Federalism: If you learn only one thing about the American system of government in this class, then learn this: the U.S. has a federal system of government. Unlike unified or centralized systems (such as monarchies), the U.S. system divides sovereignty (power or authority to govern) among three levels of government: local, state, and national. Or, more accurately, ultimate authority resides in the people (“We the People...”; “...of the people, by the people, for the people”) and the operation of government is divided among the three levels. Under the Constitution, each level has sovereignty within in its sphere. Their experience during the late colonial period and the Revolutionary War taught Americans to distrust centralized or distant authority. Instead, they demanded representative government (republican government).  And many preferred that most of the power be kept close at hand—on the state level. As the U.S. grew, however, tensions arose between a group known as the Anti-Federalists later the Democratic-Republicans (followers of Thomas Jefferson) and the Federalists (followers of Alexander Hamilton). The two groups fundamentally disagreed over what the U.S. should become. Jeffersonians wanted America to be made up of small republics where a homogeneous (not diverse) population of small farmers (yeomen) toiled close to the earth and governed themselves. Hamiltonians, on the other hand, envisioned an expansive American industrial empire governed by an educated and wealthy elite. Under this view, power had to be more centralized so that government could protect business and America could compete with the Great European powers, notably Britain. As with all things American, neither side won completely. Instead, what we had was a compromise that satisfied neither side fully. American history, therefore, has seen an uneasy working out of conflict over who is in charge (central or local), whether it is the conflicts over tariff and banking policy in the early national and Jacksonian periods, or the Civil War, or the New Deal, or the Civil Rights Movement.
 
 

King Henry VIII: English monarch (1509-1547) notable for having six wives and for treating them brutally when none could give him a surviving son; more notable for breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church in order to divorce his first wife and creating the Church of England (Anglican Church) – the break would lead to more than 100 years of conflict between Catholics and Anglicans over control of Great Britain

Queen Elizabeth I: English monarch (1558-1603), known as “The Virgin Queen” because she never married; a capable and strong-willed leader who benefited from a growing English commercial economy and an increasingly powerful navy; chartered the first permanent English colonies in the New World

Spanish Armada, 1588: Naval fleet sent by King Philip II to invade England; its defeat at the hands of English sailors, such as Francis Drake, marked a turning point of imperial relations in Europe (and the New World); Spain would never again be as strong a nation as it was before the defeat of the Armada

Enclosure Movement: In the sixteenth century, England underwent a significant internal reorganization. As wool  prices rose, landowners began fencing land (enclosing the land) to make more room for grazing sheep. Englishmen greatly increased the production of wool, channeling it through the Antwerp Wool Market. Huge profits were made, bringing more people into the market and increasing production even more. By mid-century England produced more wool than Europe could consume. The price crashed in 1551. The collapse of the market led English policymakers to search for ways to avoid such economic disaster in the future. They sought new markets as outlets of wool and cloth. And to get more capital into the economy, individual investors pooled their money in proto-corporations, or joint-stock companies.
     The Enclosure Movement forced poor tenants off the large estates that had been their home for centuries. Although population posed no problem in England, the visible presence of vagabonds and unemployed disturbed may powerful Englishmen. Many believed that England was over-populated and looked for some outlet.
     European rivals, Spain and France, had created colonies in the Caribbean and Florida causing further concern in England.
     The three elements (markets, surplus population, and international rivalry) created a nexus that provided the impulse for colonization.

John Cabot: Although England was but a rather negligible world power in the late fifteenth century, it mustered enough resources to begin its own age of exploration. In 1496, King Henry VII commissioned the Genoese sea captain John Cabot, “to seeke out, discover, and find  whatsoever isles, countreys, regions, or provinces of the heathen and infidels whatsover they be” and to look for a shorter sea route to “Cathay” (China). Cabot did not find the Northwest Passage, but he did discover the Grand Banks, a fishing region at the edge of the continental shelf and claimed them for England. Cabot was lost at sea on his second voyage. His son, Sebastian, retraced Cabot’s route and reached as far as the entrance into Hudson’s Bay

English Motives for Colonizing: The key architects of this movement for colonization were two cousins who became prominent in the court of Queen Elizabeth, Walter Raleigh and Richard Hakluyt. Raleigh provided the money; Hakluyt provided the reasoning. Hakluyt’s Discourse of Western Planting, (1584) offers the clearest expression of why England should create colonies in the New World. The Oxford clergyman wrote it to convince Queen Elizabeth I to grant permission to colonize America. The book suggests ways that colonies could benefit England: (1) to extend “the reformed religion”; (2) to expand trade; (3) to provide England with needed resources and markets; (4) to enlarge the Queen’s revenues and navy; (5) to discover a Northwest Passage to Asia; and (6) to provide an outlet for the growing English population.
 
 

Sir Walter Raleigh: Raleigh succeeded in winning a  charter to organize a private expedition to the area around Albemarle Sound at Roanoke Island in 1585. Raleigh’s 108-man team clashed with local Indians, but they remained through the winter. Hardship plagued the settlement, however, and in the late spring the group packed up and returned to England with Francis Drake when he happened by.   Croatoan, The Lost Colony: A ship had already been sent to relieve the first, but its eighteen men were killed in an Indian attack. A second expedition landed off Hatarask Island in July 1587. Led by Governor John White, its 117 men, women, and children resettled on Roanoke Island. White left the settlers, including his granddaughter, Virginia Dare (the first English child born in the New World), and returned to England for supplies. Before leaving, White carved the letters C.R.O. into a tree and told the men to carve a cross over them as a distress signal should they run into trouble before he returned. He did not return for three years because of the conflict with Spain and the Spanish Armada.       When White reached the place of the settlement in 1590, no one was there. He looked for a cross on the tree, but found none. He found only the word Croatoan carved into a post. Taking it to mean that the mission had moved to Croatoan Island, he sailed south in search of the settlers. He found no English settlement on Croatoan or anywhere else.      War with Philip II of Spain during the 1590s kept England from making another stab at colonizing the New World until the early 1600s. No trace of the Lost Colony of Roanoke has ever been found.

joint-stock company: Corporations created by investors who buy shares of the company in hope of getting rich off of the profits of the company

joint-stock colony: a colony controlled by a joint-stock company; shareholders determined the governance of the settlement; Virginia and Massachusetts Bay are joint-stock colonies at founding

proprietary colony: a colony controlled and owned by an individual or family: the later colonies, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, etc., all start out as proprietary colonies

Mercantilism: Economic system based on trade where a nation tries to export more than it imports. European nations establish empires to produce the goods needed to make them “self-sufficient.” As the system progresses, the mother country tries to control all elements of trade among its colonies.

		Queen Elizabeth’s death in 1603 did not interrupt Britain’s pursuit of global power. King James I, in 1606, granted charter to a joint-stock company headed by Richard Hakluyt. The Virginia Company of London, as it was known, divided the British claims in North America with a rival company, the Virginia Company of Plymouth. The original charters had no western boundaries; hence in theory, they ran from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The London Company was made up of merchants and gentry from the west of England and from London, itself.
Jamestown:		On December 20, 1606, three ships, the Susan Constant (120 tons), the Godspeed (40 tons), and the Discovery (20 tons) left London with 144 passengers, under the command of Captain Christopher Newport. The ships briefly laid over at the Canary Islands and the Bahamas, before arriving in Virginia at Chesapeake Bay on April 26th with 104 survivors.
		Following the orders of the London Company, and after facing a brief conflict with the local Indians, the Powhatan, the ships landed up the newly-named James River and encamped at what became Jamestown on May 13, 1607. Of the 104 survivors, 39 had noble titles and 36 more were described as gentlemen. The others were attendants, soldiers, and artisans skilled at metalwork—that is to say, they were goldsmiths and jewelers.      Among the soldiers was a boorish troublemaker of immense ego, Captain John Smith. Smith’s mouth more than once got him into trouble with his commanders, as near the Canaries he was accused of trying to foment a mutiny and so was locked up for the rest of the voyage. When the settlers unsealed their orders, however, they found that Smith was named to the Council of the Colony and put in command of the day-to-day running of the settlement.
Jamestown Map		From the outset, the settlement was in trouble. Located on the site of an abandoned Indian village and in the Powhatan hunting grounds, it continually faced Indian attack. Many of the settlers refused to work. Instead they searched for gold and left the chore of building shelter to the soldiers. Instead of gathering or hunting for food, many chose to steal it from the Indians, causing no small amount of hostility. The Indians, meanwhile, raided Jamestown to steal weapons and gunpowder. Smith tried to force all to work and, failing that, traded for Indian maize. The English also gave Chief Powhatan a formal coronation and made him an ally of King James. This briefly improved relations with the Indians, but did little to guarantee the success of the colony, neither did the arrival of some women to the community.      Conditions hit bottom during the winter of 1609-1610, after Smith returned to England as a result of an illness. That winter was known as “The Starving Time”: Crop yields were miniscule because of a drought, but there was still game in the woods and fish in the river. Despite that, however, starvation reduced the settlement’s population from nearly 500 down to 54 by the time a ship finally arrived with fresh provisions and new settlers in May 1610. Shockingly, settlers had resorted to cannibalism to survive. They dug up graves to eat the remains. Equally shocking, the new Assistant Governor recorded the settlers’ activities as he sailed in. They were not out foraging for food in the spring forests. They were bowling in the street! Obviously, this settlement needed a reworking.      In June 1610, Governor Lord De la Warr restored order through a new code, the Lawes Divine, Moral, and Martiall. All settlers were required to work in work gangs under military discipline. The day was divided by drumbeats: 6 a.m. until 10 a.m. they worked in the fields. During the heat of the day, they ate, did household chores, and rested. They were back in the fields again from 2 p.m. ‘til 4 p.m. If they still did not work hard then they would be punished. Punishments were also meted out for crimes, such as: rape, adultery, theft, lying, sacrilege, blasphemy, killing a domestic animal, weeding a garden, taking of a crop, and private trade. Anyone who ran away from the settlement and was caught was executed. The new rules helped save the colony, but they still could not feed themselves.      The colony had still not found its purpose and the London Company’s investors were beginning to wonder whether it had been worth it, particularly after a new round of conflict with the Powhatan emerged about 1611.

John Rolfe: Rolfe arrived in Jamestown in May 1610 aboard Gates’ ship. Rolfe had brought with him to Virginia some Spanish tobacco plantings, hoping successfully to cultivate them. By 1612, he gave his friends a small sampling of his produce to see if it suited their tastes. While not of the quality of Spanish tobacco at the time, it was still palatable enough for larger-scale cultivation. By 1617, Virginia shipped 20,000 pounds of tobacco (at 3 shillings per pound) to England and the crop became so profitable that if became known as “brown gold.”  Rolfe also brought peace with the Indians. In 1614, the First Powhatan War ended when Rolfe married the daughter of Chief Powhatan, Pocahontas. In 1616, Rolfe, Pocahontas, and their son traveled to England and Pocahontas met the King. Tragically, just before they set sail to return to the New World, the 22-year-old Pocahontas died, likely of pneumonia. She is buried in a churchyard at Gravesend.

