This decade best reflects the multifaceted aspects of Colden's life. Because he was well established in his country estate and more often distant from the disturbing aspects of city life, he was able to focus on his intellectual pursuits and devote an increased amount of time to an extensive correspondence with an array of individuals with similar interests. The colonies offered a limited number of intellectuals who gained his respect. Letters to and from Dr. John Mitchell introduced another medical association to his life. Benjamin Franklin and Colden exchanged letters on a variety of subjects, while the correspondence with Dr. Samuel Johnson gave vent to philosophical and metaphysical interests. John Bartram shared an interest in botany. The paucity of Americans who were held in high regard by Colden necessitated frequent transatlantic correspondence. The names of Carolus Linnaeus and Johnannes Frederick Gronovius joined that of Peter Collinson as correspondents with the common interest of botany.
The early part of the decade continued to require Colden's multiple and, at times, prolonged absences from his family and the tranquility of Coldengham, as he exercised his roles of surveyor general and provincial Councilman. Colden had hoped to spend more time on a revision of The History of the Five Indian Nations, but, as he wrote to Collinson, the project was “entirely laid a side by reason that my Business carrying me from home almost three quarters of the year….”1
The position of surveyor general was time consuming. In August 1748, Governor Clinton chronicled that Colden had served as surveyor general for about twenty-eight years, all but three without a salary from the province. In that position, Colden was compensated only by fees from those who received grants of land that required survey. An annual salary of one hundred pounds sterling was suggested.2 During the decade under consideration, Colden conducted several surveys and was appointed in December 1740 to serve on a commission to determine the boundaries between the Province of Massachusetts Bay and the Colony of Rhode Island that was held in April of the following year.3
Related to surveying, Colden devised a new and more exact quadrant to determine distance more accurately utilizing a micrometer screw. He submitted the plans to Collinson to have it evaluated by a machinist in England. It was deemed to be flawed and impractical.4
With the workings on his farm stabilized and his involvement in political affairs temporarily reduced, Colden was able to rekindle his interest in botany. In 1741, Collinson informed Colden that he should anticipate a visit from the individual who was internationally regarded to be the American colonies’ leading botanist, “an Ingenious Man and a great teacher unto Nature Named John Bartram of Pensilvania….”5 Bartram was a native Pennsylvanian, whom Linnaeus held in the highest esteem. Bartram was a farmer without formal education but was driven by a lifelong interest in botany, particularly plants with medicinal applications. He has been assigned the designation of the “father of American Botany.”
Bartram travelled extensively in the eastern colonies collecting plants and chronicled his observations in publications, Observations on the Inhabitants, Climate, Soil, Rivers, Productions, Animals, and other Matters Worthy of Notice, made by Mr. John Bartram in his Travels from Pennsylvania to Onondaga, Oswego, and the Lake Ontario, in Canada (London, 1751), and Diary of a Journey through the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida (American Philosophical Society Transactions, XXXIII, 1942). Bartram had forwarded many of the plant specimens that he collected to Linnaeus, Gronovius, and other European botanical taxonomists. Bartram's life and Colden's would intersect over decades and it was probably Bartram who proposed Colden for membership in the American Philosophical Society sometime after June 1744.6
Shortly following Bartram's visit to Coldengham, Colden wrote Collinson, “Few in America have and tasted in Botany and still fewer if any of these have ability to form & keep a Botanical Garden without which it is impracticable to give compleat Characters of Plants. In short I may positively assert that not one in America has both the power & the will for such a performance.”7
In 1742, Colden became acquainted with Genera Plantarum, which Linnaeus, the Swedish father of a system of taxonomy based on the sexual characteristics of plants, had published in 1737. As Colden wrote over a decade later, “About the year 1742 a student from Leiden gave me the perusal of Dr Linnaeus Characters of Plants As his Method was new to me & appeared exceedingly curious & his characters more accurate than any I had seen it excited my curiosity to examine the plants which grew around my house I put my observations in writing As I was an unexpert botanist I was in doubt whether I had reduced the plants to their proper genera & some of them I was not able to reduce to any Genus in the book For this reason I sent my Observations to Dr Gronovius in Leiden.”8 In 1743, Colden received his first of many letters from Johannes Frederick Gronovius, the Leiden botanist and patron of Linnaeus, who would continue to supply Colden with the sequential publications of Linnaeus.9
Bartram was impressed with Colden and wrote to Collinson that ”this hath been A happy journey & I met with our friend doctor Colden who received & entertained me with all ye demonstrations of civility & respect that was Convenient He is one of the most facetious agreeable gentlemen I have ever met….”10 Colden and Bartram continued to exchange plant specimens over the years.
In keeping with Colden's critical nature and his need to provide his own input in formulating broad concepts (as was the case for his consideration of Newtonian physics) he suggested that there were faults with Linnaeus's sexual system of plant classification, and proposed a system based on small steps of Natural Gradation.11 Colden constructed a catalogue, using the Linnaean system, of the flora in the vicinity of Coldengham. Linnaeus published the catalogue as “Plantae Coldenhamiae in provincia Novaboracensi Americanes sponte Crescentes.”12 When Linnaeus published Species Plantarum in 1753 he referred to “C. Colden” as a source of his knowledge of New World flora. Colden's name would become a permanent part of botanical taxonomy when Linnaeus, in Flora Zeylanica, assigned Coldenia to a specific plant, a genus of borginaceous herb of the species Ehreticoe, and Colden was honored with the title of Summus Perfectus.
