the Old French War. The colonies contri
buted their respective sums of money to the
general cost of the war ; and their troops served
together in the several early attempts on Ca
nada, in the expedition against Cape Breton
and the capture of Louisburg, and upon what
was the first foreign service of the colonists,
(I mean foreign beyond the continent,) Ver
non's disastrous expeditions against Carthagena
and Cuba. The associated service in the Old
French War was the latest discipline of the
kind to prepare the colonies for the war of the
Revolution. While such influences, and others of a more
imperceptible nature, which I cannot now pause
to discuss, were working propitiously for union,
there was a counter-agency produced by the
indications of a desire on the part of the British
government to adopt a different colonial policy,
— to substitute for " that wise and salutary neg
lect," which Mr. Burke afterward commended,
a more active control. In carrying out such a

THEUNION. 63
policy there would be needed more of union; not
spontaneous, voluntary colonial union, but com
pulsory union, by the imperial power on the other
side of the Atlantic. It was at the close of the
seventeenth century that William the Third
formed the standing Council of the Lords-Com
missioners for Trade and Plantations, vested
with new and centralizing powers of superin
tendence. There had been in the more arbi
trary reign of James the Second indications
of the same policy of active colonial control ;
and it made itself manifest in the new methods
of colonial administration, their policy and their
plans, — in one instance, nothing less than a re
commendation that " all the English colonies of
North America be reduced (' reduced' — such was
the word) under one government and one vice
roy." The consequence of all this was, that
union began to present itself to the thoughts of
the colonists in the obnoxious light of a means
of increasing the ascendency of the royal pre
rogative ; and they watched with perpetual vigi
lance every approach to combined action, to
union avowedly or covertly compulsory, as some
thing that was fatal to colonial rights.
The ancient Saxon element of distributed
power was quickened into renewed activity
during a long period of apprehension. When,
in consequence of the suggestion of the Board
5

64 THEUNION.
of Trade and of the colonial secretary, the Al
bany convention was held in 1754, with its dele
gations from seven colonies, extending as far
south as Maryland, the plan of union pro
posed by that Congress was, as is well known,
rejected, although the war with France was im
minent, and although the author of the plan
was Franklin himself, a delegate from Pennsyl
vania. The several colonial assemblies detected
too much of prerogative in the scheme of
union, which had the singular fate of proving
also unsatisfactory in England, because of the
opposite objection of too little prerogative.
Franklin was discouraged in his hopes of co
lonial confederation; and one of his correspond
ents said to him, writing from Boston, in 1754,
"However necessary a union may be for the
mutual safety and preservation of these colonies,
it is certain it will never take place unless we
are forced to it by the supreme authority of the
nation." It was by the action of the supreme power
of the nation that union did take place, but
not in the way contemplated when those words
were used. When the new and obnoxious co
lonial policy took the well-defined shape of the
Stamp Act, union, which had been dreaded
when the proposal came in any form from the
British government, was instinctively resorted

THE UNION. 65
to as a means of defence and security, and
the delegations of nine colonies, as far south
as South Carolina, met in the Congress of
1765. When, nine years later, the power of the British
government struck, with the Boston Port Bill, at
one single point, the sentiment of union was dis
covered to be strong enough and quick enough
to make common cause with almost instanta
neous rapidity; and twelve colonies (soon after
wards to reach the full complement of the old
thirteen) assembled by their delegations in the
Congress of 1774. When it is considered that
those delegations were chosen in various ways,
with much of irregularity, of necessity, I know
of nothing so remarkable in the history of re-
presentation as the meeting of those fifty-two
men in a room of a building familiar to Phila-
delphians as the Carpenters' Hall, locking the
doors, enjoining by word of honour secrecy on
the members, and all the while the people from
New Hampshire to Georgia waiting quietly,
willingly, resolutely, prepared to do, I will not
say the bidding of that Congress, but to accept
the conclusions of that Congress as the voice of
the nation. What higher proof could there be
of the unknown strength of union ? I say the
unknown strength of the sentiment of union, be
cause that Congress contemplated nothing more

