Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II by Various

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GREAT EPOCHS IN AMERICAN HISTORY

DESCRIBED BY FAMOUS WRITERS
FROM COLUMBUS TO WILSON

Edited, with Introductions and Explanatory Notes

By FRANCIS W. HALSEY

_Associate Editor of "The World's Famous Orations"; Associate Editor
of "The Best of the World's Classics"; author of "The Old New York
Frontier"; Editor of "Seeing Europe With Famous Authors"_

IN TEN VOLUMES

ILLUSTRATED

VOL. II

THE PLANTING OF THE FIRST COLONIES: 1562--1733

Current Literature Publishing Company
New York

COPYRIGHT, 1912 AND 1916, by

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY

[_Printed in the United States of America_]

[Transcriber's Note: This text retains original spellings. Also,
superscripted abbreviations or contractions are indicated by the
use of a caret (^), such as w^th (with).]

INTRODUCTION

(_The Planting of the First Colonies_)

After the discoverers and explorers of the sixteenth century came
(chiefly in the seventeenth) the founders of settlements that grew
into States--French Huguenots in Florida and Carolina; Spaniards in
St. Augustine; English Protestants in Virginia and Massachusetts;
Dutch and English in New York; Swedes in New Jersey and Delaware;
Catholic English in Maryland; Quaker English and Germans in
Pennsylvania; Germans and Scotch-Irish in Carolina; French Catholics
in Louisiana; Oglethorpe's debtors in Georgia.

To some of these came disastrous failures--to the Huguenots and
Spaniards in Florida, to the English in Roanoke, Cuttyhunk and
Kennebee. Others who survived had stern and precarious first
years--the English in Jamestown and Plymouth, the Dutch in New York,
the French in New Orleans. Chief among leaders stand John Smith,
Bradford, Penn, Bienville and Oglethorpe, and chief among settlements,
Jamestown, Plymouth, New York, Massachusetts Bay, Wilmington,
Philadelphia, New Orleans and Savannah. The several movements, in
their failures as in their successes, were distributed over a century
and three-quarters, but since the coming of Columbus a much longer
period had elapsed. From the discovery to the arrival of Oglethorpe
lie 240 years, or a hundred years more than the period that separates
our day from the years when America gained her independence from
England.

Each center of settlement had been inspired by an impulse separate
from that of others. Alike as some of them were, in having as a moving
cause a desire to escape from persecution, religious or political, or
otherwise to better conditions, they were divided by years, if not by
generations, in time; the settlers came from lands isolated and remote
from one another; they were different as to race, form of government,
and religious and political ideals, and, once communities had been
founded, each expanded on lines of its own and knew little of its
neighbors.

The Spaniards who founded St. Augustine continued long to live there,
but of social and political growth in Spanish Florida there was none.
Spain, in those eventful European years, was fully absorbed elsewhere
in Continental wars which taxed all her strength, especially that
furious war, waged for forty years against Holland, and from which
Spain retired ultimately in failure. In those years also was
overthrown Philip's Armada, an event in which the scepter of
maritime-empire passed from Spain to England.

Of the French settlements the chief was New Orleans, French from the
beginning, and so to remain in racial preponderance, religious
beliefs, and political ideals, for a century and a half after
Bienville founded it--so, in fact, it still remains in our day. But
elsewhere the French gave to the United States no permanent
settlements. Numbers of them came to Florida, only to perish by the
sword; others in large numbers settled in South Carolina, only to
become merged with other races, among whom the English, with their
speech and their laws, became supreme.

On Manhattan Island and in the valleys of the Hudson and lower Mohawk
settled the Dutch a few years after the English at Jamestown. They
erected forts on Manhattan Island and at Albany, Hartford and near
Philadelphia; they partitioned vast tracts of fertile lands among
favorite patroons; they built up a successful trade in furs with the
Indians--and sent the profits home. Real settlements they did not
found--at least, not settlements that were infused with the spirit of
local enterprise, or animated by vital ambitions looking to growth in
population and industry. After forty years of prosperity in trade they
had failed to become a settled and well-ordered colonial state,
looking bravely forward to permanence, expansion and eventual
statehood. The first free school in America is credited to their
initiative, and they were tolerant of other religions than their own,
but they planted no other seeds from which a great State could grow.

As Coligny before him had sought to plant in Florida a colony of
French Huguenots, so Raleigh, who had served under that great captain
in the religious wars of the Continent, sought to found in Virginia a
Protestant state. Much private wealth and many of his best years were
given by Raleigh to the furtherance of a noble ambition, but all to
futile immediate results. Raleigh's work, however, like all good work
nobly done, was not lost. Out of his failure at Roanoke came English
successes in later years--John Smith at Jamestown, the Pilgrims at
Plymouth.

