PART III.

THE NATION.

CHAPTER XVII.

HISTORICAL.

In order to understand the government of the United States, we must examine its beginnings and antecedents.

THE COLONIES.

When Columbus returned to Spain with his marvelous stories of the New World, expeditions were fitted out which soon filled the coffers of that country with wealth from Mexico, Central and South America, and the West Indies.  Spain became the wealthiest nation of the world.  Other countries soon caught the infection, and expeditions were sent from France, Holland and England, the other great commercial nations of western Europe.

For a long time scarcely any effort was made to form permanent settlements, and the attempts that were by and by made were unsuccessful.  For more than a hundred years the territory now included within the United States remained unoccupied, except at a few points in the southern part.  Explorations were, however, pushed with vigor, and many conflicting claims were based upon them.

About the beginning of the seventeenth century permanent settlements began to be made, yet the increase in population was for the succeeding hundred and fifty years very slow.  During this time settlements were made in the tropical part of America by the Spanish; the French founded settlements in Canada and established a chain of forts along the Ohio and Mississippi; and the English, though claiming all the land to the Pacific, made settlements only along the Atlantic.  The Dutch and the Swedes made settlements along the Hudson and about Delaware Bay, respectively.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, the Swedes had been dispossessed by the Dutch, who in turn had succumbed to the English.  And in 1756 began the great struggle between France and England for the possession of the Mississippi Valley.  England won, and the existence of the United States as we know and love it became a possibility.

THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION.

The causes of the Revolutionary War fall naturally into two great classes, the remote and the immediate.

The Remote Causes.—­Among the underlying causes of the war may be mentioned the following: 

1. The location of the colonies. They were separated from the mother country by a great ocean, which then seemed many times as wide as it does now.  Communication was so infrequent that the authorities in England could not keep track of what was going on in America, and misgovernment could flourish unchecked because unknown.  And so far away and so differently circumstanced from the people in England were the people of the colonies that the former could not appreciate the real needs of the latter.