Formation of the Union | Page 5

Bay Company, and--more important than all the rest--the broad strip of
territory running along the coast from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the
Altamaha River.
[Sidenote: Boundaries.]
It is in this continental strip, lying between the sea and the main chain
of the Appalachian range of mountains, that the formation of the Union
was accomplished. The external boundaries of this important group of
colonies were undetermined; the region west of the mountains was
drained by tributaries of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi rivers,
and both these rivers were held in their lower course by the French.
Four successive colonial wars had not yet settled the important question
of the territorial rights of the two powers, and a fifth war was
impending.
So far as the individual colonies were concerned, their boundaries were

established for them by English grants. The old charters of
Massachusetts, Virginia, and the Carolinas had given title to strips of
territory extending from the Atlantic westward to the Pacific. Those
charters had lapsed, and the only colony in 1750 of which the
jurisdiction exercised under the charter reached beyond the
Appalachian mountains was Pennsylvania. The Connecticut grant had
long since been ignored; the Pennsylvania limits included the strategic
point where the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers unite to form the
Ohio. Near this point began the final struggle between the English and
the French colonies. The interior boundaries between colonies in 1750
were matters of frequent dispute and law-suits. Such questions were
eventually brought to the decision of the English Privy Council, or
remained to vex the new national government after the Revolution had
begun.
[Sidenote: The frontiers.]
At this date, and indeed as late as the end of the Revolution, the
continental colonies were all maritime. Each of them had sea-ports
enjoying direct trade with Europe. The sea was the only national
highway; the sea-front was easily defensible. Between contiguous
colonies there was intercourse; but Nova Scotia, the last of the
continental colonies to be established, was looked upon as a sort of
outlyer, and its history has little connection with the history of the
thirteen colonies farther south. The western frontier was a source of
apprehension and of danger. In northern Maine, on the frontiers of New
York, on the west and southwest, lived tribes of Indians, often
disaffected, and sometimes hostile. Behind them lay the French,
hereditary enemies of the colonists. The natural tendency of the English
was to push their frontier westward into the Indian and French belt.
3. THE PEOPLE AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION.
[Sidenote: Population.]
This westward movement was not occasioned by the pressure of
population. All the colonies, except, perhaps, Rhode Island, New Jersey,
and Delaware, had abundance of vacant and tillable land. The

population in 1750 was about 1,370,000. It ranged from less than 5,000
in Georgia to 240,000 in Virginia. Several strains of non-English white
races were included in these numbers. There were Dutch in New York,
a few Swedes in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Germans in New York
and Pennsylvania, Scotch Irish and Scotch Highlanders in the
mountains of Pennsylvania and South Carolina, a few Huguenots,
especially in the South, and a few Irish and Jews. All the rest of the
whites were English or the descendants of English. A slow stream of
immigration poured into the colonies, chiefly from England. Convicts
were no longer deported to be sold as private servants; but
redemptioners--persons whose services were mortgaged for their
passage-- were still abundant. Many years later, Washington writes to
an agent inquiring about "buying a ship-load of Germans," that is, of
redemptioners. There was another important race-element,--the negroes,
perhaps 220,000 in number; in South Carolina they far out-numbered
the whites. A brisk trade was carried on in their importation, and
probably ten thousand a year were brought into the country. This
stream poured almost entirely into the Southern colonies. North of
Maryland the number of blacks was not significant in proportion to the
total population. A few Indians were scattered among the white
settlements, but they were an alien community, and had no share in the
development of the country.
[Sidenote: Settlements.] [Sidenote: American character.]
The population of 1,370,000 people occupied a space which in 1890
furnished homes for more than 25,000,000. The settlements as yet
rested upon, or radiated from, the sea-coast and the watercourses;
eight-tenths of the American people lived within easy reach of streams
navigable to the sea. Settlements had crept up the Mohawk and
Susquehanna valleys, but they were still in the midst of the wilderness.
Within each colony the people had a feeling of common interest and
brotherhood. Distant, outlying, and rebellious counties were infrequent.
The Americans of 1750 were in character very like the frontiersmen of
to-day, they were accustomed to hard work, but equally accustomed to
abundance of food and to