Introduction
Prefatory Note to the Huguenots in Florida || 1: Part 1: Chapter I.
The springs of American civilization, unlike those of the elder world,
lie revealed in the clear light of History. In appearance they are
feeble; in reality, copious and full of force. Acting at the sources of
life, instruments otherwise weak become mighty for good and evil, and
men, lost elsewhere in the crowd, stand forth as agents of Destiny. In
their toils, their sufferings, their conflicts, momentous questions were
at stake, and issues vital to the future world,—the prevalence of
races, the triumph of principles, health or disease, a blessing or a
curse. On the obscure strife where men died by tens or by scores hung
questions of as deep import for posterity as on those mighty contests of
national adolescence where carnage is reckoned by thousands.
The subject to which the proposed series will be devoted is that of
"France in the New World,"—the attempt of Feudalism, Monarchy, and
Rome to master a continent where, at this hour, half a million of
bayonets are vindicating the ascendency of a regulated freedom;—
Feudalism still strong in life, though enveloped and overborne by
new-born Centralization; Monarchy in the flush of triumphant power;
Rome, nerved by disaster, springing with renewed vitality from ashes and
corruption, and ranging the earth to reconquer abroad what she had lost
at home. These banded powers, pushing into the wilderness their
indomitable soldiers and devoted priests, unveiled the secrets of the
barbarous continent, pierced the forests, traced and mapped out the
streams, planted their emblems, built their forts, and claimed all as
their own. New France was all head. Under king, noble, and Jesuit, the
lank, lean body would not thrive. Even commerce wore the sword, decked
itself with badges of nobility, aspired to forest seigniories and hordes
of savage retainers.
Along the borders of the sea an adverse power was strengthening and
widening, with slow but steadfast growth, full of blood and muscle,—a
body without a head. Each had its strength, each its weakness, each its
own modes of vigorous life: but the one was fruitful, the other barren;
the one instinct with hope, the other darkening with shadows of despair.
By name, local position, and character, one of these communities of
freemen stands forth as the most conspicuous representative of this
antagonism,—Liberty and Absolutism, New England and New France. The
one was the offspring of a triumphant government; the other, of an
oppressed and fugitive people: the one, an unflinching champion of the
Roman Catholic reaction; the other, a vanguard of the Reform. Each
followed its natural laws of growth, and each came to its natural
result. Vitalized by the principles of its foundation, the Puritan
commonwealth grew apace. New England was preeminently the land of
material progress. Here the prize was within every man's reach: patient
industry need never doubt its reward; nay, in defiance of the four
Gospels, assiduity in pursuit of gain was promoted to the rank of a
duty, and thrift and godliness were linked in equivocal wedlock.
Politically she was free; socially she suffered from that subtle and
searching oppression which the dominant opinion of a free community may
exercise over the members who compose it. As a whole, she grew upon the
gaze of the world, a signal example of expansive energy; but she has not
been fruitful in those salient and striking forms of character which
often give a dramatic life to the annals of nations far less prosperous.
We turn to New France, and all is reversed. Here was a bold attempt to
crush under the exactions of a grasping hierarchy, to stifle under the
curbs and trappings of a feudal monarchy, a people compassed by
influences of the wildest freedom,—whose schools were the forest and
the sea, whose trade was an armed barter with savages, and whose daily
life a lesson of lawless independence. But this fierce spirit had its
vent. The story of New France is from the first a story of war: of war
—for so her founders believed—with the adversary of mankind
himself; war with savage tribes and potent forest commonwealths; war
with the encroaching powers of Heresy and of England. Her brave,
unthinking people were stamped with the soldier's virtues and the
soldier's faults; and in their leaders were displayed, on a grand and
novel stage, the energies, aspirations, and passions which belong to
hopes vast and vague, ill-restricted powers, and stations of command.
The growth of New England was a result of the aggregate efforts of a
busy multitude, each in his narrow circle toiling for himself, to gather
competence or wealth. The expansion of New France was the achievement of
a gigantic ambition striving to grasp a continent. It was a vain
attempt. Long and valiantly her chiefs upheld their cause, leading to
battle a vassal population, warlike as themselves. Borne down by numbers
from without, wasted by corruption from within, New France fell at last;
and out of her fall grew revolutions whose influence to this hour is
felt through every nation of the civilized world.
