Page:The Rise of American Civilization (Volume 1).djvu/92



NE hundred and seventy years lay between the founding of Jamestown and the Declaration of Independence—a longer period, it is instructive to remember, than the lapse of time since America took her place among the sovereign nations of the earth. To the casual reader of letters, diaries, journals, and other records of the age, those colonial years seem mainly filled with the swirling eddies of purposeless war and politics. There were countless clashes with the Indians, always brutal, often futile. There were wars with the French and Spanish, agonizing phases of the English struggle for the encirclement of the globe that incarnadined the waters of seven seas and the soil of five continents.

There were domestic events that crowded the pages of those who chronicled the passing days: exciting contests in America as the fortunes of contending parties in England flowed and ebbed through revolution, restoration, and revolution; quarrels among the colonies and proprietors over boundaries and commercial regulations; theological dis-