History of the United StatesBeard, Charles A. (Charles Austin)
History
History of the United States
Beard, Charles A. (Charles Austin)
United States -- History
The populations of later English colonies--the Carolinas, New York,
Pennsylvania, and Georgia--while receiving a steady stream of
immigration from England, were constantly augmented by wanderers from
the older settlements. New York was invaded by Puritans from New England
in such numbers as to cause the Anglican clergymen there to lament that
"free thinking spreads almost as fast as the Church." North Carolina was
first settled toward the northern border by immigrants from Virginia.
Some of the North Carolinians, particularly the Quakers, came all the
way from New England, tarrying in Virginia only long enough to learn how
little they were wanted in that Anglican colony.
=The Scotch-Irish.=--Next to the English in numbers and influence were
the Scotch-Irish, Presbyterians in belief, English in tongue. Both
religious and economic reasons sent them across the sea. Their Scotch
ancestors, in the days of Cromwell, had settled in the north of Ireland
whence the native Irish had been driven by the conqueror's sword. There
the Scotch nourished for many years enjoying in peace their own form of
religion and growing prosperous in the manufacture of fine linen and
woolen cloth. Then the blow fell. Toward the end of the seventeenth
century their religious worship was put under the ban and the export of
their cloth was forbidden by the English Parliament. Within two decades
twenty thousand Scotch-Irish left Ulster alone, for America; and all
during the eighteenth century the migration continued to be heavy.
Although no exact record was kept, it is reckoned that the Scotch-Irish
and the Scotch who came directly from Scotland, composed one-sixth of
the entire American population on the eve of the Revolution.
[Illustration: SETTLEMENTS OF GERMAN AND SCOTCH-IRISH
IMMIGRANTS]
These newcomers in America made their homes chiefly in New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. Coming late upon
the scene, they found much of the land immediately upon the seaboard
already taken up. For this reason most of them became frontier people
settling the interior and upland regions. There they cleared the land,
laid out their small farms, and worked as "sturdy yeomen on the soil,"
hardy, industrious, and independent in spirit, sharing neither the
luxuries of the rich planters nor the easy life of the leisurely
merchants. To their agriculture they added woolen and linen
manufactures, which, flourishing in the supple fingers of their tireless
women, made heavy inroads upon the trade of the English merchants in
the colonies. Of their labors a poet has sung:
"O, willing hands to toil;
Strong natures tuned to the harvest-song and bound to the kindly soil;
Bold pioneers for the wilderness, defenders in the field."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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