Many attempts had been made by colonial legislatures to cut off or to tax the importation of slaves.

Besides paid white laborers, there was everywhere a class of white servants bound without wages for a term of years, and a more miserable class of Negro slaves.

The colonies had little occasion to feel or to resent direct royal prerogative.

The old charters of Massachusetts, Virginia, and the Carolinas had given title to strips of territory extending from the Atlantic westward to the Pacific.

The residence of the Plymouth settlers in the Netherlands, and the later conquest of the Dutch colonies, had brought the Americans into contact with the singularly wise and free institutions of the Dutch.

One of the strongest and most persistent elements in national development has been that inheritance of political traditions and usages which the new settlers brought with them.