66 THEUNION.
than " associatiffn" (as it was termed) in a policy
of non-importation and non-exportation. When
the Congress of 1774 adjourned, it was a contingent
adjournment, leaving it to be determined by the
course events might take whether the colonies
would again be found acting in concert. The
plan of confederation proposed by Franklin, in
1775, looked to no duration beyond the con
tinuance of the obnoxious acts of Parliament;
and even after the war began and the Continental
army was formed, perpetuity of union appears
not to have formed part of the plan of opera
tions. It was not until the wearied patience of
the people was worn out, and the aggrieved
sense of freedom driven to the last resort, that
the coalition of the colonies began to assume
the aspect of permanence. Then, and not till
then, it became apparent what had long been
the tendency of things touching the relation
between those distinct communities. Together,
they had sought redress for their grievances;
together, they had declared their rights; they
appealed, petitioned, remonstrated together;
and, when they encountered the same repulse
and the same disappointment, they " associated"
under solemn pledges, " the sacred ties of vir
tue, honour, and love of country," for a com
bined pacific resistance. At length, when all
had failed, and they saw that the hour had

THEUNION. 67
come for the last appeal, they bowed down
together in "public humiliation, fasting, and
prayer;" and, with hearts thus fortified, they
stood prepared to face the common danger. It
was one war to all. Blood was soon shed ; and
that blood, poured out for the common cause of
all, was the seal of union. Further, when hos
tilities had been continued for more than a
year, and it became manifest that the war was
ineffectual as a means of mere colonial redress,
the process which established national existence
was at the same time the consummation of
union. The colonies, which found themselves in
a state of revolutionary anarchy, instead of
hurrying to separate action, deliberately sought
the advice of the whole country as it might be
given by Congress. They sought and they fol
lowed that guidance. This was union. When
the final and formal act of independence came,
it was done by all and for all. That was union.
Therefore, there is, I think, no proposition in
our constitutional history clearer, simpler, truer
than this, that Union is our country.
In conclusion, permit me to say that I fear I
have exposed myself to some condemnation for
rashness in attempting to treat so large a sub
ject within such limited space. I have had it
most at heart to show how, during a very long
period of time, there has been a tendency of

68 THEUNION.
events proving a providential purpose in the
establishment of the Union. However the feel
ings of men may differ in respect for antiquity,
what mind can refuse to recognise a claim for
all that can be given of thoughtful, affectionate,
and dutiful loyalty to that which for our good
was achieved by more than human agency
working through centuries? For the Constitu
tion of the United States you may carry your
debt of gratitude to the memory of that assem
bly of sages and statesmen who in convention
constructed the Constitution. The debt of
gratitude for Independence may be paid to that
other assembly of wise and good men who de
clared it. But for the Union, our thanksgiving
must be laid at the foot of the throne of God ;
and, therefore, treason to the Union cannot be
conceived of but as a crime which heaps upon
the traitor an accumulated guilt of thankless
impiety. I speak it with reverence and with
humility, and with thoughtfulness in the words
I use, when I say that this Union of ours was
the work of God.

THE END.

PARRY & McitlLLAN'S PUBLICATIONS.

Reeb'S Lectures on English Literatube,
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Henry Reed. With a Portrait. Edited by his brother,
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{Extracts of a Utter front Professor C. C. Felton, of Harvard.']
CambridgEj May 21, 1855.
Gentlemen :
I have read, with much pleasure and instruction, the Lectures of the late
Professor Reed, on English Literature, published by you.
Among the greatest improvements made in our higher schools within a few
years, there is none, in my opinion, more important than the increased atten
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tion. * * * * As a guide and companion in this department of education,
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I am, gentlemen, very respectfully, yours, C. C. FELTON.
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" The book is in every way a most creditable contribution to the Library of
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(t * * * * If any thing could bring consolation to the friends of Professor
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* * * * The third lecture of the volume, on the English language, is in
itself a monument of the varied and extensive learning and acquirements of the
lamented author, which would hand down his name to posterity as one of the
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Lectures ojy U.vglise History,
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than lectures, they are — traces the varied course of English history down to the
verge of the Poet's own day — the reign of Henry the Eighth and the birth of
Elizabeth; and it is wonderful to be made to understand, by the continuity of
such a mode of illustration, how complete the course is. Marlborough's con
fession of ignorance was not so great as one is apt to think, when he said that
all he knew of English history he learned from Shakspeare's plays; and Mr.
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ledge was. There is throughout a happy blending of criticism and history, and
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