Conceived in Liberty (143 page)

The most recent survey of the history of American immigration is Maldwyn Jones,
American Immigration
(1960), but it is too scanty to be useful. More serviceable is Marcus Lee Hansen,
The Atlantic Migration, 1607–1860
(1940). The best work on the Ulster Scots is James G. Leyburn,
The Scotch-Irish: A Social History
(1962). Also useful is Wayland F. Dunaway,
The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania
(1944), for the colony where the Ulster Scots made the greatest impact. The saga of the Palatine Germans may be found in Walter A. Knittle,
Early Eighteenth-Century Palatine Emigration
(1937). The even more heartrending saga of the Acadians is treated in Arthur G. Doughty,
The Acadian Exiles
(1916), and in Oscar W. Winzerling,
Acadian Odyssey
(1955).

On labor and government in the colonies, Richard B. Morris,
Government and Labor in Early America
(1946), is thorough and virtually alone. Still useful, however, is Marcus W. Jernegan,
The Laboring and Dependent Classes in Colonial America
(1931). Abbot Emerson Smith,
Colonists in Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607–1776
(1947), is excellent and still the only major work on the subject. There are now two vitally important overall works on slavery and the Negro, David Brion Davis,
The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture
(1964); and Winthrop D. Jordan,
White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812
(1968), though both are marred by errors in interpretation. Almon W. Lauber,
Indian Slavery in Colonial Times Within the Present Limits of the United States
(1913), is the classic work on the subject. Herbert Aptheker,
American Negro Slave Revolts
(1943), is the only work on a neglected and important topic. There are also several useful articles on slave rebellions in New York: Kenneth Scott, “The Slave Insurrection in New York in 1712,”
New York Historical Society Quarterly
(1961); T. Wood Clarke, “The Negro Plot of 1741,”
New York History
(1944); and Ferenc M. Szasz, “The New York Slave Revolt of 1741: A Reexamination,”
New York History
(1967). See also Edgar J. McManus,
A History of Negro Slavery in New York
(1966), and the substantial work of Lorenzo J. Greene,
The Negro in Colonial New England
(1942).

Land-grabbing and Indian conflicts were vital and intermingled aspects of the Western frontier in the eighteenth century. Two indispensable works on the Western land-grabs are Clarence W. Alvord,
The Mississippi Valley in British Politics
(2 vols., 1917), and Thomas Perkins Abernathy,
The Western Lands and the American Revolution
(1937), the early chapters of which are relevant to this volume. Nicholas B. Wainright’s masterful biography of
George Croghan: Wilderness Diplomat
(1959) is a vivid study of this adventurer and swindler so vital to frontier and Indian relations during midcentury. Bernhard Knollenberg’s
George Washington: The Virginia Period, 1732–1755
(1964) is a much needed revisionist essay by a superb historian. Verner W. Crane,
The Southern Frontier, 1670–1732
(1928), is excellent and indispensable on Indian fighting and other events on the Southern frontier during this period. See also John R. Alden,
John Stuart and the Southern Colonial Frontier, 1754–75
(1944), and John A. Caruso,
The Appalachian Frontier: America’s First Surge Westward
(1959). Caruso’s
The Southern Frontier
(1963) is particularly good on Florida and Louisiana. Dale Van Every,
Forth to the Wilderness: The First American Frontier, 1754–1774
(1961), is vivid and valuable.

Marshall Harris’s
Origin of the Land Tenure System in the United States
(1953) is definitive, as is Beverly W. Bond,
The Quitrent System in the American Colonies
(1919), on the unsuccessful attempts to collect quitrent from the recalcitrant American colonists. The best overall economic history of the colonial period is Edward C. Kirkland,
A History of American Economic Life
(4th ed., 1969).