Virginia, 1610s to 1620: With the colony saved, under new Governor Edwin Sandys, the London Company created a new policy for land distribution and to entice more settlers. The headright system promised that every new company shareholder who settled in Virginia would get 50 acres of land for himself and 50 acres for each “family member” he brought over, including servants. Further to entice settlement, the company a new constitution for the colony, granting settlers the “Rights of Englishmen.”
     In July 1619, Virginia created the House of Burgesses, the first legislative assembly in America. Its twenty-two members represented their local settlements and governed along with a Governor and executive council.
     Two other events in 1619 further expanded the colony: (1) more women arrived as the company sponsored the sale of women for wives – 90 women were bought for the princely sum of 125 pounds of tobacco – creating a better gender balance in the colony; (2) the first Africans arrived – they came on a Dutch trade ship, but were indentured servants, not slaves.
     An indenture is a contract. So, in return for the master’s paying their passage to the New World, an indentured servant contracts to work for a specific term, usually seven years. During that time the servant has no rights to property. Upon completion of the term, the servant is free to do whatever he or she wishes and under Virginia law would receive a headright of 50 acres.
     The policy created by the London Company to entice immigration to Virginia: each settler would receive 50 acres of land and an additional 50 acres for each family member – this helped to increase the population of the colony and make it more stable. The shift from a commodity-based company to a realtor changed the London Company’s relationship with the colony. The company’s new goal was to get as many people to Virginia as possible. It cared less about the condition of the settlers when they got there and so the condition of the colony suffered. Making matters worse, an Indian war arose.

Opechancanough’s Wars: Powhatan’s brother, Opechancanough, seems never to have accepted the settlers or his brother’s peace. Upon his brother’s death, in March 1622, he led raids on the settlement that turned into nearly two years of warfare and killed 347 settlers, including John Rolfe. The turmoil finally caused King James to appoint a Royal Commission to investigate the Company. It found that between 1607 and 1622 more than 14,000 people had emigrated to Virginia, but in 1624 only 1,132 of them still lived there. The investigation forced James I to revoke the Company’s charter and make Virginia a Royal Colony. Under the king’s authority for most of the remainder of the 1620s, Virginia stabilized and slowly began to prosper. In 1642, Governor William Berkeley arrived in Virginia to begin thirty-four years of stable governance. But colonizing was still no easy task. Conditions had sufficiently improved to make slavery a more viable economic choice. Relations with the Indians, however, remained difficult. In 1644, an elderly Opechancanough led a second raid on the colony. It, too, killed several hundred settlers, but this time, the colonists were strong enough to retaliate with great force. The raid was put down and hostilities with the local Indians ended.

“How miserable that man is that governs a people where six parts of seven at least are poor, indebted, discontented, and armed.” Governor William Berkeley

Bacon's Rebellion (1676): Tobacco production increased through the 1630s. But, ironically, it was so profitable that so many settlers began planting tobacco that for much of the period after 1650 it glutted the market, causing the price to fall, and pushing marginal farmers into severe debt. As the population of poor grew and as the colony spread deeper into the interior, above the falls at what would become Richmond and toward the Blue Ridge and up the Potomac, it became harder to govern the colony. Adding to public displeasure was the fact that Berkeley’s government had become a clique of family members and business relations. The colonial treasurer was a Berkeley cousin, as was the Secretary of State.      The discontent reached a head in 1675. Settlers on the frontier believed the government was not looking after their interests. In particular, they thought it was not protecting them from Indian attack – as settlement moved west it came into lands of different Indian tribes, notably the Susquehanna. A minor squabble between settlers and Indians along the Potomac turned ugly and left nearly twenty-five Indians dead. The Indians retaliated by attacking settlers along the frontier and the James River. The overseer of an up-river planter named Nathaniel Bacon was killed in a raid. Berkeley proposed a series of forts be built along the frontier, but the assembly believed it would be too expensive and besides what the settlers really wanted was to get rid of the Indians and take their land. Tensions grew.      In May 1676, Nathaniel Bacon led a group of vigilantes against the Indians, despite Berkeley’s prohibition. Then Bacon and his men, a collection of landless servants, small farmers, and slaves, turned around and went on a rampage down river, ultimately torching Jamestown itself. By October, the rebellion was over, however, and Bacon was dead, from malaria. Order was restored and Berkeley had twenty-three of the rebels executed. When news of the rebellion reached England, Berkeley was recalled and a new regime was put in place in Virginia, one that more clearly protected the interests of common Virginians.      A peace treaty was made with the Indians who were given reservations of protected land, leaving the rest for development by colonials. By 1677, the difficult infancy of Virginia ended. Now a toddler, the colony would prosper.

      Beyond staple crop agriculture, the plantation’s distinguishing mark was its social order, conceding nearly everything to the slaveowner. In theory, the planters’ rule was complete. From his Great House, he looked out upon trades-shops, barns, sheds, cabins, and other outbuildings that were known as “dependencies.” The plantation would also include all the various trades’ shops that would be necessary to run a large farm: blacksmith, tanner, cooper, carpenter, etc. As slavery replaced indentured servitude, the trades were often taken over by the slaves (dislocating white workers) and the gentry increased their dominion over their land and region (making workers white and black more dependent on them). But the masters’ authority radiated beyond the estate to statehouses, courtrooms, counting houses, churches, colleges, taverns, and the like.  

Puritanism: The reformed church created out of the English Reformation. Its main beliefs include a desire to “purify” the practices of the Christian church by eliminating many of the rites of the Roman Catholic church; belief in the idea of predestination; salvation by grace alone; local (congregational) selection of clergy; and personal reading of the Holy Bible; and election, as in those elected by God to be saved. Structurally, Puritans advanced the idea of a bottom-up organization, reversing the structure of the Catholic Church. This placed the congregation in charge of church government and the individual in charge of his own salvation.

During the reign of Elizabeth I, Puritans were not totally free to worship as they chose, but neither were they persecuted. King James I was less hospitable, however, and the Puritans split into two groups: the Puritans (who wanted to stay in England and work within the system to reform it) and the Separatists (who said enough is enough, England is lost beyond redemption; let’s find somewhere else to live). So they left the town of Scrooby in England and moved to the town of Leyden in the Netherlands in 1609. After years in Holland, the Scrooby Separatists feared the moral decay of their community amid the permissive Dutch culture. In 1619, they contracted with the London Company to settle in Virginia and the crown ensured that they could practice their religion freely there. With financial help from a group of merchant adventurers, they set up their voyage.
 
 

Plymouth Colony: In July 1620, 35 of the 238 members of the Leyden congregation, led by William Bradford, sailed aboard the Speedwell to Southampton to meet more Separatists and the 180-ton Mayflower. After two false starts, including a forced docking at Plymouth after the Speedwell turned out to be too leaky, the 102 saints and strangers set sail for Virginia. The Separatists called themselves the Saints – as in visible saints, those elected to heaven; the others, a majority of the passengers, they called strangers and included Anglicans and at least one Roman Catholic, Miles Standish. Two months later, 103 landed along Cape Cod – two babies were born and one youth died en route – some five hundred miles off course. Since they could not be governed under the London Company’s charter, being so far north, the men aboard agreed to write up a new contract for the settlement. Called the “Mayflower Compact”, it represented the first example of self-government in the New World. The settlers agreed to create a system of laws, to elect leaders, and to obey those laws and leaders.      A month later, on December 20th, after several reconnaissance missions, the settlers chose an abandoned Wampanoag village as the place to build their Plimoth Plantation. Out of food and exhausted, they soon discovered that they had made the right choice; for in the abandoned village they found buried a large store of maize, enough, when replenished with fish and game, to see the settlement through the winter.      In March of 1621 a truly strange coincidence further proved to the pilgrims that they were destined to come to Plymouth. A Mohegan Indian named Samoset arrived at the plantation to inform them that Massasoit, the Wampanoag chief, intended to visit. Another Indian, named Tisquantum, arrived with Samoset. Remarkably, Tisquantum began talking to the pilgrims in English and told them that he had seen London. Calling him Squanto, the pilgrims learned that he had been captured by European fishermen and sold into slavery to Spain. He had been in the West Indies and the Canaries and had escaped his Spanish captors and fled to England. While in England he learned English and then he arranged to board an English ship and sail back to America; just in time for him to be here when the pilgrims arrived. Squanto taught the pilgrims how to grow maize, fertilizing the ground with rotting fish. By the autumn, the pilgrims harvested their first crop and gave thanks to God for the bounty.      Through the 1620s, Plymouth grew into several communities, spreading from Cape Cod to the Kennebec River in what is now Maine.

Massachusetts Bay Colony: 1n 1623, with Plymouth established and growing, a group of settlers traveled north to Cape Ann looking for fishing grounds. English migrants from the town of Gloucester joined them and established the settlement of Gloucester. Within three years, a number of fishing villages dotted Cape Ann. In 1628, in search of more capital for better equipment and to generate more settlement, the sponsors of these settlements formed a joint-stock company, the Massachusetts Bay Company. They petitioned the king for a charter to lands between the southernmost point of the Charles River and the Merrimac River. The charter granted the “freemen” of the company the right to select all officers, admit newcomers to freemanship, to make laws and administer those laws through a general court. The company then sent Governor John Endecott and sixty Puritan followers to establish the town of Salem in 1629.
     The company’s primary goal was profit and economic opportunity, but conditions for the Puritans in England had deteriorated under Charles I, James I brother and an ardent Catholic. He had run into conflict with the Presbyterians in his native Scotland and he had no intention of tolerating the English Calvinists.
     During the 1630s, some 80,000 people left England for the New World. It was known as the Great Migration. Of those, about 20,000 came to Massachusetts Bay.
     In 1629, a group of well-placed and wealthy Puritan landholders drew up the Cambridge Agreement in which they pledged to go to the New World with their families and their fortunes. Although partly a business venture, the colony would be, as John Winthrop called it, a “Wilderness Zion,” a place of religious refuge for persecuted Puritans.
     In March 1630, led by Governor Winthrop, 400 Puritans left for the New World. They landed at Salem, June 12, 1630. 600 more Puritan settlers soon followed, ultimately to create a new community at the mouth of the Charles River to establish the Massachusetts Bay Colony. While aboard the Arbella, Winthrop set out his plan for the colony in a sermon, titled A Model Of Christian Charity based on the line from the Gospel of Matthew 5:14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid.”

