Page:The Rise of American Civilization (Volume 1).djvu/94

 the state—military force. Colonial privateers, preying on French and Spanish commerce, were learning how to trim their sails and use their guns preparatory to the contest with English seamen. In short, America was acquiring during those colonial years the economic resources, political experience, intellectual acumen, and military arts that were to sweep half a continent into independence and summon into being a governing class capable of sustaining it.

In the early stages of colonial development, the stream of migration to America was almost purely English—merchants, yeomen, laborers, artisans, scholars from Oxford and Cambridge, and a few, a very few, scions of noble families usually in quest of materials with which to repair damaged fortunes. This movement was strongest in the century that saw the foundation of the colonies. The Puritan exodus that carried about twenty thousand adventurers to New England was especially large during the years between 1629 and 1640 while Charles I was endeavoring to establish a personal despotism in London; then it dwindled to a thin stream.

Thus it happened that, on the eve of the Revolution, the major portion of the inhabitants in that region were the descendants of original pioneer stock. For different reasons, perhaps, but with similar results the English migration into the Southern colonies also slowed down, after the first spurt of enthusiasm, leaving the older houses in possession of the ancestral heritage.

During the eighteenth century the growth of the English population in America was due to big families among the settlers rather than to increments from the mother country. An abundance of cheap land encouraged early marriages, making a wife and children economic assets, not a drain upon the husbandman's purse. As the records of family Bibles bore witness, the ancient injunction to replenish the