The United Jerseys
The Quaker colonists grouped round Burlington and Salem, on the
Delaware, and the Scotch Covenanters and New England colonists
grouped around Perth Amboy and Newark, near the mouth of the Hudson,
made up the two Jerseys. Neither colony had a numerous population,
and the stretch of country lying between them was during most of the
colonial period a wilderness. It is now crossed by the railway from
Trenton to New York. It has always been a line of travel from the
Delaware to the Hudson. At first there was only an Indian trail
across it, but after 1695 there was a road, and after 1738 a stage
route.
In 1702, while still separated by this wilderness, the two Jerseys
were united politically by the proprietors voluntarily surrendering
all their political rights to the Crown. The political distinction
between East Jersey and West Jersey was thus abolished; their
excellent free constitutions were rendered of doubtful authority;
and from that time to the Revolution they constituted one colony
under the control of a royal governor appointed by the Crown.
The change was due to the uncertainty and annoyance caused for their
separate governments when their right to govern was in doubt owing
to interference on the part of New York and the desire of the King
to make them a Crown colony. The original grant of the Duke of York
to the proprietors Berkeley and Carteret had given title to the soil
but had been silent as to the right to govern. The first proprietors
and their successors had always assumed that the right to govern
necessarily accompanied this gift of the land. Such a privilege,
however, the Crown was inclined to doubt. William Penn was careful
to avoid this uncertainty when he received his charter for
Pennsylvania. Profiting by the sad example of the Jerseys, he made
sure that he was given both the title to the soil and the right to
govern.
The proprietors, however, now surrendered only their right to govern
the Jerseys and retained their ownership of the land; and the people
always maintained that they, on their part, retained all the
political rights and privileges which had been granted them by the
proprietors. And these rights were important, for the concessions or
constitutions granted by the proprietors under the advanced Quaker
influence of the time were decidedly liberal. The assemblies, as the
legislatures were called, had the right to meet and adjourn as they
pleased, instead of having their meetings and adjournments dictated
by the governor. This was an important right and one which the Crown
and royal governors were always trying to restrict or destroy,
because it made an assembly very independent. This contest for
colonial rights was exactly similar to the struggle of the English
Parliament for liberty against the supposed right of the Stuart
kings to call and adjourn Parliament as they chose. If the governor
could adjourn the assembly when he pleased, he could force it to
pass any laws he wanted or prevent its passing any laws at all. The
two Jersey assemblies under their Quaker constitutions also had the
privilege of making their own rules of procedure, and they had
jurisdiction over taxes, roads, towns, militia, and all details of
government. These rights of a legislature are familiar enough now to
all. Very few people realize, however, what a struggle and what
sacrifices were required to attain them.
The rest of New Jersey colonial history is made up chiefly of
struggles over these two questions--the rights of the proprietors
and their quitrents as against the people, and the rights of the new
assembly as against the Crown. There were thus three parties, the
governor and his adherents, the proprietors and their friends, and
the assembly and the people. The proprietors had the best of the
change, for they lost only their troublesome political power and
retained their property. They never, however, received such
financial returns from the property as the sons of William Penn
enjoyed from Pennsylvania. But the union of the Jerseys seriously
curtailed the rights enjoyed by the people under the old government,
and all possibility of a Quaker government in West Jersey was ended.
It was this experience in the Jerseys, no doubt, that caused William
Penn to require so many safeguards in selling his political rights
in Pennsylvania to the Crown that the sale was, fortunately for the
colony, never completed.
The assembly under the union met alternately at Perth Amboy and at
Burlington. Lord Cornbury, the first governor, was also Governor of
New York, a humiliating arrangement that led to no end of trouble.