Oldest of permanent English settlements in America is Jamestown, but
the English failures at Cuttyhunk and Kennebec antedate it by a few
years, and the failure at Roanoke by a quarter of a century. At
Jamestown, ten years after the arrival of the first settlers, a
legislative assembly was organized--a minature parliament, modeled
after the English House of Commons, and the first legislative body the
new world ever knew. Here, too, in Jamestown began negro slavery in
the United States, and in the same, or the next, year. Thus
legislative freedom and human slavery had their beginning in America
at the same time and in the same place.

Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, next among the English settlements,
followed in due time the failure of Gosnold at Cuttyhunk and the
description of New England John Smith wrote and printed in 1614 after
a voyage of exploration along her coast. After several years Plymouth
contained only about 300 souls, but the Bay colony, founded ten years
later, increased rapidly. By 1634 nearly 4,000 of Winthrop's followers
had arrived, many of them college graduates. From this great parent
colony went forth Roger Williams to Rhode Island, Hooker to Hartford,
Davenport to New Haven, so that by the middle of the seventeenth
century five English colonies had been planted within the borders of
New England.

Long after all these came the Maryland and Pennsylvania settlements,
founded by Lord Baltimore and William Penn as lords proprietor, owners
of vast tracts of land and possessing privileges more extensive than
ever before were bestowed on British subjects. In the new century
arrived Oglethorpe, with his insolvent debtors, soon to find Spaniards
from St. Augustine hostile to his enterprise. But Oglethorpe was a
soldier as well as a colonizer; he had served in Continental wars,
and, after laying siege to St. Augustine further aggressions from that
source ceased.

Thus at last, in the New World, the English race, their flag, their
language and their laws, had displaced the Spaniards in that
world-important contest for dominion and power, of which the second
issue was soon to be fought out on many bloody fields with France.

F.W.H.

CONTENTS

VOL. II--THE PLANTING OF THE FIRST COLONIES

INTRODUCTION. By the Editor

THE FOUNDING OF ST. AUGUSTINE AND THE MASSACRE BY MENENDEZ
(1562-1565):

I. The Account by John A. Doyle

II. Mendoza's Account

SIR WALTER RALEIGH'S VIRGINIA COLONIES (1584-1587):

I. The Account by John A. Doyle

II. The Return of the Colonists with Sir Francis Drake. By Ralph
Lane

III. The Birth of Virginia Dare. By John White

BARTHOLOMEW GOSNOLD'S DISCOVERY OF CAPE COD (1602):

I. By Gabriel Archer, One of Gosnold's Companions

II. Gosnold's Own Account

THE FOUNDING OF JAMESTOWN (1607). By Captain John Smith

THE FIRST AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY (1819). By John Twine, its
Secretary

THE ORIGIN OF NEGRO SLAVERY IN AMERICA:

I. In the West Indies (1518). By Sir Arthur Helps

II. Its Beginnings in the United States (1620). By John A. Doyle

NEW ENGLAND BEFORE THE PILGRIM FATHERS LANDED (1614). By Captain John
Smith

THE FIRST VOYAGE OF THE "MAYFLOWER" (1620). By Governor William
Bradford

THE FIRST NEW YORK SETTLEMENTS (1623-1628). By Nicolas Jean de
Wassenaer

THE SWEDES AND DUTCH IN NEW JERSEY (1627). By Israel Acrelius

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY (1627-1631). By
Governor Thomas Dudley

HOW THE BAY COLONY DIFFERED FROM PLYMOUTH. By John G. Palfrey

LORD BALTIMORE IN MARYLAND (1633). By Contemporary Writers

ROGER WILLIAMS IN RHODE ISLAND (1636). By Nathaniel Morton

THE FOUNDING OF CONNECTICUT (1633-1636). By Alexander Johnston

WITCHCRAFT IN NEW ENGLAND (1647-1696). By John G. Palfrey

THE ENGLISH CONQUEST OF NEW YORK (1664). By John H. Brodhead

BACON'S REBELLION IN VIRGINIA (1676). By an Anonymous Writer

KING PHILIP'S WAR (1676). By William Hubbarrd

THE FOUNDING OF PENNSYLVANIA:

I. Penn's Account of the Colony (1684)

II. Penn's Treaty with the Indians (1683). His Own Account

III. The Reality of Penn's Treaty. By George E. Ellis

THE CHARTER OAK AFFAIR IN CONNECTICUT (1682). By Alexander Johnston

THE COLONIZATION OF LOUISIANA (1699). By Charles E.T. Gayarre

OGELETHORPE IN GEORGIA (1733). By Joel Chandler Harris

THE PLANTING OF THE FIRST COLONIES

1562-1733

THE FOUNDING OF ST. AUGUSTINE AND THE MASSACRE BY MENENDEZ

(1562-1565)

I.

