Our first century . tion of the little colony onAlbemarle Sound and of another which was presentlyplanted (1663) on Cape Fear River, near the spot whereWilmington now stands, and which was soon broken upand scattered, the whole region was a wilderness of forest 118 OUR FIRST CENTURY and swamp, infested by Indians more or less disposed tobe hostile. The problem of the Lords Proprietors wasto get industrious men to settle there, cut down the for-ests, open fields, make homes, defend themselves againstthe Indians and the Spanish and find out how to turn theproductiveness of that favorable s
Our first century . tion of the little colony onAlbemarle Sound and of another which was presentlyplanted (1663) on Cape Fear River, near the spot whereWilmington now stands, and which was soon broken upand scattered, the whole region was a wilderness of forest 118 OUR FIRST CENTURY and swamp, infested by Indians more or less disposed tobe hostile. The problem of the Lords Proprietors wasto get industrious men to settle there, cut down the for-ests, open fields, make homes, defend themselves againstthe Indians and the Spanish and find out how to turn theproductiveness of that favorable soil and climate toprofitable account. But in those days it was the customof men everywhere, as has been pointed out earlier in thisbook, to do their thinking without much reference tofacts or conditions. So the Lords Proprietors in Englandput their heads together, employed the philosopher, JohnLocke, to aid them, and decided to build up in the Caro-linas a great aristocratic government with an arbitraryclass Carolina elephant piece. Under this constitution there were to be landgravesand caciques, and every other sort of big and little nabobsto rule the people and to hold complex tenures of thelands, exploiting them all for the enrichment of the LordsProprietors in England. For in that day whoever inEngland secured a grant of land in America and under- THE PEOPLING OF CAROLINA 119 took to colonize it did so chiefly for his own enrichmentand with little or no concern for the welfare of the peoplewho were to do the colonizing, encounter the risks, bravethe dangers, and endure the hardships of settlement inAmerica. It is possible that such a constitution as that whichJohn Locke and the Lords Proprietors devised andsought to enforce upon the log cabin settlements in theCarolinas, might have worked fairly well in some oldcountry where conditions of society were already settledand where class distinctions were fixed. But in theswamps and forests of the Carolinas, where every
Size: 2326px × 1075px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookauthoregglestongeorgecary18, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900
