American history-full.docx

American history Full all chapters Summary Chapter Colonial times Chapter The Invasion and Settlement of North America Chapter The British Empire in America Chapter Growth Diversity and Crisis Colonial Society Chapter Toward Independence Chapter War and Revolution Chapter The New Political Order Chapter The Quest for a Republican Society Chapter The Economic Revolution Chapter The Democratic Revolution Chapter The Ferment of Reform Chapter The Crisis of Union Chapter Two Societies at War Chapter Reconstruction Chapter The American West Chapter Capital and Labor in the Age of Enterprise Chapter The Rise of the City Chapter The Politics of the Gilded Age Chapter The Progressive Era Chapter An Emerging World Chapter War and the American State Chapter Modern Times The Chapter The Great Depression Chapter The World at War Chapter Cold War America Chapter The Age of Affluence Chapter The Liberal Consensus Flaming Out Chapter The s Toward a Conservative America Chapter The Reagan Revolution Chapter A Divided Economy A Divided People Chapter Into the Century Chapter Colonial times Colonial Notes I Exploration know major explorers Protestant Reformation Martin Luther Thesis John Calvin Calvinism English Reformation Church of England Anglican John Knox Church of Scotland Presbyterian English Puritans Separatists Pilgrims Colonial rivals in North America Spain Fla Gulf Coast west France Canada Miss River Valley Dutch Hudson River Valley new York Sweden Delaware England east coast of North America The Winner II st English settlement Virginia Sir Walter Raleigh Roanoake disappeared Jamestown st permanent Virginia Company joint stock company John Smith John Rolfe Pocahontas the starving time Chesapeake Va House of Burgesses st representatives assembly FFVs Carter Randolph Lee Md Lord Baltimore George Calvert Act of Toleration Indenture headright system Bacon s rebellion Puritan New England Plymouth Colony merged with Mass Pilgrims William Bradford Mayflower Compact baby step toward self-govt not a constitution Mass Bay Colony Puritans John Winthrope The Great Migration - Barbados than Mass town meetings General Court rep assembly elected by freemen Religion Congregational Church Predestination the elect visible saints freemen City on a hill Protestant work ethic John Cotton Half-Way Covenant Salem Witch Trials executed Dissenters Roger Williams banished est RI Anne Hutchinson banished to RI antinomianism Thomas Hooker Hartford Colony Conn Fundamental Orders model for later state constitutions New Hampshire Mason family grant merges with Mass Maine Gorges family grant merges with Mass NOT ONE OF ORIGINALS New England Confederation Mass Ply New Haven Conn colonies mutual protection st milestone in colonial unity Indian Puritan relations King William s War - Metacom NEC helped in defense during this uprising then fell apart Restoration Colonies Carolinas Lord Proprietors divided into North South North most disgruntled Va farmers indep minded anti-aristocratic tobacco South Rice indigo Indian slaves by majority slaves Charles Town major southern port III British in America Mercantilism Navigation Acts - Dominion of New England Brit imposed Edmund Andros ended with Glorious Revolution William and Mary Slavery grew from society with slavery to slave society mil to America - total mil st slave ships to Va middle passage slave culture few rebellions New politics thesis The salutary neglect by Britain of her colonies prior to resulted in economic and political autonomy that challenged later attempts to strengthen control of British mercantilist policies IV Mid-Atlantic colonies NY NJ DE PA New York New Netherlands till Peter Stuyvesant patroonships New Jersey East and West Proprietorship Royal Delaware originally Sweden merge with Pa Pennsylvania Holy Experiment William Penn Society of Friends Quakers beliefs Penn Dutch Scots-Irish V Enlightenment and Great Awakening - John Locke social compacts Ben Franklin Pietism Jonathon Edwards George Whitefield John Wesley Black Protestantism Colonial colleges see table Timeline of Events - Coronado and DeSoto Explore Northern Lands After the conquest of Mexico the Spanish moved north to explore the southern reaches of North America In - Henando De Soto attempted to invade and conquer Florida In the southwest Francisco De Coronado launched an expedition in search of the seven cities of Cibola When he found only impoverished Zuni towns he continued on to discover the Grand Canyon encountered the Pueblo peoples and even reached southern Kansas Spain Establishes St Augustine Florida Spain established St Augustine as a fort to secure the coast of Florida and subjugate nearby peoples St Augustine was the first permanent European settlement in North America and provided a foothold that Spain used to control the Florida peninsula for the next two centuries Acoma Rebellion in New Mexico When a Spanish military leader led an expedition to establish a trading outpost and fort among the Acoma people in New Mexico and brutally seized supplies murdered and raped those who resisted the Acoma people rose in revolt The Acoma killed eleven Spanish soldiers In retaliation the Spanish looted their land and massacred men women and children Then confronted by a widespread revolt the Spanish retreated - King James I of England James promoted England as a colonial as well as a commercial and political power Seeing a variety of benefits in the establishment of colonies in America King James encouraged continued settlement in North America He also however intensified persecution of Puritans and Presbyterians and exerted his divine right to rule He thus increased the power of the state through colonization while pursuing policies that assured many emigrants would be religious exiles English Adventurers Settle Jamestown Virginia Under a charter from James I the Virginia Company of London established the first permanent English colony at Jamestown in the spring of Disorganized and without focus the colonists sought gold rather than worry about food production As a result less than half of the settlers survived the first winter Reinforcements stronger discipline and better organization enabled the colony to survive Samuel de Champlain Founds Quebec The first permanent French colony in North America was established at Quebec by Samuel de Champlain Isolated and very small the settlement survived only by establishing an alliance with the Huron to protect it against the Iroquois Dutch Set Up Fur-Trading Post on Manhattan Island Interested in the New World for commercial rather than spiritual purposes the Dutch established a trading post on Manhattan Island at the mouth of the river Dutch explorer Henry Hudson had named for himself in It became the basis of the Dutch colony known as New Netherlands From there the Dutch government expanded its fur trading stations throughout the middle Atlantic First Africans Arrive in Chesapeake The first Africans in the English New World colonies were brought to Virginia as slaves Chesapeake planters began to import African slaves to replace indentured servants whom they had to free after a given time and who thus were less profitable Virginia House of Burgesses Convened The Virginia Company tried to make the colony of Virginia work In the company established the headright system They also formed the House of Burgesses a local legislative body that was given the power to make laws and levy taxes though both could be vetoed by the governor or nullified by the company By providing the incentives of land and local self-government the company attracted a wave of new immigrants through Pilgrims Found Plymouth Colony Separatist Puritans left England to establish their own churches spread the gospel and by example purify the Anglican church First they went to Holland but then decided to make a pilgrimage to America hence the name Pilgrims They established their own government and after a harsh initial winter worked hard to establish an orderly and thriving town on the coast of Massachusetts south of the current site of Boston - Tobacco Boom in Chesapeake Colonies Growing demand in England for Virginian tobacco caused an escalation of prices and a boom in production The boom came to an end in the s when overproduction and oppressive duties imposed by England cut demand and prices dramatically This decline in the market triggered a social and economic crisis in the Chesapeake colonies Dutch West India Company Chartered The Dutch government established its presence in the Atlantic by chartering the Dutch East India Company The company established a monopoly in the slave trade and plundered the coast of Brazil and Spanish colonies in the Caribbean It also took over Hudson river trading posts and set up new trading posts along the central coast of North America The rising power of the Dutch in the Atlantic would eventually force the English to challenge them Opechancanough s Uprising The rapid influx of settlers to Virginia between and dramatically increased pressure on Indian lands Colonists occupied lands the Indians had cleared and were still using Alarmed the Indian leader Opechancanough formed an alliance and launched a surprise attack on the settlers killing nearly a third of the local population The English waged war against the Indians killing hundreds and by destroying their crops and houses leaving the survivors without food or shelter Virginia Becomes a Royal Colony The massacre of convinced James I that the Virginia Company was badly managed He dissolved the company and took over the colony James I allowed the House of Burgesses led by a governor to remain He also established the Church of England in the colony Virginia became the model for all subsequent royal colonies - King Charles I of England King Charles I a strong supporter of the Anglican church was also sympathetic to the Roman Catholic church and used his influence to push Anglican doctrine back towards Catholic doctrine Appalled a vocal Puritan minority in Parliament protested Charles responded by dissolving Parliament and ruling by divine right for ten years Having thwarted the Puritans in government he then appointed William Laud to the position of Archbishop of Canterbury Laud launched a campaign to oust hundreds of Puritan ministers from their pulpits Charles and Archbishop Laud s action convinced thousands of Puritans it was time to leave England Those who stayed would later rise up in the English Civil War Puritans Found Massachusetts Bay Colony Convinced that to purify the Anglican church they needed to leave England Puritans led by John Winthrop emigrated to Massachusetts Bay to create a new England They established their own government By requiring that those who could vote and hold office be members of a Puritan congregation the Puritans linked church and state into a religious Commonwealth About ten thousand Puritans and as many non-Puritans followed them to the City Upon a Hill by Maryland Settled King Charles I favored his friends with extensive land grants in North America He made Cecilius Calvert Lord Baltimore proprietor of Maryland As proprietor Baltimore sold lands and encouraged settlement by Catholic refugees from persecution in England as well as Protestants The colony prospered during the tobacco boom When religious friction between Catholics and Protestants threatened the peace of the colony Lord Baltimore pressured the assembly to pass a Toleration Act In general though Maryland would experience similar economic and social developments as its neighbor Virginia - Pequot War As Puritans moved into the Connecticut River valley they encroached on the lands of the small Pequot tribe The Pequots resisted by attacking settlers The Puritans and their Indian allies retaliated by launching a brutal attack against the main Pequot town Five hundred were killed and survivors were hunted down and sold into slavery Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson Banished Puritan theology upheld the sole authority of the minister to interpret the Bible for the congregation By such meditation each individual reaffirmed his or her participation in the covenant between the congregation and God In the Puritans banished Roger Williams for challenging the establishment of the church and its power over members He went on to found Rhode Island Similarly Anne Hutchison was tried for heresy in by arguing that she could directly communicate with God through his revelation thus diminishing the role of the minister Anne Hutchison moved first to Rhode Island and then to Long Island where she was killed in an Indian raid in Rhode Island continued to prosper as a democratic-minded enterprise s Puritan Revolution in England In response to the arbitrary rule of Charles I and the religious persecution of William Laud the Archbishop of Canterbury the Puritans rebelled in and fought a four-year Civil War against the king Oliver Cromwell leader of the Puritan forces established himself as ruler of a republican commonwealth In the Puritan Parliament had Charles I executed When order broken down Cromwell established himself as a dictator weakening support for the republican experiment Iroquois Go to War Over Fur Trade The Five Nations of the Iroquois of New York launched a long-term war against neighboring tribes to gain control of the fur trade between the Atlantic coast and the Great Lakes In the course of their efforts they nearly destroyed several tribes and the remaining members of several more migrating west When those refugees regrouped and formed an alliance with the French they gradually weakened the Iroquois The Iroquois were eventually forced to give up their plans to monopolize the fur trade and agreed to the Grand Settlement in First Navigation Act In the midst of political revolution Parliament took action to wrest control of trade on the North Atlantic from the Dutch Drawing on the theory of mercantilism they excluded Dutch ships from trade within the British system compelled the colonies to ship certain goods to London and raised import duties English goods produced in English colonies were traded through the English capital in English ships which provided more money for English people Restoration of English Monarchy When the dictatorial Oliver Cromwell died Parliament re-instituted the monarchy calling Charles II to the throne The brief period of Puritan rule had ended and the Church of England was restored Poor Tobacco Market Begins The decline in the price of tobacco in the s set in motion a number of forces that would lead to widespread social and political discord in Virginia Lower returns on tobacco farming eliminated the opportunity for success for all but the largest planters Freedmen were forced to become tenants or farm laborers with no prospect of social mobility As some planters recouped losses with rents from tenants economic differentiation and social and political tensions increased - Bacon s Rebellion In search of more land disgruntled freedmen yeoman farmers servants and laborers on the Virginian frontier launched an Indian war in When challenged by Governor Berkeley Nathaniel Bacon leader of the freedmen rebelled against Berkeley and took over the colony His sudden death enabled the governor to regain the upper hand He defeated the rebel army and had its leaders executed In response to the rebellion the elite would dramatically change both the labor system upon which they relied and their style of political leadership For this reason Bacon s Rebellion was a pivotal event in Virginia s history Metacom s Uprising The demand for land by Puritans in New England created similar pressures as in Virginia Though some Indians were drawn into praying towns that the Puritans founded to convert them many resisted this effort In Metacom leader of the Wampanoag tribe formed an alliance of local tribes and launched an attack against Puritan settlement across the New