The executive government, the press, and the judiciary were in the
complete control of the Crown and the Governor, who was instructed
to take care that "God Almighty be duly served according to the
rites of the Church of England, and the traffic in merchantable
negroes encouraged." Cornbury contemptuously ignored the assembly's
right to adjourn and kept adjourning it till one was elected which
would pass the laws he wanted. Afterwards the assemblies were less
compliant, and, under the lead of two able men, Lewis Morris of East
Jersey and Samuel Jennings, a Quaker of West Jersey, they stood up
for their rights and complained to the mother country. But Cornbury
went on fighting them, granted monopolies, established arbitrary
fees, prohibited the proprietors from selling their lands, prevented
three members of the assembly duly elected from being sworn, and was
absent in New York so much of the time that the laws went unexecuted
and convicted murderers wandered about at large. In short, he went
through pretty much the whole list of offenses of a corrupt and
good-for-nothing royal governor of colonial times. The union of the
two colonies consequently seemed to involve no improvement over
former conditions. At last, the protests and appeals of proprietors
and people prevailed, and Cornbury was recalled.
Quieter times followed, and in 1738 New Jersey had the satisfaction
of obtaining a governor all her own. The New York Governor had
always neglected Jersey affairs, was difficult of access, made
appointments and administered justice in the interests of New York,
and forced Jersey vessels to pay registration fees to New York. Amid
great rejoicing over the change, the Crown appointed the popular
leader, Lewis Morris, as governor. But by a strange turn of fate,
when once secure in power, he became a most obstinate upholder of
royal prerogative, worried the assembly with adjournments, and,
after Cornbury, was the most obnoxious of all the royal governors.
The governors now usually made Burlington their capital and it
became, on that account, a place of much show and interest. The last
colonial governor was William Franklin, an illegitimate son of
Benjamin Franklin, and he would probably have made a success of the
office if the Revolution had not stopped him. He had plenty of
ability, affable manners, and was full of humor and anecdote like
his father, whom he is said to have somewhat resembled. He had
combined in youth a fondness for books with a fondness for
adventure, was comptroller of the colonial post office and clerk of
the Pennsylvania Assembly, served a couple of campaigns in the
French and Indian Wars, went to England with his father in 1757, was
admitted to the English Bar, attained some intimacy with the Earl of
Bute and Lord Fairfax, and through the latter obtained the
governorship of New Jersey in 1762.
The people were at first much displeased at his appointment and
never entirely got over his illegitimate birth and his turning from
Whig to Tory as soon as his appointment was secured. But he advanced
the interests of the colony with the home government and favored
beneficial legislation. He had an attractive wife, and they
entertained, it is said, with viceregal elegance, and started a fine
model farm or country place on the north shore of the Rancocas not
far from the capital at Burlington. Franklin was drawing the
province together and building it up as a community, but his extreme
loyalist principles in the Revolution destroyed his chance for
popularity and have obscured his reputation.
Though the population of New Jersey was a mixed one, judged by the
very distinct religious differences of colonial times, yet racially
it was thoroughly Anglo-Saxon and a good stock to build upon. At the
time of the Revolution in 1776 the people numbered only about
120,000, indicating a slow growth; but when the first census of the
United States was taken, in 1790, they numbered 184,139.
The natural division of the State into North and South Jersey is
marked by a line from Trenton to Jersey City. The people of these
two divisions were quite as distinct in early times as striking
differences in environment and religion could make them. Even in the
inevitable merging of modern life the two regions are still distinct
socially, economically, and intellectually. Along the dividing line
the two types of the population, of course, merged and here was
produced and is still to be found the Jerseyman of the composite
type.
Trenton, the capital of the State, is very properly in the dividing
belt. It was named after William Trent, a Philadelphia merchant who
had been speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly and who became chief
justice of New Jersey. Long ages before white men came Trenton seems
to have been a meeting place and residence of the Indians or
preceding races of stone age men. Antiquarians have estimated that
fifty thousand stone implements have been found in it. As it was at
the head of tidewater, at the so-called Falls of the Delaware, it
was apparently a center of travel and traffic from other regions.
From the top of the bluff below the modern city of Trenton there was
easy access to forests of chestnut, oak, and pine, with their
supplies of game, while the river and its tributary creeks were full
of fish. It was a pleasant and convenient place where the people of
prehistoric times apparently met and lingered during many centuries
without necessarily having a large resident population at any one
time. Trenton was so obviously convenient and central in colonial
times that it was seriously proposed as a site for the national
capital.
