American Stories Author:Edward Everett Hale General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1903 Original Publisher: World book company Subjects: History / General Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to... more » Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: THE GRAY CHAMPION BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE There was once a time when New England groaned under the actual pressure of heavier wrongs than those threatened ones which brought on the Revolution. James II., the bigoted successor of Charles the Voluptuous, had annulled the charters1 of all the colonies and sent a harsh and unprincipled soldier to take away our liberties and endanger our religion. The administration of Sir Edmund Andros lacked scarcely a single characteristic of tyranny : a governor and council holding office from the king and wholly independent of the country; laws made and taxes levied without concurrence of the people, immediate or by their representatives; the rights of private citizens violated and the titles of all landed property declared void; the voice of complaint stifled by restrictions on the press; and finally, disaffection overawed by the first band of mercenary troops that ever marched on our free soil. For two years our ancestors were kept in sullen submission by that filial love which had l Under their charters, the New England Colonies (which are chiefly meant here) were almost independent. 115 invariably secured their allegiance to the mother country, whether its head chanced to be a parliament, protector, or popish monarch. Till these evil times, however, such allegiance had been merely nominal, and the colonists Iiad ruled themselves, enjoying far more freedom than is even yet the privilege of the native subjects of Great Britain. At length a rumor reached our shores that the prince of Orangel had v...« less