Page:The Rise of American Civilization (Volume 1).djvu/97

 Irish, Celtic in race and Catholic in religion, who seem to have come by the hundreds, if not by the thousands, bearing the scars of an age-long conflict with the Anglo-Saxon. Though they met no very cordial reception in the land of their adoption, they flocked to the American army when its standard of revolt was raised. From many lands came the Jews fleeing as of old from economic and religious persecution; like the Huguenots, they turned to merchandising and in a similar fashion were subjected to the pressure of English competition. Thus it happened that, in the peopling of the colonies, the stream of tendency ran against the continuance of political allegiance to the Old World, its powers, governors, and potentates.

Meanwhile intercolonial migrations were breaking down the barriers of purely local circumstance. Puritans, scarcely established in Connecticut, pulled up their roots, moved into Long Island, and then made their way into New Jersey. Quakers from Plymouth, pained by conflicts with their neighbors, passed into Virginia and, meeting little friendliness there, eventually found a home in the western wilderness of North Carolina. A French Huguenot, Faneuil, tried his fortune in New York, transferred his business to Rhode Island, sent his son, Peter, to Boston. In the veins of many colonists of the second generation ran the blood of two or three nations and an English name might well cover a Dutchman, a Swede, or a Scotch covenanter. For instance, Dirck Stoffels Langesstraet sailed from the Netherlands to the New World in 1657; a descendant married a Quakeress in New Jersey; the good old Dutch name became Longstreet; restless offspring took ship for Georgia; finally James Longstreet, trained at West Point, on the river once claimed by Holland, served the Southern Confederacy from Manassas to Appomattox. Benjamin Franklin, nourished in Boston, ripened his talents in the milder atmosphere of Philadelphia, and gave his last years to the service of a continent. It is true that the cross-currents of the population movement were not