Princeton University, though originating, as we have seen, among the
Presbyterians of North Jersey, seems as a higher educational
institution for the whole State to belong naturally in the dividing
belt, the meeting place of the two divisions of the colony. The
college began its existence at Elizabeth, was then moved to Newark,
both in the strongly Presbyterian region, and finally, in 1757, was
established at Princeton, a more suitable place, it was thought,
because far removed from the dissipation and temptation of towns,
and because it was in the center of the colony on the post road
between Philadelphia and New York. Though chartered as the College
of New Jersey, it was often called Nassau Hall at Princeton or
simply "Princeton." In 1896 it became known officially as Princeton
University. It was a hard struggle to found the college with
lotteries and petty subscriptions here and there. But Presbyterians
in New York and other provinces gave aid. Substantial assistance was
also obtained from the Presbyterians of England and Scotland. In the
old pamphlets of the time which have been preserved the founders of
the college argued that higher education was needed not only for
ministers of religion, but for the bench, the bar, and the
legislature. The two New England colleges, Harvard and Yale, on the
north, and the Virginia College of William and Mary on the south,
were too far away. There must be a college close at hand.
At first most of the graduates entered the Presbyterian ministry.
But soon in the short time before the Revolution there were produced
statesmen such as Richard Stockton of New Jersey, who signed the
Declaration of Independence; physicians such as Dr. Benjamin Rush of
Philadelphia; soldiers such as "Light Horse" Harry Lee of Virginia;
as well as founders of other colleges, governors of States, lawyers,
attorney-generals, judges, congressmen, and indeed a very powerful
assemblage of intellectual lights. Nor should the names of James
Madison, Aaron Burr, and Jonathan Edwards be omitted.
East Jersey with her New England influence attempted something like
free public schools. In West Jersey the Quakers had schools. In both
Jerseys, after 1700 some private neighborhood schools were started,
independent of religious denominations. The West Jersey Quakers,
self-cultured and with a very effective system of mental discipline
and education in their families as well as in their schools, were
not particularly interested in higher education. But in East Jersey
as another evidence of intellectual awakening in colonial times,
Queen's College, afterward known as Rutgers College, was established
by the Dutch Reformed Church in 1766, and was naturally placed, near
the old source of Dutch influence, at New Brunswick in the northerly
end of the dividing belt.
New Jersey was fortunate in having no Indian wars in colonial times,
no frontier, no point of hostile contact with the French of Canada
or with the powerful western tribes of red men. Like Rhode Island in
this respect, she was completely shut in by the other colonies. Once
or twice only did bands of savages cross the Delaware and commit
depredations on Jersey soil. This colony, however, did her part in
sending troops and assistance to the others in the long French and
Indian wars; but she had none of the pressing danger and experience
of other colonies. Her people were never drawn together by a common
danger until the Revolution.
In Jersey colonial homes there was not a single modern convenience
of light, heat, or cooking, and none of the modern amusements. But
there was plenty of good living and simple diversion--husking bees
and shooting in the autumn, skating and sleighing in the winter.
Meetings and discussions in coffeehouses and inns supplied in those
days the place of our modern books, newspapers, and magazines.
Jersey inns were famous meeting places. Everybody passed through
their doors--judges, lawyers, legislators, politicians, post riders,
stage drivers, each bringing his contribution of information and
humor, and the slaves and rabble stood round to pick up news and see
the fun. The court days in each county were holidays celebrated with
games of quoits, running, jumping, feasting, and discussions
political and social. At the capital there was even style and
extravagance. Governor Belcher, for example, who lived at
Burlington, professed to believe that the Quaker influences of that
town were not strict enough in keeping the Sabbath, so he drove
every Sunday in his coach and four to Philadelphia to worship in the
Presbyterian Church there and saw no inconsistency in his own
behavior.
Almanacs furnished much of the reading for the masses. The few
newspapers offered little except the barest chronicle of events. The
books of the upper classes were good though few, and consisted
chiefly of the classics of English literature and books of
information and travel. The diaries and letters of colonial native
Jerseymen, the pamphlets of the time, and John Woolman's "Journal,"
all show a good average of education and an excellent use of the
English language. Samuel Smith's "History of the Colony of
Nova-Casaria, or New Jersey," written and printed at Burlington and
published there in the year 1765, is written in a good and even
attractive style, with as intelligent a grasp of political events as
any modern mind could show; the type, paper, and presswork, too, are
excellent. Smith was born and educated in this same New Jersey town.