In appreciation of Colden's reputation, Benjamin Franklin wrote him: “I congratulate you on the Immortality conferr'd on you by the learned Naturalists of Europe. No Species or Genus of Plants was ever lost, or ever will be while the World Continues; and, therefore your Name, now annext to one of them, will last forever.”13
Colden's relationship with Benjamin Franklin was initiated during this decade. According to a letter that Colden wrote to William Strahan, he met Franklin in the summer of 1743 while traveling. Colden related, “I accidentally last summer fell into Company with a Printer (the most ingenious in his way without question of any in America…).”14 Between 1743 and 1748 he wrote two letters to Franklin. Colden first submitted to Franklin his work on Fluxions, and the Different Species of Matter for comments and evaluation by the Philadelphia savant, James Logan.15Colden subsequently requested Franklin's assistance in the purchase of a newly designed apparatus for electrical experiments.16
During the same period, fifteen letters from Benjamin Franklin to Cadwallader are recorded. The first recorded instance of the extensive correspondence between Franklin and Colden is dated November 4, 1743, and consists of Franklin's response to a letter from Colden in which the latter proposed a new method of printing known as stereotyping.17 It was subsequently deemed impractical by Will Strahan, the London printer, who sent one of his journey men, David Hall, to manage Benjamin Franklin's Philadelphia printing establishment.18 Franklin also related Logan's criticisms of Colden's paper on Fluxions.19 In another letter to Colden regarding his conclusions about perspiration and absorption through the skin, Franklin offered his own speculations.20
In a 1746 letter from Franklin to Colden, there appeared Franklin's initial attempt to determine why ships sailing from the colonies to England took significantly less time than the reverse voyage. Franklin initially ascribed the phenomenon to the diurnal motion of earth.21 Colden opined that the shorter voyages to Europe were due to the effects of tides and contrary currents when sailing westerly.22 More than twenty years later, the first printed chart of the Gulf Stream appeared. It was brought about through the efforts of Franklin, who was then serving as deputy postmaster general for the American colonies. Based on the knowledge that the stream was a current of warm water, Franklin provided his nephew, Timothy Folger, with a thermometer to measure the water's temperature and chart the Gulf Stream during a voyage. In another letter to Colden, Franklin made mention of the stove that he devised to increase the generation of heat.23
Franklin also indicated that he had read the 1747 edition of Colden's book, The History of the Five Indian Nations, and he wrote, “I can only tell you my own Opinion that ’tis a well wrote, entertaining & instructive Piece, and must be exceedingly usefull to all those Colonies who have anything to do with Indian Affairs.”24
Colden's name joins that of Franklin on the early roster of members of the American Philosophical Society, for which Franklin is credited as the proposer. Colden's relationship with the society, America's oldest learned society, might be dated to the spring of 1743 when Colden met Benjamin Franklin by chance on the road while travelling in New England.25 It is highly probable that they discussed the development of a learned society in the colonies. In Franklin's November 4, 1743 letter to Colden, he indicated that he “had no Leisure to forward the Scheme of the Society: But that Hurry being now near over, I purpose to proceed in the affair very soon, your Approbation being no small Encouragement to me.”26
As noted previously (see p. 32), in 1728, Colden had indicated to William Douglass the need for such a learned society in the colonies. In 1743, John Bartram and Benjamin Franklin circulated among their friends and correspondents “A PROPOSAL for Promoting USEFUL KNOWLEDGE among the British Plantations in America.” Although it was printed by Franklin's press as a broadside bearing Franklin's signature, there are indications that the project was a joint product of Franklin's and Bartram's efforts.27 Nine Philadelphians constituted the core of the society that was established and three meetings were held in 1744. In April of that year, seven new members were initiated, of whom Colden was elected by unanimous consent.28 Both Colden and Mitchell visited Philadelphia after their election to membership.29
Shortly thereafter, the society lapsed into inactivity, at which point, Franklin indicated a plan to proceed with publishing papers,30 a suggestion that Colden had previously made to him.31 The society was eventually revived in 1767 and in 1769 it united with the American Society for Promoting and Propagating Useful Knowledge and Benjamin Franklin was elected the first president. Colden's name remained on the roll of members at the time that the unification occurred. Although he never attended a meeting, about thirty years after his election, some of his “remarks on some obvious Phenomena of Light” were presented to the members.32
During the decade, Colden maintained his interest in medical matters. In 1741, his Essay on the Iliac Passion was printed by Benjamin Franklin. As a physician, Colden's attention was drawn to public health issues in New York City and the need to improve sanitation. In 1743 and 1744, James Parker printed, in New York, articles by Colden on seasonal fevers that affected citizens of the city while sparing those who lived in rural areas. James Alexander, Colden's fellow councilman and closest friend, informed Colden that “the paper I believe & hope has had the Effect to witt to Convince a majority of our Magistrates of the necessity of removing Skinners Tanners &c to fresh water & Either cleaning or filling up the Slips before Summer and measures are takeing for doing these things & putting their former Laws as to the keeping clean the Streets & docks is better Execution—All whom I have talkt to on this head think themselves & the City very much obliged to you.”33
Colden was especially critical of the contamination of stagnant water in the area of the docks, and he urged that removal of the filth and better drainage be carried out. He insisted that the responsibility be assigned to a tax-supported entity rather than contracted to private parties.34 As a consequence of Colden's efforts, which gain him primacy as the first to deal with public health in the Province of New York, corrective measures were undertaken and more stringent regulations were adopted.35
Colden's medical notes chronicle his observations on the bite of a rattle snake that injected its venom into a steer. Successful treatment was effected by pouring heated hog's lard down the throat into the stomach of the steer.36 He speculated on the relationship between Yaws and Lues Venera, and indicated that the former had an African origin while the latter originated in America before the European explorers arrived, thereby making the two distinct species of disease.37 Colden's treatise on Tar water, An Abstract from Dr. Berkeley's Treatise on Tar-Water with Some Reflections Thereon, Adapted to Diseases Frequent in America, was printed by James Parker in 1744.38
A common interest in medicine brought Colden together with John Mitchell, who became a member of the American Philosophical Society at the same time as Colden. The relationship began in June 1745 with an introductory letter from Colden to Mitchell, and continued when Franklin sent Colden Mitchell's reflections about pestilential distemper (Yellow Fever) in accordance with Mitchell's request.39 For a disease that was associated with 90 percent mortality, Mitchell recommended diaphoretics and purgatives to stimulation evacuation. In reference to the treatment of pleurisy and pneumonia, Mitchell introduced the new medicine, named Rattlesnake Root (Polygala senega).40
In Colden's letter of response to Mitchell, he reported on the epidemics of 1743 and 1745 in New York City. He ascribed the disease to importation from England, Europe, and the West Indies because it that is where it first appeared and was concentrated near the docks. It is now felt that the “Yellow Fever,” which gained the attention of many colonial physicians, including the most notable Benjamin Rush, was probably either infectious hepatitis or Weil's disease (food or water contaminated by urine containing Leptospira icterohaemorhagiae of infected rats).41 Colden included reports of the benefits of Tar Water as treatment of Yaws, gout, and scurvy. In that letter Colden deviated from medicine to bring into focus his own intellectual accomplishments in Newtonian science.42
I think I have discover'd the first principles of Action in the Material World & that I can demonstrate them & from them demonstrate not only all the Phenomena arising from Gravitation but the cause of Gravitation itself In short I think I can demonstrate the Theorem in Sr Isaac Newtones Principia from these Principles & that independently from the conic sections which alone would be of some advantage to those who would not be so perfect in that Doctrine as the understanding of Sr Isaac Principia requires…. I am in hopes it may likewise be of use to explain some other Phenomena besides Gravitation of which none of the Philosophers have hitherto been able to give any tolerable account.”43
JOHN MITCHELL
John Mitchell, with whom Cadwallader Colden never made personal contact, shared with Colden the status of an Edinburgh trained colonial physician, a concern with the Anglo-French rivalry in North America, cartography of the pertinent region, a continued interest in botany, as well as early membership in the American Philosophical Society.
