Laws formed to harmonize contrarious creeds,
And heal the wounds through which a nation bleeds;
Laws mild, impartial, tolerant and fixed,
A bond of union for a people mixed;
Such as good Calvert framed for Baltimore,
And Penn the Numa of th' Atlantic shore.
The Stevens family were so intimately related to their country, that the history of one is the history of the other. Philip Stevens, or Estevan, had located in the south and left behind a numerous progeny, while his brother Mathew, who came over in the Mayflower, had left an equally large family in New England. Their descendants began to push out into the frontier colonies, those in the south going as far north as Pennsylvania, and those in the east pushing out westward to New York and New Jersey.
The family were lovers of freedom, and, wherever a struggle has been made on American soil for liberty, one of these descendants of the youth who landed on American soil with Columbus, in 1492, has been found. They disliked Andros, and the members of this now extensive and widely scattered family were in sackcloth and ashes, so to speak, when King James, in 1688, gave Andros a vice-regal commission to rule New York and all New England.
When the viceroy journeyed from Boston to New York City, early in August the same year, George Stevens, a cousin of Charles, accompanied him, and saw Andros received by Colonel Bayard's regiment of foot and horse, who was entertained by the loyal aristocrat. In the midst of the rejoicings, the news came that the queen, the second wife of James, had been blessed with a son, who became heir to the throne. The event was celebrated the same evening by bonfires in the streets and a feast at the city hall. At the latter, Major Van Cortlandt became so hilarious, that he made a burnt sacrifice to his loyalty of his hat and periwig, waving the burning victims over the banquet table on the point of his straight sword.
Princess Mary, the eldest daughter of King James, had married the Prince of Orange, and this new birth in the royal family was a disappointment to the Dutch inhabitants of New York, as well as the Protestant republicans, who had begun to hope that William and Mary would succeed James to the throne of England. This event intensified the general discontent, because of the consolidation of New York with New England and the abridgment of their rights, and the people were ready to rebel at almost any moment, especially as Andros had rendered himself particularly obnoxious.
Like the other colonies, Maryland was shaken by the revolution in England, in 1688, and, for a while, experienced deep sorrows. The democratic ideas, which, for several years, had been spreading over the provinces, could not reconcile the rule of a lord proprietor with the true principles of republicanism. Even when Charles Calvert went to England after the death of his father, signs of political discontent were conspicuous in Maryland. In 1678, the general assembly, influenced by the popular feeling, established the right of suffrage--"casting of a vote for rulers"--on a broad basis. On the return of Charles, in 1681, he annulled this act and, by an arbitrary ordinance, resisted the right of freemen owning fifty acres of land, or personal property of the value of forty pounds sterling. This produced great disquietude, and Ex-Governor Fendall planned an insurrection for the purpose of abolishing the proprietorship and establishing an independent republican government. The king was induced to issue orders that all the offices of the government in Maryland should be filled by Protestants alone; and so, again, the Roman Catholics were deprived of their political rights.
Lord Baltimore went to England again, in 1684, leaving the government of his province in charge of several deputies under the nominal governorship of his infant son. There he found his rights in great peril; but before the matter could be brought to a direct issue by the operation of a writ of quo warranto, King James was driven from the throne, and Protestant William and Mary ascended it. Lord Baltimore immediately acquiesced in the political change. On account of his instructions to his deputies to proclaim the new monarchs being delayed in their transmission, he was charged with hesitancy; and a restless spirit named Coode, an associate of Fendall in his insurrectionary movements--"a man of loose morals and blasphemous speech"--excited the people by the cry of "a popish plot!" He was the author of a false story put in circulation, that the local magistrates in Maryland and the Roman Catholics there had engaged with the Indians in a plot for the destruction of the Protestants in the province. An actual league at that time between the French and the Jesuit missionaries with the savages on the New England frontiers for the destruction of the English colonies in the east seemed to give color to the story, which created great excitement. The old feud burned intensely. The Protestants formed an armed association led by Coode. They marched to the Maryland capital, took possession of the records and assumed the functions of a provisional government, in May, 1689. In the following August they met in convention, when they prepared and sent to the new sovereigns a report of their proceedings, and a series of absurd and false accusations against Lord Baltimore. In conclusion, they requested the monarchs to depose Lord Baltimore by making Maryland a royal province and taking it under the protection of the crown.