England frontier After two years of bitter fighting the Puritans prevailed after nearly destroying the Indian population Pop s Rebellion in New Mexico In the seventeenth century Spanish settlers and missionaries moved into what is today New Mexico and established a tribute and forced labor system to control the Indians The pueblos in which the Indian people lived were severely threatened An Indian priest Pop launched a rebellion against the Spanish that they were unable to quell for a decade Finally a compromise was reached The Indian people accepted Spanish rule and in return the Spanish allowed them to practice their own religion helped them to defend themselves against nomadic invaders and did away with the forced labor system Salem Witchcraft Trials As social and political pressures intensified in many New England towns and villages an increasing number of Puritans became convinced that their calling was endangered More began to see in the behavior of others the influence of evils spirits or spiritual forces In Salem in these pressures boiled over when frustrated townsmen charged over two hundred people in the town with witchcraft Things got quickly out of hand when local judges accepting unsubstantiated evidence for indictments arrested people put on trial many of them and convicted and executed nineteen of whom were women This was the most serious but also the last outbreak of alleged witchcraft in New England Chapter Timeline of Events s Virginia Moves Toward Slave System In response to the disruptions of Bacon s Rebellion and changes in the international labor market planters across the Chesapeake gradually switched from white indentured servitude to black slavery as their labor system for cultivating tobacco Virginians began to lower the legal status of African-Americans whether they had gained their freedom and become planters or remained servants After stripping them of many of their rights and prohibiting them from bearing arms making contracts receiving baptism and marrying English persons Virginians eventually defined all black residents as slaves and allowed only blacks who were slaves to enter the colony These laws enabled Virginians to replace white indentured servitude with African slavery Carolina Proprietorship Granted Charles II made a proprietary grant of the colony of Carolina claimed by Spain to eight aristocrats Though the proprietors sought to create a manorial system in which powerful landlords ruled their tenants or serfs the settlers would have none of it and after a rebellion in the proprietors were forced to abandon their claims New Netherlands Captured Becomes New York The British after a brief war with the Dutch occupied New Amsterdam and the colony of New Netherlands The Dutch did not resist Charles II granted the entire colony as well as lands to the south to his brother James the Duke of York later James II who took control of the colony and renamed it New York James gave his rights to the lands south of New York to two proprietors who named the colony New Jersey William Penn Founds Pennsylvania In Charles II paid off a debt to the Penn family by granting the vast lands west of New York to William Penn Penn instituted a radical form of government in his Frame of Government allowing all settlers free simple ownership of the land a voice in public affairs and freedom of worship Though he initially wanted the colony to be a refuge for Quakers it became a magnet for other Protestants from England Holland and Germany Eventually the colony attracted a mixed racial ethnic and religious population who lived in relative peace and prospered through Penn s liberal social and economic policies - Dominion of New England James II and his supporters who wanted to enforce royal authority in the colonies revoked charters in Connecticut Rhode Island New York and New Jersey and established one large colony known as the Dominion of New England Colonists protested vigorously and soon joined with James s enemies in England to support his overthrow and exile - Glorious Revolution in England Threatened by James II s abuses of power angry with his tendency to ignore Parliament s advice and fearful that he would restore Catholicism as the state religion Protestant leaders in Parliament instigated a bloodless coup against him Parliament elevated Mary James II s daughter by his first wife and her husband William of Orange to the throne to guarantee a Protestant monarchy In return for being named King and Queen they gave up claims to divine right and agreed to rule as constitutional monarchs accepting the premise of mixed government that divided power among three social orders the monarchy represented by the king the aristocracy represented in the House of Lords and the people represented by the House of Commons This reduction of royal power would weaken government control over the colonies and allow the power of colonial merchants to increase Revolts in the Dominion of New England When colonists heard of the Glorious Revolution they rebelled against the oppressive systems at home In Massachusetts colonists expelled the governor broke up the Dominion of New England and sought a return to the original charter In New York both Dutch residents and English settlers ousted the lieutenant-governor and replaced him with Jacob Leisler Though initially popular among all groups Leisler quickly lost the support of the wealthy elite who removed him from power and then had him executed Government by representative assembly was restored but ethnic and class conflict between English merchants and Dutch residents continued for decades - England France and Spain at War England s rising power and its renewed commitment to Protestantism drew it into a series of wars with France and Spain that would continue intermittently until the late eighteenth century In North America the expanding borders of the English colonies as well as efforts by both sides to draw the Indians into alliances dramatically increased tensions that quickly escalated into wars The first of these was King William s War known as the War of the League of Augsburg in Europe fought between the English and the French and their respective Indian allies to clarify the border between New England and New France In the English fought along their colonial borders against the French in the north and the Spanish in the south in a war with no formal name In the most active year of this war an expedition of English allied with Indians pillaged Spanish missions across northern Florida burned St Augustine and attacked Pensacola That same year a group of Iroquois Indians allied with the French attacked Deerfield Massachusetts killing and taking into captivity The Spanish attacked Charlestown Queen Anne s War known as the War of the Spanish Succession in Europe like King William s War had both a European and a colonial front It ended with the Treaty of Utrecht Britain acquired Newfoundland Nova Scotia and the region around Hudson Bay from France giving them access to the western fur trade It also received Gibraltar an island at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea and trading rights in central and South America from Spain The Treaty of Utrecht increased Britain s power in Europe and provided Britain with the opportunity to reform its thriving colonial empire For political reasons its leaders would not pursue that opportunity Board of Trade Created In an effort to establish a uniform system of control over the American colonies Parliament created the Board of Trade staffed by officials familiar with colonial affairs The Board would coordinate the various Navigation Acts and attempt to supervise and enforce the mercantilist system However Parliament gave the Board little coercive power to rule Hence it had little impact on the administration of the colonial system Full Legal Slavery Enacted in Virginia In the Virginia House of Burgesses completed a legal process they had been engaged in for thirty years A statute of that year declared that virtually all Africans brought into Virginia by reason both of their race and their religion were slaves The decision to establish slavery as the labor system of Virginia was complete - The Rise of American Assemblies The Peace of Utrecht and a thriving commercial empire encouraged British officials during the reigns of George I and George II to focus on encouraging trade and maintaining the defense of the colonies rather than directly supervising them Meanwhile the Americans for the most part governed themselves though increasingly powerful colonial assemblies Spanish Establish Missions and Garrisons in Texas By the early s the Spanish began to feel threatened by the presence of the French to their north and east in Louisiana To solidify their hold on the northern stretches of New Spain the Spanish established Franciscan missions and military garrisons in Texas with the first at San Antonio in - Sir Robert Walpole Chief Minister Robert Walpole a Whig developed a cooperative relationship between Parliament and the King by creating a strong court party in Parliament His did this primarily through patronage Walpole extended his patronage system to the American colonies He filled colonial offices with mediocre placemen more interested in their salary than in developing a policy As a result he weakened royal bureaucracy in the colonies and fostered a low-key policy of salutary neglect The policy brought prosperity but it also encouraged the rise of colonial assemblies and undermined British authority in America - African-American Community Forms By the second quarter of the eighteenth century African slaves in America began to fuse their tribal cultures with those of others slaves to create a new African-American culture For example in South Carolina this fusion resulted in Gullah a language combining African and English words and structures The development of composite culture was supported and reinforced by natural population increase which caused the development of families and kin networks Over time the number of slaves born in the American colonies steadily increased Expansion of Seaport Cities Access to the South Atlantic began to dramatically affect the pace of economic development and growth in the American colonies after Seaport cities grew rapidly as farmers in the Middle Colonies and New England responded to the increased demand from the British West Indies for rice tobacco grain livestock and supplies In both north and south the South Atlantic system empowered elite groups who supported the rise of colonial assemblies and shaped the American response to any efforts by British to increase supervision of the empire Georgia Chartered To provide a buffer to protect the Carolinas and the Chesapeake colonies from attacks by the Spanish and their Indian allies in Florida King George II accepted James Ogelthrope s petition to form a reform colony south of the Carolinas in the s The Spanish were outraged by this British expansion into territory they had claimed for nearly two centuries Hat Act One in a larger set of restrictive Navigation Acts the Hat Act prohibited the export of colonial hats for inter-colonial or British sale Many similar acts were passed for other goods Molasses Act When American colonists from the Middle Colonies produced more grain and livestock than the British West Indies needed they began selling grain and livestock to the French West Indies In doing so they helped the French reduce sugar production costs allowing the French to cut into the British share of a waning international market for sugar To protect that market Parliament allowed supply of the French islands to continue but slapped a high tariff on French molasses imported into the colonies Though the Americans protested and smuggled French molasses into the colonies a resurgence in the sugar market brought back strong profits for both French and British producers making the issue moot Consequently the Act was not enforced War With Spain in the Caribbean War of Jenkin s Ear Outraged at the founding of Georgia on land claimed by Spain the Spanish governor of Florida plotted against the nascent English colony by enticing slaves to run away to Florida in return for freedom and land When the Spanish assaulted a British sailor on a captured ship war broke out between the Spanish and British Both sides launched attacks on the other neither having much effect While Oglethorpe organized an attack on Florida seventy-five slaves responding to the Governor of Florida s call rose in rebellion and marched towards the border The colonial militia suppressed the rebellion The war continued for several years resulting in no territorial gains but establishing the security of Georgia and gaining further British trade access to the Spanish empire Veto of Massachusetts Land Bank To assure an adequate supply of money colonies often printed their own paper currency After accepting this practice for some time in different colonies in British officials refused to allow Massachusetts to issue currency This action is considered an early sign of the increasing view of some British officials that more control over the colonies was needed Iron Act Following their policy of prohibiting the same of colonial-made goods that competed with British manufacturers the Iron Act added plows axes skillets and other iron products to the list of restricted items As the American economies matured artisans and manufactures would increasingly protest these restrictions on economic development Currency Act To protect the interest of British creditors who complained about colonials trying to pay debts with worthless colonial currency the British restricted more and more land banks prohibited the issue of colonial currency and banned the use of bills to pay debts Chapter Timeline of Events - New Hudson River Valley Manors Created English governors granted titles to vast manorial estates along the Hudson River Valley to a few elite families The control these the families forced small farmers into tenancy which dissuaded new migrants from settling in the area s German and Scots-Irish Migration Beginning in the s and increasing through the s thousands of Germans Scots and Irish arrived in Pennsylvania Though some came as indentured servants the majority arrived with enough resources to purchase land and become farmers Most settled across the western parts of Pennsylvania Maryland and Virginia where they acquired land and maintained their own cultural and social practices within a pluralistic society Theodore Jacob Frelinghuysen Holds Revivals Frelinghuysen was among the first preachers to lead religious revivals in the colonies A Dutch minister he traveled from congregation to congregation among the German immigrants of the middle colonies exhorting them to fervency with his emotional sermons Enlightenment ideas Spread from Europe In the s the first influences of the European cultural movement called the Enlightenment reached the American colonies The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement that advocated the use of reason to analyze understand and change the natural and human world In the colonies it quickly transformed what well-educated Americans thought about religion science and politics s More Religious Revivals William and Gilbert Tennett led Presbyterian revivals among Scots-Irish migrants Jonathan Edwards preached in New England During the same period a religious revival from Europe that emphasized the need for more emotion and piety to achieve conversion experiences reinvigorated Protestant churches throughout the colonies George Whitefield and the Great Awakening Possessing a remarkable presence and speaking from memory in a highly emotional style Whitefield drew large crowds and influenced the skeptical and faithful alike to strive for moral perfection Itinerant preachers like Whitefield challenged the traditional organization of