The Life of George Washington. Woodrow Wilson
business that touched the colonies to the quick. New York had her western frontiers upon the nearer lakes. Thence, time out of mind, had come the best furs to the markets at Albany, brought from tribe to tribe out of the farthest regions of the northwest. New England, with the French at her very doors, had to look constantly to her northern borders to keep them against the unquiet savage tribes the French every yeaj stirred up against her. Virginia felt the French power among her savage neighbors too, the moment her people ventured across the Blue Ridge into the valley where many an ancient war-path ran; and beyond the Alleghenies she perceived she must stand in the very presence almost of the French themselves. English frontiersmen and traders, though they had no advancing military posts behind them, were none the less quick to go themselves deep into the shadowed wilderness, there to meet the French face to face in their own haunts. The Carolinas were hardly settled before their more adventurous spirits went straight into the far valley of the Tennessee, and made trade for themselves there against the coming of the French. Out of Virginia, too, and out of Pennsylvania, as well as out of New York, traders pressed towards the West, and fixed their lonely huts here and there along the wild banks of the Ohio. 'Twas diamond cut diamond when they met their French rivals in the wigwams of the Indian villages, and their canoes knew the waterways of the wilderness as well as any man's. 'Twas they who learned at first hand what the French were doing. They were like scoots sent oat to view the ground to be fought for.
This hazardous meeting of rival nations at the heart of the continent meant many a deep change in the fortunes of the colonies. European politics straightway entered their counsels. Here was an end of their separateness and independence of England. Charles and James and William all showed that they meant to be veritable sovereigns, and had no thought but that the colonists in America, like all other Englishmen, should be their subjects; and here was their opportunity to be masters upon an imperial scale and with an imperial excuse. In Europe, England beheld France her most formidable foe; she must look to it that Louis and his ministers take no advantage in America. The colonies, no less than the Channel itself, were become the frontiers of an empire—and there must be no trespass upon English soil by the French. The colonists must be rallied to the common work, and, if used, they must be ruled and consolidated.
As it turned out, the thing was quite impossible. The colonies had too long been separate; their characters, their tempers, their interests, were too diverse and distinct; they were unused to co-operate, and unwilling; they were too slow to learn submission in anything. The plan of grouping several of them under a single governor was attempted, but they remained as separate under that arrangement as under any other. Massachusetts would interest herself in nothing beyond her own jurisdiction that did not immediately touch her safety or advantage; New York cared little what the French did, if only the Iroquois could be kept quiet and she could get her furs in the season, and find a market for them abroad or among the French themselves; Virginia had no eye for any movement upon the frontiers that did not menace her own fair valleys within the mountains with hostile occupation; the Carolinas were as yet too young to be serviceable, and New Jersey too remote from points of danger. Nowhere could either men or supplies be had for use against the French except by the vote of a colonial assembly. The law of the empire might be what it would in the mouths of English judges at home; it did not alter the practice of the colonies. The courts in England might say with what emphasis they liked that Virginia, "being a conquered country, their law is what the King pleases"; it was none the less necessary for the King's Governor to keep on terms with the people's representatives." Our government is so happily constituted," writes Colonel Byrd to his friend in the Barbadoes, "that a governor must first outwit us before he can oppress us. And if ever he squeeze money out of us, he must first take care to deserve it." Every colony held stoutly to a like practice, with a like stubborn temper, which it was mere folly to ignore. One and all they were even then "too proud to submit, too strong to be forced, too enlightened not to see all the consequences which must arise" should they tamely consent to be ruled by royal command or parliamentary enactment. Their obedience must be had on their own terms, or else not had at all. Governors saw this plainly enough, though the ministers at home could not. Many a governor had his temper sadly soured by the contentious obstinacy of the colonial assembly he was set to deal with. One or two died of sheer exasperation. But the situation was not altered a whit.
When there is friction there must, sooner or later, be adjustment, if affairs are to go forward at all, and this contest between imperial system and colonial independence at last brought some things that had been vague to a very clear definition. 'Twas plain the colonies would not of themselves combine to meet and oust the French. They would supply neither men nor money, moreover. England must send her own armies to America, fight France there as she would have fought her in Europe, and pay the reckoning herself out of her own treasury, getting from the colonies, the while, only such wayward and niggardly aid as they chose to give. The colonies, meanwhile, might gather some of the fruits of experience; might learn how safe it was to be selfish, and how unsafe, if they hoped to prosper and be free; might perceive where their common interests lay, and their common power; might in some degree steady their lives and define their policy against the coming of more peaceful times. Two wars came and went which brought France and England to arms against each other in America, as in Europe, but they passed away without decisive incident in the New World, and there followed upon them thirty years of uneventful peace, during which affairs hung at a nice balance, and the colonies took counsel, each for itself, how they should prosper.
Virginia, meanwhile, had got the charter she was to keep. From the Potomac to the uncertain border of the Carolinas she had seen her counties fill with the men who were to decide her destiny. Her people, close upon a hundred thousand strong, had fallen into the order of life they were to maintain. They were no longer colonists merely, but citizens of a commonwealth of which they began to be very proud, not least because they saw a noble breed of public men spring out of their own loins to lead them. Though they were scattered, they were not divided. There was, after all, no real isolation for any man in Virginia, for all that he lived so much apart and was a sort of lord within bis rustic barony. In that sunny land men were constantly abroad, looking to their tobacco and the labor of all kinds that must go forward, but would not unless they looked to it, or else for the sheer pleasure of bestriding a good horse, being quit of the house, and breathing free in the genial air. Bridle-paths everywhere threaded the forests; it was no great matter to ride from house to house among one's neighbors; there were county-court days, moreover, to draw the country-side together, whether there was much business or little to be seen to. Men did not thrive thereabouts by staying within doors, but by being much about, knowing their neighbors, observing what ships came and went upon the rivers, and what prices were got for the cargoes they carried away; learning what the news was from Williamsburg and London, what horses and cattle were to be had, and what dogs, of what breeds. It was a country in which news and opinions and friendships passed freely current; where men knew each other with a rare leisurely intimacy, and enjoyed their easy, unforced intercourse with a keen and lasting relish.
It was a country in which men kept their individuality very handsomely withal. If there was no town life, there were no town manners either, no village conventionalities to make all men of one carriage and pattern and manner of living. Every head of a family was head also of an establishment, and could live with a self-respect and freedom which were subject to no man's private scrutiny. He had leave, in his independence, to be himself quite naturally, and did not need to justify his liberty by excuses. And yet he had responsibilities too, and a position which steadied and righted him almost in spite of himself. It required executive capacity to make his estate pay, and an upright way of life to maintain his standing. If he was sometimes loud and hectoring, or over-careless what 'he said or did, 'twas commonly because he was young or but half come into his senses; for his very business, of getting good crops of tobacco and keeping on dealing terms with his neighbors, demanded prudence and a conduct touched with consideration. He had to build his character very carefully by the plumb to keep it at an equilibrium, though he might decorate it, if it were but upright, as freely, as whimsically even, as he chose, with chance traits and self-pleasing tastes, with the full consent and tolerance of the neighborhood. He was bis own man, might have his own opinions if he held them but courteously enough, might live his own life if he but lived