of
wilderness and mountain range, their sole bond of brotherhood was their
common aspiration for liberty, while in all other respects they were
unlike in aims and purposes. The spirit of political liberty was
strongest in the New England colonies, and these held their own against
every effort to rob them of their rights with an unflinching boldness
which is worthy of the highest praise, and which set a noble example for
the remaining colonists. Next to them in bold opposition to tyranny were
the people of the Carolinas, who sturdily resisted an effort to make
them the enslaved subjects of a land-holding nobility. In Pennsylvania
and Maryland political rights were granted by high-minded proprietors,
and in these colonies no struggle for self-government was necessary.
Only in Virginia and New York was autocratic rule established, and in
both of these it gradually yielded to the steady demand for
self-government.

On the other hand, New England, while politically the freest, was
religiously the most autocratic. The Puritans, who had crossed the ocean
in search of freedom of thought, refused to grant a similar freedom to
those who came later, and sought to found a system as intolerant as that
from which they had fled. A natural revulsion from their oppressive
measures gave rise in Rhode Island to the first government on the face
of the earth in which absolute religious liberty was established. Among
the more southern colonies, a similar freedom, so far as liberty of
Christian worship is concerned, was granted by William Penn and Lord
Baltimore. But this freedom was maintained only in Rhode Island and
Pennsylvania, religious intolerance being the rule, to a greater or less
degree, in all the other colonies; the Puritanism of New England being
replaced elsewhere by a Church of England autocracy.

The diversity in political condition, religion, and character of the
settlers tended to keep the colonies separate, while a like diversity of
commercial interests created jealousies which built up new barriers
between them. The unity that might have been looked for between these
feeble and remote communities, spread like links of a broken chain far
along an ocean coast, had these and other diverse conditions to contend
with, and they promised to develop into a series of weak and separate
nations rather than into a strong and single commonwealth.

The influences that overcame this tendency to disunion were many and
important. We ca