churches across the colonies This time is known as the Great Awakening - War of Austrian Succession Yet another war between Spain France and England this time over the succession to the Austrian monarchy was briefly fought in the American colonies as well as in Europe In a New England militia captured Louisbourg a French naval fort at the mouth of the St Lawrence River The British were compelled to return it in the peace treaty signed in - s Great Awakening Creates Conflict Between Old Lights and New Lights The so-called Old Lights denounced the passionate fervent nature of the Great Awakening revival and took steps in some places to suppress it The so-called New Lights rejected the conservatism of Old Light preachers and denounced Old Lights as unconverted sinners New Colleges Founded by Religious Denominations Presbyterian Baptist Dutch Reformed and Anglican New Lights sought to expand education opportunities in the colonies Their goal was to train ministers not scientists or Enlightenment thinkers One of the first of these new colleges was established in Princeton New Jersey Population Pressure on Land in New England Steady population growth in New England forced farmers to divide their lands and give their children smaller plots By about many farms were too small to break up any further so parents began to deed farms to first sons and provide cash and goods for the others Those who received farms were compelled to develop ways to use their land more efficiently Many introduced new techniques of farming and harvesting to increase yields Others began to develop and tap the full benefits of household production by producing goods in the home and using them for exchange in the local barter economy Farmers also demanded more currency In these ways those farmers with land tried to maintain their standard of living despite a declining supply of land Increasing Inequality in Rural Communities Increasing demand for wheat from Europe transformed the Middle Colonies into the breadbasket of Europe though tobacco remained the most important colonial export This increase of production and trade sustained steady population growth and further economic development As land values rose and competition increased a class of agricultural capitalists developed above yeoman farmers and more farmers found themselves pushed into tenancy or out of farming Falling Birthrate Increases Women s Options Married couples began to reduce the size of their families in the middle of the century As this occurred women had more time to devote their energies to household production helping to maintain or even enhancing their standard of living Benjamin Franklin Founds American Philosophical Society Enlightenment ideas motivated thinkers such as Ben Franklin to print books magazines and newspapers and found hospitals libraries universities and alms houses to improve society In Philadelphia Franklin was an innovator inventor and scientist To promote useful knowledge he founded the American Philosophical Society s Americans Export More to Pay for British Imports Increased capital from its expanding world trade enabled British inventors to more aggressively replace imports with domestic production New technology and work regimes enabled British manufacturers to produce better quality products than craftsmen in the colonies British merchants marketed these goods to the colonies to get rid of surplus production Offering better credit terms to American merchants the British stimulated a consumer revolution in the colonies that raised the American standard of living Though the colonists increased their own production and trade to pay for these goods colonists increased consumption at an even faster rate and thus went deeper into debt Ohio Company Threatens French Claims in Ohio River Valley As settlers pushed west in search of land eastern planters and investors began to recognize the value of western lands Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia and a group of Virginia planters formed the Ohio Company and obtained a grant to much of the land in the Ohio River Valley Both the Iroquois and the French objected to this claim To mute the tensions between the Iroquois and British the Board of Trade called for an inter-colonial meeting at Albany Connecticut s Susquehanna Company Seeks Land in Pennsylvania In response to the shortage of land in New England settlers companies claimed land in the west and tried to settle it In Connecticut the colonial assembly established the Susequehannah Company and laid claim to Pennsylvania lands that had been claimed by the Penn family since Similar land disputes occurred across the region Proprietors Assert Charter Rights to Lands In the Hudson River Valley and eastern New York farmers refusing tenancy purchased titles from land speculators who often did not have a clear claim on the lands in question In each colony as well as in New Jersey and Maryland proprietors reasserted their control of the land against the claims of yeoman farmers Albany Meeting and Plan To secure the cooperation of the Iroquois against the French the British Board of Trade called an inter-colonial meeting at Albany Aside from assuring the Iroquois that the British colonists had no designs on their lands delegate Benjamin Franklin proposed that the colonists form a continental assembly to develop a coordinated policy with the Indians and facilitate colonial trade and defense Neither the colonists nor the British liked the plan Great War for Empire Seven Years War French Indian War Begins The French responded to the Albany meeting by constructing Fort Duquense at the site of Pittsburgh In response the Governor of Virginia sent George Washington and a small force to encourage them to leave When the French captured Washington and his troops the British led by William Pitt declared war Fall of Quebec British forces led by General Wolfe attacked Quebec by way of the St Lawrence River and defeated the French forces led by General Montcalm The following year the British completed the conquest of Canada by capturing Montreal s New England Border Conflicts Settlers continued to challenge the unclear border between Massachusetts and New York challenging the titles of manorial lords in the Hudson River Valley Regulator Movements in the Carolinas Settlers in western South Carolina tired of the indifference of the colonial leaders to their needs and their lack of representation in the colonial assembly established the Regulators as an extra-legal force to establish political control and make demands to the government Though initially eastern elites resisted and even raised an armed force to discipline them the two sides compromised and averted conflict in Baptist Revivals in Virginia Baptist preachers in the south continued to spread the enthusiasm of the Great Awakening through revivalist meetings The preachers at these meetings used enthusiasm and emotion to attract a large following among yeoman and tenant farm families in Virginia By doing so they challenged the Anglican aristocratic rule of the elite Pontiac Leads Indian Uprising When the British occupied French forts across the frontier and then stopped the flow of French supplies to the Indians Indians across the frontier led by the Ottawa chief Pontiac launched a full scale war against the British Though initially the Indians succeeded in liberating most of the French forts the British gradually wore them down Pontiac was defeated at Detroit Treaty of Paris Ends the Great War of Empire The Treaty ending the Great War for Empire established the Proclamation Line of beyond which no colonial settlers were supposed to make permanent settlements This recognition of Indian land rights would not last long In return for their military triumphs in the Great War for Empire the British acquired all of French Canada and all the territory east of the Mississippi River including Spanish Florida Spain received Louisiana and Cuba in exchange The French maintained a few sugar islands in the West Indies and two islands off the coast of Newfoundland but was otherwise out of the North American picture Britain s vast acquisitions would transform the geopolitical context in which it administered the colonies of North America Paxton Boys Go Crazy in Pennsylvania Scots-Irish farmers in search of land had been trying to push Indians out of western lands for decades but failed to get government support In a group of settlers took matters into their own hands and attacked Indians in western Pennsylvania When the governor tried to arrest the farmers leaders the Paxton Boys marched on Philadelphia The revolt was quashed only by the efforts of Benjamin Franklin who negotiated a fragile compromise The same issues would reappear ten years later Chapter Summary The Invasion and Settlement of North America - Following the lead of Spain which extended its empire into North America in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century the French English and Dutch sought to establish permanent settlements in North America The encounter between each group and the native peoples profoundly altered and shaped the character of each colony As native peoples lives were transformed by trade the loss of land and disease they responded in increasingly desperate ways Though each colony developed differently from the way the founders had intended it nevertheless laid down some of the fundamental characteristics of American society and culture Imperial Conflicts and Rival Colonial Models Each country had its own specific goals and developed distinctive colonizing strategies to meet those goals The Spanish and French achieved extensive control over Indian tribes by a combination of military and diplomatic strategies and religious conversion The Dutch established small posts at which they carried on trade with the Indians The English sought to establish settler colonies as outposts of English society in the New World New Spain Colonization and Conversion In the s and s a number of Spanish adventurers and explorers driven by a quest for gold and wealth ventured into southern North America Initially the Spanish viewed this as a military effort and the adventurers found themselves fighting the native peoples The Spanish established military forts on the coast of Florida and the Carolinas In the Spanish changed their strategy and sent missionaries instead of military adventurers to pacify convert and control the Indians at outpost missions From these towns and missions the Spanish demanded tributes and instituted a system of forced labor The Indians responded with a series of revolts though they eventually succumbed The Spanish were so taken aback by the heavy costs of exploration that they decided to wait until the late eighteenth century to colonize California New France Furs and Souls The French conferred on a settlement company a monopoly over the fur trade and the rights to extensive lands distributed to settlers In contrast to England however peasants in France retained control over their lands and thus had little incentive to resettle on the poorer lands of New France Few therefore joined the enterprise As a result a small population of administrators traders and Jesuit missionaries established extensive control over native peoples through trade and conversion across a vast extent of North America Traders pursued trading arrangements with native peoples far to the west and south Meanwhile French missionaries instead of coercing native peoples achieved conversions by understanding Indian ideas concerns and needs and relating Christian doctrine to them Even so New France was only a moderate commercial and cultural success New Netherland Commerce The Dutch developed trading outposts along the coast of North America as extensions of the activities of the Dutch West India Company They tried to attract settlers and to protect the outposts from Indians and other Europeans by granting extensive tracts of land along the Hudson River to Dutch proprietors Only one proprietor was able to attract settlers The policy failed to protect the colony from disputes and wars with the Indians and from internal dissension among diverse settlers The weak small colony was easily taken by the English who renamed it New York in The First English Model Tobacco and Settlers The Virginia Company launched its first colonial venture to establish an economic outpost in Virginia in The adventurers and seekers of fortune who established Jamestown had few if any survival skills More interested in looking for gold than in planting crops the settlers relied on their own meager supplies and on the Indians help for food When they alienated the Indians their food supply was cut off and most of the settlers perished over the winter The efforts of subsequent leaders to impose discipline enabled the colony to survive from one year to the next but just barely Within ten years the Virginia Company to draw settlers to the colony had instituted the headright system developed tobacco as a cash crop and established local government The strategy worked but as settlers spread farther across the wilderness Indian resistance increased An Indian uprising in inflicted heavy casualties on the colony Distressed by its poor performance King James assumed control over Virginia and by instituting local government under royal control established the model for royal colonies throughout North America The Chesapeake Experience The Chesapeake colonies brought wealth to planters and religious freedom to Catholics in Maryland but European settlement destroyed native American communities and subjected both European indentured servants and African slaves to ruthless exploitation for the sake of profit Settling the Tobacco Colonies The Chesapeake colonies made money but at a considerable moral and social cost While Virginia became a royal colony a royal charter made Lord Baltimore a Catholic proprietor of Maryland Baltimore carefully planned the development of the small colony both as a refuge for Catholics and as a cash-crop colony The tobacco boom assured its continued economic growth but friction between Protestants and Catholics persisted In both colonies epidemic disease resulted in an extraordinarily high death rate among colonists The high death rate disrupted families shifted gender roles and eroded social institutions Servants and Masters The headright system and a large demand for labor attracted many indentured servants to the Chesapeake colonies Laborers were bound to a master for several years and compelled to work in often brutal conditions They were not allowed to marry and were punished harshly for various infractions against a stringent legal code While half the men died before they were freed women being generally in short supply in the Chesapeake could achieve social mobility by marrying a landlord and sometimes even their master The Seeds of Revolt A collapse in the price of tobacco by increased social friction throughout the Chesapeake colonies Lower prices forced many planters deeper into debt even as they grabbed the last available lands in the colonies Low prices all but eliminated the prospect that a newly freed servant could become a planter More and more former servants were forced to lease lands from planters as tenant farmers or farm laborers or head west to the frontier in search of cheap land Government officials exacerbated the tensions by granting more lands to a privileged elite and trying to exclude landless freemen who by the s constituted half the population from voting This effort to translate the widening distance between classes into a political oligarchy sowed the seeds of revolt Bacon s Rebellion As settlers in the western part of the colony increasingly resentful of the social and political exploitation in the colony pushed on to the last Indian lands left in Virginia the pressure boiled over When westerners led by newcomer Nathaniel