America had a powerful influence in moulding the spirit of the age.
"Every great European event affected the fortunes of America. Did a state prosper, it sought an increase of wealth by plantations in the west. Was a sect persecuted, it escaped to the new world." — Bancroft, Vol. II.
The Colonial Age may be divided into two distinct periods, The First Colonial Period, which extends. from 1607, the year of Jamestown settlement, to 1688, the year of the revolution which placed William and Mary on the English throne; and The Second Colonial Period, which opens with the date 1688 and ends in 1765, the year of the Stamp Act and the birth of the Revolutionary spirit in the colonies.
The First Colonial Period (1607—1688).
(Fisher's Colonial Era; Bancroft, Vol. I.; Hildreth, Vol. I.; Lodge's English Colonies in America.) During the eighty-one years included in the first colonial period, thirteen colonies of widely differing characteristics, founded for thirteen different reasons, yet all of them of English stock in the end, were planted along the Atlantic coast of America.
The eighty years were filled with action. It was no easy task to subdue a raw continent. To establish homes in a savage wilderness subject to cruel winters; to hew down the forest; to clear the rocky, stump-strewn fields and fit them for cultivation; to be constantly in terror of wild beasts and savage men,—all of these things called for unrelenting physical toil, and