Roger Williams: Williams was an ardent Separatist, but he came from England to Boston, not Plymouth. He would likely not have been happy anywhere, but he was especially unhappy in Boston. He believed that the Puritans’ earlier unwillingness to leave the Church of England contaminated him and would have nothing to do with them. So Williams made his way up to Salem to try out their congregation, but he found them just as unsatisfactory. Then he moved on to Plymouth to see if the Separatists themselves would meet his criteria. They did not. At its heart, Williams’ problem with the colonies was that he believed that there should be complete separation of church and state and that no one could be coerced into belief. He held that the “perfect church” could have no contact with the unregenerate. This eventually led him to believe that no true church was even possible on Earth.
     Back in Salem, Williams began to agitate against the government, claiming that magistrates had no authority in religious matters. As his criticisms became less restrained and more dangerous to the stability of the colony, Williams was brought before magistracy councils to renounce his opinions. He refused, and talk began about deporting him to England. Before that happened, however, Governor Winthrop allowed him to solve the problem himself. In the spring of 1636, he left Massachusetts and established the settlement on Narragansett Bay. He called it the Providence Plantation, and it was the first permanent settlement in Rhode Island.
     At Providence, Williams fulfilled all of his goals: (1) he bought the land from the Indians, something he had always criticized the settlers of Massachusetts Bay for not doing; (2) he permitted believers of any Faith and non-believers, as well, to live there; (3) government service required no religious test—there was complete separation of church and state.

Anne Hutchinson: In 1637, the 46 year-old midwife, pregnant with her 16th child, got into trouble in the Massachusetts Bay Colony by preaching the “covenant of grace.” That meant that one was freed from moral law by one’s faith and by God’s grace. She also contended that individuals could be in direct contact with God and receive His direct inspiration. This was heresy. Puritans argued that being among God’s elect proved that you had to show your election through works; and that it was a sin of pride to believe that God would have direct contact with any human. Hutchinson was forced out of Newtown (later Cambridge) in 1638. She first sought refuge in Narragansett country with a group of followers under William Coddington who eventually founded Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She then found her way to Long Island among the Dutch. In 1643, she was killed in an Indian attack.
     She has since become a symbol as a victim of the religious intolerance of the Puritans. But her life is more complicated than that. She did not fit in anywhere and may more likely have be victim of a time that did not respect the opinions of women. Winthrop called he death, “a special manifestation of divine justice.”

Those lands that were developed were parceled out to each man as tiny house-lots, with additional strips of arable meadow and woodland scattered around the village. Though property was not divvied up equally, each family received a share of land or crop in an organized communal fashion. All lands not distributed were held in common. The whole community used the “common lands” or “commons” for grazing cattle or sheep. As population grew, rights of private ownership and the ability to decide how to use one’s own land expanded. By the early 1700s, with town lands already distributed, the second or third generations of Puritans often had to move elsewhere to find opportunity. Thus, migration within and between colonies was common.       New England came to be characterized by family farms on which all toiled. Slaves, composed mostly of Creoles from the West Indies, worked as household servants and field hands. The region’s rocky soil kept farms small, although as the region moved into the eighteenth century, larger landholdings similar to plantations did develop in Rhode Island and along the Connecticut River, where tobacco had taken root. Slavery became increasingly important to these areas, but it was not so important that it kept New Englanders from abolishing it after moral questions were raised during the Revolution.      The New England economy eventually developed a powerful landholding, merchant class that traded internationally and dominated American shipping. Before that came about, however, the Puritans tried to create a self-sufficient economy. They hoped not only to produce enough food for the population, but also to establish industry.      The manufacture of iron goods and cloth were attempted without much success. The main problem for New Englanders was that they did not have the capital necessary to compete with English industry. And worse than that, the English had no intention of allowing them to compete. The fledgling Saugus Iron Works, the nation’s first industrial “factory” ran for less than five years in the 1650s. Textiles mills met a similar fate. Both were brought down by mercantilism.

Pequot’s War (1634-37): As the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies grew, they came into conflict with Indians trying to hold on to ancestral lands. Problems began when Narragansett allies to the Dutch were killed as they traveled through Pequot land and then the Dutch retaliated, killing the Pequot chief. After a brief peace, in 1636 the Pequot were implicated in the death of a settler and Massachusetts Bay sends a force of ninety men to destroy the Indian settlement. In retaliation for that, the Pequot attack Saybrook and Wethersfield, Connecticut. The colonials respond with the help of the Narragansett and destroy the Pequot settlement on the Mystic River, killing 700 tribesmen and capturing the rest. In the peace settlement, the Pequot are eliminated as a tribe and distributed among the Mohegan and the Narragansett.

King Philip’s War (1675-76):

Named after Chief Metacomet, whom the English called King Philip, tensions began when Philip’s older brother Alexander was imprisoned in Boston where he caught a fever and died. Then an Indian who had converted to Christianity and had testified against Alexander was murdered. When the English settlers executed three Wampanoag tribesmen for the murder, Metacomet retaliated by destroying the town of Swansea, killing eight. Colonial volunteers formed a brigade to avenge the town. Philip held the upper hand throughout the spring of 1675 until the third day of a siege at Brookfield when colonials killed eighty Indians.      For more than a year, war raged in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, colonials answering every Indian assault with an equally vicious attack. In a fierce battle near South Kingston, Rhode Island, the colonials destroyed the Indian settlement and killed more than seven hundred, wounding and leaving for dead another three hundred or so. By late summer 1676,  the Wampanoag had had enough. Philip escaped capture and ran away but was found out and killed in a final showdown. After his death, colonials forced the remaining Indians into submission, taking their land.      By the time it ended, thirteen colonial towns had been destroyed and at least six hundred settlers had been killed and nearly two thousand wounded. The defeated Indians fared far worse, losing more than one thousand to death and many of the remaining were captured and sold into slavery in the West Indies.

Salem Witch Trials, (1692): Historical event shrouded in foggy interpretation, at its heart it involved several young girls, likely influenced by the stories of a slave named Tituba, accusing people of being witches and of putting spells on them. As the hysteria grows, the town divides. In the end, 20 people are put to death for witchcraft and 100 more are imprisoned. At the peak of the hysteria, the girls confess that they made the whole thing up.
 
 

English Civil War: Religious conflict between Catholics and Puritans from 1617-1649 (although it dates back to the 1540s) and becomes particularly fierce in the 1640s, ending with the beheading of King Charles I and a victory by the Puritans; Puritans rule as a Long Parliament under Oliver Cromwell for ten years but monarchy is restored in 1660 in the person of Charles II

New York: In 1609, the Dutch East India Company had hired Henry Hudson to discover the “Northwest Passage.” Hudson sailed the coast of North America and located the river that now bears his name. He sailed as far up-river as he could but was stopped by rapids at what is now Albany, New York. Not able to go farther, he met with the local Mohican Indians and negotiated a contract for the Mohicans to provide furs to the Dutch. They sealed the deal with a few kegs of brandy.      In 1614, the Dutch established trading posts on Manhattan Island at the mouth of the river and Fort Orange at a site below the rapids. Ten years later, the Dutch West India Co. established a settlement at what is now Governor’s Island.      In 1626, Peter Minuit bought Manhattan Island from the Indians and moved the settlement there, calling it New Amsterdam. The colony spread west to the Delaware, east to the Connecticut River, and north to the Mohawk River but remained only thinly populated because its focus was on furs.      The company did encourage settlement. It established the patroon system, modeled after the European manorial and the French seigneurial systems. A stockholder governed a patroonship, a large estate on the Hudson River, if he peopled it with 50 adults within four years, and established herds, barns, mills, and any other necessities for farming. The tenants would treat him as “lord of the manor,” paying him rent, using his mill, and submitting to his authority.      The patroon system did little to entice settlers, however, because too much open land was available and few Dutchmen wanted to volunteer for serfdom.      The English Civil War raged for most of the decade of the 1640s and the Puritans took control of the English government in 1646. In 1649, they executed the king. The beheading ushered in eleven years of Commonwealth. In 1660, the Commonwealth collapsed and the people restored the Stuarts to the thrown.      The Restoration of the crown in England, in the person of Charles II, led to the official recognition of Rhode Island and Connecticut. It also led to new expansion into the new world.      The Dutch expanded their territories while the British were engaged in Civil War. The British Crown fretted over the Dutch presence dividing the English colonies and Dutch control of the best routes into the interior of North America (the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers). Charles II decided to push the Dutch out.      The rivalry resulted in war in 1664 when an English expedition led by Col. Richard Nicolls reached New Amsterdam. Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant vowed that the Dutch would fight. But without the supplies, weapons, or the will to withstand the English, the Dutch surrendered without a shot being fired. King Charles granted the lands to his brother James, the Duke of York and the colony became New York. Some of the Dutch returned to Holland, but most of them stayed. Nicolls was made governor.

With so many non-English in the colony, representative government was slow to evolve. Still, inhabitants were given certain guarantees: (1) local property holders could elect a constable and eight overseers to supervise town government; (2) the towns would be placed under justices of the peace named by the governor; (3) these justices aid the governor in making laws; and (4) because of the diverse polity--made up of Frenchmen, Swedes and Finns, as well as Dutch and English--there was complete religious toleration. In 1682, a legislature was established and wrote the Charter of Liberties and Privileges, guaranteeing colonists the “Rights of Englishmen.” But, in 1685, when James became King James II he turned New York into a royal colony, the charter was denied and the legislature dissolved.

Taking New Netherland gave England control of lands between the Hudson River and Delaware Bay. The Duke of York gave control of these lands to friends John Berkeley and George Carteret. The land became known as New Jersey. The colonies of East Jersey (Carteret) and West Jersey (Berkeley) became important outlets for surplus populations in New England and New York.

 

William Penn (1644-1718):A leading Quaker in West Jersey was William Penn. While at Oxford, Penn converted to Quakerism and in the middle 1670s became interested in America. With the land west of the Delaware River still unorganized, he hoped to establish a “Godly experiment” in the New World. He petitioned for a patent. Penn’s father had loaned the king £16000; so in 1681 Charles II granted Penn a patent to the land. As proprietor, Penn had the right to name the governor and establish a government.      The colony was to be named Pennsylvania, meaning “Penn’s woods.”  In 1682, Penn took control of the colony of Delaware when the Duke of York gave it to him. Delaware became a separate entity in 1703.      Motives of Quaker migration were economic, moral, and political, but religious freedom predominated. In the 1680s, persecution against Quakers intensified. Charles II dissolved Parliament and began to rule without constitutional restraint.