Bacon a member of the governor s council started a war against the Indians the governor condemned them expelled Bacon from the council and ordered his arrest Bacon however forced the governor to back down and institute reforms Still not satisfied Bacon rebelled openly and civil war broke out only to end when Bacon died suddenly To prevent further rebellions the elite after punishing the rebels returned voting rights to the lower class reduced taxes and instituted an expansionist land policy They also looked for ways to acquire more control over a labor force that was needed to grow tobacco Puritan New England In contrast to Virginia New England was settled by dissenters seeking religious freedom New England Puritans arrived as families and established small villages of yeomen farmers centered around their churches and governed by a strict ethical code The Puritan Migration The first wave of migrants to New England traveled as a joint-stock company and established the Plymouth colony in Only half survived the first winter but community discipline thereafter helped the colony to thrive and grow Named Pilgrims because they had come to America as a holy pilgrimage the residents of Plymouth nevertheless maintained a separation of church and state authority As King Charles I increasingly oppressed Puritans in England a second wave of migants under John Winthrop left for America to establish a pure model Christian community They settled Massachusetts Bay colony near Plymouth but unlike the Puritans firmly linked the powers of church and state becoming a religious commonwealth Religion and Society The Puritans gave the process of settlement and subsequent American history a moral dimension They sought not only worldly wealth and security but also a place in which they could establish a purified true church as a model for the reformation of the Anglican Church Church membership was limited to those saints who were able to demonstrate that they had had a conversion experience and thus might be among the elect Sometimes members joined together in a collective covenant with God They were also given influence over secular affairs transforming Massachusetts Bay into a theocracy Always a minority of the population church members ran self-governing congregations By accepting new membership applications appointing screening and firing ministers scrutinizing members and purging heresies and expelling heretics the elect exerted considerable moral political and social power The Puritan Imagination and Witchcraft Like other European peasants imbued with the pagan tradition that still underlay the Christian cosmos as well as that of the native Americans the Puritans believed that nature contained spiritual forces They also believed that both God and evil spirits expressed their will or power through natural signs miracles invisible grace or negative forces often relayed by wizards or witches The Puritans doubts about their original mission and a variety of pressures in the congregations and villages increased their tendency to explain events as the result of evil forces Not surprisingly arrests and convictions for witchcraft increased culminating in a dramatic outbreak of witch-hunting in In Salem frustrated farmers resentful of wealthier church members retaliated by accusing scores of their neighbors and friends of witchcraft Of the people arrested were executed before proceedings were stopped because of unsubstantiated evidence A Yeoman Society The Puritans believed that some inequality of wealth was part of the natural order of things Nevertheless most townsmen received sufficiently significant tracts in fee simple to establish themselves as yeomen farmers This relatively equal distribution of land enabled most men to become involved in local politics and gave them unprecedented political power Even though the dynamics of market competition would further differentiate wealth and push many farmers into tenancy most settlers in New England achieved a better life than they had had in England The Indians New World Native Americans responded to the arrival and expansion of the settlement of European invaders by resisting trying to cope or immigrating to the West Whatever their response however the Indians found their world fundamentally changed Puritans and Pequots Though one might have expected otherwise the moralist Puritans convinced that God was on their side often treated the Indians as brutally as the Spanish had When the Indians violently resisted the Puritans retaliated with brutal attacks Indians who chose not to resist allowed themselves to be converted in praying towns Attempts at conversion provided Puritans with a buffer against further Indian attacks and Indians with a temporary haven Metacom s War Metacom the leader of the Wampanoag tribe believed conversion was not the answer He forged an alliance of smaller tribes and attacked white settlements across central New England in and In retaliation the Puritans attacked the Indians They inflicted massive casualties and sold hundreds of captives into slavery The surviving Indians resigned themselves to losing both their land and their culture The Fur Trade and the Inland Peoples Farther inland the fur trade transformed Indian life European traders brought disease alcohol and European trade goods These conditions reduced populations increased social disorder and undermined native cultures The dynamics of the fur trade also intensified intra-tribal warfare shifted power to younger more aggressive warriors and fundamentally transformed the Indians spiritual relationship with nature In the end the Indians as much as the Europeans lived in a New World Chapter The Invasion and Settlement of North America Chapter Instructional Objectives After you have taught this chapter your students should be able to answer the following questions What goals did the Spanish French Dutch and English pursue in North America How did these ambitions lead to different settlement patterns How did the European settlements of North America affect Native American populations How and why did a system of forced labor emerge in the Chesapeake and Virginia colonies What were the economic religious political and intellectual foundations of Puritan society in New England How did colonial society in the Chesapeake region differ from that of New England How did the conflicts of the s affect relations among colonists Indians and Africans in America Chapter Invasion and Settlement - I Imperial Conflicts and Rival Colonial Models A New Spain Colonization and Conversion Spanish adventurers were the first Europeans to explore the southern and western United States By the s their main goal was to prevent other Europeans from establishing settlements In Spain established St Augustine the first permanent European settlement in America most of Spain s other military outposts were destroyed by Indian attacks In response to the Indian attacks the Spanish adopted The Comprehensive Orders for New Discoveries and employed missionaries For Franciscans religious conversion and assimilation went hand in hand but Spanish rule was not benevolent Most Native Americans tolerated the Franciscans but when Christian prayers failed to prevent disease drought and Apache raids many returned to their ancestral religions and blamed the Spanish for their ills Santa Fe was established in and after the Indian revolts the system of missions and forced labor was reestablished By many Pueblos in New Mexico were faced with extinction the Pueblos eventually joined with the Spanish to protect their lands against nomadic Indians Spain maintained its northern empire but did not achieve religious conversion or cultural assimilation of the Native Americans The cost of expansion delayed the Spanish settlement of Ca B New France Furs and Souls Quebec established in was the first permanent French settlement New France became a vast fur-trading enterprise The Hurons in exchange for protection from the Iroquois allowed French traders into their territory French traders set in motion a series of devastating Indian wars over the fur market and they also brought disease to the Indians Beginning in the s the New York Iroquois seized control of the fur trade and forced the Hurons to migrate to the north and west While French traders amassed furs French priests sought converts unlike the Spanish French missionaries did not use Indians for forced labor and they won religious converts by addressing the needs of the Indians C New Netherland Commerce The Dutch republic emphasized commerce over religious conversion In the West India Company had a trade monopoly in West Africa and exclusive authority to establish outposts in America The company founded the town of New Amsterdam as the capital of New Netherland To encourage migration the company granted land along the Hudson River to wealthy Dutchmen New Netherland failed as a settler colony but flourished briefly in fur trading When the Dutch seized prime farming land from the Algonquians and took over their trading network the Algonquians responded with force The West India Company largely ignored the floundering Dutch settlement and concentrated instead on the profitable importation of African slaves to their sugar plantations in Brazil The Dutch ruled New Amsterdam shortsightedly rejecting requests for representative government and after a lightly resisted English invasion New Amsterdam happily accepted English rule D The First English Model Tobacco and Settlers English merchants replaced the landed gentry as the leaders of English expansion In King James I granted a group of London merchants the right to exploit from present-day North Carolina to southern New York this region was named Virginia In the Virginia Company sent an expedition of men to North America landing in Jamestown Virginia the goal of the Virginia Company was trade not settlement Life in Jamestown was harsh death rates were high there was no gold and little food Native American hostility was another major threat to the survival of the settlement as conflicts over food and land increased Chief Powhatan threatened war with the settlers Tobacco farming became the basis of economic life and an impetus for permanent settlement in Jamestown To encourage English settlement the Virginia Company granted land to freemen established a headright system and a local court system and approved a system of representative government under the House of Burgesses The resulting influx of settlers sparked war with the Indians but did not slow expansion by English settlement in the Chesapeake Bay was well established II The Chesapeake Experience A Settling the Tobacco Colonies In James I dissolved the Virginia Company and created a royal colony in Virginia in The Church of England was established in Virginia and property owners paid taxes to support the clergy The model for royal colonies in America consisted of a royal governor an elected assembly and an established Anglican Church King Charles I conveyed most of the territory bordering the Chesapeake to Lord Baltimore a Catholic aristocrat Baltimore wanted Maryland to become a refuge from persecution for English Catholics settlement of Maryland began in Baltimore granted the assembly the right to initiate legislation A Toleration Act was enacted in granting religious freedom to all Christians Demand for tobacco started an economic boom in the Chesapeake and attracted migrants but diseases especially malaria kept population low and life expectancy short B Masters Servants and Slaves The majority of migrants to Virginia and Maryland were indentured servants most masters ruled with beatings and withheld permission to marry Most indentured servants did not achieve the escape from poverty they had sought although about percent benefited from their ordeal acquiring property and respectability The first African workers fared even worse than the indentured servants and their numbers remained small At first Africans were not legally enslaved although many served their masters for life By becoming a Christian and a planter an enterprising African could sometimes aspire to near equality with English settlers In the s Chesapeake legislatures began enacting laws that lowered the status of Africans being a slave had become a permanent and hereditary condition C The Seeds of Social Revolt By the s the Chesapeake tobacco market had collapsed and long-standing conflicts between rich planters and men with small farms or no property flared up in political turmoil In an effort to exclude Dutch and other merchants Parliament passed an Act of Trade and Navigation permitting only English or colonial-owned ships into American ports The number of tobacco planters increased but profit margins were growing thin the Chesapeake ceased to offer upward social mobility to whites as well as blacks The Chesapeake colonies came to be dominated by elite planter- landlords and merchants Social tensions reached a breaking point in Virginia during Governor William Berkeley s regime Berkeley gave tax-free land grants to himself and members of his council The corrupt House of Burgesses changed the voting system to exclude landless freemen but distressed property-holding yeomen were no longer willing to support the rule of the corrupt landed gentry D Bacon s Rebellion Poor freeholders and aspiring tenants wanted the Indians removed from the treaty guaranteed lands along the frontier Wealthy planter-merchants were opposed to Indian removal they wanted to maintain the labor supply and to continue trading furs with the Native Americans Poor freeholders and propertyless men formed militia and began killing Indians the Indians retaliated by killing whites Not wanting the fur trade disrupted Governor Berkeley proposed building frontier forts Settlers saw Berkeley s strategy as a plot to impose high taxes and to take control of the tobacco trade Nathaniel Bacon a member of the governor s council led a protest against Berkeley s strategy Bacon and his men killed a number of peaceful Indians for which Berkeley arrested Bacon When Bacon s militant supporters threatened to free Bacon by force Berkeley agreed to political reforms and restored voting rights to landless freemen Not satisfied Bacon s men burned Jamestown and issued a Manifesto and Declaration of the People demanding removal of all Indians and an end to the rule of wealthy parasites Although Bacon died in Bacon s Rebellion prompted tax cuts a reduction of corruption opening of public offices to yeomen and the expansion into Indian lands To forestall another rebellion among former indentured servants Virginia and Maryland turned away from indentured servitude and laws were enacted to legalize African slavery III Puritan New England A The Puritan Migration New England differed from other European settlements it was settled by men women and children The Pilgrims who were Separatists from England s Anglican Church sailed to America in on the Mayflower They created the Mayflower Compact a covenant for religious and political autonomy and the first constitution in North America The first winter in America tested the Pilgrims as hunger and disease took a heavy toll thereafter the Plymouth colony became a healthy and thriving community After having Anglican rituals forced upon their churches Puritans sought refuge in America in John Winthrop and Puritans established the Massachusetts Bay colony Over the next decade Puritans migrated to Massachusetts Bay along with others fleeing hard times in England more went to Barbados than to New England The Puritans created representative political institutions that were locally based The right to vote and hold office was limited to Puritan church members and the Bible was the legal as well as spiritual guide for Massachusetts Bay B Religion and Society Puritans eliminated bishops and devised a democratic church structure influenced by John Calvin they