William and Mary listened favorably to the request and, moved by the false representations, complied with it. Coode was ordered to administer the government in the name of the king. He ruled with the spirit of a petty tyrant, until the people of every religious and political creed were heartily disgusted with him, and, in 1692, he was supplanted by Sir Lionel Copley, whom the king sent to be governor of Maryland. On the arrival of the new governor, in the spring of 1692, he summoned a general assembly, to meet at St. Mary's in May. New laws abolishing religious toleration were instituted. The church of England was made the state church for Maryland, to be supported by a tax on the whole people.
"Thus," says McMahan, "was introduced, for the first time in Maryland, a church establishment, sustained by law and fed by general taxation." Other laws oppressive in their bearings upon those opposed in religious views to the dominant party were enacted, some of which remained in force until the glorious emancipation day, in the summer of 1776, gave freedom to our nation.
Partly in order to better accommodate the people of Maryland, but more for the purpose of punishing the adherents of Lord Baltimore, who constituted a greater proportion of the population of St. Mary's, the seat of government was moved from there to Anne Arundel, a town on the shore of the Chesapeake, early in 1694, and there a general assembly was convened in February. The following year, the name of the place was changed by authority to Annapolis, and the naval station of the province was established there. Annapolis has, ever since, continued to be the capital of Maryland, while St. Mary's, dependent for its existence upon its being the capital of the province, speedily sunk into ruins.
Lord Baltimore never recovered his proprietary rights. Neither did he return to America, but died in England in the year 1714, at the age of eighty-five years. He was succeeded by his son Benedict Leonard Calvert. That son had abandoned the faith of his father and, in the spring of 1715, died, when his title to the province devolved upon his infant son Charles, who, with his brothers and sisters, had been educated as Protestants. Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore and William Penn were contemporaries, and were equally conspicuous for their beneficent disposition. They are regarded as the best of all the proprietors, who owned charted domains in America.
Rufus Stevens, an uncle of Charles Stevens, the youth of Salem, was living in New Jersey, when Lord Berkeley, disgusted by the losses and annoyances which the ownership of the colony brought upon him, sold his interests in the province to John Fenwick and Edward Byllinge, English Friends, or Quakers, for the sum of five thousand dollars. The tract thus disposed of was in the western part of the province. With some emigrants, mostly of the society of Friends, Fenwick sailed for his new possessions. They entered at a spot not far from the Delaware River, which they named Salem, on account of the peaceful aspect of the country and the surrounding Indians. There, with the peculiar gravity of the sect, Fenwick and his two daughters, thirteen men (most of them heads of families) and one woman, the wife of one of the emigrants, sat in silent worship, according to their custom, under the shadow of a great tree, with covered heads and quiet bodies, on the ensuing "First Day" after their arrival. Then they built log cabins for shelter, and so began a new life in the wilds of New Jersey.
The principal proprietor was Byllinge; but soon after the departure of Fenwick, heavy losses in trade made him a bankrupt, and his interest in New Jersey was first assigned to William Penn and others for the benefit of his creditors, and was afterward sold to them. These purchasers and others who became associated with them, unwilling to maintain a political union with other parties, bargained with Carteret for a division of the province. This was done in July, 1676, Carteret retaining the eastern part of the province, and the new purchasers holding the western part. From that time, until they were united and became a royal province in 1702, these divisions were known as East and West Jersey. Even to this day, we frequently hear the expression, "The Jerseys," used.
Most of the settlers of West Jersey were Friends, and the proprietors gave them a remarkably liberal constitution of government, entitled: "The concessions and agreements of the proprietors, freeholders and inhabitants of the province of West Jersey in America." The following year (1677), more than four hundred Friends came from England and settled below the Raritan. Andros required them to acknowledge his authority as the representative of the Duke of York. This they refused to do, and the matter was referred to the eminent crown-lawyer and oriental scholar, Sir William Jones, for adjudication. Sir William decided against the claims of the duke, who submitted to the decision, released both provinces from allegiance to him, and the Jerseys became independent of foreign control. The first popular assembly in West Jersey met at Salem, in November, 1681, and adopted a code of laws for the government of the people. One of these laws provided that in all criminal cases, excepting treason, murder and theft, the aggrieved party should have power to pardon the offender.
In the year 1679, Carteret died, and the trustees of his American estates offered East Jersey for sale. It was bought, in 1682, by William Penn and others, among them the earl of Perth, the friend of Robert Barclay, whom the proprietors appointed governor for life. Barclay was an eminent young Friend, whose writings were held in high estimation by his own sect, especially his "Apology for the true Christian Divinity, as the same is held forth and practised by the people called in scorn Quakers," and his "Treatise on Christian Discipline." The purchase of these lands was not made in the interest of either religion or liberty, but as a speculation. Barclay governed the province by deputies until 1690.
