-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- an excerpt from: American Enterprise - Free and Not So Free Clarence H. Cramer©1972 Little & Brown and Company ISBN 0-316-16000-8 728pps. - First Edition - Out-of-print --[3b]-- Ultimately four colonies were founded originally as a result of activities by joint-stock companies: Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, and Delaware. Three others were born because of animosity against Massachusetts: these were New Hampshire, which broke away for political reasons, and Connecticut and Rhode Island, which were settled by squatters unhappy with the theological, social, and economic climate in the Bible Commonwealth. New Hampshire began with fishing and trading settlements, was gobbled up in 1641 by the grasping Bay Colony. In 1679 Charles II, annoyed by this display of greed, separated New Hampshire from Massachusetts and made it a royal colony. Connecticut got its start in the late 1630's largely through the influence of Thomas Hooker. He was basically a clerical autocrat of the medieval vintage, but authoritarians seldom see eye to eye and he had chafed under the restrictive laws of Massachusetts Bay. He left for the south, however, with the blessing of the Bay Colony, and it seems that the economic desire for better land was more important in the migration than any religious difference which might have developed. Like Plymouth, Connecticut was originally a squatter colony with no legal right to the lands it had usurped and no rights of government granted by the king. The latter, in the person of Charles 11, had no use at all for Massachusetts Bay; he was therefore happy to grant Connecticut a royal charter in 1662. The founding of Rhode Island in the 1630's is much more interesting than that of Connecticut or New Hampshire. The division between Massachusetts and Rhode Island was deep and wide and complex because of very real theological, social, and economic fissures. The emigrants who first went to Rhode Island, unlike those who departed for New Hampshire and Connecticut, had been banished. Roger Williams managed to get some territory south of Massachusetts from the Narragansett Indians, whose friendship he had won and whose language he had taken the trouble to learn. In 1663 he was granted a royal charter that legalized his squatter colony, in part because Charles II had a greater dislike of Massachusetts to the north. Rhode Island turned out to be unusual in several ways: in religion, in its Indian policy, and in an economic theory that was at complete variance from the Protestant ethic. There was complete separation of church and state and freedom of religion for all including freedom for Quakers, Jews, and Catholics. There was no compulsory attendance at church; in Williams's judgment "forced worship stinks in God's nostrils." There were no taxes to support a state religious establishment. The Puritans held firmly to the idea of the unity of church and state, and believed that the state should legislate and enforce morals among its subjects. Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, who had led the exodus to Rhode Island, did not believe civil authorities should have any control over conscience. Williams defended Indian claims to their soil, purchased from them instead of taking land by force. As a trader-clergyman he shared the Indian life, slept at their forest firesides, experienced their dangers; among all other Englishmen the Indians came to trust him. The old Narrangansett chief Canonicus, who distrusted whites, came to love Williams as a son; when he was dying he asked that the Englishman come to close his eyes. In his attitude toward property, Williams was as much an economic as a religious egalitarian. In Rhode Island the original distribution of land was in equal shares with Williams keeping but one share for himself; the assignment for use rather than ownership. He was devoid of self-interest , for the Protestant ethic he had no understanding at all. Wealth, success, status, power for Williams these goals were as transient as smoke. The Dutch, who were a leading maritime power in the seventeenth century, established two great trading companies: the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company. It was the first which sent Henry Hudson to these shores during 1609 in the Half Moon, to search unsuccessfully for a Northwest Passage to India. It was the second which founded New Netherland, now New York, on the North American continent. The Dutch West India Company was chartered by the States General in 1621 for one prime purpose -to make money for its stockholders. It would earn dividends not only through trade but also by making war against Spanish and Portuguese possessions in the New World. So profitable and patriotic did the enterprise appear that by 1623, two years after its founding, subscribers had invested more than seven million guilders in the company. Here was an organization that appeared to be capable of challenging Spain and Portugal -armed as it was with its own fleet of warships, an adequate initial supply of capital, and the enthusiastic support of the home government. It became a prominent carrier of colonial trade by reason of low and attractive shipping rates, and some guile. Its plundering operations were remunerative. As an example, in 1628 seven years after