Politically, Penn was closely acquainted to a group called Whigs, a Parliamentary faction that challenged the authority of the King’s court. Penn advised Freeholders to guard their rights as Englishmen. “For the matters of liberty and privilege,” Penn declared, “I propose that which is extraordinary, and to leave myself and successors no power of doing mischief, that the will of one man may not hinder the good of the whole community.” Penn actively recruited settlers from throughout the British Isles and Europe, leading to a great diversity of population. English and Welsh Quakers made the journey, as did members of German dissenting religions such as Mennonite, Amish, Moravian; and Lutheran Rhenish Germans. Later in the century, Scots-Irish immigrants joined the English, Welsh, German, Dutch, Swedish, and Finnish settlers. A significant majority of the settlers who came to Pennsylvania were tradesmen; dominant among the remainder were merchants.

Penn’s Prospectus for Merchants, 1683 Your Provincial Settlements both within and without the Town, for Situation and Soil, are without Exception: Your City-Lot is an whole Street, and one side of a Street, from River to River, containing near one hundred Acers, not easily valued; which is besides your four hundred Acers in the City Liberties, part of your twenty thousand Acers in the Countery. Your Tannery hath such plenty of Bark, the Saw-Mill for Timber, the City-Lot for a Dock, [all] to help your People, that by God’s blessing the Affairs of the Society will naturally grow in their Reputation and Profit. I am sure I have not turned my back upon any Offer that tended to its Prosperity: and though I am ill at projects, I have sometimes put in for a Share . . .  advance her interest, [particularly in] whatsoever tends to the Promotion of Wine, and to the Manufacture of Linnen in these parts. . . . I shall add no more, but to assure you, that I am heartily inclined to advance your just Interest, and that you will always find me . . . Your Kind Cordial Friend.                                                                                                                     William Penn

In 1683, fifty ships carrying 3000 settlers arrived to establish Philadelphia (“City of Brotherly Love”). By 1700, the colony’s population topped 21,000.

William Penn and the Indians

The Deep South

The last colonies settled in the seventeenth century were the Carolinas. A proprietorship for the region south Virginia was arranged as early as 1629. At that time, Charles I rewarded Attorney General Robert Heath with the tract. Heath called it “Carolina”--a Latin form of Charles--but he did nothing to organize it. Some settlers did venture into the area around Charleston, but by the time of the Restoration, the land was under royal control. Some sources trace the name “Carolina” to the early French colonists, naming it for King Charles IX.

     In March 1663, wanting to stop Spanish encroachment north, Charles II gave Carolina to friends, wealthy landholders in other colonies. Many of the proprietors held land in the islands of the Barbados. Led by John Colleton, they formed the Corporation of Barbados Adventurers. Colleton hoped to use it as an outlet for the growing Barbadian population and to provide the Barbados with food. The company settled the southern section first. Thus, South Carolina became a “colony of a colony.”
     The Barbadian Adventurers distributed land along a headright system to recruit settlers. Immigrants were given 100 acres of land to settle. Persons too poor to pay their own way could come as indentured servants. The wealthier slaveholders who emigrated from the Barbados received an extra headright for each slave they brought—20 acres for a male and 10 acres for a female slave.
     The “first fleet” of settlers landed in September 1670, a  hundred more in February 1671. About 30 percent of the population was black—either Creole or African. Charleston quickly became the most important southern port in the colonies. It had the finest natural harbor on the Atlantic coast south of Chesapeake Bay.

The South Carolina economy was based on staple crop production: rice. The slaves from West Africa were experienced in the cultivation of rice, and they employed their expertise to make the proprietors rich. They were also cattle herders. Thus, South Carolina became a significant beef producer for the colonies. With a prospering economy based on slavery, the population of South Carolina swelled. Blacks were even more perfect inhabitants of South Carolina because they were better able to withstand the diseases of the semi-tropical climate. The cycle cell made them less susceptible to malaria. By 1720 (if not a bit earlier), blacks became a majority in the colony. It was the only colony ever to have a black majority.

     The northern region of Carolina was slower to develop. The first settlers of the region were Huguenots seeking refuge from Roman Catholic domination in France in the 1560s. That colony was wiped out by successive attacks by Indians and by the Spanish. Sir Walter Raleigh’s failed Roanoke adventure followed in the 1580s.
     Under Lord Albemarle, the region began to be settled in the 1660s. The first settlers were Virginians dissatisfied with opportunities there. After 1685, it was a refuge for Huguenots. Louis XIV’s persecution also caused Swiss and German Protestants to immigrate. Still, it grew slowly because of its isolation and inadequate harbors. Bath, the colony’s first town, was not founded until 1704. North Carolina did offer economic opportunity once settlement started in earnest and by the time of the Revolution its population topped 110,000.
     Its staple crop was tobacco, but the colony became equally important as a supplier of stores to the Royal Navy (naval stores): timber, tar, and turpentine.

     The last colony settled was Georgia. In 1733, James Oglethorpe received a royal charter for King George II to found a colony south of the Carolinas on land bought from the Creek Indians. The King’s goal was to have a buffer with Spanish Florida. Oglethorpe a Member of Parliament in the 1720s had grander plans. He had made prison reform, particularly prison for debt, a focus of his attention and sought to provide opportunity and a second chance for debtors in a sort-of penal colony. This drove Oglethorpe to establish Savannah. He arranged that slavery would be prohibited in in the colony and transported mulberry bushes to the settlement to create a silk industry.
     Oglethorpe and the first convicts arrived at the Savannah River in February 1733. The colony remained small, disorganized, and unprofitable until the Revolutionary Era. The silk industry failed. The penal system failed. And settlers turned to African slavery as their labor source, growing rice. Georgia became a royal colony in 1755. Even after that the colony remained small and concentrated around Savannah (surrounded by the Creek Confederacy). Not until the expansion of a cotton industry, especially after the invention of the cotton gin (1790s), and the Creek ceded more land (1805) did Georgia truly succeed.

Colonial Development Overview

Albion's Seed: Population Growth to 1760

     Interestingly, where the settler was from in England strongly influenced where he or she ended up in America. As David Hackett Fischer has written, America grew from Albion’s Seed. Men (mostly men anyway) from the south of England, from London to Bristol, tended to settle in the Chesapeake. Families from East Anglia, the shires of Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, as well as working-class Londoners, tended to settle in New England. Those from the Midlands and the north of England, as well as Wales, settled the mid-Atlantic colonies. And Scots and Scots-Irish (those who had first tried their hand at colonizing Northern Ireland) tended to settle in the “Backcountry,” the frontier lands of each colony nearing the Appalachian Mountains.
     Because the bulk of the population was comprised of newcomers, the social structure of the English colonies, at first glance, looked like that of the mother country. The social hierarchy that symbolized the class system in England was transplanted with the settlers, as “lesser” almost always deferred to the “betters.” A free-holder always deferred to a planter and a servant deferred to a free-holder.
     One fundamental difference did exist, however. The colonies were characterized by social mobility rather than a fixed class system. Many of the first landowners of Virginia had died or returned to England. The next wave of settlers was comprised of men of lesser means, having only one or two servants or no servants at all. They succeeded or failed by their own labors.
     The turmoil evinced by Bacon’s Rebellion or the others of which we will speak resulted from the fact that those who had made their own success refused to be governed by cliques or entrenched elites.

Immigration to America was extremely dangerous and lifespan in the colonies was very short early on. Diseases, such as diphtheria, small pox, yellow fever, malaria, and dysentery, ravaged the settlers, particularly in the Southern colonies, and kept population growth slow; as did the dearth of women. In 1625, the population of Virginia was about 2000. During the 1630s it grew slowly, but by the time of Opechancanough’s Second War in 1644 the population was still only 8,000. Within thirty years, however, Virginia’s population had quadrupled to about 32,000 and thirty years farther on, it doubled again to about 75,000. New England’s population grew more rapidly: from one hundred in 1620, to 12,000 in 1640, to more than 100,000 in 1700. And although the Middle Colonies of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York started later, they grew even more rapidly, reaching about 70,000 by 1700. Until about 1675, or so, growth came primarily from in-migration. After that it was caused by a combination of immigration and natural growth.

By the early 1700s, a somewhat more fixed social structure had developed, particularly in Virginia and South Carolina, at least at the upper end of society. Success brought more land and more slaves. Large planters formed a “gentry,” an aristocratic, well-educated, and refined elite who fancied themselves English country gentlemen.      Wealthy merchants in the Delaware Valley—Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and carrying over into Maryland—combined land-holding and business acumen to enter the upper class.      But points north and east (except for along the Hudson River where the wealthy old patroons carried over from the Dutch years) tended to be more middle class until later in the century when further urbanization had taken effect.      Along the Appalachian Backcountry life remained rustic and brutish for most of the colonial period. It is essential to note in all this, however, that a person could quickly move up or down the social ladder as his fortunes rose or fell in the fluid American economy.

Stage One: Social Simplification: Settlers take their inherited social structure, here the English class system, and simplify it to fit the new circumstances; especially outside of New England (but even there), there was a sense of unsettledness and disorientation as they forged a subsistence and then a profitable society in the wilderness Historical Development – gradually they become more settled - with more population (i.e. density and creolization) and with more economic wherewithal
Stage Two: Social Elaboration: Highly creolized variants of those found in Britain – including a growing acculturation of inhabitants to their local social environments, but not beyond closer replication of British norms as induced by the will and power of the community elites. Historical Development – with greater population resources and with improved economic prosperity, society becomes more settled and more internally complex
Stage Three: Social Replication: Established community by mid-1700s, but times and results vary from colony to colony Elites have strong desire to replicate British society in America and disproportionately contribute their will, dominating colony; they take pride in the metropolization, becoming models of the “good” life The replication of English society is not complete nor necessarily harmonious as creolization (frontier influence) alters institutions and norms. Tension exists over social design and which elites will rule. Historical Development – by the 1760s, the disparate colonies converge and out of this convergence comes an American cultural order waiting to be defined by the Revolution and independence

Slavery

The Plantation System: Beginning in the 1100s, planters began growing sugar in the Middle East and developed plantation-style agriculture—taking large productive units of land and labor to focus on a single cash crop. Sugar planters moved steadily across the Mediterranean, perfecting their organization and technology as they moved west. During the 1400s, sugar plantations crossed much of the Atlantic: the Azores, Madeiras, Canaries, and Cape Verde Islands. By the late 1500s, sugar made its way to Brazil and the plantation form of agriculture included production of tobacco, rice, coffee, hemp, and cotton.