The classic work on colonial agriculture has not been superseded: Percy W. Bidwell and John I. Falconer,
History of Agriculture in the Northern United States,
vol. 1 (1933). The same is true of the works on colonial industry by Victor S. Clark,
History of Manufactures in the United States,
vol. 1 (1929); and Rolla M. Tryon,
Household Manufactures in the United States, 1640–1860
(1917). Valuable on colonial manufacturing as a threat to British industry is Curtis P. Nettels, “Menace of Colonial Manufacturing, 1690–1720,”
New England Quarterly
(1931). Specific industries are treated in Arthur Cecil Bining,
British Regulation of the Colonial Iron Industry
(1938); Bining,
Pennsylvania Iron Manufacture in the Eighteenth Century
(1938); and Arthur Harrison Cole,
The American Wool Manufacture,
vol. 1 (1926”). Also valuable is Carl Bridenbaugh,
The Colonial Craftsman
(1950). On various aspects of colonial commerce, see the useful works of Harold A. Innis,
Fur Trade in Canada
(rev. ed., 1956); and Richard Pares,
Yankees and Creoles: Trade Between North America and the West Indies Before the American Revolution
(1956). Arthur Pierce Middleton,
Tobacco Coast: Maritime History of the Chesapeake Bay in the Colonial Era
(1953), is an invaluable history. Howard M. Chapin,
Privateering in King George’s War, 1739–1748
(1928), concentrates on an important topic, concerning which see also, in particular, Carl Bridenbaugh,
Cities in Revolt: Urban Life in America, 1743–1776
(1955).

Indispensable—and virtually alone—on the history of the post office is Wesley Everett Rich,
The History of the United States Post Office to the Year 1829
(1924), which needs to be supplemented by the excellent study of the history of the British postal service by Ronald H. Coase, “The Postal Monopoly in Great
Britain: An Historical Survey,” in J. K. Eastham, ed.,
Economic Essays in Commemoration of the Dundee School of Economics, 1931–1955
(1955).

Price statistics are scanty for this period, but excellent are Anne Bezanson et al.,
Prices in Colonial Pennsylvania
(1935), and Arthur Harrison Cole,
Wholesale Commodity Prices in the United States, 1700–1861, with Statistical Supplement
(1938); see also George R. Taylor, “Wholesale Commodity Prices at Charleston, 1732–1791,”
Journal of Economic and Business History
(1932).

The history of money and banking in colonial America is in an unsatisfactory state. The problem, in general, is that the earlier works are economically sound but historically out of date, whereas the newer and historically superior writings are fatally marred by an acceptance of modern inflationist dogma. The only overall studies, flawed though they are by inflationary bias, are Richard A. Lester,
Monetary Experiments: Early American and Recent Scandinavian
(1939), and Curtis P. Nettels,
Money Supply of the American Colonies Before 1720
(1934). Older but far sounder accounts, from the economic point of view, are Horace White,
Money and Banking Illustrated by American History
(1902), and Davis R. Dewey,
Financial History of the United States
(1936). A particularly hard-hitting critique of colonial inflationism is in Charles Jesse Bullock,
Essays on the Monetary History of the United States
(1900). Very old but magnificently sound on monetary economics is William M. Gouge,
Short History of Paper Money and Banking in the United States, Including an Account of Provincial Continental Paper Money
(1833). Specific colonies are treated in Kathryn L. Behrens,
Paper Money in Maryland, 1727–1789
(1923); Clarence P. Gould,
Money and Transportation in Maryland
(1915); and, from a sound-money point of view, Donald L. Kemmerer, “Paper Money in New Jersey, 1668–1775,” New Jersey Historical Society,
Proceedings
(1956). E. James Ferguson, “Currency Finance: Colonial Monetary Practices,”
William and Mary Quarterly
(1953), is an inflationist survey. Particularly valuable is the notable revisionist work by George A. Billias,
The Massachusetts Land Bankers of 1740
(1959), which demonstrates that the inflationary land-bank scheme was put forth and promoted by large merchants and landowners, and not, as older historians would have it, by a mass of impoverished debtors.

Andrew M. Davis, ed.,
Colonial Currency Reprints, 1682–1751
(4 vols., 1910–11), is a superb source collection of monetary thought and opinion in the colonies in the first half of the eighteenth century. Harry E. Miller,
Banking Theories in the United States Before 1860
(1927), is excellent if sketchy. Joseph Dorfman’s monumental
Economic Mind in American Civilization, 1606—1865,
vol. 1 (1946), is indispensable for economic opinion in the colonies, but it does not do justice to the great hard-money theorist of the colonies, Dr. William Douglass, who, unfortunately, still lacks a biographer or a systematic study.

