re
beautiful than those of England.

It will be remembered that New York (Nieuw Amsterdam) was settled by the
Dutch in 1613, and Jamestown, Virginia, by the Elizabethan colonies in
1607. So that both of these colonies antedated the coming of the
Pilgrims to Massachusetts in 1620. It is true that most of the histories
of the United States have been written by men of New England origin, and
that therefore by natural predilection they have made more of the New
England influence than of the other elements among the Colonies. Yet
this is not altogether the result of prejudice; for, despite the
splendid roll of soldiers and statesmen from the Middle and Southern
sections of the country who bore so large a share in the critical events
of the transition era of the Revolution, it remains that the brunt of
resistance to tyranny fell first and heaviest on New England, and that
the principal influences that prepared the general sentiment of revolt,
union, war, and independence proceeded from those colonies.

The Puritan exodus from England, chiefly from the eastern counties,
first to Holland, and then to New England, was at its height during the
persecutions of Archbishop Laud in the reign of Charles I. The
Pilgrims--as the small company of Separatists were called who followed
their Puritanism to the extent of breaking entirely away from the
Church, and who left Holland for America--came to barren shores, after
having learned many things from the Dutch. Their pilgrimage was taken,
not with the view of improving their fortunes, like the more
aristocratic settlers of Virginia, but to develop their peculiar ideas.
It must be borne in mind that the civilization they brought with them
was a growth from Teutonic ancestry,--an evolution from Saxon times,
although it is difficult to trace the successive developments during the
Norman rule. The Pilgrims brought with them to America an intense love
of liberty, and consequently an equally intense hatred of arbitrary
taxation. Their enjoyment of religious rights was surpassed only by
their aversion to Episcopacy. They were a plain and simple people, who
abhorred the vices of the patrician class at home; but they loved
learning, and sought to extend knowledge, as the bulwark of free
institutions. The Puritans who followed them within ten years and
settled Massachusetts Bay and Salem, were direct from England. They were
not Separatists, like the Pilgrims, but Presbyterians; they hated
Episcopa