The economy and land distribution structure in the Chesapeake and points south differed greatly from those in New England. First, they were built around single staple crops: either tobacco, rice, or sugar. Growing tobacco was incredibly labor intensive as it was planted as seedlings and had to be staked; fields had to be hoed and fertilized; plants topped, etc. Rice cultivation was not only labor-intensive, but was also outside of the English experience and so needed laborers not only for the work, but also with the expertise to grow it. The settlers at first preferred indentured servants because the short life expectancy in the colonies made buying slaves uneconomical. An indentured servant was person, often from the lower-classes in England, who in return for a sponsor paying their passage to America contracted to work for a fixed period of time (usually seven years); once their service was finished, indentured servants were free to pursue their own opportunities. They made up the majority of workers in the colony in the first fifty years of the settlement. As early as the 1640s, however, Virginians began employing slaves and once the colony’s living conditions stabilized and lifespan increased, after 1660, African slave labor became codified and soon predominated.

indentured servant: Person, often from the lower-classes in England, who in return for a sponsor paying their passage to America contracted to work for a fixed period of time (usually seven years); once their service was finished, they were free and could pursue their own opportunities. They made up the majority of workers in the colony in the first fifty years of the settlement. As early as the 1640s, however, Virginians began employing slaves and once the colony’s living conditions stabilized and lifespan increased, after 1660, African slave labor predominated
 

Triangular Trade: As the plantation economy expanded, two three-way trade systems among Africa, Europe, and the Americas developed. In one, sugar - producing Caribbean islands sent molasses to New England where it was turned into rum; then the rum along with other goods were shipped to Africa where they were traded for slaves; slaves then made the middle passage across the Atlantic to the sugar-producing islands and the rice and tobacco producing colonies. In the other, raw materials and food stuffs went from the Americas to Europe; manufactured goods from Europe were sent to the Americas and Africa; and then European traders shipped African slaves to the New World. Middle Passage: Horrific trip of slaves across the Atlantic from Africa to the New World. Estimates suggest that 10 million Africans were transported to the New World (about 5% coming to British North America or the U.S.) Slaves were crammed so tightly into ships that as many as 20% died from disease and starvation during passage. Schools of sharks followed ships to feed off of the dead slaves buried at sea

Why Africans?

• An African slave trade already existed across the Sahara and into the Middle East
• The enslavement of Indians by the Spanish had failed for several reasons: (1) the Indians died from disease (2) the Indians ran away
• Black Africans could be more easily identified and caught if they tried to run away
• Blackness had negative connotations in Europe
• Europeans considered themselves superior to the Africans.

Historians disagree about why slavery continued:

• At first many African workers were treated as indentured servants, but the terms of indenture grew longer until they lasted a lifetime.
• White indentured servants were freed while black servants were not. In some colonies, black servants lost other rights.
• Once life expectancies lengthened (c. 1660s) holding slaves cost less than indentured servants.
• Slaves’ children supplied the next generation of workers.
• Economic growth in England reduced the supply of white indentures after 1700
• Some historians argue that after the disruption of Bacon’s Rebellion, planter elites chose not to hire indentures because they were too much trouble and then used race and slavery to divide the poor and control southern society

James II’s agent, Governor-General Edmund Andros, arrived in Boston in December 1686. Even had Andros not been overly authoritarian, he would have faced a discontented citizenry; but Andros’ officiousness and the excesses of King James II back in England combined to create the short and very unhappy history of the Dominion of New England. Older, larger, and more independent minded, Massachusetts bristled at the new regime. Andros tried to appease the colony by guaranteeing that laws enacted by the General Court and not in direct violation of new principles would remain in effect, but in areas of taxation, representation, and religion the citizens found his authority unacceptable. One of Andros’ first acts was to levy new taxes. Relative to taxes in England, the taxes were not onerous but the colonials had always had the right to tax themselves. When citizens published handbills protesting the measures, Andros appointed a censor to block any pamphlets on public affairs that the Dominion government found offensive. Most troubling for citizens of Massachusetts was the plan to establish the authority of the Church of England. He turned the South Meeting House into an Anglican church. He required all marriages to be “solemnized” by an Anglican minister. When a prominent minister preached against the new regime, he was arrested and denied a writ of habeas corpus informing him of the charges. When challenged on it, Andros responded, “The scabbard of an English redcoat shall quickly signify as much as a justice of the peace!”

James II, an avowed Roman Catholic, began to exploit his royal prerogatives to enhance Catholic influence in government. “We cannot but heartily wish,” the king declared, “that all the people of our dominions were members of the Catholic Church.”The king’s excesses caused England’s latent political factions to develop into the more clearly defined Court Party (King’s Court; a.k.a Tories) and Country Party (Parliament; a.k.a. Whigs). When James remarried, a French Catholic woman who was “with child,” his opponents in Parliament saw a future of bloody religious conflict. They rebelled, soliciting the aid of the Dutch husband of James’ daughter Mary, William of Orange. Armed with the promise of the kingdom, William  and his troops landed to “rescue Protestantism.” Within six weeks, James fled to France and the bloodless Glorious Revolution of 1688 ended. William became King William III and his wife Queen Mary II.

     When Andros learned of the overthrow of James II, he had the messenger thrown in jail. But the news could not be contained and neither could the wrath of colonials. Bostonians wrote a declaration of Andros’ “crimes” and arrested him and other of James’ agents. Andros tried to escape, but was shipped back to England for hearings there. The Massachusetts General Court reconvened as the government of the colony and petitioned the new regime for restoration of their charter. King William appointed a governor friendly to the colonials, Sir William Phips, but Massachusetts remained a royal colony.

     The Glorious Revolution bred other conflicts in America, as colonials challenged James’ authority. In Maryland, a long-running tension between the Protestant majority and the ruling Catholic minority erupted as the largely-Congregationalist Protestant Association took advantage of William’s ascension. It petitioned the new king suggesting that the Calverts were plotting to give the colony to the French. The crown revoked the family’s charter, establishing Maryland as a royal colony. The Calverts were restored to power in the colony in 1715, by which time the family had converted to Anglicanism, but the king had to approve any governmental appointments and all legislation.

     When word of the Glorious Revolution reached New York, Andros’ lieutenant, Francis Nicholson, ordered Manhattan’s garrison fortified with militiamen under the pretext that the French might invade the colony in retaliation for James’ ouster. Many of the militia believed that Nicholson really intended to use the military to impose Catholic rule over them. Jacob Leisler led a revolt that proclaimed the colony for the new king and queen. Supporters of King James fled to Albany and held out there until a French attack actually did occur, the attack that would grow into King William’s War. In December 1689, King William blessed the rebellion, telling Leisler to “stay in his post.” Leisler governed Manhattan and parts of downstate New York for two years until a royal governor arrived in 1691. While in power, he convened a representative assembly that reformed many of the most obvious political and economic evils. He initiated the collection of customs duties and organized a military expedition against Canada. By May 1691, Leisler’s support had ebbed. He refused to give up control, but was quickly overwhelmed. He and his son-in-law were tried and hanged for treason. Among his chief opponents were members of the Livingston family who would come to govern New York and represent it at the continental congresses during the revolutionary era.

     Although wrapped up in larger geo-political and imperial issues, Leisler’s, Bacon’s, and Culpeper’s Rebellions, and the Protestant Association exposed a deep rift between those in power and those out of power, between an economic and/or social ruling elite and the populace. Each colony had to accommodate the rights and interests of the many as well as the few if it was going to survive and prosper.
     They did not evince a desire to overthrow British rule, as each of the colonies willingly submitted to the new regime, indeed when Virginia established the second college in the colonies (after Harvard, 1636) in 1693, it was named the College of William and Mary.

The English Enlightenment: The Glorious Revolution occurred as Europe, and particularly Britain, was experiencing an important change in world-view. Known as the “English Enlightenment,” it reflected the advance of the scientific revolution that had been ongoing for more than a century.

     The most important scientist of the revolution was Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727). Newton went to Cambridge University, excelling in physics, theoretical mathematics, and optics. A devout Christian, he was also interested in metaphysics and alchemy. Newton came up with his basic theories of physics at the age of 24, but could not prove them. Twenty years later, he developed theoretical proofs for his “laws of physics.” Working day and night, seldom stopping to eat the meals brought to him, breaking away only to teach his classes. A year before the Glorious Revolution, Newton published Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, or more commonly the Principia. The most important laws included a definition of a law of gravity and his three laws of motion.

     The scientific revolution bred new approaches to other elements of life, including politics. The most important political thinker of the English Enlightenment is John Locke (1632-1704). The eldest son of a respectable Somersetshire Puritan family, Locke’s formative years were surrounded by religious and political tension. He was strongly influenced by the events of the English Civil War and Interregnum. Freedom of thought and to a lesser degree action became the foundation on which he built his philosophy. Two works by Locke stand out: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690); and Two Treatises of Government (1690).
     First, and paramount, in Locke’s view of political society is the idea that mankind at the beginning of time were free and endowed with certain natural rights: life, liberty, and property. It was in a complete state of nature, free from obligation, free to do whatever they chose to do. While this state of nature had its advantages, it was not satisfactory for the maintenance of a sustained existence. Nature is dangerous because the strong can devour the weak. One’s life, liberty, or property were constantly at risk. Locke’s predecessor, Thomas Hobbes, described life in a state of nature as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” To survive, men joined together in the spirit of community to protect their rights. They left a state of nature and created government. Man kept his freedoms--the right freely to pursue property, the right to mobility, and the right to life. But his freedoms were not absolute. By joining society, man had to conform to the will of that society’s laws. This is, in a sense, a contract between individual man and society: a social contract. To this point, Locke is not radically different from his predecessor Hobbes. Where the two part company is over what happens if the contract is broken not by man, but by government. Locke’s answer is that in such times man has a right to revolt against the government. The revolution is a conservative one, however: to restore the community to the original terms of the contract. Locke’s writing is a justification of the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
     Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is an inquiry into “the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge.” In other words, Locke wanted to know how men think and how they come to “know” or “understand” things. It arose out of a debate between Locke and his friends over the “principles of morality and revealed religion” as related to questions of faith and reason.
According to Locke, “we are of necessity ignorant, and want knowledge of all sorts, where we want ideas . . . we are ignorant, and want rational knowledge, where we want proofs . . . we want probability to direct our assent in matters where we have neither knowledge of our own nor testimony of others to bottom our reason upon.” Because we lack physical certainty in religious questions, there is religious conflict—one opinion battling another. “For till it be resolved how far we are guided by reason, and how far by faith,” he argues, “we shall in vain dispute, and endeavor to convince one another in matters of religion.” Thus, we have the distinction between what is knowable and what is only suspected or taken on faith. Part of the appeal of the Puritan faith at its inception was its resolution of reason and piety. As we can see by Locke’s discussion, however, that balance was beginning to break down. Locke’s resolution of the problem, his emphasis on reason over faith, satisfied many of the more educated in the colonies, such as Jonathan Edwards. But it left the masses cold; they preferred a more emotional response to the shifts occurring in society around them. The opposing trends in religion merged into an often contradictory movement during the 1730s and 40s—the Great Awakening.

