A History of the American People

And it was the earliest settlers who counted most. It is almost a law of colonization that the first
group, however small, to set up an effective settlement has more effect on the political and social
character of the colony than later arrivals, however numerous. Until Charles II's reign, indeed
until the 1680s, by which time the English had effectively wrested maritime control of the North
Atlantic from the Dutch, the English crown made little attempt to supervise closely what went on
across the Atlantic. It awarded charters, then let the colonists get on with it. This was an old
tradition in England, applying particularly to local government through justices of the peace
(magistrates), sometimes referred to as Self-government by the King's Command.' So governors, however appointed or elected, operated independently of England. And every colony, almost from its inception, and in most cases within a year of its foundation, had some kind of representative assembly. Electing people was one of the first things a settler in America learned to do. Moreover, many offices in America which, in England, would have been filled by appointment, by lords lieutenant or even by the crown-key offices in the administration and enforcement of the law-became elective from the start. The American tradition of electing large numbers of public officers directly took deep root quickly. Those men so chosen might be very humble people. Forty years after the foundation of Maryland, governors were complaining that many men chosen as justices or sheriffs could not even sign their names. Virtually everyone voted for somebody or other. In orthodox Calvinist New England, voting rights, to begin with at least, were confined to church members. Elsewhere all freemen had them, as a rule. In Maryland, for instance, at least from the 1650s, all freemen voted for four delegates per county to serve in the Lower House. It was linked to service in the militia, compulsory for every male over sixteen: if you fought for the colony, you voted in it. In Carolina, you voted automatically if you took up a 50-acre plot, though to be a delegate you were supposed to have 500 acres. These 50-acre men were lowly folk who would never have been allowed to take part in politics in Europe: Thomas New, who came out in 1682, described them astradesmen, poor and wholly ignorant of husbandry ... their whole business was to clear a little
ground to get bread for their families. But they voted all the same. Some of the Carolina elite,
who originally tried to call themselves 'landgraves' and 'cassiques,' grumbled at this. As one of
them put it, It is as bad as a state of Warre for men who are in want to have the making of Laws over Men that have Estates. But it was a fact of colonial life, even in Carolina, explained partly by the proprietors themselves being mostly absentee landlords. As an independent-minded Caroliner wrote in the 1670s: 'By our frame [of government], noe bodys power, noe not of any of the Proprietors themselves were they there, is soe great as toe be able to hurt the meanest man in the Country.’ You may ask: how did the early settlers reconcile their acceptance that even the meanest had rights-including rights to vote-with the institution of slavery? The point was to be made with great force by Dr Samuel Johnson at the time of the American Revolution, and it echoes through American history:How is it that the loudest YELPS for LIBERTY come from the drivers of
Negroes?' The answer is that America was only gradually corrupted into the acceptance of large-
scale slavery. The corruption entered through Carolina, whence it came from Barbados. In the
West Indian islands, those occupied by the Spanish, Portuguese, and French under Catholic
teaching, slaves were treated as actual or potential Christians, with souls and rights-not just
property. In the islands occupied by the English and Dutch Protestants, who got their doctrine
about slavery from the Old Testament, slaves were seen as legal chattels, with no more rights
than cows or sheep. The Barbadian planters in Carolina, who set the tone, never troubled
themselves to Christianize their slaves and even prevented others from doing so. In any case, it