d the building of Plymouth on the Massachusetts coast.[22] King James
had been a foster-father to the Virginia colony, he had drawn up a set
of laws for it with his own hand, and when these failed he had granted
it a local assembly of its own, the beginning of representative
government in America.[23] Virginia was prospering. Slavery was
introduced there in 1619 and, much to the royal patron's disgust, the
cultivation of tobacco as well.[24] Soon the new colony was supplying
the world with tobacco.

But the nest of Puritans farther north could expect no such favor from
James. As the hand of oppression grew ever heavier at home, the
Puritans, not yet dreaming of escape by rebellion, looked more and more
thoughtfully to the land beyond the sea. They planned to expatriate
themselves almost in a body. A great preliminary fleet carrying over a
thousand souls left England in 1630 and settled Boston.[25]

During the next ten years twenty thousand Puritans came to
Massachusetts. This was colonization on a scale hitherto unconceived. A
new and powerful commonwealth burst suddenly into being where the
primeval wilderness had so lately been. And it was a commonwealth
rebellious from the start. When the civil war broke out in England
against Charles, large numbers of the Massachusetts men hurried back to
take grim part in it. In America the rule of England became little more
than a name. Other colonies were formed both north and south, and they
stood by themselves with no mother-country to uphold them. They grew
strong through wrestling with the wilderness. Connecticut was settled
from Massachusetts, and its pioneers, seeing no arm of authority long
enough to reach them, drew up a code of laws of their own, the first
written constitution prepared by a free people for their own
government.[26] A few years later we find the New England colonies
uniting in a union for defence against the Indians--and, if necessary,
against King Charles' tyranny as well.[27] Maryland was settled by
English Catholics who had found themselves as oppressed as the Puritans
at home, and there the assembly of burghers proclaimed religious
toleration to all who joined them.[28] Surely the New World had
something to teach the Old! Only Europe's brightest and bravest and best
had ventured to cross the seas for the freedom they desired. It was with
good material indeed, and after sore experience of European blunders,
that the land beyond the ocean began its rem