THE ACCOUNT BY JOHN A. DOYLE[1]

In 1562 the French Huguenot party, headed by Coligny, made another
attempt[2] to secure themselves a refuge in the New World. Two ships
set sail under the command of Jean Ribault, a brave and experienced
seaman, destined to play a memorable and tragic part in the history of
America. Ribault does not seem to have set out with any definite
scheme of colonization, but rather, like Amidas and Barlow, to have
contented himself with preliminary exploration. In April he landed on
the coast of Florida....

After he had laid the foundations of a fort, called in honor of the
king Charlefort, Ribault returned to France. He would seem to have
been unfortunate in his choice alike of colonists and of a commander.
The settlers lived on the charity of the Indians, sharing in their
festivities, wandering from village to village and wholly doing away
with any belief in their superior wisdom and power which might yet
have possest their savage neighbors....

France was torn asunder by civil war, and had no leisure to think of
an insignificant settlement beyond the Atlantic. No supplies came to
the settlers, and they could not live forever on the bounty of their
savage neighbors. The settlers decided to return home. To do this it
was needful to build a bark with their own hands from the scanty
resources which the wilderness offered. Whatever might have been the
failings of the settlers, they certainly showed no lack of energy or
of skill in concerting means for their departure. They felled the
trees to make planks, moss served for calking, and their shirts and
bedding for sails, while their Indian friends supplied cordage. When
their bark was finished they set sail. Unluckily in their impatience
to be gone, they did not reckon what supplies they would need. The
wind, at first favorable, soon turned against them, and famine stared
them in the face. Driven to the last resort of starving seamen, they
cast lots for a victim, and the lot, by a strange chance, fell upon
the very man whose punishment had been a chief count against De
Pierria. Life was supported by this hideous relief, till they came in
sight of the French coast. Even then their troubles were not over. An
English privateer bore down upon them and captured them. The miseries
of the prisoners seem, in some measure, to have touched their enemies.
A few of the weakest were landed on French soil. The rest ended their
wanderings in an English prison.

The needs of the abandonment of the colony did not reach France till
long after the event. Before its arrival a fleet was sent out to the
relief of the colony. Three ships were dispatched, the largest of a
hundred and twenty tons, the least of sixty tons, under the command of
Rene Laudonniere, a young Poitevin of good birth. On their outward
voyage they touched at Teneriffe and Dominica, and found ample
evidence at each place of the terror which the Spaniards had inspired
among the natives. In June the French reached the American shore south
of Port Royal. As before, their reception by the Indians was friendly.
Some further exploration failed to discover a more suitable site than
that which had first presented itself, and accordingly a wooden fort
was soon built with a timber palisade and bastions of earthen work.
Before long the newcomers found that their intercourse with the
Indians was attended with unlooked-for difficulties. There were three
tribes of importance, each under the command of a single chief, and
all more or less hostile to the other. In the South the power of the
chiefs seems to have been far more dreaded, and their influence over
the national policy more authoritative than among the tribes of New
England and Canada. Laudonniere, with questionable judgment, entangled
himself in these Indian feuds, and entered into an offensive alliance
with the first of these chiefs whom he encountered, Satouriona....

A new source of trouble, however, soon beset the unhappy colonists.
Their quarrels had left them no time for tilling the soil, and they
were wholly dependent on the Indians for food. The friendship of the
savages soon proved but a precarious means of support. The dissensions
in the French camp must have lowered the new-corners in the eyes of
their savage neighbors. They would only part with their supplies on
exorbitaut terms. Laudonniere himself throughout would have adopted
moderate and conciliatory measures, but his men at length became
impatient and seized one of the principal Indian chiefs as a hostage
for the good behavior of his countrymen. A skirmish ensued, in which
the French were victorious. It was clear, however, that the settlement
could not continue to depend on supplies extorted from the Indians at
the point of the sword. The settlers felt that they were wholly
forgotten by their friends in France, and they decided, tho with heavy
hearts, to forsake the country which they had suffered so much to
win....