believed in predestination Puritans dealt with the uncertainties of divine election in three ways conversion experience a born-again conviction of salvation preparation confidence in redemption built on years of piety and discipline and belief in a covenant with God that promised salvation in exchange for obedience to God s laws Puritans of Massachusetts Bay felt that they must purge their society of religious dissidents Roger Williams a religious dissident and his followers founded settlements in Rhode Island where there was no legally established church Anne Hutchinson was considered a heretic because her beliefs diminished the role of Puritan ministers Puritans believed that when it came to governance of church and state women were clearly inferior to men In Thomas Hooker and others left Massachusetts Bay and founded Hartford in the Connecticut Puritans adopted the Fundamental Orders which provided for a representative assembly and a popularly elected governor Connecticut s government also included a representative assembly and elected governor Connecticut united church and state but voting was not limited to church members England fell into a religious civil war between royalists and Parliamentary forces and thousands of English Puritans joined the revolt demanding greater authority for Parliament and reform of the established church After four years of civil war Parliamentary forces led by Oliver Cromwell were victorious but the Puritan triumph was short lived With the failure of the English Revolution Puritans looked to create a permanent society in America based on their faith and ideals C The Puritan Imagination and Witchcraft Puritans thought that the physical world was full of supernatural forces their respect for spiritual forces perpetuated certain pagan superstitions shared by nearly everyone Between and Puritan civil authorities in Massachusetts and Connecticut hanged fourteen people for witchcraft In in Salem Massachusetts people were arrested and were hanged for witchcraft Popular revulsion against the executions dealt a blow to the dominance of religion in public life there were no more legal prosecutions for witchcraft after The European Enlightenment helped promote a more rational view of the world D A Yeoman Society Puritans instituted a fee simple land distribution policy that encouraged the development of self-governing communities All landowners had a voice in the town meeting Consequently ordinary New England farmers enjoyed far more political power than their European or Chesapeake counterparts Puritans believed in a social and economical hierarchy the largest plots of land were given to men of high social status As all male heads of families received some land a society of independent yeomen farmers emerged Town meetings chose selectmen levied taxes and enacted ordinances and regulations as the number of towns increased so did their power enhancing local control As one generation gave way to the next the farming communities of New England became more socially divided yet nearly all New Englanders had an opportunity to acquire property IV The Indians New World A Puritans and Pequots Seeing themselves as God s chosen people Puritans tried to justify taking Indian lands on religious grounds In Pequot warriors attacked English farmers who had intruded on their lands Puritan militiamen and their Indian allies massacred about Pequots and many of the Pequot survivors were sold into slavery English Puritans viewed the Indians as savages who did not deserve civilized treatment Disease military force and Christianization eventually subdued the Indians of New England By New England settlers were at least temporarily guaranteed safety B Metacom s Rebellion By the s whites in New England numbered while Indians numbered Seeking to stop the European advance the Wampanoag leader Metacom forged an alliance with the Narragansett and Nipmuck peoples in The group attacked white settlements throughout New England and the fighting continued until Metacom s death in Losses were high on both sides but the Indians losses were worse percent of the Indians already diminished population died from war or disease Many survivors were sold into slavery in the Caribbean including Metacom s family The defeated Algonquian peoples lost their land as well as the integrity of their traditional cultures C The Fur Trade and the Inland Peoples The greatest threat to Indian cultures came from wars and epidemics brought by the fur trade Nonetheless the Iroquois fought to gain control of the fur trade with the French and Dutch The Iroquois waged a series of successful wars against other tribes and these triumphs gave the Iroquois control of the fur trade with the French and the Dutch The Iroquois adopted non-Iroquois captives from these victories in order to replenish the Iroquois populations that had been diminished by epidemics and wartime losses Cultural diversity within Iroquois further increased as the Five Nations made peace with the French and allowed a number of Jesuit missionaries to live among them In the Iroquois repudiated their peace treaty with the French and again had to battle for control of the fur trade Disease sickness from liquor and neglected artisan skills were the fur trade s legacy Constant warfare shifted tribal power from cautious Indian elders to headstrong young warriors The fur trade profoundly altered the natural environment by severely depleting the animal population Chapter The British Empire in America - As the pace of English settlement of North America increased Britain instituted mercantilist policies that gradually resulted in the development of the first British Empire Though never totally successful and based on African slave trade the empire enriched Britain and elevated it to a major European power The Politics of Empire In the s through the s Charles II after restoring royal authority in England began the process by which a scattered group of colonies across the North Atlantic connected by British and European trade became a trading system or empire based on mercantilist theory The Restoration Colonies In an effort to pay off his debts King Charles II distributed title to vast lands in the colonies of New York Delaware Pennsylvania New Jersey and North and South Carolina to a few English aristocrats The character of life in each colony was established by the nature of the population and the power of the proprietor to rule While small farmers rebelled against proprietary rule in North Carolina colonists in South Carolina established a poorly governed slave regime In contrast Pennsylvania and Delaware were established as Quaker colonies in which farmers held land in fee simple and the people ruled through representative assemblies From Mercantilism to Dominion Recognizing the potential wealth of his colonies Charles II expanded the concept of mercantilism to encompass the various routes of trade and areas of production that were developing across the English colonies Through wars against the Dutch and a series of Navigation Acts Charles banned the Dutch and other foreigners from English trade and required English colonies to trade the goods they produced through England In doing so he began the process of transforming a disparate group of colonial economies into an integrated trading system To administrate this new system he created a new Board of Trade and imposed customs and duties When American colonists resisted these initiatives James II followed up his predecessor s economic policies by tightening the Crown s political and administrative control over the colonies establishing a vast centralized colonial administration over the northern colonies called the Dominion of New England The Glorious Revolution of James II s similar imposition of arbitrary power on the English people at home created similar discontent there When James s Spanish wife a Catholic gave birth to a son the prospect of a Catholic heir s returning to the throne precipitated a bloodless coup known as the Glorious Revolution In quick order colonists in Maryland and the Dominion of New England rebelled against the governors appointed by James II In Maryland and Massachusetts new royal colonies were established with appointed governors colonial assemblies and the formation of the Anglican Church or at least the right of Anglicans to worship In New York Jacob Leisler who replaced James II s appointed governor was himself ousted and then executed by members of a faction supported by the wealthy elite plunging the colony into factional political disputes that continued into the s In general the reorganization of royal colonies run by colonial assemblies representing the mercantile class allowed for the further development of a mercantile-based empire Imperial Wars and Native Peoples England s recommitment to Protestantism and to expanding its empire drew it into an on-again off-again conflict with France and Spain that lasted for most of the eighteenth century In North America the British continually resisted or tried to thwart French or Spanish efforts to consolidate or expand their colonial empires In King William s War and Queen Anne s War both the British and the French used Indian alliances to attempt to gain the upper hand In the South war raged along the Spanish border of Florida In the North forays between Canada and New England were hindered by an Indian alliance that maintained Indian neutrality While England gained vast Newfoundland and northern Canada the Spanish fortified their colonies from Florida to Texas Though the British still sought to create a unified colonial administration they gradually conceded that ruling haphazardly over a patchwork of rapidly growing and thriving colonies was sufficient The Imperial Slave Economy The engine of wealth driving the development of the British Empire was the South Atlantic system Using slaves transported from Africa to produce crops on land taken from native Americans the British produced marketable products that transformed the economies societies and political systems of four continents The African Background The diverse social economic political and cultural systems of different African peoples were fundamentally changed by the development of the slave trade Initially European trade with Africa had a positive effect on African life introducing new plants and animals to Africa that allowed African farmers to increase production and stimulating the African economy But as Europeans entered the slave trade and expanded it from a localized trade into a vast exportation of human beings from Africa to the Americas millions of people were taken from the continent in exchange for goods of trade As the slave trade drained Africa of capital centralized slave-trading states preyed on smaller egalitarian tribes and nations social hierarchies became more pronounced and fundamental social relationships were transformed The South Atlantic System In the West Indies the use of slaves to produce sugar enriched and empowered a small wealthy absentee aristocracy of planters many of whom spent their wealth in England Likewise the cost of furnishing and supplying the West Indies with goods services and food enriched manufacturers in Britain as well as merchants and farmers in the American colonies In the North American colonies social elites enriched directly or indirectly by the slave trade rose to power In the seaports of the North a merchant class many of whom held slaves rose to social and political power Beneath them a vibrant artisan and laboring class also developed In the South the planter elite further tightened their social and political control by modeling their behavior on that of the English aristocracy All this economic development and the social changes it set in motion occurred at the expense of Africa The exportation of millions of people diminished the wealth uprooted economies restructured societies and undermined the cultures of Africa Slavery and Society in the Chesapeake Though initially Africans who arrived as indentured servants in the Chesapeake colonies could gain freedom like any servant in time Virginia planters seeking to consolidate social order and responding to the availability of slaves from the developing South Atlantic system turned to a labor system of African slavery The Expansion of Slavery A combination of better conditions a more widely dispersed population and a smaller profit margin allowed planters in North America to employ less force and violence in disciplining slaves than did planters in the West Indies Hence slaves in the Chesapeake colonies lived longer than those in the West Indies and as a result they began to form a distinctive slave society African American Community and Resistance In contrast to the West Indies African slaves in North America established families developed kin relationships maintained social and cultural traditions and through interaction with other Africans created a new ethnic African American identity and culture Their impoverished enslaved status placed severe limits on their creative cultural expression however Most slaves resisted oppressive masters in subtle ways and negotiated the nature and conditions of work with their masters in ways unheard of in the West Indies Only one major slave uprising took place in the eighteenth century and it was brutally suppressed For slaves the cost of resistance was high The Northern Maritime Economy Because sugar production brought such high returns planters in the West Indies preferred to buy their produce livestock and supplies from others than to produce them at home This provided a ready market for grain livestock and supplies produced by farmers or craftsmen in the middle colonies The need to market these goods to the West Indies in exchange for bills of credit which colonial merchants then exchanged for manufactured goods from England triggered the development of several major port towns along the North American coast At these towns merchants exchanged goods and services within the empire manufacturers turned raw materials into finished goods and artisans produced fine goods for local merchants shipbuilders suppliers of naval stores and craftsmen maintained a growing fleet of ships to carry the trade of empire and laborers and slaves manned the ships hauled the cargo and performed menial tasks Likewise interior market towns from which produce from farther inland was shipped to the city also developed At all of these places society was differentiated by wealth class and culture A genteel elite established themselves at the top of seaport society Beneath the middle level of society was occupied by a variety of merchants and artisans who had moderate wealth Poorer artisans laborers workers and seamen formed a lower class which during economic downturns fell into dependence poverty and hunger The New Politics of Empire To facilitate the growth of trade British officials decided that when it came to colonial administration less was more By allowing the colonists a significant degree of self-government and economic autonomy in short by neglecting the need to establish administrative control they allowed the colonies to continue to grow and develop This policy of healthy or salutary neglect however would only make it much harder for subsequent ministers to regain control of the system when it was deemed necessary The Rise of the Assembly As the Whigs gained control in England and implemented their policy of salutary neglect colonial assemblies acquired more power and control over colonial affairs Though the assemblies were controlled by members of elite families who sought to rule without referring to the people s wishes urban mobs artisans and yeomen farmers demanded assemblies that were responsive to their needs and independent of British administration Salutary Neglect Sir Robert Walpole the leader of the Whig party in the House of Commons from