England and Scotland contributed a large number of Friends to East Jersey, and other immigrants flocked from Long Island, to find repose and peace; but repose is not to be found by lovers of freedom, under royal rule, and they were forcibly impressed with the significance of the injunction, "Put not your trust in princes," for James the king failed to keep the rosy promises of James the duke, and they were forced to submit to the tyranny of Andros. When that detested viceroy was expelled from the country, in 1689, the Jerseys were left without a regular civil government, and so they remained for several years. Wearied with contentions, with the people of the provinces and with the government at home, and annoyed by losses in unprofitable speculations, the proprietors of the Jerseys surrendered them to the crown, in 1702, when Queen Anne was the reigning British monarch. The government of that domain was then confided to Sir Edward Hyde (Lord Cornbury), whose instructions constituted the supreme law of the land. He was then governor of New York and possessed almost absolute legislative and executive control within the jurisdiction of his authority. In New Jersey the people had no voice in the judiciary or the making and executing of laws other than recommendatory. All but Roman Catholics were granted liberty of conscience; but the bigoted governor always showed conspicuous favors to the members of the Church of England. The governor was dishonest and a libertine, and under his rule the people of New Jersey were little better than slaves. Printing, except by royal permission, was prohibited in the province, and the traffic in negro slaves was especially encouraged.
New Jersey remained a dependency of New York, yet with a distinct legislative assembly of its own, until the year 1738, when it was made an independent colony, and it so remained until the Revolutionary War, when it became a separate State. After the province gained its freedom from New York, Mr. Morris was commissioned its governor. He was the son of an officer in Cromwell's army, who, about the year 1672, settled on a farm of three thousand acres on the Harlem River, New York, which was named Morrisania.
Last of the royal governors of New Jersey was William Franklin, son of Dr. Benjamin Franklin, who was appointed in 1763, and closed his official career in the summer of 1776, when he was deposed by the continental congress and sent under guard to Connecticut. There he was released on parole and went to England, where he died in 1813.
One of the Stevens family having served as governor of North Carolinia, it was only natural that other members of the southern branch of that rapidly increasing family in the south should push out into the Carolinias and take part in the early settlement of these colonies.
After the failure of the schemes of Loche and Cooper to form "Fundamental Constitutions," a splendid government, in 1669, was completed. The "constitutions" were signed in March, 1670, and were highly lauded in England, as forming the wisest scheme for human government ever devised. Monk, Duke of Albemarle, was created palatine or viceroy for the new empire, who was to display the state parade of his office, with landgraves, barons, lords of manor and heraldry, among the scattered settlers in pine forests, living in log cabins with the Indians. Never was a more ludicrous idea entertained with any degree of seriousness; yet, so far as the proprietors were concerned, this splendid government was established; but the simple settlers had something to say; and when the governor of the Albemarle county colony attempted to introduce the new government, they said, "No." They had a form of government of their own, far better adapted to their social circumstances than the one sent from England, and they resolved to adhere to it.
All attempts to enforce obedience to the new form of government, all oppressive taxation imposed upon the people, and especially the commercial restrictions authorized by the English navigation laws, produced wide-spread discontent. Most particularly was this fostered by refugees from Virginia, who had been engaged in Bacon's rebellion, and who sought personal safety among the people below the Roanoke. These refugees, smarting under the lash of tyranny, scattered broadcast over the generous soil the germinal ideas of popular freedom, and successful oppression was made difficult, if not impossible.
At this period, North Carolinia did not contain four thousand inhabitants. They carried on a small trade in tobacco, maize and fat cattle with the merchants of New England. This sort of smuggling was perhaps excusable, when we consider the grinding navigation laws of the monopolists. The little vessels, trading between North Carolinia and New England, brought many articles to the southern colonies, which they were incapable of producing. English cupidity envied them their small prosperity, and the navigation laws of 1672 were put in force. An agent of the government appeared, who demanded a penny for every pound of tobacco sent to New England. The colonists resisted the levy and the tax-gatherer became rude and had frequent collisions with the people. On one occasion, he went to the home of Francisco Stevens, a planter, who had shipped some tobacco to a relative in Boston, and demanded a steer in payment for the shipment. The tax-gatherer attempted to drive away the ox, when the sturdy wife assailed him with her mop-stick and drove him from the premises.
