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possession of liberty, based upon the practical assertion of the sovereignty of the people."

How sadly must we record the fact, in exact contrast with all this, that slavery at length forced itself into this province, and assumed to dictate and control it! This vile institution was not wanted in Maryland. If in her unpretending days it was freely tolerated, or even welcomed, when the negroes began to be numerous, and the price of their staples was, in consequence, alarmingly reduced, and debts for slaves were largely increased, Maryland, as well as Virginia and the Carolinas, greatly desired and preferred white laborers. But the English had become a nation of slave-dealers. Up to 1700, in twenty years, they " took from Africa about three hundred thousand negroes, or about fifteen thousand a year." The dealers must have a market; and the nefarious slavetrade, which civilization has pronounced "piracy upon the high seas," and which has just expired from the repeated death-strokes of freedom, must fix its fetters on this noble and rising State. Thus Maryland becomes a part of the slaveholding group of the South, and bears her crushing burden, in consequence, for some two hundred years.

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This was not her true position. She was much more naturally allied to the Middle and Eastern States. Her climate gave the white laborer the advantage, and hence she had more "white servants" than any other colony. She was the most southern of the colonies which joined with the East for the defence of New York, paid her quota, and helped to form "an imperfect confederacy" extending "from the Chesapeake to Maine."

DELAWARE.

In the spring of 1631, the Dutch "planted a colony of more than thirty souls," "just within Cape Henlopen, on Lewes Creek ;" and thus by occupancy secured to the future

* Bancroft, i. 265.

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State of Delaware the right to exist as an independent commonwealth. They built a fort, attached the arms of Holland to a pillar, and named the country Swaanendael. Godyn, Van Rensselaer, and their associates, in company with Pieter Heyes (the commander of the emigrant-ship), Hosset, and De Vries, did what they could to make this a Dutch province; but the colonists were murdered by Indians to avenge the death of their chief, slain by authority of Hosset, the commander. Wouter van Twiller, who superseded Minuet, could not achieve success. The English swarmed everywhere, and claimed this land as a part of the whole. Dutchmen could live here, and on the Connecticut, and on the Hudson, where the right of discovery and settlement was undoubtedly with them; but they could erect no States for Holland. The English, urged forward by religious zeal, resolved to occupy the ground, and devote it to the rights of the people. And there was soon another competitor.

Gustavus Adolphus, the great king of Sweden, claimed a right for his subjects in the soil and traffic of America. He would attempt colonization upon a vast scale. A grand commercial company was to be formed, and all Europe invited to take stock; but he would not trouble the company to govern the colony. "Politics," he said, "lie beyond the profession of merchants."

One thing in the views of this enlightened sovereign and his company is worthy of note. "Slaves," they said, "cost a great deal, labor with reluctance, and soon perish from hard usage. The Swedish nation is laborious and intelligent; and surely we shall gain more by a free people with wives and children." "To the Scandinavian imagination, hope painted the New World as a paradise;" the proposed colony as a benefit to the persecuted, a security "to the honor of the wives and daughters" of those whom bigotry had made fugitives; a blessing to the "common man," to the "whole Protestant world." It may prove the advantage, said Gustavus, of "all oppressed Christendom."

But the great question of the rights of conscience must be fought out on the plains of Germany; and Gustavus Adolphus led his brave troops to the conflict. Liberty of thought and religion triumphed at Lutzen: but the funds raised for the colony were ingulfed in the war, and the great hero of liberty passed away, bequeathing to Germany and his own loyal but bereaved subjects the grand colonial enterprise as "the jewel of his kingdom." Oxenstiern, “the wise statesman, one of the great men of all time, the serene chancellor," who felt himself to be the executive of the will of Gustavus Adolphus, " renewed the patent, and extended its benefits to Germany;" saying, "The consequences will be favorable to all Christendom, to Europe, to the whole world."