through created a strong Court party by using an elaborate patronage system He filled numerous colonial posts with mediocre and corrupt officials and governors who were more interested in self-enrichment than in promoting colonial policy As a result American colonial assemblies dominated by merchant elites who routinely evaded British maritime laws and resisted the rule of corrupt governors grew accustomed to self-rule and viewed themselves as equals in the empire Their belief in the assemblies that responded to popular needs their lack of respect for colonial governors and their fear of high taxes and standing armies made Americans in general sympathetic to Radical or Real Whig criticisms of Walpole s government Consolidating the Mercantilist System Safeguarding British planters and merchants was the main focus of British mercantilist policy during Walpole s ministry To create a buffer between Spanish Florida and its Carolina colonies Walpole supported the creation of Georgia and from to fought a sporadic border war with the Spanish to secure it To channel trade within the mercantile system British officials also began to crack down on pervasive American violations of the Navigation Acts In a series of new laws they limited American manufacturers prohibited the issuing of currency and tried to limit the burgeoning trade between the colonies and the French West Indies In their efforts to control Americans some British officials began to think that a more rigorous colonial administrative system was needed Chapter The British Empire in North America - Chapter Instructional Objectives After you have taught this chapter your students should be able to answer the following questions How and why did Europeans bring Africans to American colonies as slaves How did African American communities in America respond to and resist their condition What was the structure of colonial government How did it operate Why did Englishmen and colonial citizens view the role of assemblies differently What was the role of the colonies within the British mercantilist system How did economic considerations affect political decision making in both England and North America British Empire in America - I The Politics of Empire A The Restoration Colonies Charles II gave the Carolinas to his aristocratic friends and gave his brother James the Duke of York the land between the Delaware and Connecticut Rivers James took possession of New Netherland and named it New York the adjacent land was established as New Jersey The proprietors of the new colonies sought to create a traditional social order with a gentry class and an established Church of England The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina prescribed a manorial system with nobility and serfs Poor families in North Carolina refused to work on large manors and chose to live on modest farms South Carolinians imposed their own design of government and attacked Indian settlements to acquire slaves for trade South Carolina remained an ill-governed and violence-ridden frontier settlement until the s Pennsylvania designed as a refuge for Quakers persecuted in England developed a pacifistic policy toward the Native Americans and became prosperous Quakers believed that people were imbued by God with an inner light of grace and understanding at opened salvation to everyone Penn s Frame of Government guaranteed religious freedom for all Christians and allowed all property-owning men to vote and hold office Ethnic diversity pacifism and freedom of conscience made Pennsylvania the most open and democratic of the Restoration colonies B From Mercantilism to Dominion In the s the English government imposed mercantilism via the Navigation Acts which regulated colonial commerce and manufacturing The Revenue Act of imposed a plantation duty on sugar and tobacco exports and created a staff of customs officials to collect it In commercial wars between and the English ended Dutch supremacy in the West African slave trade The English also dominated Atlantic commerce Many Americans resisted the mercantilist laws as burdensome and intrusive To enforce the laws the Lords of Trade pursued a punitive legal strategy in they denied the claim of Massachusetts to New Hampshire s territory instead creating New Hampshire as a separate colony In they annulled Massachusetts s charter When James II succeeded to the throne his insistence on the divine right of kings prompted English officials to create a centralized imperial system in America In the Connecticut and Rhode Island colonies were merged with those of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth to form the Dominion of New England a royal province Two years later New York and New Jersey were added to the Dominion Sir Edmund Andros governor of the Dominion was empowered to abolish existing legislative assemblies and rule by decree Andros advocated worship in the Church of England banned town meetings and challenged land titles The Puritans protested to the king regarding Andros s demands but their protests went unheeded C The Glorious Revolution of In James s Catholic wife gave birth to a son raising the prospect of a Catholic heir to the throne Fearing political persecution Protestant Parliamentary leaders carried out a bloodless coup known as the Glorious Revolution Mary James s Protestant daughter by his first wife and her husband William of Orange were enthroned Queen Mary II and William III accepted a Bill of Rights that limited royal prerogatives and increased personal liberties and parliamentary powers Parliamentary leaders relied upon John Locke s Two Treatises on Government to justify their coup Locke rejected divine right theories of monarchical rule Locke s celebration of individual rights and representative government had a lasting influence in America The Glorious Revolution sparked colonial rebellions against royal governments in Massachusetts Maryland and New York In Andros was shipped back to England and the new monarchs broke up the Dominion of New England The monarchs did not restore Puritan dominated government instead they created a new royal colony of Massachusetts whose new charter granted religious freedom to members of the Church of England and gave the vote to all male property owners instead of Puritans only The uprising in Maryland had both political and religious causes Protestants resented rising taxes and high fees imposed by wealthy Catholic proprietary officials In New York the rebellion against the Dominion of New England began a decade of violence and political conflict The uprisings in Boston and New York toppled the authoritarian Dominion of New England and won the restoration of internal self-government In England the new constitutional monarchs promoted an empire based on commerce salutary neglect gave free reign to merchants and financiers who developed American colonies as a source of trade Colonies that were of minor economic or political importance Connecticut and Rhode Island retained their corporate governments or proprietary institutions Pennsylvania Maryland the Carolinas while royal governors ruled the lucrative staple-producing settlementsin the West Indies and Virginia D Imperial Wars and Native Peoples Between and Britain and France fought wars for dominance of Western Europe These wars involved a number of Native American warriors armed with European weapons The War of the Spanish Succession pitted Britain against France and Spain So that they might help to protect their English settlement whites in the Carolinas armed the Creek peoples to fend off French and Spanish attacks The Creeks took this opportunity to become the dominant tribe in the region Native Americans also played a central role in the fighting in the Northeast aided by the French the Abnakis and Mohawks took revenge on the Puritans attacking settlements in Maine and Massachusetts New Englanders responded by joining British forces in attacks on French strongholds in Nova Scotia and Quebec The New York frontier remained quiet due to the fur trade and the Iroquois policy of aggressive neutrality trading with the British and the French but refusing to fight for either side Britain used victories in Europe to win territorial and commercial concessions in the Americas in the Treaty of Utrecht solidifying Britain s supremacy and bringing peace to North America II The Imperial Slave Economy A The South Atlantic System Triangular Trade The South Atlantic system was composed of land seized from the Indians slave labor from Africa and investment capital from Europe To provide labor for the sugar plantations the British and French developed African-run slave-catching systems that extended far into the interior of Africa They transported about Africans per year to the Americas - million African slaves to Americas most to West Indies The Portuguese and Dutch developed sugar plantations in Brazil and the English and French carried the industry into the subtropical islands of the West Indies sugar was the most profitable crop in Europe and America Due to the Navigation Acts by re-exports of American sugar and tobacco accounted for half of all British exports The South Atlantic system brought wealth to the European economy but it brought economic decline political change and human tragedy to West Africa and parts of East Africa The slave trade changed West African society by promoting centralized states and military conquest by kingdoms such as Barsally Dahomey and Asante Some African people of noble birth enslaved and sold those of lesser status however slaving remained an act of choice for Africans not a necessity Benin for example opposed the trade in male slaves for over a century Due to slave taking the resulting imbalance of the sexes allowed some African men to take several wives changing the nature of marriage The Atlantic trade prompted harsher forms of slavery in Africa eroding the dignity of human life African slaves who were forced to endure the Middle Passage suffered the bleakest fate many were literally worked to death on the sugar plantations since it was cheaper to replace a dead slave than to keep him alive B Slavery in the Chesapeake and South Carolina After planters in Virginia and Maryland imported thousands of slaves and created a slave society Slavery was increasingly defined in racial terms in Virginia virtually all resident Africans were declared slaves Living and working conditions in Maryland and Virginia allowed slaves to live relatively long lives Some tobacco planters tried to increase their workforce through reproduction purchasing a high proportion of females and encouraging large families By the middle of the s American-born slaves formed a majority among Chesapeake blacks The slave population in South Carolina suffered many deaths and had few births therefore the importation of new slaves re-Africanized the black population South Carolina slaves were much more oppressed Growing rice required work amidst pools of putrid water and mosquito-borne epidemic diseases took thousands of African lives C African American Community and Resistance Slaves initially did not regard one another as Africans or blacks but as members of a specific family clan or people The acquisition of a common language and a more equal gender ratio were prerequisites for the creation of an African American community As enslaved blacks forged a new identity in America their lives continued to be shaped by their African past influencing decorative motifs housing design and religious patterns African creativity was limited because slaves were denied education and had few material goods Slaves who resisted their rigorous work routine were punished with beatings whippings and mutilation including amputation The extent of violence toward slaves depended on the size and the density of the slave population a smaller slave population usually meant less violence while predominantly African-populated colonies suffered more violence The Stono Rebellion in South Carolina was the largest slave uprising of the eighteenth century White militiamen killed many of the Stono rebels and dispersed the rest preventing a general uprising D The Southern Gentry As the southern colonies became slave societies life changed for whites as well as blacks As men lived longer patriarchy within the family reappeared The planter elite exercised authority over yeomen and black slaves the American equivalent of oppressed peasants and serfs To prevent rebellion the southern gentry paid attention to the concerns of middling and poor whites By the majority of English Chesapeake families owned a slave giving them a stake in the exploitative labor system Taxes were gradually reduced for poorer whites and poor yeomen and some tenants were allowed to vote In return the planter elite expected the yeomen and tenants to elect them to office and defer to their power By the s the gentry took on the trappings of wealth modeling themselves after the English aristocracy The profits of the South Atlantic system helped to form an increasingly well-educated refined and stable ruling class E The Northern Maritime Economy The South Atlantic system tied the whole British empire together economically West Indian trade created the first American merchant fortunes and the first urban industries in particular shipbuilding and the distilling of rum from West Indies sugar In the eighteenth century the expansion of Atlantic commerce in lumber and shipbuilding fueled rapid growth in the North American interior as well as in seaport cities and coastal towns A small group of wealthy landowners and merchants formed the top rank of the seaport society Artisan and shopkeeper families formed the middle ranks of seaport society and laboring men women and children formed the lowest ranks Between and involvement in the South Atlantic system brought economic uncertainty as well as jobs to northern workers and farmers III The New Politics of Empire A The Rise of Colonial Assemblies The triumph of the South Atlantic system changed the politics of empire the British were content to rule the colonies with a gentle hand and the colonists were in a position to challenge the rules of the mercantilist system In England a Declaration of Rights in strengthened the powers of the Commons at the expense of the crown American representative assemblies also wished to limit the powers of the crown and maintain their authority over taxes The colonial legislatures gradually won partial control of the budget and the appointment of local officials The rising power of the colonial assemblies created an elitist rather than a democratic political system Neither elitist assemblies nor wealthy property owners could impose unpopular edicts on the people Crowd actions were a regular part of political life in America and were used to enforce community values By the s most colonies had representative political institutions that were responsive to popular pressure and increasingly immune to British control B Salutary Neglect Salutary neglect more relaxed royal supervision of internal colonial affairs was a byproduct of the political system developed by Sir Robert Walpole a British Whig Radical Whigs argued that Walpole used patronage and bribery to create a strong Crown Party Landed gentlemen argued that Walpole s high taxes and bloated incompetent royal bureaucracy threatened the liberties of the British people Colonists maintaining that royal governors likewise abused their patronage powers tried to enhance the powers of provincial representative assemblies C Protecting the Mercantile System of Trade Walpole s main concern was to protect British commercial interests in America from the Spanish and the French Walpole arranged for Parliament to subsidize Georgia in order to protect the valuable rice colony of South Carolina Resisting British expansion into Georgia and growing trade with Mesoamerica Spanish naval forces