VIRGINIA HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 14 X2 12 THE AUTHORITIES. VIRGINIA and New England were the original forces of American society, and shaped its development. This arose from natural causes. Both races were vigorous offshoots of the same English stock, arrived first in point of time, and impressed their characteristics on the younger societies springing up around them. Each was dominant in its section. New England controlled the 1 North from the Atlantic to the Lakes, and Virginia the South, to the Mississippi. This supremacy of the old centres was a marked feature of early American history, but it was not to continue. Other races, attracted by the rich soil of the Continent, made settlements along the seaboard. These sent out colonies in turn, and the interior was gradually occupied by new communities developing under new conditions. The character of these later settlements was modified by many circumstances · by distance from the parent stems, their surroundings, the changed habits of living, and the steady intermingling of diverse nationalities. Now, a vast immigration has made America the most multiform of societies. But the impetus of the first forces is not spent. The characteristics of the original races are woven into the texture of the nation, and are ineradicable. |