its founding one of the company's admirals in command of a fleet of thirtv-one sail, surprised and overcame a homeward-bound Spanish convoy and captured the whole fleet without firing a shot. It was a profitable theft, enough to pay a dividend Of 50 percent. In the 1630's the company seized numerous islands, including Curacao and St. Eustatius. These were valuable chiefly as trading and smuggling depots; today Curacao is still extremely prosperous both as a free port and as a refining center for Venezuelan oil. But outside the Caribbean the company attempted two territorial conquests, and ultimately lost both of them. It hoped to conquer Brazil and make it the principal source of sugar for Europe as well as a market for African slaves. For a brief period (1630-1650) it did control a long stretch of the Brazilian coast, but ultimately lost it for good. Curiously two countries England and France -- benefited from this effort. The Dutch so strained the resources of both Spain and Portugal during these middle years of the seventeenth century that the French and English were unmolested in their colonization of North America. As Professor John H. Parry has noted (in a perceptive volume with the intriguing title The Age of the Reconnaissance) the English in particular, behind this Dutch screen, had the opportunity to build their colonies along the Atlantic coast from Newfoundland to Barbados. by this display of greed, separated New Hampshire from Massachusetts and made it a royal colony. Connecticut got its start in the late 1630's largely through the influence of Thomas Hooker. He was basically a clerical autocrat of the medieval vintage, but authoritarians seldom see eye to eye and he had chafed under the restrictive laws of Massachusetts Bay. He left for the south, however, with the blessing of the Bay Colony, and it seems that the economic desire for better land was more important in the migration than any religious difference which might have developed. Like Plymouth, Connecticut was originally a squatter colony with no legal right to the lands it had usurped and no rights of government granted by the king. The latter, in the person of Charles II, had no use at all for Massachusetts Bay; he was therefore happy to grant Connecticut a royal charter in 1662. The founding of Rhode Island in the 1630's is much more interesting than that of Connecticut or New Hampshire. The division between Massachusetts and Rhode Island was deep and wide and complex because of very real theological, social, and economic fissures. The emigrants who first went to Rhode Island, unlike those who departed for New Hampshire and Connecticut, had been banished'. Roger Williams managed to get some territory south of Massachusetts from the Narragansett Indians, whose friendship he had won and whose language he had taken the trouble to learn. In 1663 he was granted a royal charter that legalized his squatter colony, in part because Charles II had a greater dislike of Massachusetts to the north. Rhode Island turned out to be unusual in several ways: in religion, in its Indian policy, and in an economic theory that was at complete variance from the Protestant ethic. There was complete separation of church and state and freedom of religion for all including freedom for Quakers, Jews, and Catholi cs. There was no compulsory attendance at church; in Williams's judgment "forced worship stinks in God's nostrils." There were no taxes to support a state religious establishment. The Puritans held firmly to the idea of the unity of church and state, and believed that the state should legislate and enforce morals among its subjects. Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, who had led the exodus to Rhode Island, did not believe civil authorities should have any control over conscience. Williams defended Indian claims to their soil, purchased from them instead of taking land by force. As a trader-clergyman he shared the Indian life, slept at their forest firesides, experienced their dangers; among all other Englishmen the Indians came to trust him. The old Narrangansett chief Canonicus, who distrusted whites, came to love Williams as a son; when he was dying he asked that the Englishman come to close his eyes. In his attitude toward property, Williams was as much an economic as a religious egalitarian. In Rhode Island the original distribution of land was in equal shares with Williams keeping but one share for himself; the assignment for use rather than ownership. He was devoid of self-interest; for the Protestant ethic he had no understanding at all. Wealth, success, status, power for Williams these goals were as transient as smoke. The Dutch, who were a leading maritime power in the seventeenth century, established two great trading companies: the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company. It was the first which sent Henry Hudson to these shores during 1609 in the Half Moon, to search unsuccessfully for a Northwest Passage to India. It was the second which founded New Netherland, now New York, on the North American continent. The Dutch West India Company was chartered by the States General in 1621 for one prime purpose to make money for its stockholders. It would earn dividends not only through trade but also by making war against Spanish and Portuguese possessions in the New World. So profitable