It seemed a singular providence that the "Key of Calmar and the Griffin," bearing the emigrants who were to represent the deceased Swedish monarch and the great Oxenstiern, should be directed to the Bay of Delaware; and that the emigrants should plant their little colony, which was to aid in founding an American State, within the disputed territory of the Dutch, the Quakers, and the Puritans. The Dutch would remonstrate, but did not then dare to defy the immense power of Sweden; the Quakers would finally sell out, and the Yankees cluster elsewhere; the Swedes would stay for a few years, and finally be overwhelmed by the Dutch; the Dutch, in their turn, would be compelled to submit to the English; and finally the representatives of European nations would cease to be Swedes or Englishmen or Dutch or Germans, but would become Americans, and the distinguished Lord Delaware would give his name to the State.

It is important to our inquiry to identify the sources of light, which, according to the plans of God, were to converge upon the land of the future Great Republic. I have, therefore, given position and consideration to the Scandinavian. movement, which, under the guidance of great minds, colonized "New Sweden." True, this laudable effort terminated disastrously, after a struggle of seventeen years; but the

Swedes brought with them from the Protestant Reformation of Germany the grand ideas of liberty and the dignity of labor. They rejected slavery, not, to be sure, from principles of justice and humanity, but upon economical grounds; and history vindicates their opinions. The Dutch, who finally triumphed over them, were not so clear in their doctrines of political economy, and were unscrupulous with regard to the rights of the African race. They, with the English, deeply involved in the crime of kidnapping and selling " Guinea negroes," sent the curse of slavery into New Netherlands, and at length fastened it upon the State of Delaware. Here, therefore, as well as in Virginia, the wrong of oppression corrupted the morality and retarded the civilization of the people; and Delaware most unnaturally took her place in the Southern group.

NORTH CAROLINA.

Raleigh failed to establish a colony in North Carolina; but his attempts were valuable in the history of discovery, and form an important link in the chain which connects the American Republic with the best minds and best impulses of the Old World. His daring as an adventurer, his heroism as a military commander, his shrewdness as a manager of both civilized and savage men, entitle him to a high rank among the great men of his times. James owed him a debt of gratitude that he repaid by acts of tyranny which will add infamy to his name as long as it is remembered. Raleigh's real crime was, failing to discover gold-mines in Guiana. He was out of favor; and, "against law and against equity," he must be shut up for long years like a felon : but his elegant mind would devote these years to ennobling literature. His ungrateful sovereign could, in his old age, order him to execution; but England and America would embalm his memory as a great statesman and a splendid philanthropist. Men perish; but ideas and impulses live. Raleigh left for his countrymen large information concern

ing the New World, and the enthusiasm of enterprise, which would ultimately make that world available to the civilization of succeeding ages, and the glory of the nation to the narrow-minded bigotry of whose sovereign he fell a sacrifice.

It is especially as a man of liberal opinions, imbued with a high sense of justice, that his relation to North Carolina and the United States is held most sacred. The spirit which moved him to resist the cruel orders against the nonconformists, and every form of persecution for opinion's sake, was essentially new English, and thoroughly American; and the influences which such men awake never cease to benefit the race. The North-Carolinians perpetuate his memory by the name of their capital; and the nation, in the noble institutions which are true to his most thorough convictions.

But the time for a permanent colony, and the people to found a State, would come. In 1663, Clarendon, Monk (Duke of Albemarle), Lord Cramm, Lord Ashley Cooper, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Sir John Colleton, Lord John Berkeley, Sir William Berkeley, and Sir George Carteret, "were constituted the proprietors and immediate sovereigns" of " the Province of Carolina." They were old men, and very avaricious. They were high-born royalists, and, so far as possible, would stamp the future States with the impress of aristocracy. They would drain the country of its resources, under pretence of "a pious zeal for the propagation of the gospel."

*

They were to contend with numerous rivals for the right of domain. Spain made Florida to extend over this whole coast. The everlasting Puritans were hunting about there for more room, more traffic, and more liberty; and claimed for themselves all "the region round about." The nonconformists of Virginia, shrinking from the exactions of a State church, had fled to the forests, and, in 1663, probably formed the first permanent settlement on Albemarle Sound, under patronage of Sir William Berkeley, at the same time Governor of Virginia and one of the proprietors of Carolina.

* Bancroft, ii. 129, et seq.

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