The French dominion is a memory of the past; and when we evoke its
departed shades, they rise upon us from their graves in strange,
romantic guise. Again their ghostly camp-fires seem to burn, and the
fitful light is cast around on lord and vassal and black-robed priest,
mingled with wild forms of savage warriors, knit in close fellowship on
the same stern errand. A boundless vision grows upon us; an untamed
continent; vast wastes of forest verdure; mountains silent in primeval
sleep; river, lake, and glimmering pool; wilderness oceans mingling with
the sky. Such was the domain which France conquered for Civilization.
Plumed helmets gleamed in the shade of its forests, priestly vestments
in its dens and fastnesses of ancient barbarism. Men steeped in antique
learning, pale with the close breath of the cloister, here spent the
noon and evening of their lives, ruled savage hordes with a mild,
parental sway, and stood serene before the direst shapes of death. Men
of courtly nurture, heirs to the polish of a far-reaching ancestry,
here, with their dauntless hardihood, put to shame the boldest sons of
toil.
This memorable but half-forgotten chapter in the book of human life can
be rightly read only by lights numerous and widely scattered. The
earlier period of New France was prolific in a class of publications
which are often of much historic value, but of which many are
exceedingly rare. The writer, however, has at length gained access to
them all. Of the unpublished records of the colonies, the archives of
France are of course the grand deposit; but many documents of important
bearing on the subject are to be found scattered in public and private
libraries, chiefly in France and Canada. The task of collection has
proved abundantly irksome and laborious. It has, however, been greatly
lightened by the action of the governments of New York, Massachusetts,
and Canada, in collecting from Europe copies of documents having more or
less relation to their own history. It has been greatly lightened, too,
by a most kind co-operation, for which the writer owes obligations too
many for recognition at present, but of which he trusts to make fitting
acknowledgment hereafter. Yet he cannot forbear to mention the name of
Mr. John Gilmary Shea of New York, to whose labors this department of
American history has been so deeply indebted, and that of the Hon. Henry
Black of Quebec. Nor can he refrain from expressing his obligation to
the skilful and friendly criticism of Mr. Charles Folsom.
In this, and still more must it be the case in succeeding volumes, the
amount of reading applied to their composition is far greater than the
citations represent, much of it being of a collateral and illustrative
nature. This was essential to a plan whose aim it was, while
scrupulously and rigorously adhering to the truth of facts, to animate
them with the life of the past, and, so far as might be, clothe the
skeleton with flesh. If, at times, it may seem that range has been
allowed to fancy, it is so in appearance only; since the minutest
details of narrative or description rest on authentic documents or on
personal observation.
Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research,
however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be
detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as
a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue
himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in
their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, and manners of
those who took part in them, he must himself be, as it were, a sharer or
a spectator of the action he describes.
With respect to that special research which, if inadequate, is still in
the most emphatic sense indispensable, it has been the writer's aim to
exhaust the existing material of every subject treated. While it would
be folly to claim success in such an attempt, he has reason to hope
that, so far at least as relates to the present volume, nothing of much
importance has escaped him. With respect to the general preparation just
alluded to, he has long been too fond of his theme to neglect any means
within his reach of making his conception of it distinct and true.
To those who have aided him with information and documents, the extreme
slowness in the progress of the work will naturally have caused
surprise. This slowness was unavoidable. During the past eighteen years,
the state of his health has exacted throughout an extreme caution in
regard to mental application, reducing it at best within narrow and
precarious limits, and often precluding it. Indeed, for two periods,
each of several years, any attempt at bookish occupation would have been
merely suicidal. A condition of sight arising from kindred sources has
also retarded the work, since it has never permitted reading or writing
continuously for much more than five minutes, and often has not
permitted them at all. A previous work, "The Conspiracy of Pontiac," was
written in similar circumstances.
The writer means, if possible, to carry the present design to its
completion. Such a completion, however, will by no means be essential as
regards the individual volumes of the series, since each will form a
separate and independent work. The present work, it will be seen,
contains two distinct and completed narratives. Some progress has been
made in others.
Boston. January 1,1865.