On British mercantilism and the American colonies, a good account is provided in the fourth volume of Charles M. Andrews,
The Colonial Period of American History
(1938). The Board of Trade is examined in Oliver M. Dickerson,
American Colonial Government, 1696–1765: A Study of the British Board of Trade
(1912), and the influence of the British Treasury in Dora Mae Clark,
The Rise of the British Treasury: Colonial Administration in the Eighteenth Century
(1960). The effects of the Navigation Acts on the American colonies have given rise to
considerable historical controversy. Lawrence A. Harper,
The English Navigation Laws: A Seventeenth Century Experiment in Social Engineering
(1939), is an apologia for the Navigation Acts; far sounder is Oliver M. Dickerson,
The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution
(1951). Particularly good on the issue is Curtis P. Nettels, “British Mercantilism and the Economic Development of the Thirteen Colonies,”
Journal of Economic History
(1952). On British naval-stores policy, see Joseph J. Malone,
Pine Trees and Politics: Naval Stores and Forest Policy in Colonial New England, 1691–1775
(1964).

The classic work on British government in America is Leonard W. Labaree,
Royal Government in America
(1930). Bernard Bailyn,
The Origins of American Politics
(1968), is a brilliant explanation of the underlying reasons for the rise of the colonial Assemblies to power over the royal governors, despite the
de jure
powers of the latter, increasingly by midcentury. Bailyn also provides an illuminating contrast, in the course of this explanation, to Great Britain itself, where the king’s ministers managed to acquire working control over Parliament during this period, despite the letter’s
de jure
power. Jack P. Greene’s
The Quest for Power: The Lower Houses of Assembly in the Southern Royal Colonies, 1689–1776
(1963) is a detailed institutional account of the rise of Assembly power in the Southern colonies.

Jack P. Greene, “An Uneasy Connection: An Analysis of the Pre-conditions of the American Revolution,” in S. Kurtz and J. Hutson, eds.,
Essays on the American Revolution
(1973), provides new information on the abortive attempt of Halifax, at the Board of Trade in the early 1750s, to enforce on the colonies the network of mercantilist restrictions that had become a dead letter. Lawrence H. Gipson’s massive
The British Empire Before the American Revolution
(15 vols., 1936–70) provides many useful facts on the British Empire and British-American relations, but its interpretation is deeply flawed throughout by furnishing an elaborate apologia for the empire.

A classic treatment of New England town government is Roy H. Akagi,
The Town Proprietors of the New England Colonies: A Study of Their Development, Organization, Activities, and Controversies, 1620–1770
(1924). Its class-struggle emphasis, however, particularly on land speculation, needs to be corrected by the brilliant revisionist work of Charles S. Grant,
Democracy in the Connecticut Frontier Town of Kent
(1961).

The decline of Puritan theocracy in Massachusetts is set forth in the brilliantly critical and uncompromising work of Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker,
The Puritan Oligarchy
(1947). John A. Schutz,
William Shirley: King’s Governor of Massachusetts
(1961), is more than simply an indispensable, if overly sympathetic, biography of the most important royal governor in that colony (in the 1740s and early 1750s); he is also highly valuable on the frontier expansion and Indian and French relations of the period. The most important work on Massachusetts government in this period is Robert E. Brown,
Middle-Class Democracy and Revolution in Massachusetts, 1691–1780
(1955), which demonstrates the democratic nature of representation in the Assembly. Brown’s celebration of an overall “democracy,” however, is crude and simplistic. A valuable discussion on problems with indentured servants in Massachusetts is Lawrence W. Towner, “A Fondness for Freedom: Servant Protest in Puritan Society,”
William and Mary Quarterly
(April 1962). A leading merchant family in Boston is discussed in W. T. Baxter,
The House of Hancock: Business in Boston, 1724–75
(1945).

New Hampshire and Maine have at last found a modern historian in Charles E. Clark,
Eastern Frontier: Settlement of Northern New England, 1610–1763
(1970); and Byron Fairchild,
Messrs. William Pepperrell: Merchants at Piscataqua
(1954), deals with one of the leading merchant families of the area.

Apart from the Great Awakening and the Grant study on
Democracy in the Connecticut Frontier Town of Kent
(1961), Connecticut remains without a satisfactory history. Oscar Zeichner’s
Connecticut’s Years of Controversy, 1750–1776
(1949) deals briefly with the years just after 1750. The best work on the history of colonial Rhode Island is still Irving B. Richman,
Rhode Island: Its Making and Its Meaning,
vol. 2 (1902), which can be supplemented by Edward Field, ed.,
The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
(3 vols., 1902). The only book on the Narragansett Country is Edward Channing,
The Narragansett Planters
(1886), which needs to be supplemented by the only modern account, William D. Miller, “The Narragansett Planters,” American Antiquarian Society,
Proceedings
(1933).