Wars for Empire, 1689-1763:

King William’s War, (1689-1697): (a.k.a. War of the League of Augsburg) with England and Holland fighting France. A tie, the French take English territories of Newfoundland and Hudson Bay, and England gets Gibraltar at the entrance of the Mediterranean Sea.

Queen Anne’s War, (1701-13): (a.k.a. War of the Spanish Succession) with England, Austria, and Holland fighting France and Prussia. Colonists from Charleston destroy St. Augustine, (now Florida). New Englanders attack Quebec, but fail. England regains Hudson Bay, Acadia, and Newfoundland.

King George’s War, (1744-48): (a.k.a. War of the Austrian Succession) with England and Austrian fighting France and Prussia. As a world war, it is a tie. In North America, England took a major French fort, Louisburg, showing her naval dominance and paving the way for an assault on Quebec.

Salutary Neglect: The wars with France left the British government deep in debt. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Robert Walpole had devised methods to keep the British treasury solvent, including creating a “Sinking Fund” through which to pay down (but not pay off) the debt from Queen Anne’s War. The debt was one of the causes of the South Sea Bubble in 1720. The debt and the economic collapse forced Walpole, now Prime Minister, to find ways to cut spending. In 1723, he created the policy called Salutary Neglect. It relaxed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and allowed the colonial economy to run along essentially unregulated.  But the loosening of oversight had broader effects on the colonies than just economic. The colonies grew closer together and developed a sense of identity different from England. Salutary Neglect ended with the French and Indian War when, Britain started controlling the colonies by imposing new economic regulations, taxes, and restrictions on movement. During the brief time of unsupervised growth, the colonies experienced a Great Awakening and the Enlightenment. When it was abruptly ended, it caused a groundswell of opposition that would eventually grow into an American Independence movement. 

Developments During the Era of Salutary Neglect:

Great Awakening: Many elements combined to create the revival movement of the mid-1700s known as the Great Awakening. Beginning in New England, many people believed that churches no longer met their spiritual needs. Many preachers, meanwhile, were frightened by the lack of piety among the citizens, especially on the frontier. Religious tensions had occurred before, in New England particularly, but this time it seemed the masses were rejecting the “city upon the hill” altogether.
     Church membership had never been easy to obtain. It was important, however, because many of the rights of citizens derived from church membership. Additionally, much of the orderliness of Massachusetts society derived from church membership: those outside the church were also outside the ruling structure of the colonies. One source of tension was church membership for the unconverted. In the late 1650s, the question arose as to whether children of original church members were properly converted to Puritanism. Second generation church members had been baptized and admitted to the church on the strength of their fathers’ conversion, but few confessed their own “calling” to the church. Thus, the question arose as to whether the children of these unconverted should be baptized and admitted to the congregation. In 1657, the issue reached a head and a group of ministers met to see if they could come to some agreement over the matter. Confirmed in 1662, the agreement was known as the half-way covenant: unconverted members could transmit membership to their children, but the membership only went “halfway;” children would be baptized, but not take communion. And as adults, they would not be allowed to vote; halfway members had to pledge to obey the church and to raise their children as Christians; they also sat separated from full church members. Slowly over time, the halfway distinctions disappeared. The blurring of the line troubled conservatives who fretted over the decay of the church. So what had been an unstable compromise became even less satisfactory, particularly after some churches started inviting all congregants to take communion. To regain order, Massachusetts churches trended away from congregational authority and began to centralize, a reform that proved a move in the wrong direction.
     In other colonies, churches were even less capable of meeting citizens’ spiritual needs. In Virginia, the state church was the Church of England, which tried to establish a religious orthodoxy among the settlers. Missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) had been sent to the colonies to convert the Indians, but they soon found that their time would be better spent trying to sustain the Church of England against the rise of Scots-Irish Presbyterianism. SPG tactics caused many settlers to oppose them.

In the hyper-religious or supernatural world of colonial America, these tensions played out in eerie and often destructive ways. The witch hysteria that overtook Salem and other New England towns, in part, grew out of conflicts within congregations. Religious tension mingled with social unrest, natural disasters, and an apparent increase in immoral behavior to create the “Great Awakening.”

In 1734-1735, Jonathan Edwards, a Congregationalist minister from Northampton in western Massachusetts, began a rekindling of the American spirit of piety. It is no mystery why it occurred on the extremities of the colony first. A Baptist clergyman had once called frontiersmen, “A Gang of frantic lunatics broke out of Bedlam.” Edwards stirred his audience with explicit descriptions of the torment of hell-fire and damnation. In 1737, Edwards published his account of the event, Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God.

The real catalyst of the Great Awakening, however, was George Whitefield, a 27 year old Anglican minister from England. In 1739, he arrived in Philadelphia to stir up piety. By December, he had won renown preaching to crowds of as many as 6000. He continued his tour of the colonies in Georgia and then New England. Whitefield was a showman. He performed in the pulpit--acting out the horrors of damnation and the joy of the regenerate. Whitefield’s meetings were so popular they often were moved outside to accommodate the audience. The core of Whitefield’s message was the idea of “new birth”--the need for a sudden and emotional moment of conversion and salvation where a sinner would testify his (or more often her) finding Christ. Imitators of Whitefield popped up all over the colonies. Itinerant preachers traveled throughout the frontier regions of the colonies to spread the word.

The Great Awakening caused tension between conservatives and revivalists. Presbyterians split into “Old Side” and “New Side;” Congregationalists became “New Light” or “Old Light.” Newer sects, such as Baptist and Methodist, made inroads into the colonial population. Puritanism was decimated. The balance between reason and faith broke down and piety and the emotional extravagance of the conversion experience as something beyond reason became eminent. Jonathan Edwards led this new theology. He took a more intellectual approach than Whitefield, though. Indeed, he wrote some of the most eloquent sermons and religious tracts ever composed in America. He tried to reconcile Calvinism with the Enlightenment. In 1754, he published what might be his most important work: Of Freedom of the Will, but his best known work is a sermon entitled, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (1741).
     The upheaval of the Great Awakening brought different reactions from colony to colony. In Massachusetts, backlash against the emotionalism of the revival led to the rise of the rationalist sects, such as Unitarianism. In Virginia, reaction was slower to come (1760s) but when it did arrive the “New Light” Baptists and Presbyterians began a consolidated effort to overwhelm the Church of England.

He purchased a print shop and the Pennsylvania Gazette. He turned the newspaper into a great success by offering occasionally sensational or even fictional stories for the amusement of readers. He also began publishing Poor Richard's Almanack, an annual journal that amid its accounts of holidays or weather forecasts included witty and wise sayings. Among them were such memorable teachings as: "A penny saved is a penny earned;" "the rotten apple spoils his companion;"  "God heals and the doctor takes the fee;" and a series of tutorials to labor: "a used key is always bright;" "never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today;" "the sleeping fox catches no poultry;" and "there will be sleeping enough in the grave."  Of particular interest to Franklin were sayings regarding economy and thrift. In 1758, he created the character of Father Abraham to deliver a sermon on frugality and the evils of idleness. The popularity of Father Abraham was astronomical. He became popular not just in the colonies. Father Abraham raised the celebrity of Franklin in England and France, as well.

In his mid-forties, he sold his interests in these publications making of himself a wealthy man and began to pursue his true interest: science. Necessity being the mother of invention, Franklin devised numerous very practical inventions, including: the bifocal lens (so that one wouldn't have to keep switching spectacles to read and see at a distance); the Franklin stove (a small fireplace that would generate great heat with minimal fuel--later inventors modified the stove and greatly improved on Franklin's idea); swim fins (small rounded fins that fit onto one's hands like gloves); and the odometer (to measure distance and speed up the public mails) among other things. His greatest scientific achievement, however, related to the studies of electricity and weather. His most famous experiment involved the discovery that lightning was really electrified air. From his research he developed many theories that helped future scientists advance our knowledge and control of electricity. He also created the lightning rod, a vitally important invention which dramatically reduced the danger of fires started by lightning hitting homes, barns, and other buildings. His Experiments and Observations on Electricity was published in 1751.

George Washington: The list of George Washington's accomplishments is too long and varied to include in total on this site. Here are a few of the most important:
    Born at Wakefield Plantation, in Westmoreland County, Virginia, he grew up in relative privilege. Although not intellectually the equal of many of his contemporaries, such as Franklin, Adams, or Jefferson, he took advantage of opportunities, both professional and personal, and his physical attributes to become "the Father of his Country."
    He first came to prominence as a colonel in the militia during the French and Indian War. In 1754, Washington was ordered to establish the English claim to the source of the Ohio River in western Pennsylvania (land also claimed by France). The competing presence there sparked a skirmish between Washington's troops and the French and their Indian allies. Within a year, the conflict would develop into an all-out war.
    Although the war would continue until the English won in 1763, Washington resigned his commission in early 1759 and returned to Virginia and married a well-to-do widow, Martha Custis. For the next fifteen years, he ran his plantation, Mount Vernon, south of Alexandria and served in the House of Burgesses. As the American Independence Movement heated up, Washington served as a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses (see below) and once the shooting started, he served as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army. Using so-called Fabian tactics (knowing that discretion is the better part of valor and that when you are weaker than your opponent it is oftentimes better to run away so that you can live to fight another day) and a little help from his friends (particularly the French--Lafayette and Rochambeau), he took a rag-tag bunch and defeated the mightiest military force of the day. In 1783, with victory in hand, he once again resigned his commission and returned to the life of a planter at Mount Vernon.
    As the new government faced crisis in the mid-1780s, Washington returned to service, presiding over the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. Upon the constitution's ratification, he was elected first President of the United States. His administration established numerous precedents and has been almost universally described as a great success--arguably given the difficulty of the task no one was better suited and no one could have done a better job. The times were not without turmoil, however. Despite his call for nonpartisanship, he oversaw the time when political parties were created and participated (even if passively) in their creation.
More importantly, however, he oversaw the creation of Washington, D.C. as the national capital and secured the stability of the nation against threats both foreign and domestic (see: Whiskey Rebellion and Jay's Treaty). Worn out from the politics, he chose not to serve a third term and in September 1796 he delivered his Farewell Address to Congress in which he advised his successors of that fact and others: notably, to be conservative and slow to tinker with the Constitution, to avoid political partisanship, and to preserve America's independence by avoiding permanent entangling alliances.
    Washington returned to Mount Vernon and died there in December 1799, the result of the Quinsy (strep throat) and the doctor's attempted cure (excessive bleeding or leeching).

