sparing and frugal and looked forward to realizing his ambition, which was to take up a few acres and farm. This was forest land, and before he could put plough to it he must build himself a rude cabin and with axe and torch clear away the trees and the underbrush; but his optimism, his industry, and the help of his neighbors soon put him on his feet, and when his circumstances improved he was able to buy a redemptioner, add more land to his holdings and surround himself with greater comforts. A trait characteristic of the Germans, which from the beginning has always endured, is that they have ever been loyal to their adopted country. There was a strong Tory element in Pennsylvania which exerted a powerful influence against the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, and without Pennsylvania union was impossible; but it was the Germans who beat down Tory opposition and brought the support of Pennsylvania to the other colonies. They were equally loyal to the new-born Republic, and the way in which they responded to Lincoln's call to arms and freely offered their lives to preserve and maintain the Union the muster rolls of the Northern armies eloquently testify; and the prominent part taken by American generals of German birth is a part of the history of that great conflict. The three remaining colonies, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Delaware, can be dismissed with a few sentences. New Jersey was within the Dutch grant of the New Netherlands, but its existence was of indifferent concern to them and the few who crossed the river and settled there found Swedes from the Delaware, who always trespassed on Dutch soil; and there was of course a scattering of Puritans, for wherever there was vacant land or the promise of founding a successful settlement there the Puritan went. The genesis of New Hampshire is a counterpart of Connecticut and Rhode Island; they were all three the offshoots of Massachusetts and born in the throes of religious persecution. When Mrs. Hutchinson and her followers were banished from Massachusetts some went to Providence and founded what later became the state of Rhode Island; others settled Exeter, and in the usual fashion of that time soon a new colony arose. Just as Connecticut was founded by the establishment of little towns which were afterwards politically incorporated, so the beginning of New Hampshire came from the four towns of Portsmouth, Dover, Exeter and Hampden, which were founded either by Puritans from England or their coreligionists from Massachusetts. There as elsewhere in New England the church republic was established, the straggling settlement clustering about the rude meeting-house, which was always the heart of the independent state of the Puritans in the New World. The New Hampshire settlements were too weak to stand alone and not strong enough to sink mutual jealousies and find strength in confederation. For twenty years they quarrelled, then they applied to Massachusetts to be taken under her jurisdiction, and forty years later, during which time the towns had made no progress, the English courts decided that Massachusetts had no legal title and New Hampshire became a royal province and was governed from London. There is really no history of New Hampshire apart from Massachusetts in this period, and the influence of Massachusetts was so strong that the younger colony developed no originality and brought no contribution to the thought of the time. Delaware was originally settled by the Dutch, who claimed it by right of discovery and as embraced in the grant of the New Netherlands although the English also asserted title to it as part of Virginia, which had neither metes nor bounds but extended indefinitely from ocean to ocean. The Dutch established a small settlement in 1631, but their rule was short, as the settlers were massacred to a man by the Indians in revenge for the killing of one of their chiefs. In 1638 Peter Minuit, who had formerly been the agent of the Dutch West India Company and governor of the New Netherlands, but who resented his removal from office, under the patronage of the Queen of Sweden and prominent merchants, led a Swedish colony to Delaware Bay, where a fort was erected and a settlement created at what is now the site of Wilmington. This is the first and only colony founded by Sweden in the New World, but Sweden wrote her brief chapter in American colonization in water. She brought nothing to the common stock; she left not the slightest mark of her nationality or character. Little impression as the Dutch made as colony builders, still less was that made by the Swedes, who bequeathed not even a trace of language, custom or law. At a later stage in the development of the American people we shall have to deal with a great Scandinavian influx, but that has no bearing on the colonial period. The Swedes attach no such sentiment to the spot that was their landing-place in the New World as the English do to Plymouth Rock, but with the Swedes it was merely a passing incident in their life that had no more lasting consequences than the scars of childhood have on a man's nature; with the English it was veritably the rock on which was built a civilization no less than a polity which was to affect all mankind. The petty quarrels between Dutch and Swedish governors, the transfer of sovereignty to Dutch and English as the results of the fortunes of war, the disputes between proprietors as to boundaries, the inclusion at one time of Delaware in Pennsylvania and its subsequent independence, are of no concern for the purpose we have in view. As a colony Delaware is as nonexistent as New Hampshire or New Jersey; they were members of a family that influenced it neither for good nor evil, they brought |