The exasperated people finally, in December, 1677, seized the public funds and imprisoned the governor and six of his councillors, called a new representative assembly and appointed a chief magistrate and judge. Then, for two years, the colonists were permitted to conduct the affairs of their government without any foreign control. Meanwhile, John Culpepper, their leader, whom the royalists denounced as an "ill man, who merited hanging for endeavoring to set the people to plunder the rich," conscious of his integrity, went boldly to England to plead the cause of the colony. While in the act of re-embarking for America, he was arrested, tried for treason and honorably acquitted. Returning to North Carolinia, he was appointed surveyor-general of the province, and, in 1680, laid out the city of Charleston in South Carolinia.
Until the arrival of Seth Sothel as governor, North Carolinia enjoyed a period of repose. He had purchased a share in the provinces of Clarendon, and was sent to administer the government. On his voyage, he was captured by Algerine pirates, but, escaping them, reached North Carolinia, in 1683.
It has been said of this avaricious, extortionate and cruel statesman, that "the dark shades of his character were not relieved by a single virtue." His advent disturbed the public tranquillity. He plundered the people, cheated the proprietors, and on all occasions seems to have prostituted his delegated power to purposes of private gain. About six weeks of his misrule were all the independent colonists could stand. Then the people rose in rebellion, seized the governor, and were about to send him to England to answer their accusations before the proprietors, when he asked to be tried by the colonial assembly. It is asserted by historians of note, that that body was more merciful than his associates in England would have been, for they found him guilty and sentenced him to only one year's punishment and perpetual disqualification for the office of governor.
Sothel withdrew to the southern colony, and was succeeded by Philip Ludwell, an energetic, honest man, whose wisdom and sense of justice soon restored order and good feeling in the colony. He was succeeded by John Archdale, a Quaker, who, in 1695, came as governor of the two colonies. His administration was a blessing. The people over whom he ruled were as free in their opinions and actions as the air they breathed. Legal or moral restraints were few; yet the gentle-minded people were enemies to violence or crime. They were widely scattered, with not a city or town and scarce a hamlet within their sylvan domain. The only roads were bridle paths from house to house, and these were indicated by notches cut in trees--"blazed roads." There was not a settled minister in the colony until 1703.
The southern, or Carteret County Colony was, meanwhile, steadily moving along in population and wealth. The settlers, perceiving the fatal objections to the "Fundamental Constitutions" as a plan of government for their colony, did not attempt conforming thereto, but established a more simple government adapted to their conditions. Under it, the first legislative assembly of South Carolinia convened, in the spring of 1672, at the place on the Ashley River where the colony was first seated. In that body, jarring political, social and theological interests and opinions produced passionate debates and violent discord. South Carolinia has ever been a seething political caldron, and, even in that early date, there was a proprietary party and a people's party, a high church party and a dissenters' party, each bigoted and resolute. At times, the debates were so heated and earnest, that they seemed on the eve of plunging the colony into civil war.
The savages had commenced plundering the frontier, and all factions of the whites were forced to unite against this common enemy. The bold frontiersman, with his trusty rifle, was often unable to defend his home. His cattle were run away or slaughtered before his very eyes. Old Town was the first point selected for the capital; but Charleston was finally laid out on Oyster Point, and the seat of government was removed to this city, where the second assembly met, in 1682. Immigrants flowed in with a full and continuous stream. Families came from Ireland, Scotland and Holland, and when the edict at Nantes, which secured toleration to Protestants in France, was revoked, a large number of Huguenots fled from their country, and many sought an asylum in the Carolinias. The traditionary hatred of the English for the French was shown at this time. For fully ten years these French refugees were deprived the privilege of citizenship in the land of their adoption.
A colony of Scotch Presbyterians, numbering ten families, was located at Port Royal, South Carolinia, in 1682, and four years later was attacked and dispersed by the Spaniards, who claimed Port Royal as a dependency of St. Augustine.
The persecution of the Huguenots in France drove many to seek homes in the colonies, despite English hatred to them.
The struggles of South Carolinia with the Indians, and the attempted oppression of the home government is but a repetition of the experience of the other colonies, until the good John Archdale came as governor of the Carolinias. His administration was short, but highly beneficial. He healed dissensions, established equitable laws, in the spirit of a true Christian example of toleration and humanity. He cultivated friendly intercourse with the Indians and the Spaniards at St. Augustine, so that his administration was marked as a season of peace, prosperity and happiness.