French and Indian War, (1754-1763):

In 1747, several wealthy Virginians established the Ohio Company. Among the investors were George Washington’s brother and Lieutenant-Governor Robert Dinwiddie. Hoping to make money in the fur trade and in land speculation, in 1748, the company received a 200,000 acres grant in western Pennsylvania at the forks of the Ohio River, near present-day Pittsburgh. The land was also claimed by France and in 1749, troops went to the region to shore up France’s claim by building or expanding a series of forts, and befriending the Indians. In October 1753, now-Governor Dinwiddie sent an expedition led by Washington to Fort Le Boeuf (near present-day Erie, PA) to negotiate a French withdrawal. The French refused. On the trip back to Williamsburg, in January 1754, Washington’s expedition skirmished with French and Indian forces around Fort Duquesne. Returning to the region in May 1754, Major Washington and his forty troops engaged the French and Indians in the Battle of Jumonville Glen. The English won and Washington set out to build Fort Necessity. In July, French attacked the fort and forced Washington's withdrawal (July 4th, 1754). The skirmishes developed into the last French-English global war for empire, the Seven Years’ War.
     In 1754, Ben Franklin devised the Albany Plan of Union to enable the colonies to protect themselves. Delegates met in Albany, New York, to form an alliance with the Iroquois against the French and their Huron allies; and potentially to create a governing council for all the colonies. It was not an independence movement; it intended only to bring the colonies closer together. Some colonies thought it was a good idea, but a majority did not want to give up any power over their own affairs to another layer of government.

The war, in America, was inconsistent. In 1755, General Edward Braddock led British troops to the area and was ambushed by Indians and Frenchmen in Indian costumes. Outflanked and surprised, the English were defeated and Braddock was killed. George Washington again the retreat.
     Little of significance on the battle-front occurred between Braddock’s death and the fall of the French fort Louisbourg in 1758. What was important was William Pitt’s ascension to Prime Minister. Pitt reorganized the British government and allocated resources (military and financial) necessary to win the war and establish Britain’s imperial dominance once and for all.

     Pitt’s policies turned the tide of war. In upstate New York, the Ohio and Niagara regions, and on the Mississippi, British troops made significant gains, including building Fort Pitt at the forks of the Ohio. Then in September 1759 came the death knell for the French in North America. General James Wolfe led a British force against the Marquis de Montcalm at the Citadel of Quebec. Both commanders were killed in the British victory in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham.
     The Treaty of Paris (1763) ended the French and Indian War. In it, France gave up all claims to North America, ceding land east of the Mississippi to Britain and west of it to Spain. The land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi posed an opportunity and a problem for Britain. Colonials wanted to flood the territory and the Transylvania Company (whose investors included George Washington and Ben Franklin) was created in Virginia to speculate in lands in Kentucky. But each new incursion by colonials resulted in war with the Indians. So King George III banned colonists from entering the region. The Proclamation of 1763 banned all settlement west of the continental divide in the Appalachians. Colonists were outraged. Many, including North Carolinian trailblazer Daniel Boone, simply ignored it and went anyway.  The Proclamation brought a formal end to the era of Salutary Neglect.

Death of James Wolfe at Quebec, 1759

Battle Sites of the French and Indian War

 

The Era of Independence

As Salutary Neglect ended, a series of new taxes and enforcement procedures further demonstrated that the British were going to change the rules on the colonies and further alienated colonists.

“Declaration of Rights and Grievances” That the inhabitants of the English Colonies in North America, by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters or compacts, have the following Rights: 1. That they are entitled to life, liberty, and property. 2. That [those] who first settled these colonies, were . . . entitled to all the rights, liberties, and immunities of free and natural born subjects within the realm of England. 3. That by such emigration they by no means forfeited, surrendered, or lost any of those rights. *           *           * 5. That the respective colonies are entitled to the common law of England, and to the great and inestimable privilege of being tried by their peers. 6. That they are entitled to the benefit of such of the English statutes [that] they have, by experience, respectively found to be applicable to their several local and other circumstances. 7. That these, his majesty's colonies, are likewise entitled to all the immunities and privileges granted and confirmed to them by royal charters, or secured by their several codes of provincial laws. 8. That they have a right peaceably to assemble, consider of their grievances, and petition the King. 9. That the keeping a Standing army in these colonies, in times of peace, without the consent of the legislature of that colony in which such army is kept, is against law. 10. It is indispensably necessary to good government . . . that the constituent branches of the legislature be independent of each other; that, therefore, the exercise of legislative power in several colonies, by a council appointed . . . by the crown is unconstitutional. . . and destructive to the freedom of American legislation. The key point, beyond basic legal rights, in the Declaration is Part 4. wherein the Congress discusses representation. 4. That the foundation of English liberty, and of all free government, is a right in the people to participate in their legislative council: and as the English colonists are not represented, and from their local and other circumstances, cannot properly be represented in the British parliament, they are entitled to a free and exclusive power of legislation in their several provincial legislatures, where their right of representation can alone be preserved, in all cases of taxation and internal polity, subject only to the negative of their sovereign, in such manner as has been heretofore used and accustomed. But, from the necessity of the case, and a regard to the mutual interest of both countries, we cheerfully consent to the operation of such acts of the British parliament, as are bona fide restrained to the regulation of our external commerce, for the purpose of securing the commercial advantages of the whole empire to the mother country, and the commercial benefits of its respective members excluding every idea of taxation, internal or external, for raising a revenue on the subjects in America without their consent. The Declaration warned of the actions colonies intended to take to make Parliament back down to “restore us to that state in which both countries found happiness and prosperity, we have for the present only resolved to pursue the following peaceable measures: 1. To enter into a non-importation, non-consumption, and non-exportation agreement or association. 2. To prepare an address to the people of Great Britain, and a memorial to the inhabitants of British America, and 3. To prepare a loyal address to his Majesty, agreeable to resolutions already entered into.”

Parliament:  What used to be the pride of the Americans?     Franklin: “To indulge in the fashions and manufactures of Great Britain.“     Parliament: “What is now their pride?“     Franklin: “To wear their old clothes over again till they can make new ones.” Many colonies enacted “Non-importation Agreements,” establishing boycotts of all British goods. One result of the boycotts was that colonials could no longer buy British cloth or clothing. They began wearing homespun instead. This gave the revolutionary era a drab fashion, as homespun was a coarser fabric than British textiles and lacking in the variety of dye colors.

The actions of the colonists (especially the boycotts), lobbying by Franklin in Parliament, and support from Whigs in Parliament (notably Edmund Burke) finally combined to force Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act. In March 1766, King George III also replaced Grenville with the Marquis of Rockingham, a Whig. The repeal obviously was a victory for the colonists, but Parliament moved quickly to reassert its authority. Rockingham drew a distinction between “external” taxes on trade (what colonials meant by indirect taxes) and “internal” taxes within the colonies (direct taxes). This left Rockingham an opening to raise tariffs. Parliament also passed the Declaratory Act, which asserted Parliament’s right to enact taxes and any other laws on the colonies. Upon hearing of the Declaratory Act, John Adams wondered “whether they will lay a tax in consequence of [the] resolution.”

“Parliament has a right to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever.” Declaratory Act, 1766

In 1767, Adams’ query was answered. Charles Townshend became new Chancellor of the Exchequer and sought a “painless” way to get money out of the colonies. He admitted that he did not see the distinction between an internal and an external tax, but decided to give the colonies what they wanted: an external tax.
     The Revenue Act of 1767, better known as the Townshend Duties, placed tariffs (“external” taxes) on glass, lead, paper, paint, and tea. The law also set up a Board of Customs in Boston to collect the tax; and it recognized the vice-admiralty courts as having jurisdiction over the law—this removed suits involving the tariff from colonial courts and colonial juries.
     Additionally, Townshend suspended all laws enacted by the New York Assembly until New Yorkers began obeying the Quartering Act of 1765. That law required colonials to provide provisions and housing to British troops stationed there. It hit New York hardest because New York was the headquarters of the British force in the colonies.
     Having been caught in a trap of their own making, the colonials changed tack. They drew distinctions between tariffs for revenue and tariffs to regulate trade. The latter were acceptable; the former were not. And since the Townshend Duties were clearly for revenue to pay for policing the colonies, colonists rose up against them. They rekindled the Non-Importation movement, and colonial shippers and merchants, such as John Hancock, stepped up their smuggling activities. The new taxes also caused opponents of the laws to split over tactics. The moderate view was represented by John Dickinson in his Letters of a Pennsylvania Farmer. Dickinson was a wealthy planter and a true patriot of the colonies, but he feared British power and did not want to make matters worse by resorting to mobism. He repeated the arguments of the Declaration of Rights in a clearer and more plain-spoken manner. But he stopped short of advocating violence. “The cause of Liberty,” he exclaimed, “is a cause of too much dignity to be sullied by turbulence and tumult.”
     Outraged by the new taxes, many colonials again called for boycotts. Among the most aggressive were the Sons of Liberty in Massachusetts, led by Samuel Adams. A young Harvard graduate, Adams inherited his family’s brewery and soon ran it into the ground. Described as the “Puritan type . . . poor but incorruptible,” he found his calling in rebel rousing. In 1768, in the Massachusetts Assembly, Adams and James Otis wrote the Massachusetts Circular Letter (open letter) attacking Parliament’s taxing and calling on other colonies to join Massachusetts in opposition. The letter drew the attention of the Colonial Secretary and made Adams and Otis marked men. Otis would be beaten by a crowd of British loyalists and Adams would eventually be charged with treason. Meanwhile, Francis Bernard, Royal Governor of Massachusetts dissolved the assembly. But soon the answers to the letter started arriving: the colonies supported Massachusetts.
     In June 1768, events in Massachusetts kicked tensions up a notch as the British tried to make an example of John Hancock. Hancock’s ship, Liberty, arrived at port with a cargo of Madeira wine. Hancock, as was his habit, declared just a part of the cargo for customs officers, likely intending to declare the whole cargo when it was off-loaded. At that point, a Royal Navy vessel sent from Halifax seized the ship for non-payment of taxes. That night, a mob collected protesting the seizure; it threw rocks at customs officers and burned a customs boat. In September, 4,000 British Regulars arrived to maintain order in Boston. According to Parliament, Massachusetts was in rebellion.