Unlike his contemporary medical colleagues, Colden and Douglass, John Mitchell was a native American, born in White Chapel Parish, Lancaster County, Virginia, on April 13, 1711. He was the son of a comfortable planter and merchant. As a young teen, Mitchell was sent to Edinburgh, which awarded him a master's degree in 1729. While at the university he studied botany under Dr. Charles Alston, who later became the King's Botanist for Scotland. Over the ensuing two years, Mitchell continued his studies in preparation for a career in medicine. He enrolled in the anatomy course of Alexander Monro primus and the class on the practice of medicine conducted by John Rutherfurd, the grandfather of Sir Walter Scott. Mitchell did not receive a medical degree, but returned home to practice medicine in Lancaster for two years before moving to Urbanna in Middlesex County, Virginia, where he spent his remaining years in America.44
Mitchell maintained his interest in botany and began collecting plant specimens from his region almost immediately after his return to Virginia. He shared these with his fellow Virginian John Clayton who assembled “A Catalogue of Plants, Fruits and Trees Native to Virginia,” which was dispatched to Dr. Johannes Frederick Gronovius who, without Clayton's knowledge or permission, published the material in 1739 with the title of Flora Virginica.45
As early as 1737, John Mitchell began his correspondence with Peter Collinson, the conduit between colonial botanists and those with shared interests in Great Britain and Europe. The only surviving letter between the two was dated March 11, 1741. It included Mitchell's taxonomic treatise and descriptions of thirty new floral genera.46 Collinson forwarded the treatise to Christopher Jacob Trew in Nuremberg who had it published in the proceedings of the local academy in 1748.47 Thus, Mitchell is credited as the first North American to publish on taxonomy.48
At the same time that he collected plant specimens in Virginia, Mitchell, in response to the curiosity of Peter Collinson and other Englishmen, studied and dissected both male and female opossums. The findings were read at a meeting of the Royal Society of London on February 10, 1743.49 Mitchell's first publication appeared in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1744. The paper was a consideration of the causes of different pigmentations in people. Mitchell deduced from his own studies of the composition of Negro skin:
From what has been said about the Cause of the Colour of black and white People we may justly conclude, that they might very naturally be both descended from one and the same Parents, as we are better assured from Scripture, that they are…. For the different Colours of People have been demonstrated to be only the necessary Effects, and natural Consequences, of their respective Climes and Ways of Life; as we may further learn from Experience, that they are the most suitable for the Preservation of Health, and the Ease and Convenience of mankind in the Climes and Ways of Living: So that the black Colour of the Negroes of Africa, instead of being a Curse denounced on them, on account of their Forefather Ham, as some have idly imagined, is rather a Blessing, rendering their lives in that intemperate Region, more tolerable, and less painful….50
Mitchell met Bartram and Franklin during a visit to Philadelphia in 1744. This stimulated the initiation of correspondence between Mitchell and Colden. In September of the next year, Mitchell wrote to Franklin about his deteriorating health, manifested by fever, diarrhea, “Piles,” and spitting of blood.51 Unable to continue practicing medicine and because he attributed part of his disability to the climate of Virginia, Mitchell sold his house and possessions, including his library and sailed for England with his wife in the beginning of 1746, reaching London in May.
Mitchell and Colden continued to correspond. Knowing of their mutual admiration, Collinson, who was engaged in having a second edition of Colden's History of the Five Indian Nations published, asked Mitchell to draw up a new title page.52 Mitchell spent a significant effort on the project, only to learn from Colden, two years after the 1747 publication, that he was displeased because the English edition was dedicated to General James Edward Ogelthorpe, a trustee of the colony of Georgia, with whom Colden had no acquaintance.53
Mitchell was elected to the Royal Society in December 1748 as “A Gentleman of great merit and Learning, who…from his great application to the Study of Natural History, especially Botany, is very well acquainted with the Vegetable production of North America.” His accomplishment in Botany was further honored by Linnaeus in the 1753 publication of Species Plantarum, in which the partridge berry was given the name Mitchella repens.
As the subtitle of the definitive biography of Dr. John Mitchell indicates, he is best remembered as “The Man who made the Map of North America.”54 Mitchell, like Colden, was deeply concerned with the threat of French expansion in North America. The Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantation appreciated the need to delineate British and French claims, particularly related to lands in the Ohio Valley and west of the British colonies whose boundaries were poorly defined. The French were producing maps on which their claims were staked and the British needed to rebut those claims. This was complicated by that fact that the only previous large-scale map, which was made by Henry Popple in 1733, had many errors and failed to display facts and boundaries appropriate for consideration.