He became a member of council and assembly, at one time was
treasurer of the province, and his manuscript historical collections
were largely used by Robert Proud in his "History of Pennsylvania."
The early houses of New Jersey were of heavy timbers covered with
unpainted clapboards, usually one story and a half high, with
immense fireplaces, which, with candles, supplied the light. The
floors were scrubbed hard and sprinkled with the plentiful white
sand. Carpets, except the famous old rag carpets, were very rare.
The old wooden houses have now almost entirely disappeared; but many
of the brick houses which succeeded them are still preserved. They
are of simple well-proportioned architecture, of a distinctive type,
less luxuriant, massive, and exuberant than those across the river
in Pennsylvania, although both evidently derived from the
Christopher Wren school. The old Jersey homes seem to reflect with
great exactness the simple feeling of the people and to be one
expression of the spirit of Jersey democracy.
There were no important seats of commerce in this province. Exports
of wheat, provisions, and lumber went to Philadelphia or New York,
which were near and convenient. The Jersey shores near the mouth of
the Hudson and along the Delaware, as at Camden, presented
opportunities for ports, but the proximity to the two dominating
ports prevented the development of additional harbors in this part
of the coast. It was not until after the Revolution that Camden,
opposite Philadelphia, and Jersey City, opposite New York, grew into
anything like their present importance.
There were, however, a number of small ports and shipbuilding
villages in the Jerseys. It is a noticeable fact that in colonial
times and even later there were very few Jersey towns beyond the
head of tidewater. The people, even the farmers, were essentially
maritime. The province showed its natural maritime characteristics,
produced many sailors, and built innumerable small vessels for the
coasting and West India trade--sloops, schooners, yachts, and
sailboats, down to the tiniest gunning boat and sneak box. Perth
Amboy was the principal port and shipbuilding center for East Jersey
as Salem was for West Jersey. But Burlington, Bordentown, Cape May,
and Trenton, and innumerable little villages up creeks and channels
or mere ditches could not be kept from the prevailing industry. They
built craft up to the limit of size that could be floated away in
the water before their very doors. Plentifully supplied with
excellent oak and pine and with the admirable white cedar of their
own forests, very skillful shipwrights grew up in every little
hamlet.
A large part of the capital used in Jersey shipbuilding is said to
have come from Philadelphia and New York. At first this capital
sought its profit in whaling along the coast and afterwards in the
trade with the West Indies, which for a time absorbed so much of the
shipping of all the colonies in America. The inlets and beaches
along the Jersey coast now given over to summer resorts were first
used for whaling camps or bases. Cape May and Tuckerton were started
and maintained by whaling; and as late as 1830, it is said, there
were still signs of the industry on Long Beach.
Except for the whaling, the beaches were uninhabited--wild stretches
of sand, swarming with birds and wild fowl, without a lighthouse or
lifesaving station. In the Revolution, when the British fleet
blockaded the Delaware and New York, Little Egg, the safest of the
inlets, was used for evading the blockade. Vessels entered there and
sailed up the Mullica River to the head of navigation, whence the
goods were distributed by wagons. To conceal their vessels when
anchored just inside an inlet, the privateersmen would stand slim
pine trees beside the masts and thus very effectively concealed the
rigging from British cruisers prowling along the shore.
Along with the whaling industry the risks and seclusion of the
inlets and channels developed a romantic class of gentlemen, as
handy with musket and cutlass as with helm and sheet, fond of easy,
exciting profits, and reaping where they had not sown. They would
start legally enough, for they began as privateersmen under legal
letters of marque in the wars. But the step was a short one to a
traffic still more profitable; and for a hundred years Jersey
customs officers are said to have issued documents which were
ostensibly letters of marque but which really abetted a piratical
cruise. Piracy was, however, in those days a semi-legitimate
offense, winked at by the authorities all through the colonial
period; and respectable people and governors and officials of New
York and North Carolina, it is said, secretly furnished funds for
such expeditions and were interested in the profits.
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