CHAPTER III

GOVERNOR DINWIDDIE AND THE ASSEMBLY

The events of 1753-1763 in American colonial history are pictured upon a European background. They are colored, however, by the racial, religious, and governmental conditions of the various colonies involved. The period covered by the French and Indian War in America was the period of the Georges in English history. Green has said of George I and of George II: "Their character as nearly approached insignificance as it is impossible for human character to approach it." He further says of George III: "He had a smaller mind than any English king before James II." While, however, there was no strength on the throne of England in these days, the times were made memorable because of Englishmen in both state and church who guided the affairs of the English people. These were the days of Clive in India, of William Pitt, who became in reality, though not in name, head of the British ministry, and of John Wesley, who was just inaugurating his apostolic work for England and the New World as well. In the earlier part of the struggle in America for English supremacy over the French, Pitt had not yet come to his own; but he took the oath of office in time to show his strong hand in bringing to a victorious end the war which was to decide whether America was to be dominantly English or French. Pitt said, upon assuming the high task of guiding England's destinies : "I want to call England out of that enervate state in which twenty thousand men from France can shake her." 1 The great statesman was right in feeling that there was need to "shake" somebody; but it was leadership that had been "enervate."

The hesitation and positive incompetence of the mother country in the earlier years of the French and Indian War

1 J. R. Green, A Short History of the English People, pp. 721, 749, 761.

had been paralleled in America by absence of cooperation among the colonies. Hesitation characterized some of them; in others there were bickerings, and even conflicts between colony and colony, and also between the governors and their respective legislative assemblies. The defeat of Braddock was indeed a blessing in disguise, as it served to arouse the colonies to something of concerted action. But even then there was apathy in certain colonies that, as now seen in perspective, calls for explanation.

Nearly one hundred and fifty years had passed since the founding of Jamestown, Virginia. In the meantime New England had been settled by a religious contingent from English stock whose primary aim in coming to America was to have "a State without a king and a Church without a bishop." The Puritans were Nonconformists, but not necessarily Separatists. Their position was something like the attitude of John Wesley and his followers to the Established Church" in it but not of it." Of course, the Puritans went farther than the Methodists in their attitude and practices so far as the Church of England was concerned. But both of these church folk found that on coming to America non-conformity to the Established Church became separatism in spirit and practice. At any rate, by the middle of the eighteenth century, the period of which we write, New England had become dominantly Congregational. The original Plymouth colony that had fled to America because of persecution for their religion, had developed into an intolerant state church, and then back to toleration of a cautious type. In the meantime, religion was the leading topic about which New Englanders wrote and spoke. At the very beginning of the period of the French and Indian War, when Robert Dinwiddie was appointed Governor of Virginia, Jonathan Edwards, the leading New England divine, was concerned only over the new appointee's religious status, saying 2 in a letter to a friend at the time, that Dinwiddie was a

Charles Campbell, History of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia, p. 454.

Scotchman and had been reared up under the influence of the Presbyterian church, and would, as a consequence, have "respect for that church." This is a straw that tells which way the wind was blowing.

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No characterization of the New England church at the time of the French and Indian War would be complete without some reference to the attitude of the people of that section to Roman Catholicism. To them the French people, who had strongly entrenched themselves just to the north in what is now Canada, as well as to the west towards the Great Lakes region, were "Papists." It is not going too far to say that this term had about the same effect upon the earlier New Englander that the word "fire" would produce on persons living in the vicinity of a powder mill. When we search for motive or for impulse that inspired the people of New England to be more ready to fly at the French or their Indian allies than were their fellow-colonists, we find reason enough in this deep-seated feeling against "papists and "popery." The fathers of the Congregationalists had taught their children that all the ills which they had suffered came of "popery" in spirit if not in fact. They had declared that only so far as the Church of England had become imbued with the spirit of Roman Catholicism was it a persecuting church. This condition in New England must be duly considered in order to comprehend the part that creed played in the attitude of the New England colonists in the French and Indian War. The hesitation to come to England's assistance because of the Established Church which the New Englander opposed was more than overruled by the alacrity with which they marshalled forces to fight papists."

