They sink into insignificance beside the struggles and downfall of the Virginia Company, the early constitutional development of the colony, and the bloody feuds with the savages. On the other hand, these disputes are inseparably blended with the constitutional history and the internal development of Maryland. Yet such a test sometimes fails, and there are instances where the selection must be almost arbitrary. In such cases a writer cannot hope that his decision will be universally considered the best. It must be enough if his arrangement be not distinctly and obviously ill-chosen.

I should, perhaps, here say a word as to the principle by which I have been guided in giving references. I have endeavored, as far as may be, to show the reader the process by which the book has been built up step by step. In a work of this length there will probably not be a single careful reader who will invariably put the same construction on evidence as I have done. I have endeavored, as far as may be, to give the materials, from which my readers may form an independent judgment, whether in approval or condemnation of my own verdict.

States territory.

CHAPTER II.

THE UNITED STATES TERRITORY.

It will be most convenient to deal with the internal geography of the United States territory at a later stage of this work. Unity of The productive resources of the various regions, their the United peculiarities of climate, and their facilities for water or land carriage, have exercised an important influence on the development of the several States, and form so large a part of their history that they may most fitly be considered in connection with each separately. At the same time, the territory of the United States admits of being viewed as a whole, in relation both to the rest of the American continent and to the Old World. The tract bounded by the Atlantic on the east, the St. Lawrence and the Canadian lakes on the north, and the furthest limits of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys on the west and south, seems marked out by nature as the home of a great nation. These boundaries have indeed proved too narrow for the growing spirit of the Western Republic. Yet in one sense they form a natural limit. If the United States territory had never expanded beyond them it might have been looked upon as complete and homogeneous; it could hardly have been so had it stopped short of them. Nature has endowed this region with all the physical conditions requisite for unity. Its most distant parts are bound together by great waterways, and it has within itself all the resources needful for national prosperity. Till the Rocky Mountains are reached there are no isolated territories, no hill-girt valleys fitted to become the homes of independent States. Another feature which goes far to make national unity indispensable to the prosperity of North America, is the peculiar position of the Mississippi. That river forms a great national highway, connecting the North-West with the South. As the

tide of migration rolls on from the coast-line westward, so does the possession of the lower Mississippi become more and more essential to the well-being of the North.

of soil and

At the same time we must not overlook the fact that within the territory thus united by natural formation and community of Differences resources there are wide diversities. In the North we climate. have a soil suited to, and indeed requiring free labor, and a climate subject neither to enervating heat nor depressing cold. In such a land subsistence must be won from the reluctant earth by willing and intelligent husbandry, and prosperity of a high order can only be attained when that husbandry is supplemented by the skill of the craftsman and the merchant. the South, on the other hand, we have physical conditions which at once narrow man's wants, and lessen the toil whereby they are supplied; a climate which enables him to support life on a little vegetable food, scantily clad and slightly housed, and a soil which satisfies these simple needs almost without labor. In the North, then, we have an appointed home for free and progressive communities; in the South political liberty could never be the lot of the masses, and such measure of it as existed was enforced from without, or inherited from other countries.

There is, however, no sharp line which divides the zone of freedom from the zone of slavery; they pass into one another by easy and gradual transitions, and thus it becomes possible for two widely different extremities to be held together as constituent members of one great commonwealth.

Not less important is the coincidence of this gradual change in temperature with the line of the Atlantic sea-board. If it had been otherwise, if the coast-line of America had run east and west, there would probably have been a series of communities each with its own sea-board, and possessing in miniature those varied forms of industry and production which now separate the different States one from another. Instead of that, each of the regions successively colonized was marked off by special peculiarities of soil and climate, and was thus enabled to develop a commerce of its own, and to attain a degree of independence and distinctness otherwise beyond its reach.

There is another peculiarity of Northern America which cannot fail to strike even a careless observer. The natural approach Difference to it is from the east. From the Pacific Ocean North the Atlantic America is comparatively inaccessible. This peculiarcoasts. ity, indeed, belongs to the whole continent.

between

and Pacific

Nearly

NATURAL APPROACH FROM EAST.

7

all the navigable rivers of America flow eastward The Atlantic sea-board abounds with harbors, with islands, with convenient spots for the establishment of commercial factories or outposts to serve as a basis for future settlements. The west coast offers no such facilities. Moreover, it is noteworthy that the one point at which the two coast-lines are within easy reach of one another, the Isthmus of Panama, lends itself far more readily as a pathway for a westward than for an eastward immigration. The Isthmus is within easy reach of the West India Islands, and to settlers using them as a basis it forms a ready approach to the Pacific. Immigrants coming from the west would, on the other hand, have no better station than the arid, barren, and unwholesome coast on the west side of the Isthmus. Nor should it be forgotten that America is separated from Eastern Asia by double the extent of sea which divides it from the west coast of Europe. This view does not conflict with any theory as to early migrations from Asia to America. There is nothing in the nature of the Pacific coast to make it impossible that small bands of settlers, either driven by storm or in deliberate quest of a new country, might land there, and might even in time become the founders of such empires as those of Mexico and Peru. Such a case is wholly different from that of colonists settling in a distant country, and at the same time keeping up a certain political connection with the home which they had left. To such colonists, the eastern coast of America offers every facility; the western is practically almost inaccessible.

America shares in the general

By these physical conditions America has been involved in that system of movement which has hitherto governed the migrations of the Old World. Ever since our Aryan forefathers quitted the cradle of their race in Central movement Asia, and went forth to find new homes in Europe, the westward. stream of movement has run westward. The position of America, and the conformation and character of the coast, have given it a share in this movement; and we may look on that westward migration, still incomplete, as one which embraces alike the Old and the New Worlds.

of mankind

The parallel does not end there. Across the great westward movement of the Old World there has always been a subordinate and lateral movement from north to south. That, too, may in a certain sense be said to find its counterpart in America. We have already seen how there, as in the Old World, the North

Relations

Northern

ern Amer

ica.

seems marked out by nature as the home of political freedom and vigorous national growth. In America, indeed, between the course of conquest has never moved directly southand South- ward. The nearest approach to such a movement was when the Northern States were impelled by their economical and political needs, and enabled by their superior resources to force upon their Southern neighbors a mode of life resembling their own and different from that engendered by the natural conditions of the country. This, however, is not in itself a strong illustration of the tendency of political and territorial conquest to move southward, and with this one exception, the impulse which threw the hordes of the North upon the southern regions of Europe has found no exact parallel in America. But the law has been at work, albeit its operation has been chiefly negative. Instead of impelling the inhabitants of the North southwards, it has served to keep the southern races within their own limits. If danger ever threatened the English colonies in America, it was always from their northern and western frontiers. The settlers more than once knew the horrors of invasion at the hands of the French and their savage allies. From Spain they had so little to fear that we have well-nigh forgotten how formidable a neighbor she once appeared. That the South American colonies of Spain, the deliberate undertakings of a great nation, should, even with the start of more than half a century, have been completely outrun in the race of national greatness by the descendants of a few poor, straggling, and uncared-for settlers, is a phenomenon so familiar to us that we have forgotten its strangeYet it is a striking illustration of those natural laws which have decided the relative destinies of northern and southern Europe.

ness.