The Lords Commissioners were apparently acquainted with a map of North America that Mitchell had produced in 1750.55 Consequently Mitchell was retained to create a new and improved map based on up-to-date material provided by each of the colonial governors. The result was the 1755 publication of Mitchell's “A Map of the British and French Dominions in North America with the Roads, Distances, Limits, and Extent of the Settlements.” Twenty-one editions and impressions of Mitchell's map appeared in four languages between 1755 and 1781. Copies of the third edition of the map were used by John Jay, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin during the negotiations for the 1783 Treaty of Paris at the end of the Revolutionary War when the boundaries of the United States and Canada were defined. The map was referred to in boundary disputes throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century and most recently in 1932.56
The high regard that John Mitchell enjoyed in London is attested to by his selection as one of two candidates for the position of keeper of the newly created British Museum. After two and a half years of deliberation, the alternate candidate, Gowin Knight, was selected by King George II in 1758.57 One year before the selection, The Contest in America between Great Britain and France with Its Consequence and Importance was published by the same man who printed Mitchell's map. There is little doubt that Mitchell was the author of that work, which was directed at making the colonies better valued and pointing out the dangers the French, currently on the North American continent, represented.58
In 1759, Mitchell moved to Kew in order to become an active participant in the formation of the Royal Botanic Gardens, which had been initiated by the Prince of Wales and supported by Mitchell's intimate friend, the Earl of Bute. In 1767, Mitchell's Present State of Great Britain and North America with regard to Agriculture, Population, Trade, and Manufactures, impartially considered was published in London. He considered the 1765 Stamp Act to have been unwise and stressed that imposing taxed on the colonies was counterproductive to their desired expansion. Mitchell died in London on February 29, 1768, in the same month that his membership in the revived American Philosophical Society was confirmed.59
In the early 1740s, Colden was able to dedicate much of his time at Coldengham to his favorite intellectual subject, a consideration of Isaac Newton's postulates regarding matter, motion, and gravitation. Newton's Principia Mathematica, in which his three universal laws of motion appeared, was published in 1697. The First Law states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in uniform motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an external net force. The Second Law states that an applied force on an object equals the rate of change of its momentum with time. These two laws indicate that a force is only needed in order to change an object's state of motion. Newton's Third Law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Colden's initial exposure to Newtonian science occurred during his course in physics at the University of Edinburgh. His notes provide evidence of the awe with which he regarded Newton's work.60 As Colden continued his interest in Newtonian science, the genesis of his publication was his sincere conviction that his understanding of the science was sufficient for him to make meaningful improvements. As Colden wrote to Peter Collinson in June 1745:
I had pleased myself with the conceit of my being able to explain the Cause of Gravitation a point which has hitherto puzzled the ablest of Philosophers. My speculations have so far pleas'd my self & appear to me to be founded upon such evident principles that I have adventur'd to put them to the press in order to have a sufficient number of copies to submit it to the examination of the Learned…. As a meer point of Speculation I think it will be acceptable to the curious if it in any manner approach to the opinion I have of it…. [I]t opens a Method for improvement in Astronomy & all the Sciences which depend on it as Navigation & Geography which exceeds anything done hitherto…. I propose to give an entire Theory of the Earth's motion from the Principles in this treatise which I have now published which in several parts will be entirely new. I propose to explain the Phenomena from those principles & some of which tho principal Phenomena in the earths motion not so much as attempted by Sr Isa. Newt….”61
Colden considered himself qualified to disagree with some of Newton's postulates. He wrote to Samuel Johnson requesting an opinion of his treatise: “You will find by some parts of that piece that tho’ I have the greatest esteem of Sr Isaac Newtons knowledge & performances I take the liberty to differ from him in some points That man never existed that never err'd.”62
Newton had formulated laws by which the effects of gravitation could be predicted, but he specifically indicated that he could not define the cause. He wrote, “I have not been able to discover the cause of the properties of gravity from [the observation of] phenomena and I frame no hypotheses.”63
Unlike Newton, who specifically based his analyses on observations and experimentations, Colden eschewed inductive reasoning and based his conclusions on unsubstantiated hypotheses. Colden's hypotheses were mainly in keeping with the sections entitled “General Scholium” at the end of Newton's Principia and “Queries” at the end of Optics, in which Newton indulged himself in speculation. These sections were in distinct variance with Newton's expression of his theses, which were based on reasoning, careful experimentation, and mathematical calculations. Colden had failed to comprehend Newton's concept of inertia, his laws of motion, or the balances of forces exerted upon the planets.64 As a result, a historical assessment has declared: “No more audacious claim to intellectual eminence was ever made in colonial America than Cadwallader Colden's assertion, in the middle of the eighteenth century, that he had discovered the cause of gravitation.”65
Colden's explanation of gravity had as its basis the division of the material of the world into three distinct substances: ether, resisting matter, and moving matter. Colden followed the concept of Newton by invoking ether as the medium that was responsible for pushing bodies together and accounting for gravity. Colden also defined ether as “a subtile elastic fluid exceedingly more subtile and elastic than common air,”66 Colden's ether “fills every space, not occupied by resisting matter, and so, consequently, permeates all the interstices between the parts or particles, which compose bodies of inert or resisting matter.”67
As an explanation for gravitation, Newton proposed that the ether had a varied density, which was increased as the distance from a body increased. Attraction was a result the movement of a body from denser parts to rarer parts of the medium. Newton admitted uncertainty of this hypothesis and stated that he did not know what ether was. Colden's ether was a distinctly different entity, which he defined without hesitation. His ether possessed a constant density, without any distance between points within it, and it did not extend throughout space. Most irreconcilable was the hypothesis that two bodies in ether encountered less force on the sides facing each other than on all other sides because there was less ether between them than surrounding them. The resultant force brought the bodies together. Thus, Colden concluded that gravitation was caused by the “reaction” of ether on bodies of matter.68
Colden borrowed the term “matter” from Newton and referred to bodies having mass and occupying space as resisting matter. He followed Newton in asserting that the innate force in matter is the power to resist, equating resistance with inertia. A body at rest continues at rest, while a body in motion continues moving uniformly unless a force is applied. Resistance, according to Colden, was active rather than passive, as was the case for Newton. Colden's third form of matter was termed moving matter, which was essentially Newton's corpuscular light, namely, light made up of small discrete particles called “corpuscles,” which travel in a straight line with a finite velocity and possess kinetic energy. To light Colden ascribed the sole power of movement in the universe. Bodies in motion must continually receive new energy from light or motion would decrease and cease.