sparked the War of Jenkins Ear in Walpole used this provocation to launch a predatory war against Spain s American Empire The War of Jenkins Ear became a part of the War of Austrian Succession bringing a new threat from France The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle returned the French naval fortress of Louisbourg to France after its capture by New England militiamen but the treaty also reaffirmed British military superiority over Spain effectively giving Georgia to the British Colonial merchants took advantage of a loophole in the Navigation Acts that allowed Americans to own ships and transport goods The lloophole allowed colonists to cut dramatically into commerce in the Atlantic The Molasses Act of placed a high tariff on imports of cheap French molasses to make British molasses competitive but sugar prices rose in the late s so the act was not enforced The Currency Act prevented colonies from establishing new land banks and prohibited the use of public currency to pay private debts This was in response to abuse of the land bank system by some colonial assemblies who issued too much paper currency and then required merchants to accept the worthless paper as legal tender In the s British officials vowed to replace salutary neglect with rigorous imperial control Chapter Summary Growth Diversity and Crisis Colonial Society - The abundance of land in the American colonies enabled most farmers and planters in contrast to Europe to own and operate their own farms take part in the burgeoning Atlantic marketplace exert considerable control over their families practice the religion of their choice and vote and participate as freemen in town and colony politics Continued migration to the colonies along with buoyant natural increase caused a steady growth in population As society became larger and spread to the West it faced more challenges and pressures Increasingly pluralistic and diverse American colonists confronted the world intellectually and spiritually in more complex and sophisticated ways Freehold Society in New England In New England population increase gradually outstripped the availability of land As the freehold ideal came under greater pressure New Englanders responded in a variety of traditional and creative ways Farm Families Women s Place Traditional society remained patriarchal Women in this world remained subordinate and had few rights in custom or law They deferred to men received less inheritance had fewer opportunities and had no role in public life Their traditional role as mother and helpmate to their man remained intact The declining size of family farms however did compel families to respond by reducing family size and increasing household production Though control of this production provided women with some basis for exerting more influence they still remained constricted by law custom religion and culture Farm Property Inheritance The availability of land remained the distinguishing feature of American life Though over time it became more difficult to acquire land especially for indentured servants the opportunity to own property was still much better in America than in Europe Land became the universal currency of social and family obligations Initially parents had enough land to give each of their children a sufficient plot and thus maintained some control over their lives As the amount of land parents were able to give their children declined however so too did their control over their children s lives Marriage which had often been no more than a legal contractual obligation involving the exchange of lands the dower right increasingly became a relationship based on love As the land became more crowded and family plots grew smaller parents responded by leaving their lands only to the oldest child providing for the other children with cash or goods or making accommodations for them in frontier towns Either way most New England towns remained communities of independent landowners The Crisis of Freehold Society By the s population pressure had divided lands so much that families were increasingly unable to provide for their children in the traditional ways Consequently they lost social control over their children Left without land many children rejected arranged marriages and migrated west to begin again Meanwhile many New England farmers responded to the pressures of a declining standard of living by trying to introduce more currency into the economy intensifying their farming methods developing household production bartering for goods and services with other farmers or establishing new towns on the frontier The Mid-Atlantic Toward a New Society Because diverse people from across Europe settled in the middle colonies they lacked the cultural uniformity of New England Nevertheless amid diversity the middle colonies established a social and political order that incorporated freedom and diversity and created a model for the future Opportunity and Equality In the Middle Atlantic colonies prosperity and immigration failed to assure social equality Traditional estates in New York left little freehold land available to settlers forcing many to settle for tenancy Across the middle colonies limited technology restrained the progress any individual family could make The wheat trade and rising land prices differentiated wealth and land ownership even further in the next generation enabling a class of agricultural capitalists to rise above yeomen farmers and a growing landless class This landless class was a labor supply that merchants and manufacturers would later tap to create the putting-out system Cultural Diversity These tensions were intensified by a patchwork of social and religious diversity across the middle colonies Germans Scots-Irish Quakers each had their own moral ethics values customs and practices Rather than try to create a new melting-pot society each group maintained its own ethnic and cultural identities and contributed to a pluralistic society while living in a British-defined political system Religious Identity and Political Conflict Eventually however the separation between church discipline and political power compelled some sects to try to exert social control When the Quakers translated their self-disciplining strategies into politics other groups began to oppose them increasing political and social friction Nevertheless the Middle Atlantic colonies were able to develop an open political order that could generally navigate all the various social and political tensions inherent in a pluralistic society The Enlightenment and the Great Awakening These pressures which threatened the freehold ideal undermined the social order and thwarted individual action and initiative made many Americans receptive to two cultural movements from Europe that swept across the colonies before mid-century the Enlightenment and the Great Awakening The Enlightenment in America Urban merchants middling people and some farmers and planters embraced the rationalist ideas of the Enlightenment which argued that through the scientific method one could analyze understand and change both the natural and the human world Enlightenment thinkers such as Ben Franklin established newspapers founded institutions of learning hospitals and orphanages and enhanced urban services in order to spread scientific and humanistic knowledge improve the quality of civic society and contribute to the progress of humanity In doing so they created a secular environment that welcomed rational critiques of society and politics and sought ways to reform both Pietism in America Rural society was more receptive to the Great Awakening a religious revival that swept the colonies after Tapping the individualist impulse in American society the traveling ministers of the Awakening encouraged individuals to become receptive to God s grace by humbling themselves before him accepting his power and emotionally committing themselves to lives of faith piety prayer and good works in order to achieve salvation They preached deeply emotional sermons and led enthusiastic prayer meetings that prompted individual and group conversion experiences Their influence spread across the colonies affecting the enthusiastic the curious and the skeptical alike in a Great Awakening The Awakening in the North Stirred by highly emotional sermons on the equality of souls and the power of the individual to effect his or her spiritual fate New Light Presbyterians Baptists and Congregationalists the most powerful forces in the revival threatened the Old Light or Anglican religious establishments across the North New Light separatist churches broke off from Old Light churches They challenged the traditional clergy questioned the values of the marketplace and established new colleges Social and Religious Conflict in the South In the southern colonies New Light Presbyterians and Baptists challenged the authority of the Anglican Church and the hierarchical social order it supported Artisans and farmers were empowered by Presbyterianism while the Baptist Church appealed to poor whites and black slaves who transformed a religious revival into a challenge to the slave system itself Both threatened the cultural and political power of the elite and challenged the secular hierarchical genteel life of the elite The Protestant revival became a dominant tradition in American life empowering yeomen farmers and poor whites and giving African Americans a new Protestant spiritual identity The Midcentury Challenge War Trade and Social Conflict Pietism and the Enlightenment swept across colonies that were being transformed by political pressures arising from continuing prosperity As the Americans increased their standard of living they found themselves deeper in debt to British creditors In addition the westward push of American settlers increased colonial conflicts between westerners and more important led to new disputes with the Indians and the French over rights to western lands The British decision to wage war to defend the empire ended up redefining it The war convinced the British that they needed to change their colonial policy and transform their relationship with the American colonies The Great War for Empire The rapid population increase of the American colonies shifted the balance of power among the British French and Spanish colonies in North America by increasing British power It also changed the colonies relationship with the Indians When the British sought to draw the Iroquois into an alliance and a group of American investors organized the Ohio Company to establish land claims along the Ohio River the French responded by reinforcing their claims militarily William Pitt a colonial expansionist chose to respond to French seizure of an expedition led by George Washington with a full-scale war against the French For taking Quebec and Montreal suppressing a widespread Indian revolt and achieving military success around the world the British acquired Canada lands to the east of the Mississippi River and Spanish Florida in the Treaty of Paris Burdened by war debt and disturbed by the Americans lack of cooperation and deference during the joint war effort many British officials became convinced that they had to strengthen British imperial control over the colonies British Economic Growth Britain s power was based on its developing industrial and commercial power Its best customers were American colonists who increased their agricultural exports to pay for more and more imports Their spending outstripped their rising income however and as they increased their standard of living they increased debt to British creditors too American colonists lived better than ever before but they were also more dependent on outsiders than ever before Land Conflicts and Western Uprisings The quest for land increased the number of land disputes across the colonies As more farmers struggled to maintain their status and feared becoming an American tenant peasantry the ownership of vast lands by proprietors and aristocrats became more unpopular On the frontier settlers again found themselves without colonial protection in their con-frontation with Indians over land rights Settlers in western North Carolina felt they had insufficient institutions were under-represented in the colonial assembly and were treated unfairly by eastern creditors Disputes over these issues threatened to erupt into a small civil war a number of times These social and political tensions reflecting the rising economic and political power of westerners presaged a broadening awareness of the potential economic and political power of the colonies Chapter Growth and Crisis in Colonial Society - Instructional Objectives After you have taught this chapter your students should be able to answer the following questions Analyze regional differences in settlement patterns labor conditions and religious identity between freehold society in New England and the diverse communities of the Middle Atlantic How did the Enlightenment affect the emerging intellectuallife of American society What were the consequences of the Great Awakening and how would you assess these consequences How and why did the Great War for Empire change the balance of imperial power in North America Growth and Crisis in Colonial Society I Freehold Society in New England A Farm Families Women s Place Men claimed power in the state and authority in the family women were subordinates Women in the colonies were raised to be dutiful helpmates to their husbands The labor of the Puritan women was crucial to rural household economy More women than men joined the churches so that their children could be baptized A gradual reduction in farm size prompted couples to have fewer children With fewer children women had more time to enhance their families standard of living Still most New England women lived according to the conventional view that they should be employed only in the home and only doing women s work B Farm Property Inheritance Men who migrated to the colonies escaped many traditional constraints including lack of land When indentures ended for servants some climbed from laborer to tenant to freeholder Children in successful farm families received a marriage portion Parents chose their children s partners because the family s prosperity depended on it Brides relinquished ownership of their land and property to their husbands Fathers had a cultural duty to provide inheritances for their children Farmers created whole communities composed of independent property owners C The Crisis of Freehold Society With each generation the population of New England doubled mostly from natural increase Parents had less land to give their children so they had less control over their children s lives By using primitive methods of birth control many families were able to have fewer children Families petitioned the government for land grants and hacked new farms out of the forest Land was used more productively crops of wheat and barley were replaced with highyielding potatoes and corn A system of community exchange helped preserve the freeholder ideal II The Middle Atlantic Toward a New Society A Economic Growth and Social Inequality Fertile lands and long growing seasons attracted migrants to the Middle Atlantic As freehold land became scarce in New York manorial lords attracted tenants by granting long leases and the right to sell improvements such as barns and houses Inefficient farm implements kept most tenants from saving enough to acquire freehold farmsteads Rural Pennsylvania and New Jersey were initially marked by relative economic equality With the rise of the wheat trade and an influx of poor settlers a class of wealthy agricultural capitalists gradually emerged Merchants and artisans took advantage of the supply of labor and organized an outwork manufacturing system As colonies became crowded and socially divided farm families feared a