Conceived in Liberty (97 page)

Wheelwright, Rev. John,
190
,
191
,
198
,
225
,
226
,
247

Whitaker, Rev. Alexander,
79

White, Fr. Andrew,
116

White, John,
39
,
40
,
163
,
168
,
170

Whitehead, Isaac,
391
,
487

Whitehead, Samuel,
490

Whitfield, Rev. Henry,
221

Wickes, John,
198
,
199

Wilbur, Shadrach,
418

Will (slave),
153

Willard, Rev. Samuel,
456
,
457
,
459

Willet, Samuel,
490

Willett, Thomas,
444
,
445
,
468

William and Mary of Orange,
131
,
132
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149
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423
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425
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426
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427
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432
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433
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435
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436
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438
,
443
,
445
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461
,
467
,
481
,
498

Williams, Ann,
217

Williams, Robert,
215
,
217

Williams, Roger,
182-89
,
190
,
193
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195
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197
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199
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202
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278
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344
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345
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348
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349
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350
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351
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418

Willocks, George,
487
,
491

Willoughby, Francis,
269

Willys, Samuel,
429
,
482

Wilson, George,
91

Wilson, Rev. John,
191
,
192-93
,
207
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241
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243
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244
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245
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258
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454

Winslow, Edward,
218
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273

Winslow, Josiah,
276
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347
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348
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357

Winthrop, Fitz-John,
336
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374
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376
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377
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379
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418
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419
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429
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443
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466
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481
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Winthrop, John,
169
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Winthrop, John, Jr.,
218
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233
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264
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266
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278
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279
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280
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284
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336
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Winthrop, Lucy,
377

Winthrop, Martha,
377

Winthrop, Stephen,
271

Winthrop, Wait,
376
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377
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379
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424
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425
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449
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463
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471
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Wise, Rev. John,
416
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417
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456
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457

Wiswall, Rev. Ichabod,
418
,
427

Wood, Abraham,
98

Woodruff, John,
333

Wright, Louis B.,
69
n

Wyatt, Francis,
82

Yeardley, George,
60
,
97

York, Duke of;
see
James II

Youngs, Rev. John,
222

Copyright © 1999 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, 518 West Magnolia Avenue, Auburn, Alabama 36832-4528. The first edition was published in 1975 by Arlington House, Publishers.

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By Liberty, I understand the power which every man has over his own actions, and his right to enjoy the fruit of his labour, art, and industry, as far as by it he hurts not the society, or any members of it, by taking from any member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys. The fruits of a man’s honest industry are the just rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal equity, as is his title to use them in the manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above limitations, every man is sole lord and arbiter of his own private actions and property....

Indeed, Liberty is the divine source of all human happiness. To possess, in security, the effects of our industry, is the most powerful and reasonable incitement to be industrious: And to be able to provide for our children, and to leave them all that we have, is the best motive to beget them. But where property is precarious, labour will languish. The privileges of thinking, saying, and doing what we please, and of growing as rich as we can, without any other restriction, than that by all this we hurt not the public, nor one another, are the glorious privileges of Liberty; and its effects, to live in freedom, plenty, and safety....

Alas! Power encroaches daily upon Liberty, with a success too evident; and the balance between them is almost lost. Tyranny has engrossed almost the whole earth, and striking at mankind root and branch, makes the world a slaughterhouse....

Cato’s Letters

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION The Colonies in the Eighteenth Century

PART I
Developments in the Separate Colonies

1.  Liberalism in Massachusetts

2.  Presbyterian Connecticut

3.  Libertarianism in Rhode Island

4.  Land Tenure and Land Allocation in New England

5.  New Hampshire Breaks Free

6.  The Narragansett Planters

7.  New York Land Monopoly

8.  Slavery in New York

9.  Land Conflicts in New Jersey

10. The Ulster Scots

11. The Pennsylvania Germans

12. Pennsylvania: Quakers and Indians

13. The Emergence of Benjamin Franklin

14. The Paxton Boys

15. The Virginia Land System

16. The Virginia Political Structure

17. Virginia Tobacco

18. Slavery in Virginia

19. Indian War in North Carolina

20. The North Carolina Proprietary

21. Royal Government in North Carolina

22. Slavery in South Carolina

23. Proprietary Rule in South Carolina

24. The Land Question in South Carolina

25. Georgia: The “Humanitarian” Colony

PART II
Intercolonial Developments

26. Inflation and the Creation of Paper Money

27. The Communication of Ideas: Postal Service and the Freedom of the Press

28. Religious Trends in the Colonies

29. The Great Awakening

30. The Growth of Deism

31. The Quakers and the Abolition of Slavery

32. The Beginning of the Struggle over American Bishops

33. The Growth of Libertarian Thought

PART III
Relations with Britain

34. Assembly Versus Governor

35. Mercantilist Restrictions

36. King George’s War

37. Early Phases of the French and Indian War

38. The Persecution of the Acadians

39. Total War

40. The American Colonies and the War

41. Concluding Peace

42. Administering the Conquests

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

INDEX

What! Another American history book? The reader may be pardoned for wondering about the point of another addition to the seemingly inexhaustible flow of books and texts on American history. One problem, as pointed out in the bibliographical essay at the end of Volume I, is that the survey studies of American history have squeezed out the actual stuff of history, the narrative facts of the important events of the past. With the true data of history squeezed out, what we have left are compressed summaries and the historian’s interpretations and judgments of the data. There is nothing wrong with the historian’s having such judgments; indeed, without them, history would be a meaningless and giant almanac listing dates and events with no causal links. But, without the narrative facts, the reader is deprived of the data from which he can himself judge the historian’s interpretations and evolve interpretations of his own. A major point of this and the other volumes is to put back the historical narrative into American history.

Facts, of course, must be selected and ordered in accordance with judgments of importance, and such judgments are necessarily tied into the historian’s basic world outlook. My own basic perspective on the history of man, and
a fortiori
on the history of the United States, is to place central importance on the great conflict which is eternally waged between Liberty and Power, a conflict, by the way, which was seen with crystal clarity by the American revolutionaries of the eighteenth century. I see the liberty of the individual not only as a great moral good in itself (or, with Lord Acton, as the highest political good), but also as the necessary condition for the flowering of all the other goods that mankind cherishes: moral virtue, civilization, the arts and sciences, economic prosperity. Out of liberty, then, stem the glories of civilized life. But liberty has always been threatened by the encroachments of power, power which seeks to suppress, control, cripple, tax, and exploit the
fruits of liberty and production. Power, then, the enemy of liberty, is consequently the enemy of all the other goods and fruits of civilization that mankind holds dear. And power is almost always centered in and focused on that central repository of power and violence: the state. With Albert Jay Nock, the twentieth-century American political philosopher, I see history as centrally a race and conflict between “social power”—the productive consequence of voluntary interactions among men—and state power. In those eras of history when liberty—social power—has managed to race ahead of state power and control, the country and even mankind have flourished. In those eras when state power has managed to catch up with or surpass social power, mankind suffers and declines.