A History of the American People

Barbadian slave-owning colony transported to the American mainland. This gave the place a
distinctive social, political, and cultural character quite unlike the rest of the emerging colonies,
even Virginia. Indeed, as we shall see, without this Barbadian implant, which became in due
course the aggressively slave-owning state of South Carolina, the emotional leader of the South,
it is quite possible that the American Civil War would not have taken place.
Indeed, it is fascinating for the historian to observe how quickly different regions of the North
American coast developed distinctive and deep-rooted characteristics. In Europe, where national
forms go back to the pre-scriptive Dark Ages and beyond, these differences remain mysterious.
In America there is no real mystery. The books are open from the start. The earliest origins of
each colony are well documented. We know who, and why, and when, and how many. We can
see foreshadowed the historical shape of things to come. With remarkable speed, in the first few
decades, the fundamental dichotomy of America began to take shape, epitomized in these two
key colonies-Massachusetts and Carolina. Here, already, is a North-South divide. The New
England North has an all-class, mobile, and fluctuating society, with an irresistible upward
movement pushed by an ethic of hard work. It is religious, idealistic, and frugal to the core. In
the South there is, by contrast, a gentry-leisure class, with hereditary longings, sitting on the
backs of indentured white laborers and a multitude of black slaves, with religion as a function of
gentility and class, rather than an overpowering inward compulsion to live the godly life.
Not that the emerging America of colonial times should be seen as a simple structure of two
parts. It was, on the contrary, a complex structure of many parts, changing and growing more
complex all the time. It was overwhelmingly English, as yet. But it was also already
indestructibly multiethnic, preparing the melting-pot to come. It was also, compared with limited
England, which was obliged to think small in many ways, already a place which saw huge
visions and thought in big numbers. Bigness was the characteristic of Pennsylvania from the
start. In 1682 William Penn (1644-1718) arrived at New Castle, Delaware bearing a massive
proprietary grant from Charles II. He was the son of a rich and politically influential admiral, to
whom Charles II was much indebted, both financially and otherwise. Penn had already dabbled
in colonizing in the Jersey region, but his new charter, in full and final settlement of a £16,000
debt to his father, was on a princely scale and actually termed Pennsylvania' as a proprietary colony. Penn had become a Quaker in 1666, and suffered imprisonment for his beliefs, and he was determined to create atolerance settlement' for Quakers and other persecuted sects from all
over Europe. He called it his Holy Experiment.' There were Europeans in the area already- Swedes from 1643 at Tinicum Island, 9 miles south of modern Philadelphia, Dutch and English too. But they were few: Penn brought the many. His first fleet was of twenty-three ships, many of them large ones; and plenty more soon followed. Everything in Pennsylvania was big from the start. In Philadelphia, his city of brotherly love and capital, he had plans for what was later called aGarden City,' which he termed a 'Greene
Country Town,' spread out on an enormous scale so that every houseowner would have `room
enough for House, Garden and small Orchard.' In fact this did not happen: Philadelphia grew up
tightly on the Delaware waterfront, and was manifestly from the start a city built for high-class
commerce. But it was quite unlike Boston, whose narrow, winding streets recalled medieval
London. Philadelphia was a proud and self-conscious example of contemporary town-planning,
made of brick and stone from the start, and much influenced by the new baroque London of
squares and straight streets. It was laid out on a large scale to fill, eventually, its entire neck of
the river, with twenty-five straight streets bisected by eight. All these streets had proper paving
and curbing, sidewalks and spaced-out trees.