and patriotic did the enterprise appear that by 1623, two years after its founding, subscribers had invested more than seven million guilders in the company. Here was an organization that appeared to be capable of challenging Spain and Portugal armed as it was with its own fleet of warships, an adequate initial supply of capital, and the enthusiastic support of the home government. It became a prominent carrier of colonial trade by reason of low and attractive shipping rates, and some guile. Its plundering operations were remunerative. As an example, in 1628 seven years after its founding one of the company's admirals in command of a fleet of thirty-one sail, surprised and overcame a homeward-bound Spanish convoy and captured the whole fleet without firing a shot. It was a profitable theft, enough to pay a dividend Of 50 percent. In the 1630's the company seized numerous islands, including Curacao and St. Eustatius. These were valuable chiefly as trading and smuggling depots; today Curacao is still extremely prosperous both as a free port and as a refining center for Venezuelan oil. But outside the Caribbean the company attempted two territorial conquests, and ultimately lost both of them. It hoped to conquer Brazil and make it the principal source of sugar for Europe as well as a market for African slaves. For a brief period (1630-1650) it did control a long stretch of the Brazilian coast, but ultimately lost it for good. Curiously two countries England and France benefited from this effort. The Dutch so strained the resources of both Spain and Portugal during these middle years of the seventeenth century that the French and English were unmolested in their colonization of North America. As Professor John H. Parry has noted (in a perceptive volume with the intriguing title The Age of the Reconnaissance) the English in particular, behind this Dutch screen, had the opportunity to build their colonies along the Atlantic coast from Newfoundland to Barbados. In New Netherland the most brilliant stroke of the company was the purchase of Manhattan Island from the Indians after passing the bottle around for trinkets worth about $ 2 5 (the Indian name for the area has been translated as "the Island where we all got drunk"). It turned out to be 22,000 acres of what is now the most valuable real estate in the world. This cost the company about one-tenth a cent an acre; unfortunately the company was not in existence when the time came to collect the unearned increment. Ultimately the Indians, infuriated by Dutch cruelties, would retaliate with horrible massacres. As a defensive measure the hard-pressed inhabitants erected a stout wall on Manhattan Island, a barricade from which Wall Street derived its name. The English captured the colony in 1664, renaming it New York. By this time the company's financial condition was unsound; after a reorganization in 1664 it engaged primarily in the African slave trade, although it still possessed the American colony now known as Dutch Guiana. In 1791 the charter expired and was not renewed. During its four decades of existence New Netherland established religious and economic institutions which were to have lasting influence in the New World; it was also interesting politically as an example of authoritarian rule. The Dutch Reformed Church, Calvinistic in doctrine with a Presbyterian form of organization, became the established church of the colony; ultimately the church would found Queen's College (Rutgets) in New Jersey and today has a membership of about half a million in the United States. Economically the most interesting feature of the Dutch settlement was the patroon system, through which the company enticed large landowners to establish estates which they did, principally along the Hudson River. Some of them were huge. Rensselaerswyck, for example, extending along both banks of the Hudson for eighteen miles, was a feudal domain facing the wilderness; it even had a private executioner. This anachronistic system continued until 1775 when the patroons became limited proprietors of their estates, but it was not completely abolished until 1846 following the Anti-Rent War in New York. Politically the company ruled despotically through governors whose powers were similar to the autocrats in Spanish provinces. The last and most durable of their governors, who served for seventeen years ( 1647-1664), was the sturdy and pig-eyed and one-legged Peter Stuyvesant remembered chiefly for his violent temper and his silver-studded wooden leg which gave him the soubriquet "Old Silver Nails." After the British threw him out in 1664 he retired to his farm or houwerie, from which the name of a prominent section of lower Manhattan derives; other wellknown place names-like Flushing, Brooklyn, and Flatbush also had their origin in New Netherland. St. Nicholas was the patron saint of New Amsterdam, and the Dutch gave the Easter egg and Santa Claus to the New World. Little did these canny enterprisers know that, three centuries later, their saints and symbols would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars for the manufacturers and merchants and advertisers of America. Sweden wanted a share of these rising expectations in the New World and in 1633 chartered the New South Company for settlement and trade in what is now Delaware. Settlers ' from