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 States under the benign administration of one of their brethren, Thomas Jefferson. North Carolina offered farm produce and some tobacco in the market, but paid its London bills mainly in tar, pitch, and turpentine. South Carolina and Georgia furnished rice, shingles, bacon, and salt beef to the Atlantic and Mediterranean trade, and about the middle of the eighteenth century, after persistent experiments led by Eliza Pinckney, added indigo to their profitable staples.

On the ocean as on the land, American colonists drove their enterprise until they became no mean competitors of those hardy mariners who bore the British flag around the world and into the markets of every known port. The inhospitable soil of New England early directed the industry of the Puritans to the sea, to fishing, shipping, trading, and all the varied interests connected with such undertakings. Local forests furnished oak for timbers and boards, fir for masts, pitch for turpentine and tar; fields yielded hemp for rope; and mines iron for anchors and chains. Why should man be a serf of the soil when he could ride the bounding main? All along the northern coast, especially the New England line, were busy shipyards where, to the music of hammer and saw, rose splendid sloops and schooners—swift and beautiful—big enough to sail any sea and sturdy enough to weather any gale. By the middle of the eighteenth century, New England was launching seventy new ships every year, New York and Pennsylvania forty-five, and the states to the south forty. Already London shipbuilders beside the Thames had begun to complain that their trade was declining, their workmen migrating, their profits disappearing as a result of American competition.

It was the sea that offered the highest adventure to the youth of the colonial period. New England boys in their early years fled from the stony fields, picked up the art of navigation, saved a little money, and at the age of nineteen