Just, however, as all the preparations for departure were made, the
long-expected help came. Ribault arrived from France with a fleet of
seven vessels containing three hundred settlers and ample supplies.
This arrival was not a source of unmixed joy to Laudonniere. His
factious followers had sent home calumnious reports about him, and
Ribault brought out orders to send him home to stand his trial.
Ribault himself seems to have been easily persuaded of the falsity of
the charges, and prest Laudonniere to keep his command; but he, broken
in spirit and sick in body, declined to resume office.

All disputes soon disappeared in the face of a vast common misfortune.
Whatever internal symptoms of weakness might already display
themselves in the vast fabric of the Spanish empire, its rulers showed
as yet no lack of jealous watchfulness against any attempts to rival
her successes in America. The attempts of Cartier and Roberval[3] had
been watched, and the Spanish ambassador at Lisbon had proposed to the
King of Portugal to send out a joint armament to dispossess the
intruders. The king deemed the danger too remote to be worth an
expedition, and the Spaniards unwillingly acquiesced. An outpost of
fur traders in the ice-bound wilderness of Canada might seem to bring
little danger with it. But a settlement on the coast of Florida,
within some eight days' sail of Havana, with a harbor whence
privateers might waylay Spanish ships and even attack Spanish
colonies, was a rival not to be endured. Moreover, the colonists were
not only foreigners but Huguenots, and their heresy served at once as
a pretext and stimulus to Spanish zeal.

The man to whose lot it fell to support the monopoly of Spain against
French aggression was one who, if we may judge by his American career,
needed only a wider field to rival the genius and the atrocities of
Alva. Pedro de Menendez, when he had scarcely passed from boyhood, had
fought both against the French and the Turks, and had visited America
and returned laden with wealth. He then did good service in command of
the Spanish fleet in the French war, and his prompt cooperation with
the land force gave him a share in the glories of St. Quentin.[4] A
second voyage to America was even more profitable than the first, but
his misconduct there brought him into conflict with the Council of the
Indies, by whom he was imprisoned, and heavily fined. His previous
services, however, had gained him the favor of the court. Part of his
fine was remitted, and he was emboldened to ask not merely for pardon,
but for promotion. He proposed to revive the attempt of De Soto and to
extend the Spanish power over Florida. The expedition was to be at
Menendez's own cost; he was to take out five hundred colonists, and in
return to be made Governor of Florida for life and to enjoy certain
rights for free trade with the West Indies and with the mother
country....

The military genius of Menendez rose to the new demands made upon it.
He at once decided on a bold and comprehensive scheme which would
secure the whole coast from Port Royal to Chesapeake Bay, and would
ultimately give Spain exclusive possession of the South Seas and the
Newfoundland fisheries. The Spanish captain had a mind which could at
once conceive a wide scheme and labor at the execution of details. So
resolutely were operations carried on that by June, 1565, Menendez
sailed from Cadiz with thirty-four vessels and four thousand six
hundred men. After a stormy voyage he reached the mouth of the St.
John's river. Ribault's party was about to land, and some of the
smaller vessels had crossed the harbor, while others yet stood out to
sea. Menendez hailed the latter, and after some parley told them that
be had come there with orders from the king of Spain to kill all
intruders that might be found on the coast. The French being too few
to fight, fled. Menendez did not for the present attack the
settlement, but sailed southward till he reached a harbor which be
named St. Augustine. There the Spaniards disembarked and threw up a
fortification destined to grow into the town of St. Augustine, the
first permanent Spanish settlement north of the Gulf of Mexico.
Various attempts had been made, and with various motives. The
slave-hunter, the gold-seeker, the explorer had each tried his
fortunes in Florida, and each failed. The difficulties which had
baffled them all were at length overcome by the spirit of religious
hatred.

Meanwhile a council of war was sitting at the French settlement,
Charlefort. Ribault, contrary to the wishes of Laudonniere and the
rest, decided to anticipate the Spaniards by an attack from the sea. A
few sick men were left with Laudonniere to garrison the fort; all the
rest went on board. Just as everything was ready for the attack, a
gale sprang up, and the fleet of Ribault, instead of bearing down on
St. Augustine, was straggling in confusion off an unknown and perilous
coast. Menendez, relieved from immediate fear for his own settlement,
determined on a bold stroke. Like Ribault, he bore down the opposition
of a cautious majority, and with five hundred picked men marched
overland through thirty miles of swamp and jungle against the French
fort. Thus each commander was exposing his own settlement in order to
menace his enemies.