In Colden's universe, gravity was the force exerted by ether upon the planets and stars. There were fewer ether particles between the sun and each of the planets than between planets. This resulted in a force that would cause each planet to move toward the sun. Counteracting that force were light particles emanating from the sun. Light constituted the sole power of movement in the universe. It was responsible for the planets’ orbits, their orbital velocities, and also the rotations of planets on their axes.
The earliest evidence of Colden's attention to the extension of Newton's work is the manuscript An Introduction to the Doctrine of Fluxions (calculus), which Colden disseminated to several of his correspondents, including John Rutherfurd,69 Alexander, Franklin, and Logan in 1743. Colden wrote to Collinson that he was directing his attention away from botany to a subject “so bold that I dare not trouble you with it or even to mention the subject till it has undergone the examination of some Friends here.”70
As mentioned previously, Franklin was one of the recipients of Colden's manuscript, which he shared with Logan. Franklin responded:
I communicated your Piece of Fluxions to Mr Logan, and being in his House a few Days after, he told me, he had read it cursorily, that he thought you had not fully hit the Matter, and (I think) that Berkeley's Objections were well founded; but said he would read it over more attentively. Since that, he tells me there are several Mistakes in it, two of which he mark'd on Page 10. He says X X is by no Means = X + X nor is the square of 10 + 1 + 10:2:01 but = 100 + 20 + 1 and that the Method of Shewing what Fluxions are, by squaring them is entirely wrong. I suppose the 3 Mistakes he mention'd if they are such, may have been Slips of the Pen in transcribing. The other Piece, of the Several Species of Matter, he gave me his Opinion in these words, “It must necessarily have some further Meaning than the Language itself imports, otherwise I can by no means conceive the Service of it.” —At the same time he express'd a high regard for you, as the ablest Thinker (so he express'd it) in the part of the World.71
John Rutherfurd, who was stationed in Albany at the time, was qualified to provide Colden with a critique of the work. Rutherfurd, the eldest son of Sir John Rutherfurd of Edgerton, Scotland, who was a friend of Colden's father, arrived in Albany to command an independent company in early 1742. Rutherfurd's position was that of a captain in charge of a military unit in Albany directed at limiting French-Canadian encroachments in the region. Within months of his arrival, he initiated correspondence with Colden indicating that: “I find my retirement here perfectly agreeable & for this reason, that ‘tis compleat, dividing my time equally for Mathematicks, Philosphy, Politicks, &c without being interrupted in any Shape by Family cares of publick affairs as hitherto I have always been….”72
Rutherfurd conveyed that he was knowledgeable about matters in physics, light and optics, mathematics, Cartesian and Newtonian science, and the contributions of Boerhave in addition to appreciating the critical issues related to the Indians and the French.73All of their correspondence during Rutherfurd's presence in New York prior to his temporary return to Great Britain in 1748 pertained to military and Indian affairs, and Colden apparently did not share his treatise on gravitation with him. Rutherfurd resumed his command in New York, was promoted to major, and was killed in battle leading troops during a battle at Ticonderoga on July 8, 1758.
Colden did share his writings with Samuel Johnson (1696–1772). A more scientific and philosophical tone characterized their correspondence. Johnson was a native of Connecticut who was notable as a clergyman, educator, and philosopher. A graduate of the Collegiate School, which became Yale College and University, he initially became a Congregationalist minister but subsequently joined the Anglican Church. He was selected as the first president of King's College (the future Columbia University) in 1754. He was the chief proponent of the Irish philosopher George Berkeley in the colonies. As an “immaterialist” he argued against the absolute existence of matter and affirmed the merely relative existence of sensible things. The collegial epistolary dialogue between Colden, who has been regarded as the first of the American Materialists,74 provides an early chapter in the history of American philosophy and establishes Colden as a notable metaphysician.
In 1745 Colden's An Explication of the First Causes of Action in Matter; and of the Cause of Gravitation (fig. 6) was published by James Parker in New York under the direction of James Alexander, whose proximity allowed him to oversee the project.75 The forty-eight-page document was the first scientific treatise published in the colonies. About three hundred copies were printed, nine of which were sent to Peter Collinson in London to be distributed to knowledgeable individuals for their critiques.76 One of these went to the Royal Society where “it is well Esteem'd & admir'd.”77 One of the recipients thought that the work was so sophisticated that it could not have come from America and that the shipwrecked papers of a European had fallen into Colden's possession.78
Figure 6. Title page. Cadwallader Colden, An Explication of the First Causes of Action in Matter, and the Cause of Gravitation, printed by James Parker, New York, 1745. Quarto, 38 pages. The first scientific book printed in the British colonies in America.
J. Brindley pirated the New York edition and published the work in London in 1746. A German translation appeared two years later. Almost immediately criticisms appeared. Samuel Johnson wrote from Stratford, Connecticut, that the rector of Yale said “he can't understand your Solution of Gravity; for two Balls in your OEther, will certainly be press'd as much by it on the Sides between them, as on the opposite Side, unless it has some Laws of Motion that we have never yet been acquainted with.”79 Collinson conveyed two criticisms from Britain including the statement, “Mr Colden is Mistaken in every part of his Conjectures.”80
The designation of Colden as an “Early American Philosopher” is a byproduct of his attempt to expand Newtonian science. Much of Colden's philosophic thought appears in his correspondence with Samuel Johnson, which began in November 1743 with evidence that Johnson was supplying Colden with the complete works of Bishop Berkeley.81 Colden's initial writing to Johnson concerned his own work on Fluxions. Johnson argued against Colden's supposition that there were an infinite number of parts in a finite quantity and Johnson indicated that they should be substituted for by small finite quantities.82 Colden countered with an argument for his concept of infinite parts.83
In response to Johnson's indication that he was not qualified to understand Colden's mathematics, Colden wrote that, despite objections that had been made, he was as convinced of “it [his treatise] as if day light after sun is up & that it is more than an Hypothesis.” He also expressed concern with being considered an atheist and dispelled that notion. In the same letter, the elements of Colden's personality that engendered many to dislike him are manifest in his criticism of Bishop Berkeley. He wrote of Berkeley that “he has made the greatest Collection in this & his other writings of both the Ancients and moderns that I have ever met with in anyone mans performance that he has the art of puzzling & confounding his readers in an elegant stile not common to such kind of writers & that he is a great abuser of the use of words as anyone of those that he blames most for that fault.”84
The central disparity in the philosophical concepts of Johnson and Colden were summarized in a letter from Johnson to Colden.