return to peasant status B Cultural Diversity The middle colonies were a patchwork of ethnically and religiously diverse communities Quakers the dominant social group in Pennsylvania were pacifists who dealt peaceably with Native Americans and condemned slavery The Quaker vision attracted many Germans fleeing war religious persecution and poverty Germans guarded their language and cultural heritage encouraging their children to marry within the community Emigrants from Ireland formed the largest group of incoming Europeans Revivals helped to shrink the gulf between blacks and whites and gave blacks a new sense of spiritual identity IV The Midcentury Challenge War Trade and Social Conflict A The French and Indian War Indians who in still controlled the interior of North America used their control of the fur trade to bargain with both the British and the French European governments began to refuse to bargain and Indian alliances crumbled The escalating Anglo-American demand for Indian lands met with strong Indian resistance The Ohio Company obtained a royal grant of acres along the upper Ohio River land controlled by Indians To counter Britain s movement into the Ohio Valley the French set up a series of forts The French seized George Washington and his men as they tried to support the Ohio Company s claim to the land Britain dispatched forces to America where they joined with the militia in attacking French forts In June British troops and Puritan militiamen captured Fort Beaus jour in France and deported French residents from their homes in Nova Scotia French Acadia to France Louisiana the West Indies and South Carolina In July General Edward Braddock and his British troops were soundly defeated by a small group of French and Indians at Fort Duquesne B The Great War for Empire In Britain and Prussia aligned against France and Austria in the Seven Years War Britain saw France as its main obstacle to further expansion in profitable overseas trading William Pitt a committed expansionist planned to cripple France by attacking its colonies The fall of Quebec the heart of France s empire was the turning point of the war The British in India West Africa Cuba and the Philippines seized French trade and territory The Treaty of Paris of granted British sovereignty over half the continent of North America In the Ottawa chief Pontiac and his Indian allies captured British garrisons and killed many settlers The Indian alliance gradually weakened and they accepted the British as their new political fathers In return the British established the Proclamation Line of barring settlers from going west of the Appalachians The war for empire gained land for the crown but did not provide the expansionist-minded Americans with the new land they wanted C British Economic Growth and the Consumer Revolution Britain had unprecedented economic resources and it became the first industrial nation The new machines and business practices of the Industrial Revolution allowed Britain to sell goods at lower prices particularly in the mainland colonies The first consumer revolution raised the living standard of many Americans Americans paid for British imports by increasing their exports of wheat rice and tobacco The first American spending binge landed many colonists in debt The loss of military contracts and subsidies made it difficult for Americans to purchase British goods Americans had become dependent on overseas creditors and international economic conditions D Land Conflicts The growth of the colonial population caused conflicts over land particularly in Pennsylvania and Connecticut In the Hudson River Valley Massachusetts settlers tried to claim manor lands Wappinger Indians reasserted ownership to lands they had once owned and tenants asserted ownership over land they leased British general Thomas Gage and his men joined local sheriffs to suppress these uprisings English aristocrats in New Jersey and the southern colonies successfully asserted legal claims to land based on outdated charters Proprietary power increased the resemblance between rural societies in Europe and America Tenants and freeholders had to search for cheap freehold land in the West E Western Uprisings Movement to the western frontier created new disputes over Indian policy political representation and debts In Pennsylvania Scotch-Irish demands for the expulsion of Indians and the ensuing massacre led by the Paxton Boys left a legacy of racial hatred and political resentment In the North Carolina Regulators landowning vigilantes demanded greater political rights local courts and lower taxes from the wealthy coastal planters who controlled the government The Moderators a rival group forced the Regulators to accept the authority of the colonial government but the underlying problems were not addressed Tobacco prices plummeted after the Great War for Empire forcing debt-ridden farmers into court Debtors joined with the Regulators to intimidate judges close courts and free their comrades from jail The royal governor mobilized the eastern militia against the Regulator force and the result was the defeat of the Regulators and the execution of their leaders Tied to Britain yet growing resistant of its control America had the potential for independent existence Chapter Toward Independence - Expanded Timeline - British national debt doubles The cost of the British victory in the Great War for Empire was extremely high To finance the war the British doubled the national debt The British administrative response to this financial crisis was to raise taxes at home and in the colonies George III becomes king In George III ascended to the throne Young and energetic George III would support those who favored a more activist and expansionist colonial policy Revenue Act reforms customs service Determined to gain more control over the trading system in the American colonies British officials towards the end of the Great War for Empire began to press for legislative reforms that would plug loop holes and enforce the payment of duties The first effort in this strategy was the Revenue Act This legislation required customs officials to serve in the office to which they were appointed rather than leasing it to a deputy in return for cash payments thereby placing more aggressive agents in the colonies Royal Navy arrests smugglers In order to curb corruption and increase revenues in colonial trade the British government instructed the Royal Navy to stop American merchants who were illegally trading grain with the French West Indies Treaty of Paris ends Great War for Empire Proclamation Line restricts settlement west of Appalachians British troops stationed in colonies The Treaty of Paris confirmed the triumph of the British over the French in the Great War for Empire The British acquired French Canada and all the French territory east of the Mississippi River as well as Spanish Florida Concerns over Indian occupation of the lands west of the Appalachian in the wake of Pontiac s uprising prompted British officials to issue the Proclamation of which prohibited British colonial settlement west of the Appalachians To enforce the Proclamation as well as to control the French population of Canada and safeguard Florida the British placed a peacetime army of men in the colonies George Grenville becomes Prime Minister John Wilkes demands reforms in England The new prime minister George Grenville strongly supported a more aggressive administrative policy over the colonies He believed revenues from the Americans could be increased by closer regulation of colonial trade and that Americans needed to submit to Parliamentary authority Meanwhile in England the increased taxes government power and fears of corruption generated political demands for a greater representation of the people in Parliament The Radical Whig John Wilkes was the most outspoken critic of the government Currency Act protects British merchants Sugar Act places duty on French molasses Colonists oppose vice-admiralty courts To increase revenue from America and assert Parliamentary authority over the colonies George Grenville won Parliamentary approval of both the Currency Act and the Sugar Act in The Currency Act prohibited the issuing of paper currency in all the colonies The Sugar Act shrewdly lowered the duty on French molasses to enhance the competitiveness of British molasses while increasing regulation of illegal trade through vice admiralty courts American colonists protested the act because they feared it would eliminate necessary trade with the French Islands They also questioned theconstitutionality of the vice admiralty courts Mostly they opposed this increased exertion of British authority The Stamp Act imposes direct tax on colonies The Quartering Act provides for British troops Riots by Sons of Liberty Stamp Act Congress First nonimportation movement To acquire even more revenue from the American colonies Grenville gained passage of the Stamp Act which imposed a tax on all legal documents newspapers and correspondence To force colonists to pay for their own defense he also gained passage of the Quartering Act which required colonists to house and feed British troops in America While urban street mobs motivated by economic self interest and spurred on by religion enthusiasm and class animosity rejected this assertion of authority with violence political leaders called the Stamp Act Congress Arguing that only elected representative of the colonists could impose taxes the delegates opposed the tax on constitutional grounds Meanwhile patriots and their supporters organized a nonimportation movement against British goods This combining of direct action and constitutional debates transformed the colonial response into a resistance movement First compromise Stamp Act repealed and Declaratory Act passed A new prime minister Lord Rockingham opposed the Stamp Act Caught between London merchants who suffered at the hands of the colonial boycott and thus favored its repeal and conservatives who insisted that England must respond to colonial resistance with force Rockingham forged a compromise The Stamp Act was repealed and duties against colonial trade were reduced At the same time Parliament issued the Declaratory Act that asserted Parliament s authority over the colonies This ambiguous response allowed plenty of room for negotiation Townshend Duties on certain colonial imports Restraining Act in New York temporarily suspends colonial assembly there Daughters of Liberty make homespun cloth Influenced by George Grenville s persistent demand to find revenue in America Charles Townshend recommitted the British government to this agenda The Townshend Act levied a series of duties on trade goods imported into the colonies to raise revenue to pay for royal officials and support the military Townshend also responded to New York s resistance to the Quartering Act by suspending their assembly until it submitted In response the colonists again refused to pay the duties formed new political groups to organize resistance and rejected the right of Parliament to tax them Meanwhile American women responded to the second nonimportation movement by trying to replace imports with the home production of cloth called homespun Second nonimportation movement British armies occupy Boston In response to the Townshend duties American patriots organized a second nonimportation movement Deepening colonial resistance prompted the British to choose military coercion rather than debate and send troops to Boston Meanwhile the boycott organized by the colonists against the British began to cut seriously into trade Second compromise Townshend duties repealed Boston Massacre Lord North sought another compromise with the colonists He decided to repeal all but the tax on tea which he retained purely for symbolic reasons In response the Americans called off the boycott A spirit of compromise prevailed even as violence resulted in both New York and Boston from the presence of British troops In Boston when street mobs harassed British troops the troops fired into the crowd killing five men Though Boston rebels exploited the incident to broaden the movement against British rule a spirit of harmony tended to suppress the deep passions and mutual distrust between the colonists and the British Committees of Correspondence formed Fearful of British efforts to increase power over them the colonists formed numerous Committees of Correspondence Committee members exchanged information and ideas regularly by letter from colony to colony and from the cities and towns to the country These committees broadened the resistance movement even while compromise prevailed Tea Act assists British East India Company Boston Tea Party Lord North revived American resistance by passing the Tea Act in Meant to help the East India Company by giving it a monopoly on tea sales in the colonies the colonists viewed it asan effort to put American merchants out of business and enforce Parliament s authority to tax the colonies Committees of Correspondence organized widespread boycotts and resistance to the shipment of tea to the colonial ports When the Governor of Massachusetts maneuvered to force a shipment of tea into Boston Boston Patriots stormed the ship and threw its cargo of tea into the harbor Coercive Acts punish Massachusetts Quebec Act offends patriots First Continental Congress Third nonimportation movement Loyalists organize The British sought to punish the Bostonians by compelling them to submit to a series of parliamentary acts The Port Bill closed the harbor The Government Act ended Massachusetts political autonomy by annulling its charter and prohibiting public meetings A new Quartering Act required colonists to accommodate more troops The Justice Act took trials out of Massachusetts to other colonies These acts combined with the Quebec Act which legalized Catholicism in Quebec led to a broad based call for a Continental Congress Though many delegates sought compromise at the Congress the majority stated its repudiation of Parliamentary authority and launched commercial warfare against Britain through a massive nonimportation movement While the countryside prepared for armed resistance the Massachusetts House defied British authority by continuing to meet outside of Boston General Thomas Gage marches to Lexington and Concord When General Thomas Gage went into the countryside outside of Boston to arrest colonial leaders and capture supplies he encountered a countryside in rebellion British troops did battle against colonial forces at Lexington and Concord Debate and resist Events of the American Revolution Battle Event Date Significance Lexington Concord April Forewarned by Paul Revere American militiamen fought British troops on April th The battle first broke out at Concord Seventy-three British soldiers were killed and over were wounded The Americans lost soldiers and suffered wounded This marked the beginning of the Revolutionary War Battle of Bunker Hill Breed s Hill June The Americans occupied Bunker Hill overlooking Boston The British commanded by General Gage had no choice but to attack the Americans In a hard fought battle the American were forced to withdraw While the British were victorious they suffered heavy losses Attack on Canada September December In September Benedict Arnold set off with an American force to capture Quebec It was not until December that Arnold's troops were ready to attack The attack failed and the Americans were repulsed after suffering heavy losses Common Sense Published January Common Sense argued that the time had come to sever colonial ties with England This pamphlet sold copies in the first three months and was instrumental in convincing many colonists to join the revolutionary cause Declaration of Independence Signed July Twelve colonies voted in favor of the Declaration of Independence New York abstained This Declaration stated