In judging, however, of the relative prudence of the two plans, it
must be remembered that an attack by land is far more under control,
and far less liable to be disarranged by unforeseen chances than one
by sea. At first it seemed as if each expedition was destined to the
same fate. The weather was as unfavorable to the Spanish by land as to
the French by sea. At one time a mutiny was threatened, but Menendez
succeeded in inspiring his men with something of his own enthusiasm,
and they persevered. Led by a French deserter, they approached the
unprotected settlement. So stormy was the night that the sentinels had
left the walls. The fort was stormed; Laudonniere and a few others
escaped to the shore and were picked up by one of Ribault's vessels
returning from its unsuccessful expedition. The rest, to the number of
one hundred and forty, were slain in the attack or taken prisoners.
The women and children were spared, the men were hung on trees with an
inscription pinned to their breasts: "Not as to Frenchmen, but as to
Lutherans."

The fate of Ribault's party was equally wretched. All were
shipwrecked, but most apparently succeeded in landing alive. Then
began a scene of deliberate butchery, aggravated, if the French
accounts may be believed, by the most shameless treachery. As the
scattered bands of shipwrecked men wandered through the forest,
seeking to return to Fort Caroline, they were mercilessly entrapped by
friendly words, if not by explicit promises of safety. Some escaped to
the Indians, a few were at last spared by the contemptuous mercy of
the foes. Those of the survivors who profest themselves converts were
pardoned, the rest were sent to the galleys. Ribault himself was among
the murdered. If we may believe the story current in France, his head,
sawn in four parts, was set up over the corners of the fort of St.
Augustine, while a piece of his beard was sent as a trophy to the king
of Spain....

Dominic de Gourgues had already known as a prisoner of war the horrors
of the Spanish galleys. Whether he was a Huguenot is uncertain.
Happily in France, as the history of that and all later ages proved,
the religion of the Catholic did not necessarily deaden the feelings
of the patriot. Seldom has there been a deed of more reckless daring
than that which Dominic de Gourgues now undertook. With the proceeds
of his patrimony he bought three small ships, manned by eighty sailors
and a hundred men-at-arms. He then obtained a commission as a slaver
on the coast of Guinea, and in the summer of 1567 set sail. With these
paltry resources he aimed at overthrowing a settlement which had
already destroyed a force of twenty times his number, and which might
have been strengthened in the interval....

Three days were spent in making ready, and then De Gourgues, with a
hundred and sixty of his own men and his Indian allies, marched
against the enemy. In spite of the hostility of the Indians the
Spaniards seem to have taken no precaution against a sudden attack.
Menendez himself had left the colony. The Spanish force was divided
between three forts, and no proper precautions were taken for keeping
up the communications between them. Each was successively seized, the
garrison slain or made prisoners, and as each fort fell those in the
next could only make vague guesses as to the extent of the danger.
Even when divided into three the Spanish force outnumbered that of De
Gourgues, and savages with bows and arrows would have counted for
little against men with firearms and behind walls. But after the
downfall of the first fort a panic seemed to seize the Spaniards, and
the French achieved an almost bloodless victory. After the death of
Ribault and his followers nothing could be looked for but merciless
retaliation, and De Gourgues copied the severity, though not the
perfidy, of his enemies. The very details of Menendez's act were
imitated, and the trees on which the prisoners were hung bore the
inscription: "Not as Spaniards, but as traitors, robbers, and
murderers." Five weeks later De Gourgues anchored under the walls of
Rochelle, and that noble city, where civil and religious freedom found
a home In their darkest hour, received him with the honor he deserved.

[1] From Doyle's "English Colonies in America." By permission of
the publishers, Henry Holt & Co.

[2] Coligny's first attempt was made in 1555, when two shiploads of
Huguenot immigrants (290 persons), under Villegagnon, were sent to
Brazil. This settlement was soon destroyed by the Portuguese.

Menendez's expedition of 1565 followed the earlier Spanish
expeditions by Ponce de Leon, Narvaez and De Soto. It sailed from
Cadiz and comprized eleven ships. Twenty-three other vessels
followed, the entire company numbering 2,646 persons. The aim
of Menendez was to begin a permanent settlement in Florida. On
arrival he found a colony of French Huguenots already in
possession, having been there three years. A conflict was
inevitable, and one which forms a most melancholy chapter in the
early history of American colonization. Menendez hanged Huguenots,
"not as Frenchmen, but as heretics," while Gourgues hanged
Spaniards "not as Spaniards, but as traitors, robbers and
murderers." After the conflicts closed the Spaniards maintained
themselves in St. Augustine until 1586, when St. Augustine was
completely destroyed by Sir Francis Drake. Two years later the
Armada of Spain was overthrown in the English Channel, largely as
the work of Drake.

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