Whereas, therefore, you express your Definitions in these Terms, And I take to be the Essential Differences between Matter & Spirit, that matter has it's[sic] Action regulated & determined by Efficient Causes, but Spirits by final Causes: I should have chose to express them thus, That matter has properly Speaking no Action, but in all it's [sic] Motions is merely passively acted & determined by Spirits which alone can be efficient Causes, whereas Spirits or Intelligent Beings are such as act from a principle of Consciousness & Design & and of Self Exertion & Self determination, under the influence or with a view at what we call final cause, i. e. some End which they aim at Accomplishing.85
The draft of Colden's “First Principles of Morality, or of the Actions of Intelligent Beings” (n.d.), which represented a progression from physics to metaphysics, was the basis of what was at least a partial reconciliation of his own philosophical position with that of Johnson. Review of the draft allowed Johnson to ascribe their differences to a matter of semantics. Johnson had difficulty in accepting that Action could be attributed to Matter per se. Colden's statement that “The Actions [of the Body] are altered by efficient Causes always external to themselves” provided for an element of agreement with Johnson's position. As an Anglican minister, Johnson would have been satisfied because this allowed that the actions throughout nature that affect the senses and excite ideas are the actions of a Supreme Being or Spirit.86
The first recognition of Colden as an early American philosopher is ascribed to I. Woodbridge Riley, who credited Colden to be the earliest of the American materialists.87 “Materialism” is a category in philosophy that maintains that matter constitutes the only reality and that everything, including thought and feeling, can be explained in terms of matter. Colden was considered by one author to be “the only important American materialist of the eighteenth century prior to the Revolution,”88 and his philosophy provided “lines of investigation which were taken up by later materialists.”89 The most conspicuous early American materialist was Dr. Benjamin Rush.
Colden's “First Principles of Morality,” which currently exists only as an unpublished draft, considers the human body as a machine with actions determined by man. He both derived from and, at the same time, was at variance with several predecessors, including Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Leibniz, and Newton. According to Colden, all ideas that humans have of external entities come from action on the human senses. Colden considered an idea to be “the picture or representation of anything which we have received from our senses.”90 According to Colden, our knowledge of a substance is determined by that substance's action and the effects of that action. Thinking is a distinct kind of action. Matter is a sublimated force; mind is a spiritualized matter, which is not in opposition to other matter. Both possess the common denominator of a diffused, uniform elastic ether.
Matter is not regarded as passive. Rather, each type of matter possesses a force distinctive to itself. As such, Colden's “matter” is active and extended. But, the action of matter is determined by efficient causes external to itself.91 When the action of matter is not determined by external causes and is indifferent to direction, then the intelligent being, using the ether's elasticity, directs action to suit its purpose.92
Unlike the belief of Samuel Johnson that all actions in nature that affect the senses are the actions of a Supreme Being or Spirit, Colden, who on several occasions declared that he was neither an atheist nor an agnostic, refused to recognize deistic control of actions and the senses. Colden was, at the same time, a deist, a materialist, and a Newtonian. Colden allowed the coexistence of an intelligent agent and unintelligent active matter. He claimed that the idea one has of a so-called Intelligent Being is related to its actions or operations just as are the ideas derived from the activity of material principles. Colden had to determine how material and intellectual “effects” were differentiated and how the innate activity of matter would not interfere with the activity of Intelligence.93
In contrast to Johnson's arguments as a philosophical Idealist (perceptions could only be attributed to a spiritual or mental cause), Colden opined that only a material agent could produce such perceptions.94 For Colden, all beings were either agents or acting principles. “Nothing without action can produce anything.” In Colden's materialism, there were two different kinds of beings. One included material agents that were determined by efficient causes and have neither perception nor consciousness. The other consisted of intelligent agents or beings that were conscious of their own actions and perceived actions of others that affect them. In Colden's terms, this represented differences between matter and spirit.95
Matter, acting as an agent with the capability of self-motion, possessed no innate order or system. It could not exist without a system in which it was included, which was referred to as the Intelligent Being. Even within this system, matter maintained its capability of self-activity. Colden argued against all activity being dependent on an “Almighty Spirit.” He agreed with Johnson in his contempt for the Great Awakening religious movement, which had spread through the colonies. The movement that called for increased extreme emotionalism on the part of the congregation was inimical for Colden. He believed that religion ought to be based on reason “since there are no means to distinguish between true and false religion when we are not allowed to use our understanding in forming our judgment.”96
Colden's Principles of Morality brings into focus the power of the individual to determine his/her own actions without the interference of external forces. In the process, the individual considers other “Intelligent Beings” in the same manner that the individual regulates his or her other activities. Colden explained his use of the terminology “Intelligent Beings” by distinguishing between its general reference to “spirits” as contrasted with its use as “soul” or “mind” when referring to human activity. Colden also emphasized the distinction between intelligence and matter. The Intelligent Being, which possesses neither shape nor dimensions, is dependent on the activity of matter, which has dimensions and is divisible, for perception.
The mind, according to Colden, is a center of activity that functions with a purpose, be it the avoidance of pain or the creation of pleasure. Pleasure includes intellectual pleasure and the acquisition of knowledge. For Colden, morality is the “Art & Science of living so as to be happy.”97 A balance should be achieved between pleasures, and, in general, intellectual pleasures are more useful and satisfying when compared with sensual pleasures. As a participant in the Enlightenment, in the stratification by Colden, pleasures are subservient to reason.