Finland, Holland, and Sweden were brought over, but the company did not enjoy good fortune in spite of the efforts of an impressive governor (1643-1653) of Gargantuan proportions. He was Johan Bjornsson Printz, who was possibly the largest man who ever crossed the Atlantic- he was seven feet tall and weighed more than four hundred pounds. Called "Big Tub," he ran the tiny colony as he would have commanded a regiment of infantry, but he was unable either to achieve dividends for the company or to avoid conquest by the Dutch under Stuyvesant in 1655. The only permanent Swedish influence was the introduction of the log cabin to American social and architectonic life. This type of dwelling had not been used by the Pilgrims in Massachusetts, or by the early Cavaliers in Virginia. They pitched tents or took refuge in hiliside caves or moved into wigwams abandoned or appropriated from the Indians. Eventually the Pilgrims, Puritans, and Cavaliers duplicated the houses they had known in England, laboriously splitting timbers to make the familiar clapboards. By contrast, the Swedes' native log cabin was to be copied by other settlers in America until it was the typical backwoods dwelling by the end of the eighteenth century. In the West it was used universally until the Great Plains were reached, where it was replaced by the sod house, only to reappear in the Rocky Mountains. The proprietary colonies sprang from the desire of their owners to build fortunes through real estate. The Baltimores, the Penns, the various proprietors of the Carolinas and New Jersey, were all capitalist speculators and landlords who sought profits from the sale of land, the operation of their own large estates, and the collection of rent and other fees from tenants. Six men the Lords Baltimore owned Maryland for 144 years. They derived their title from an estate in County Longford in the north of Ireland, where George Calvert already owned a manor of more than two thousand acres when he received his first title of nobility as Lord Baltimore. He became a Catholic in 1625, and for that reason had to resign his office as Privy Councillor. For a brief period he had a plantation in Newfoundland, but judged it to be too cold in winter and ultimately got Charles I who had leanings toward Catholicism to grant him what is present-day Maryland. In the first years inducements to settle in Maryland were generous. The proprietor offered a grant of two thousand acres to every "adventurer" who took with him five men between the ages of sixteen and sixty. To those who transported less than this number he would give one hundred acres for each person within those ages, plus fifty acres for each child. For these grants the annual quitrent -a feudal due (beyond the actual rent charged by the immediate landowner) paid to the Baltimores varied in amount but ultimately was ten pounds of good wheat for each fifty acres. The principal income for the Calverts came from sales of land, quitrents, "alienation fines" which were assessed when the property changed hands, and the resale of escheated land land that reverted to the proprietor to pay quitrents or for other reasons. How much was all this? Toward the end of the proprietorship the income cleared annually by the Baltimores was more than C 12,000, an amount in today's terms well over a quarter of a million dollars. In exchange for prerogatives which were all but royal, the Lord Proprietor of Maryland pledged the King of England as a modern scholar has noted with some cynicism nothing more than his continued allegiance, one fifth of the colony's nonexistent gold and silver, and two Indian arrows to be delivered yearly during Easter week at Windsor Castle!" Unfortunately in their 144 years of possession the six Lords Baltimore decreased in vitality, generation by generation. Their ultimate problem, however, came not so much from a degeneration in the quality of the family, as in the fact that they clung with blind tenacity to feudal prerogatives which certainly were anachronistic in the New World but which nonetheless have left their stamp up on Maryland and its people to the present day. The interests of the Baltimores in America were predominantly economic, but collaterally they also wanted to found a refuge for English and Irish Catholics. The first Lord Baltimore earnestly desired to establish a colony free from the religious persecutions he had known as a Catholic in Protestant England, and a place of refuge that was securely beyond the reach of test-oaths. This the Baltimores did, but for Christians only; in the famed Toleration Act of 1649 Maryland prescribed the death penalty and confiscation of property for anyone denying the divinity of Christ or the concept of the Trinity. One result of all this was that when the colonial era ended, Maryland probably sheltered more Roman Catholics than any other English-speaking colony in the New World. One of them was John Carroll, who was both the first American bishop and the founder of the first Catholic college (now Georgetown University). In retrospect it is pertinent to note that freedom of religion in America benefited because Charles I granted a colony to a Roman Catholic land speculator, and because Charles II later used land to settle a debt to a Quaker. The two Carolinas were founded in 1670 when Charles II gave eight of his court favorites-as