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When we come to the consideration of New Netherland,

Laws of New York, 1691-1718, p. 41; Massachusetts Province Laws, vol. i, p. 423; as early as 1670, Roger Williams, the famous New England preacher, had declared, "the French and Roman Jesuits, the firebrands of the world, for their godbelly sake, are kindling at our back in this country their hellish fires with all the natives of this country" (Quoted by C. J. H. Hayes, A Political and Social History of Modern Europe, vol. i, p. 307).

now become New York under English dominion, we find that here both race and creed combined to produce an indisposition to come to the help of England in a united effort to drive the French from the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys. While New York was English in name, it was at this time a cosmopolitan colony of many races and creeds. It has been said that as many as eighteen languages were spoken in the New York Colony at the time of which we write. The Dutch were there in full force, of course; but so were the Quakers of different nations. When we find the New York assembly hesitating to come to the aid of England in an attempt to drive the French from a fort (which the latter had built on the Ohio) on the basis, as the assembly said, that it was not clear to them that the French had made any encroachments upon "his majesty's dominions," we may be pardoned for looking deeper than this excuse for the cause of such indifference to English supremacy. Cosmopolitan New York had not yet come to be the homogeneous New York of later years.

New Jersey was at this time what might be called a slice of New York. In race and creed that colony was much like its neighbor, and, indeed, for some time the two had been administered by one governor. Maryland was, in spite of reports to the contrary, Roman Catholic in its dominant people, although the Protestants outstripped them numerically. Virginia was strongly for the Established Church of England, and at times intolerantly so. North Carolina Iwas at this time in the throes of a conflict between the Establishment, to which the colony had originally adhered, and the spirit of dissent that now was rampant. South

* Minutes of the Provincial Council, Pennsylvania Colonial Records, vol. v, p. 748; W. C. Ford, Writings of Washington, vol. i, p. 40.

Dinwiddie to Governor Jonathan Belcher of New Jersey, Nov. 8, 1754, in Dinwiddie Papers, vol. i, p. 392; ibid., Jan. 14, 1755, pp. 457-458; Dinwiddie to Lords of Trade, ibid., p. 279; see Appendix II, No. 8.

S. B. Weeks, "The Religious Development in the Province of North Carolina," in The Johns Hopkins University Studies in His

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Carolina was ever disposed to " gang its ain gait," secure in its remoteness from northern enemies and supposedly at peace with its own Indian neighbors. The Church of England was strong in this colony but independency was also on the ground. According to Governor Glen's characterization of the South Carolina assembly, that colony had begun very early to think and act for itself. It can thus be seen at a glance that there was little hope for cohesion or cooperation among the colonists on the basis of creed. And as creed and race were intermingled in early colonial life, we may speak of both these forces as deterrents to united effort in behalf of England's honor where the individual colony did not consider itself in any special danger from French and Indian depredations.

In connection with creeds as a cause of lack of cohesion in American colonial life at the time of the French and Indian War, special mention should be made of Pennsylvania and Maryland, both of which were in the meshes of proprietary governments. These colonies were obliged to serve two masters. As a consequence, they served neither. Amidst the clash of people versus proprietor and king in these two colonies, the interests of the colonies as a whole were overlooked. Religious matters had played an important part in the founding of both Pennsylvania and Maryland. The Quakers, in these early days, though never a persecuting sect, found themselves at odds with every one else (the In

torical and Political Science, vol. x, p. 277; E. I. McCormac, "Colonial Opposition to Authority," in University of California Publications in History, vol. i, No. 1, p. 87; see below, pp. 169-170. 7 Glen to the Duke of Newcastle. 66 The people have the whole of the administration in their hands, and the governor, and thereby the crown, is stripped of its power" (quoted by E. M. Avery, History of the United States, vol. iv, p. 23).

Dinwiddie to Lord Halifax, November 16, 1754, says that South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and the Jerseys have granted no supplies; that in Pennsylvania this is due to the presence of so many Gernans, among whom are many "roman Catholicks, as also in m'yl'd, that I dread if the Fr. sh'd be permitted to make a Settlem❜t on the rich Lands of the Ohio, that by sending Invitations to them, from their religious Principles, they may be prevailed to go on to the Ohio and join the Fr. in Expectat'n of large Grants of Land" (Dinwiddie Papers, vol. i, p. 406; see Appendix II, No. 8).