During the first half of the decade (between 1739 and 1748), an increased amount of leisure time allowed for the most productive period of Colden's intellectual pursuits. However, he continued to serve the colony as a member of its Council in the administration of Lieutenant Governor Clarke, albeit with a reduced investment of his time. Colden and his political allies Lewis Morris and James Alexander represented the minority opinion under Clarke and, consequently, Colden infrequently attended meetings of the Council. Colden's name is mentioned only once in William Smith, Jr.'s History of the Province of New-York, in the chapter covering Clarke's administration, and that relates to the controversy concerning Captain Campbell's proposal to settle land with Scotch emigrants (see pp. 60–62).98 Colden's published correspondence for the period between 1738 and 1743 contains only one letter with any political implication, a brief but cordial note from Lieutenant Governor Clarke, apologizing for an inadvertent mistake by the clerk that might have been construed as injurious to Colden.99
The relative tranquility of the early part of the decade was offset by an all-consuming focus, during the second half of the decade, in which Colden fought to protect his reputation and maintain his political status. Relatively halcyon times precipitously transformed into a tempestuous period. On September 22, 1743, Governor George Clinton arrived in New York accompanied by his family. The early years of Clinton's administration were dominated by his attempt to augment the defense against those Indians who were allied with the French along the western and northern borders of the populated regions. In 1746, a newly elected Assembly increased the control of Chief Justice James Delancey, who was also a member of the Council, and opposed the governor's policies. The Assembly expressed enthusiasm for opposing the dangerous enemy but refused to advance money to underwrite the defense efforts.
In planning for a meeting with the Indians who were allied with the British colonials, the governor received little support from the Council. “He could prevail upon none of the Council to attend him, except Doctor Colden, Mr. Livingston, and Mr. Rutherford. From Mr. Delancey, by whom his measures had freely been directed, he was to expect no aid. They had quarreled in their cups, and set each other at defiance. The Governor then gave his confidence to Mr. Colden.”100
After Colden and the governor arrived in Albany at the end on July, in anticipation of an increasing need for military preparation, Colden was able to secure for his son Cadwallader, Jr., the well-compensated position of commissary of musters.101 At the opening of the August 1746 conference with the Indians in Albany, Governor Clinton was indisposed, and “left it to Mr. Colden to deliver a speech of his own drafting; and in his excuse for the absence of Mr. Clinton, he describes himself to the Indians as the next person in the administration, for Lieutenant Governor Clarke being gone to England, he was then the eldest member of the Council.”102
In August, Colden formally opened the conference with the Indians who were allied with the New York colonials. According to the document that was printed to record the event, Colden stated: “His Excellency our Governor having been taken ill, and as yet not so well recovered as that he can safely come broad, has ordered me (being the next person to him in the Administration) to speak to you In his name, which I shall do in the same words which he designed to have spoke had he not been prevented by sickness.”103The essence of the speech was an encouragement for the Indians to renew their covenant with the British, joining forces with the colonials by “taking up the Hatchet against our & your common Enemy's the French, & their Indians, who have in a very unmanly manner, by Sculking party's, muderer'd in Cold Blood, many of your Brethren, in this & the Province of Massachusetts Bay.”104
On November 24, 1746, Governor Clinton issued a message to the Assembly in defense of his conduct at the Albany conference and his plan for operations against Canada. In the printed document, he included a preemptive defense of Colden's conduct related to the conference. He pointed out that the members of the Council deemed Colden to be an appropriate representative and that most other members declined attendance. He also stated that, if they perceived any inappropriateness in Colden's conduct, it should be excused. He stressed that Colden should not be maligned publicly because he was acting in accordance with the governor's orders. Clinton assertively concluded, “but there is something more than all this when I & he are considered in our present Stations as I am Governor of this Province & he is the person on whom the Administration devolves which may make the Tendency of these resolves deserve your most serious consideration.”105
The crisis, which included a vitriolic personal attack by the Council on Colden, erupted on December 4th. When Colden entered the Council room he was confronted by Delancey with a printed copy of the account of the Albany treaty, which Colden admitted he had arranged for the printing. Colden was criticized for having indicated that members of the Council declined the governor's invitation to attend. Although this was true, it was construed to be an invidious attack on certain members of the Council. Four days later an account of the debate appeared in the New York periodical, Post-boy. Colden was presented as a vain individual who was focused on advancing himself, as evidenced by his referring to himself as the “next person to his Excellency in the administration.”106
On December 16, Philip Livingston, James Delancey, Phillip Cortlandt, Dan Horsmanden, Joseph Murray, John Moore, and Stephen Bayard, submitted a Representation to Clinton of seven members of the Council in reference to Colden's pamphlet of the Treaty with the Six Nations. In an extensive and detailed document, the authors raised the issues of misrepresentation of facts regarding their lack of attendance at the Albany meeting and, also, Colden's desire to augment his own reputation and position at the expense of others. The seven councilmen summarized their criticism of Colden: “Mr Colden has Told the World in Print of his being the Next person to your Excellency in the Administration We shall Not Make Any Reflection on this Circumstance But Leave your Excellency to Consider, Whether it may Not be his Interest to Embroil your Exellencys Affairs And Distract your Administration, the Consequence of Which may be his getting the Reins of Government into his own hands, And here perhaps Your Excellency may find that, Which Was Intended As a Reflection Upon others One of those ‘Artful and Designing Men' who have private Views.”107
Three members of the governor's opposition and critics of Colden were also early members of the American Philosophical Society. The first, James Delancey, whose brother, Peter, had married Colden's oldest daughter, Elizabeth, in 1737/38, was a Cambridge and Lincoln's Inn educated lawyer. He was a member of the Council of New York since 1729 and a justice of the colony's supreme court. As chief justice presiding over the trial of John Peter Zenger, Delancey held Zenger's attorneys in contempt. Delancey openly broke with Governor Clinton in 1744. Strengthened by his relationships with his old college friend Thomas Herring, Archbishop of Canterbury; his brother-in-law Admiral Sir Peter Warren; and his wife's cousin, Sir John Heathcote, a member of Parliament, Delancey was appointed lieutenant governor of New York in October 1747 in spite of Clinton's expressed desire that the position be awarded to Colden.
