CHAPTER XIX COLONIAL LIFE ON THE ATLANTIC PEACE brought great development to the English colonies, but the war can hardly be said to have retarded the growth of those at the South at any time. There was no attack from the sea, although that was anticipated, and the occasional ravages of the western borders appealed to the sympathies rather than the fears of the more numerous tidewater people. Even colonization in a sense continued, for immigrants still came from Europe and the old centres became themselves points of departure for new settlements. And this was as true of the oldest dominion as of the youngest, while running through them all was a constitutional growth, a Zeitgeist, which was preparing Virginians, Carolinians, and Georgians alike for something yet to come, when colonial growth, intellectual and political, had fitted them to assume their just place among the nations of the world. Consideration of their several situations will enable us to see better what they had in common. In Virginia, with the accession of Queen Anne came the curious institution of titular governorships. The first was when the Earl of Orkney held the office for forty years. while the duties were exercised by deputies of varying ability, as in 1710 by Alexander Spotswood, whose energy left marked impress upon the province. Up to his time. there had not been the right of habeas corpus, and now that greatest of all civil remedies was brought to Virginia by this soldier, who had been wounded at Blenheim; and the colony was connected in another way with that victory, for Marlborough had sent the Virginian Colonel Parke to bear the news to the queen. Spotswood was well received, and the burgesses voted £2,000 to build a palace; but this cordiality did not last long, for when he wanted to fortify the frontier he could only get a bill passed for scouts. He at least managed to prevent the Virginia Indians from joining in the Tuscarora war, however, and when buccaneers came into Chesapeake Bay promptly sent out vessels to capture them. The combat with Blackbeard Teatch came on in his rendezvous in Pamlico Sound in true pirate fashion; for Blackbeard leaped upon the roundhouse of his sloop, tossed off a glass of liquor to the opposing masters, and imprecated damnation on him who should give quarter. But his bravado came to nothing, for his crew were killed, or captured to die on the gallows, and Blackbeard's head was brought back upon the bowsprit of the colonial craft. Spotswood was in many respects the best executive Virginia had before the Revolution. He had an eye single to the public good, and, although he lectured and hectored everyone, from the burgesses down, who stood in the way of his plans, all respected him because they knew that he had no private object. He struggled with the vestries over the appointment of ministers, for they had become used to choosing their own pastors, and would even hear nothing of a Virginia bishop. There were not long afterward fifty parishes and one hundred and thirty pastors, and Spotswood had finally to abandon the unequal contest. More popular were his efforts in the way of developing industries. During her reign, Queen Anne sent over Germans from the harried Palatinate to make wine and iron, and they were placed at Germanna on the Rapidan, near which Spotswood had a house or castle. He took a deep interest in their labors. William Byrd visited him there and gives a delightful account of the trip, for, although it was a long way off from the capital, Spotswood was a fine host. He could tell good stories of campaigns under Marlborough, and even stand badinage over his recent surrender to the fair sex. Byrd thought him uxorious, but Spotswood said that whoever brought a poor gentlewoman into so solitary a place was under obligation to use her with all possible tenderness. After he ceased to be governor, Spotswood's name became connected with that great civilizer, the post office. Up to the end of the preceding century letters had passed by private conveyance, and although Thomas Neale was authorized by the burgesses to establish post offices and receive threepence for the carriage of each letter addressed to a place not exceeding fourscore miles from the point where it was mailed, and there was a postmaster-general from a northern colony, we do not know what was done. When Spotswood became postmaster-general he arranged that post riders should be at Susquehanna River on Saturday nights to receive the Philadelphia mail, get back to Annapolis on Monday, by Wednesday be near Fredericksburg, and Saturday night at Williamsburg, where connection was made once a month for mails to Edenton. The time from the Susquehanna to Williamsburg was a week, an improvement over methods of transfer under earlier officials. One of Spotswood's appointees for Pennsylvania was Benjamin Franklin. The postmaster-general had on the Chesapeake another home, which he called Temple Farm, and there he spent his last years, riding in his London chariot and dispensing hospitality. It may not have been so much of "an enchanted castle" as Byrd thought the other, but it was to have a famous history, at which perhaps its owner would have been aghast,-for many years afterward it witnessed the surrender of Cornwallis. Spotswood himself was to have commanded an expedition to the West Indies in 1740, but died just before embarking. One of his successors in the governorship was William Gooch, who held the office twenty-two years, and his conciliatory attitude made him a favorite. It was during his time that the movement to the west became prominent, for the Episcopal population on the tidewater was now supplemented by a very different immigration, that of Dissenters. It was already evident that whatever might be the true western boundary under her charter, Virginia was to spread beyond even the headwaters of the James, and embrace the beautiful Shenandoah Valley. Heretofore immigrants had come from the ocean and settled mainly on the rivers; now there was to be a large influx from the more northern colonies, particularly Pennsylvania. The interior of that province had been developed from abroad until the real frontier was along the Susquehanna, and this region was filled with a very different class of people from the quiet Quakers of Philadelphia and the east. They were homeseeking Germans and Scotch-Irish, fresh from Europe, with no ambition to advance the boundaries of Pennsylvania. The history of the Scotch-Irish takes us back to Cromwell's settlement and its results. In 1689 came the famous siege of Londonderry by James II., in which the Protestants of Ulster successfully drove back the Stuarts, and the same year was no less famous for the Act of Toleration. Unfortunately, although King William was in sympathy with the Dissenters, their position even in Ireland soon became intolerable. They had not only to see the Episcopal Church made the State establishment, and contribute themselves to its support, but in every way possible they found themselves incommoded and sometimes persecuted. This was the cause of the large emigration to America, which went first to Pennsylvania on account of the religious freedom established there by the Quakers. These colonists, however, soon found the border insecure because of the Indians and of the reluctance of the Quakers to take warlike protective measures. In 1710 some adventurers had seen the valley of the Shenandoah from the top of the Blue Ridge, and six years later Governor Spotswood entered it and bivouacked along its river, which to him and his Knights of the Golden |