Lords Proprietors-the area now comprising the two states plus a wilderness that extended all the way to the Pacific, at least in theory. The philosopher John Locke, later famous as an advocate of freedom, drew up a reactionary constitution for the Carolinas which Charles Austin Beard was to characterize as one of the most fantastic now to be found moldering in the archives of government. It provided for a feudal regime' based on slavery and serfdom, with a nobility possessed with such outlandish titles as palatines, admirals, chamberlains, and stewards. The proprietors were enthusiastic about it, but settlers steadfastly refused to ratify such an anachronistic government and this fundamental conflict was one of the reasons both Carolinas became royal colonies in 1729. From the beginning there was a great difference between North and South Carolina, and the cleavage was legally recognized in 1712. South Carolina developed close economic ties with the British West Indies, was settled by English Protestants and French Huguenots, and became an aristocratic colony based on plantations (rice and indigo) and Charleston a city which became the chief center of culture and wealth in the South. North Carolina was entirely different and still is today. The inhabitants were Scotch-Irish and Germans who came down the mountain valleys from Pennsylvania, plus a varied crew of outcasts and religious dissenters from Virginia (for that reason the North Carolinians have been called the "quintessence of Virginia's discontent"). Communication with North Carolina was difficult. By land it was almost impossible, except through Virginia, and even then swamps and forests made the attempt forbidding. By sea only vessels of light draft could negotiate the narrow and shallow passages through the island barriers. Isolated North Carolina thus developed a confident independence and a strong spirit of resistance to authority; between aristocratic Virginia and aristocratic South Carolina it was a "vale of humility between two mountains of conceit." Rhode Island and North Carolina were always two "other-minded" colonies the most self-sufficient and the least aristocratic of the original thirteen. The Quakers were a remarkable sect which appeared in England during the 16oo's and were so-called because its members were supposed to have quaked when under the influence of deep religious emotion. They were really the anarchists of the Protestant Reformation, and were especially offensive to officials because they denied the authority of both the Bible and the Church (they relied on the "inner light"), they built simple meetinghouses and had no paid clergy, they would take no oaths because Jesus said, "Swear not at all" (this particularly angered those who believed in test-oaths), and they actively believed in peace resorting to passive resistance and a "turning of the other cheek" in times of adversity. With all their radicalism they were the dynamic form of English Protestantism from 1650 to 1700 just as Puritanism had been in 1600 and Methodism was to be in 1700. William Penn was a well-born and athletic young Englishman who, in the late 1660's, had been attracted to the Quaker faith. His father, who was Admiral Sir William Penn, disapproved and administered a sound flogging. The discipline had no lasting effect; in time the youth firmly embraced the radical faith, and for his adherence was to suffer much persecution. His thoughts turned to the New World because it presented several possibilities: there he could found an asylum for his people, there he could experiment with liberal ideas of government, and there he might make a profit. He was fortunate in getting a grant because of special circumstances: Charles II owed Penn's father £ 16,000 and also favored religious toleration because he wanted Catholics so treated. The actual grant came from the king in 1681, and was called Penn's Woodland or Pennsylvania. For its day Pennsylvania was liberal in the economic, political, and religious spheres. Pennsylvania was by far the best advertised of all the colonies; its founder, sometimes called the "first American advertising man," sent paid agents to Europe and distributed countless pamphlets in English, Dutch, French, and German. Unlike the lures of many another real-estate promoter, then and later, Penn's inducements were generally truthful. His liberal land policy brought a large flow of immigrants from many countries, and Pennsylvania became a melting pot of nationalities. There was, however, a paradox in all this: economically Penn was a liberal, but at the same time he retained extensive family properties in England, Ireland, and America. He was also an aristocrat in his own tastes and pleasures as is attested by his interest in race horses, ships, good food, drink, and handsome women. Politically Penn introduced a system that was comparatively liberal as proprietary regimes went. It had a representative assembly elected by the landowners. Here again there was a paradox; Penn himself was certainly no democrat. He believed in government for the people by liberally educated gentlemen like himself. There was freedom of worship for all in Pennsylvania, although Jews and Catholics could not vote or hold office. The history of New Jersey was confused and complex in the colonial era; there are some who would claim that