The second, Daniel Horsmanden, was also an English-educated lawyer who, on his arrival in New York, was befriended by Colden but later joined the Delancey faction in opposition to Clinton and Colden. On September 17, 1747, Clinton suspended Hormsmanden from the Council, and shortly thereafter removed him from the position of recorder and from the supreme court. He was restored to his positions in the 1750s. The third, Joseph Murray, was a London-educated, able, and respected lawyer.
In response to the personal attack, Colden dispatched a long letter of rebuttal to Governor Clinton, who was unswervingly supportive of Colden throughout a lengthy period of contention. Although Colden would not dismiss his personal characteristic of vanity, as he indicated it was manifested by many colonials, he explained that he presented himself at the Albany conference as the individual next to the governor in the administration in order to provide evidence of the governor's respect for his Indian allies.108
In the third week of March 1747, the Assembly met and the governor requested funding to supply presents to their Indian allies for an expedition to reduce the French fort at Crow Point and for the funding of one hundred scouts. The members of the Assembly refused the request. Colden offered strong support for the governor and traced the greed of the opposition back to the administration of Governor Burnet. This led to Colden being referred to as “a person obnoxious to the house.”109
In May, Colden, while in New York City, was made aware of a mutiny by the troops at Albany. This prompted correspondence with his wife at Coldengham, suggesting that she move the family that was in residence to one of her son's homes, because of the fear of reprisals.110 Governor Clinton went to Albany without Colden to assuage the troops. In May 1747, Clinton wrote Thomas Pelham, Duke of Newcastle, who was in charge of colonial affairs in the ministry of Sir Robert Walpole, recommending that Colden be appointed lieutenant governor of New York.111
In 1747, a second edition of Colden's The History of the Five Indian Nations was published by Thomas Osborne in London. It included the material, ending with Denonnville's attack on the Senecas in 1689, that was included in the 1727 edition, to which was added a history of the Indians that extended to 1697 coincident with the signing of the Treaty of Ryswick. The map found in the 1747 edition is a reduced copy of Colden's original 1724 “Map of the Country of the Five Indian Nations.” Within the 283-page publication, the first appended section following Part II is a reprint of Colden's Papers relating to the Indian Trade of New York, 1724. The second edition also includes Colden's Papers Relating to the Indian Trade as an appendix. In the Papers, Colden expressed concern with the mistreatment of the Indians by the colonists and the failure of the colonists and of Great Britain to appreciate the value of a positive relationship with the Indians in the process of expansion of the empire and trade.
Among Colden's papers, there is a draft in his handwriting of a Continuation of Colden's History of the Five Indian Nations for the years 1707 through 1720.112 No manuscript has been found covering the years from 1697 to 1707. The extant manuscript chronicles a meeting between Lieutenant Governor Richard Ingoldesby and the Indians in July 1709, at which time the Indians were invited to join in an expedition against Canada. It also reports that in August 1710, Governor Robert Hunter met with the Five Nations at Albany and returned for another meeting a year later. Hunter is credited with maintaining a constant concern for his allies, the Five Nations, as evidenced by another with them in Albany in September 1719.113
The final year, 1748, of the decade in question opened with a disappointment for Colden. At the end of January, he was informed by Governor Clinton that Chief Justice Delancey had been appointed lieutenant governor by the Duke of Newcastle.114 This occasioned a letter from Colden to the duke. Colden informed the duke that there was a faction in New York attempting to wrest control from the governor and as a consequence the Crown. The group, by authority of the Assembly, had made false attacks on the governor's character. In the letter the only mention made of Colden's own conflict with the opposition referred to the insinuation that he had participated in the Rebellion against the Crown in 1715, a point that he rebutted.115
Colden perceived Delancey to be his arch enemy. In a letter to the governor, Colden refers to him by position rather than name in characterizing the chief justice as “a person in this province of such insatiable Ambition and thirst after power…entirely directed by him as to curb & embroil your administration at pleasure & to have it in his power to do the same to any other administration…. His love of money On many occasions is as remarkable as his ambition & it is therefor most likely he will never be content with a half while he can hope to have the whole.”116
The Assembly, which was convened in 1748, offered no support for the governor. Clinton became concerned that the heated arguments between Colden and Delancey might lead to his own recall to England or the termination of his appointment. Therefore he dismissed Colden from the Council and as a prime advisor, replacing him with Alexander.117 Colden was reinstated in September, allowing a continuance of the heated argument between him and Delancey. That year, from his Ulster home, Colden issued “His Address to the Freeholders and Freemen of the Cities & Counties of the Province of New York by a Freeholder.” He attacked the opposition's practice of making assertions without proof. He pointed out that their attempt to wrest authority from the king and parliament would engender resentment and adverse effects. Colden also attacked the personal interests and the desire of the wealthy members of the Council and Assembly who dominated the opposition to expand their estates.118
In late October, Colden first met Peter Kalm, who had been sent by Linnaeus to America to study the flora and fauna. Kalm wrote in his journal, “In the afternoon I called on Mr. C. Colden, who was then living in the town. He was minister in the government. He wielded great influence over the present governor, Clinton, so much that the latter almost always followed Mr. Colden's advice. On the other hand the majority of the people were very dissatisfied with Mr. Colden, whom they accused of all sorts of things.”119
Despite his disappointment, Colden continued his activities in support of the governor. He petitioned for the appointment of his son John to the post of store keeper at Fort George. From April 24 through 26, Colden engaged in a conference with the Five Nations at Onondaga to retain their friendship.120 Toward the end of the year, he received word from Franklin, who had put his printing business in the hands of David Hall, that Franklin had turned down the position of assemblyman in Philadelphia to allow for more time to read, study, experiment, and maintain his association with correspondents, particularly Colden.121