American Origins

THE COLONIAL PERIOD OF AMERICAN HISTORY: VOLUME II, THE SETTLEMENTS--Charles McLean Andrews--Yale University Press ($4).

In 1935, industrious, 72-year-old Professor Charles McLean Andrews of Yale won the Pulitzer Prize with the first volume of his monumental re-examination into U. S. beginnings: The Colonial Period of American History. That book, running to 551 well-filled pages, the most ambitious of the author's 28 historical studies, opened with a phrase of classic serenity: "In fashioning this work," said Professor Andrews, "I think it worthwhile to begin whether I am able to finish it or not." Last week Professor Andrews took one long step toward completing his history when he offered a second volume, bringing the work to a total of 958 pages of closely-reasoned, carefully-documented material that many U. S. readers will find absorbing, few familiar.

The information packed into the two volumes of The Colonial Period of American History is no rehash of conventional studies, representing rather the fruit of a lifetime of original research and the application of a fresh approach to one of the most perplexing of U. S. historical problems. By no means easy reading, the books contain an abundance of statistics, detailed records of shifting English colonial policies, explicit accounts of those lawsuits, moral problems, market prices, class struggles and boundary disputes that filled the lives of God-fearing U. S. forebears. Major innovation is in the point of view. "To discover what our colonial history is all about," Professor Andrews has studied it. not as U. S. historians have traditionally done, from the viewpoint of the colonies themselves, but as an integral part of the history of English colonial expansion. Concluding that U.S. history cannot be deeply understood unless England's experiences with all her colonies are taken into account. Professor Andrews studies the colonies that remained loyal as well as those that rebelled, with Bermuda, Newfoundland, the Barbadoes receiving almost as much attention as the ones that eventually became the original 13 States. If some U. S. heroes seem to shrink in stature as a result, and some familiar English enemies to disappear entirely, the net gain is a dense, panoramic picture of a century of struggle, revealing how confused the Founding Fathers were in their aims and intentions, how superficial and misleading most accounts of their lives and heritage.

First volume of The Colonial Period began with a sweeping summary of the whole epoch of exploration that opened with the expeditions of Prince Henry of Portugal from 1394 to 1460, together with an excellent account of the joint-stock companies, the Merchant Adventurers of New England, who paved the way for England's colonial expansion. Professor Andrews usually finds in the English adventurer companies sober self-interest pulling the wires, with small ports out to smash London monopolies, and England in turn encouraging colonization to smash Spain. The trading companies themselves were usually split with factional fights among their directors, riddled with graft. They organized and abandoned colonies as it suited the strategies of their ceaseless struggles at home. Although John Smith and Pocahontas appear in Professor Andrews' chapters on Virginia, they receive less attention than the tobacco trade, seem scarcely more significant than a strange stock company known as "The Society of Particular Adventurers for Traffique with Virginia" which was formed to exploit the colonists. Also novel in Professor Andrews' first volume was his analysis of the human material of the colonies, those "lascivious sonnes, masters of bad servants, and wives of ill husbands" whose doings fill the criminal records and who were occasionally punished by being nailed to the pillory by the ears. Spies moved freely among them, since Spain maintained a well-knit espionage apparatus to keep informed on the progress of the feeble British outposts.

Second Andrews volume begins more dramatically with an account of the found ing of Rhode Island, moves through a realistic explanation of the liberal charter of Connecticut, the rivalry between the colonies and their intrigues in England, the collapse of the ill-fated New Haven col ony, and ends with the fall of the absolute lordship in Maryland in 1691. Its high point is in its account of the confusion in the New England colonies that followed the restoration of Charles II, the masterly diplomacy that saved them from punishment for their support of Cromwell. In 1643, Roger Williams had sold his trading house in Narragansett, which earned him -L-100 annually, to raise money for a trip to England, where he wrote an influential pamphlet, served Cromwell, was rewarded with a charter that enabled him to come home and depose wealthy Rhode Island colonists planning a coup d'etat. After the Restoration, Rhode Island promptly hailed the King, raised -L-200 to send an emissary to negotiate a new charter. This unfortunate, self-sacrificing man, Dr. John Clark, remained in England 13 years, finally got the charter almost to his own surprise.

In the same period Connecticut had been illegally organized, although the colonists believed they had a valid charter. It, too, was in danger of the King's vengeance when Charles returned to the throne. Diplomatic Governor Winthrop of Connecticut organized a demonstration of loyalty to the King, then rushed to London, gained membership in the Royal Society through his scientific interests, borrowed -L-500 on Connecticut's produce to finance his wire-pulling, actively cultivated English gentlemen who had no compromising connection with the rebels. The result was that Connecticut and Rhode Island received liberal charters guaranteeing them freedom of worship, democratic rights, while England itself remained in the grip of repression for another quarter-century. Pious Rhode Islanders believed it divine mercy resulting from their steadfast adherence to God's laws. But shrewd Professor Andrews thinks that Englishmen were already secretly opposed to religious repression, willing to experiment abroad in granting rights they would not concede at home.

The Author. Born in Wethersfield, Conn., in 1863, tall, robust, blue-eyed Charles McLean Andrews says that his life could be of interest to none, hopes his writings may be. The son of a minister, descended from one of the first New Haven settlers whose colony he has studied, he graduated from Trinity College (Hartford) at 21, published his first book, The River Towns' of Connecticut at 26 while associate professor of history at Bryn Mawr, married six years later, taught at Johns Hopkins before he became Farnum Professor of American History at Yale in 1910. In his office in the Hall of Graduate Studies and at his New Haven home Professor Andrews turns out his histories in longhand, while his wife goes over his writing before publication, sometimes edits a volume with him. Last month his son, John Williams Andrews, published a well-reviewed first volume of poetry. Prelude to Icaros. Between such tasks as unearthing The Colonial Background of the American Revolution, Professor Andrews travels, is interested in contemporary British as well as early U. S. history, considers the abdication of Edward VIII a wise decision without precedent in the interests of the British Empire. No longer lecturing, working only with graduate students, popular, retiring Professor Andrews at 73 looks forward to publishing the third volume of The Colonial Period in American History next March, the fourth in 1938. Beyond that he says he can promise nothing.

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