it remains so today. When the Dutch owned New Netherland, the colony included what are now the states of New York and New Jersev. In 1664, when the British conquered New Netherland, Charles II granted the area to his brother the Duke of York, later James II. The duke kept the state named after him, and deeded the rest to two of his London cronies -Sir John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. He specified in the deed that the place be called New Jersey after the old Channel Island where Carteret had been born and had served a term as governor. Neither Berkeley nor Carteret ever came to New Jersey because they had too many troubles, caused by their own inefficiency and greed, back in the Old Country. Ultimately the two men, or their heirs, sold to others, finally, in 1702, after much manipulation and mismanagement, New Jersey welcomed new status as a royal colony. Alone of all the continental American colonies, Georgia was sponsored by men who were not interested in making a profit from the undertaking. This rare example of a vast enterprise with a thoroughly altruistic motive was so unusual that it has been the subject of much speculation and self-congratulation. There were certain influential and wealthy humanitarians in England who hoped to provide an asylum in America for "all the useless Poor in England, and distressed Protestants in Europe." In 1732 they managed to get a charter for Georgia (named for the king who granted it) under which they as sponsors and trustees would put up the money, but not for profit, in order to transport to the New World persons who had been imprisoned for debt. The trustees were to own no land in Georgia, but were given the right to govern the area for twenty-one years. In actual fact the trustees had three purposes in mind: military, economic, and philanthropic. They wished to protect the frontier -to provide a buffer state against the Spanish in Florida. From an economic point of view, they wanted to develop valuable semitropical products particularly the silkworm. As philanthropists they devoutly wished to provide a "calm retreat for undeserved distress." For that reason they limited the size of land holdings in Georgia (against speculators), they forbade slavery (so the debtor-immigrants could compete), and they forbade liquor (to keep them sober and at work). It is impossible to discuss Georgia without commenting particularly on the remarkable man who was chiefly responsible for its founding General James Edward Oglethorpe. He was a rara avis indeed a military man with liberal tendencies. A graduate of Eton and Oxford, he held a seat in Parliament for thirty-two years; in military circles he had a deservedly high reputation, gained chiefly in campaigns against the Turks. Interestingly, on the eve of the American Revolution he declined the command of the British army in America because he was not given the power of concession and conciliation. The central point is that he was vitally interested in problems which were nonmilitary, and solutions for them which avoided the employment of force. He wanted to do something for debtors in prisons; he tried to expose the evils of impressment almost a century before we went to war about it; he was opposed to Negro slavery; he was against strong drink. It is not surprising that Oglethorpe's vision of a commonwealth of small, self-supporting, abstemious landholders did not materialize. The dream was destroyed by a number of practical developments. For one thing, the trustees' plans for land, no matter how noble, were unsound at least for Georgia. In those pine barrens small farms were uneconomic; there was an adage that "it took three men and a quart of whiskey to raise hell on it." The original idea of fifty acres per family was therefore silly, simply because fifty acres of pine barren will not support a family. Ultimately the limitation was increased to five hundred, then to two thousand acres and was removed entirely in 1750. This brought a demand for slaves, because the increasingly larger holdings obviously introduced a plantation economy. Reluctantly, the trustees allowed slavery in 1750. The prohibition of liquor turned out to be both unpopular and uneconomic. Lumber from Georgia went to the West Indies, and rum was one of the few commodities that could be returned. A prohibition against the importation of rum had the effect of cutting off a vital trade with the Caribbean. The consequence could have been predicted: the trustees repealed prohibition in 1742. On top of everything else, the silkworms also refused to cooperate; however intractable the London poor were to the schemes of the trustees, the silkworms were even more so. In 1742 nearly half the silkworms in Savannah died, proving that Georgia's climate was not suited for their culture. But the trustees remained blind to a pragmatic situation; in 1751 they declared that no one could be a representative in the Georgia Assembly unless he had at least one hundred mulberry trees planted (to house and feed silkworms) on every fifty acres! The handwriting was on the wall, in letters which were plain and large. In 1752 Georgia ceased to be a utopian settlement, and became a royal colony of the Crown of England. pps. 38-60 --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. 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