Boston Massacre:

Tensions continued, but Townshend’s untimely death and replacement by Frederick, Lord North calmed neither side. The issue festered until the winter of 1770. On the cold, moonlit evening of March 5th, a group of young men began taunting a sentry with snowballs at the Customs House in Boston. Soon the snowballs turned to ice, rocks, and coal lumps. The group became a mob as several hundred converged on the Customs House. Eight soldiers reinforced the lone sentry when he called and as the mob bashed sticks together and threw whatever was at hand, a soldier fired and then the platoon fired into the crowd. By the time the dust cleared, five colonials lay dead, including an African American dockworker named Crispus Attucks, often considered the first casualty of the Revolution.
     Samuel Adams called the killings “bloody butchery” and asked Paul Revere to create an illustration of the event.

The Boston Massacre scared both sides. Samuels Adams and Joseph Warren continued to organize resistance, reviving the Committee of Correspondence. And in Virginia, Patrick Henry and others, including Thomas Jefferson, created a Committee of Correspondence in response to the Gaspee Affair, when New Englanders destroyed a British revenue ship that had tried to stop smuggling in Rhode Island. But as a matter, tensions and conditions eased between 1770 and 1773. Lord North assisted in easing the conflict by repealing the Townshend Duties on all goods, except tea. He left the tax on tea, it is said, “as a mark of the supremacy of Parliament, and an efficient declaration of their right to govern the colonies.”

Boston Tea Party:

The taxes on tea caused John Hancock to lead a boycott on tea from China imported by the British East India Company. The boycott caused significant debt for the company, which then lobbied Parliament for assistance. The Tea Act of 1773 eliminated the import duty on the company’s tea and enabled the company to sell its tea at a lower price than Hancock’s (and others’) smuggled tea. Hancock and his protégé, Samuel Adams, were particularly upset by the new arrangement.
     On December 16th, 1773, the issue came to a head. Three ships carrying a new cargo of tea were to land at Griffin’s Wharf. That night, Adams’ Sons of Liberty met at the South Meeting House to organize their protest. Some dressed up as Mohawk Indians, others as women, and they sneaked through the dark down Congress Street to the wharf. They boarded the ships and tossed 45 tons of tea, valued at £10,000 into the harbor. The tea washed up on the shores of Boston Harbor for weeks afterward.
    
     The British response was quick and severe. In March, Parliament enacted a series of laws, known collectively as the Coercive Acts because they meant to coerce better behavior from Massachusetts, or as the Intolerable Acts because the colonials found they could not tolerate them.
        1. Boston Port Act: closed the port of Boston to all traffic and trade.
        2. Act for the Impartial Administration of Justice: moved all trials to Admiralty Courts in Halifax.
        3. Massachusetts Government Act: the Royal Governor appoints the colonial council and law enforcement officers.
        4. Quartering Act of 1774, which expanded the requirement to provide room and board for British soldiers, including in private homes, if necessary.

      Not officially one of the Coercive Acts, but still intolerable to colonists, Parliament also passed the Quebec Act. It set up totally unrepresentative government in Quebec (formerly New France); gave a privileged position to the Roman Catholic Church in the province; and expanded the boundary of the province to the Ohio River, thus encircling the Thirteen Colonies. Throughout the American Colonies, the Quebec Act was seen as the thin edge of a wedge whereby Britain intended to take representative government and the Reformed Protestant religion away from colonials.

The Intolerable Acts began a tumbling snowball that within two years led to American independence. On September 5, 1774, delegates from each of the Thirteen Colonies, except Georgia, met a Carpenter Hall in the First Continental Congress. Canadian and West Indian delegations were invited, but did not attend. Among the delegates were John and Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, George Washington, John Dickinson, as well as Edmund Rutledge of South Carolina, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and John Jay of New York. The Congress debated, but rejected a plan offered by Joseph Galloway of Pennsylvania that would have created the Continental Association, similar to Franklin’s Plan of Union. It approved an embargo on all British goods. And it accepted an idea from Thomas Jefferson’s Summary View of the Rights of British America that only the King, not Parliament, had power to govern the colonies. Known as the Dominion Theory, it intended to take Parliament out of the mix and plead its case directly to the crown. It was a potentially dangerous argument, because if the king backed Parliament, then the colonies would have little room for further maneuvering. The Congress adjourned in October with orders to meet again in May 1775.
     Along with the Coercive Acts, Britain sent a military governor General Thomas Gage to Massachusetts. In October 1774, the Massachusetts House of Representatives defied Gage’s order and met in assembly. It named John Hancock head of the Committee on Safety. The Committee was empowered to call up a colonial militia. Hancock organized special units of the militia in to squads known as Minutemen. From this point onward, Massachusetts truly is in rebellion.

Battle of Lexington and Concord:

On April 14th, 1775, Gage received orders to arrest Hancock and Samuel Adams, who were in hiding In Lexington. Gage was also to confiscate weapons in a rebel supply depot in Concord. Four days later, 700 British Marines assembled in Boston Common before setting out to Lexington. The question arose of which route the British intended to take out of town: across the Charles River or along the Boston spit; the route would help determine which way Hancock and Adams would escape.
     The Boston Committee of Correspondence had spies throughout town, including the sexton of the North Church. Committee member Paul Revere set up a code by which the Robert Newman could inform him of the route. As Revere waited in a boat on the river, Newman was to hang lanterns in the church bell tower: “one if by land, two if by sea.” The two lanterns in the tower told Revere that the British were crossing the river. He rowed to Charlestown where a horse awaited him and then he rode through the countryside declaring, “the Regulars (or Redcoats) are coming.” Two others, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott, were doing the same thing. Between Lexington and Concord, all three were captured and detained by British roadblock, but Prescott escaped and continued the warning. Dawes also escaped. Revere, however, had his horse confiscated and had to walk back to Lexington. He arrived just in time to see the battle.
     On April 19th, the redcoats met the Minutemen on Lexington Green, someone fired a shot and war began. British troops routed the militia, but suffered over 250 casualties on their return to Boston. 93 colonials died in the battles.

With shots finally fired, all of New England prepared for war. Two expeditions, one from the Green Mountain part of New Hampshire (Vermont) led by Ethan Allen, and one from Massachusetts led by Benedict Arnold planned to attack a British outpost on Lake Champlain, Fort Ticonderoga. The two forces met in May 1775 and with the help of local spies the colonials overpowered the British garrison. Winning the fort itself was less significant than taking what was in it: 174 artillery pieces and a huge cache of ammunition. The large guns, by mid-June would be transported back to Boston. In a daring nighttime artillery assault, George Washington's Continental Army moved the guns to Dorchester Heights, south of the city, thus holding the highest land in the sector and putting important British installations in range.
     The other colonial regions were less united in their response to Lexington and Concord. In New York, patriots organized the militia, while loyalists sent a letter to Gage asking him to suspend further attacks until orders came from England. New Jersey was split between patriots and Tories, led by Governor William Franklin (illegitimate son of Ben Franklin). Quaker Pennsylvania divided between pacifists and fighters, while the rest of the colony divided into patriots, led by Franklin, and loyalists, led by John Dickinson. In the Chesapeake, Maryland opposed revolution, while Virginia (and especially Patrick Henry) supported it. A month before Lexington, Henry urged the House of Burgesses to organize a militia, giving his oft-quoted speech, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
     Loyalism was stronger in the Lower South, particularly in the back-country among the Scots-Irish who distrusted the Low Country planters. But a strong patriot contingent also existed in the Carolinas, as well as Georgia. On May 20th, Mecklenburg County issued four resolutions and declared its independence: “We do hereby declare ourselves a free and independent people; are, and of right ought to be a sovereign and self-governing association, under the control of no power, other than that of our God and . . . Congress: To the maintenance of which Independence we solemnly pledge to each other our mutual co-operation, our Lives, our Fortunes, and our most Sacred Honor.”

Second Continental Congress:Meeting, beginning in May 1775, after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, it was the first that included delegates from all of the colonies. The delegates were split. There was strong sentiment to avoid further conflict, but preparedness was important. The Congress named George Washington as Commander-in-Chief of the proposed Continental Army.   
 

The Revolution in Art

Battle of Bunker Hill (June 17, 1775): First major battle of the war; 2,200 British redcoats fought to take the heights north of Boston. Overdressed on a blistering hot day and with the colonists holding the better position on Breed’s Hill, wave after wave of British soldiers attacked and was mowed down. The British eventually won the battle but it was a Pyrhhic victory as they suffered 1,054 casualties.

     After Bunker Hill, John Dickenson tried once again to restore peace. He wrote the “Olive Branch Petition,” sent to England on July 8th, 1775. Thomas Jefferson wrote a companion piece that explained the action of forming colonial militias: Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (July 6, 1775)
     Ironically, the Olive Branch Petition reduced the colonies’ ability to negotiate because if the king rejected it, then there would be little for the colonies to do but either give in or become independent. News of Bunker Hill and Fort Ticonderoga arrived in England just before the petition. News of Benedict Arnold’s assault on St. John, New Brunswick, and intrigues to get Quebec to join the movement arrived shortly after. Many in Britain also wanted conciliation, but the vote to accept the petition lost 86 to 33. In August, King George III called the colonials rebels and rejected the petition. Instead, he turned to Europe for troops. Prussia, Russia, and Holland rejected his entreaty, but several German principalities and city-states complied, most notably the state of Hesse, which supplied nearly 13,000 Hessian mercenaries.

Common Sense:

Pamphlet written by radical Quaker, Tom Paine, and published in January 1776; it argued that it made no sense for the colonies to stay part of England. Its fiery language and clear reasoning helped convince the large segment of undecided to join the independence movement.

John Adams was the Boston lawyer who led Independence movement at Second Continental Congress. Although short in stature, he had a strong mind, a huge ego, and an ability to drive his colleagues crazy with sheer force of character. He was ambassador to Great Britain during the Confederation era, was first vice-president and second President of the United States. Although a Federalist, he alienated party leader Alexander Hamilton. His inept handling of international affairs, meanwhile, made him a target of great hostility and derision from republican political opponents. Losing the election of 1800 to Jefferson, Adams left Washington professing his disdain for the new president.

Thomas Jefferson was the main author of the Declaration of Independence, he was an inventor, writer, and musician. During the War of Independence, he was Governor of Virginia. He was ambassador to France during the Confederation era, the first Secretary of State, second vice-president, and third President of the United States. Fiercely political, he clashed with Hamilton and led the Democratic-Republican Party. He opposed a strong central government, but a critical compromise in the 1800 election and his Louisiana Purchase continued the expansion of the national government’s power. Jefferson's second term was marked by continued conflict with England and France. To avoid war, Jefferson signed the disastrous Embargo Act. He left office in 1809, relieved to be free of the burdenof the presidency. The political rivals patched up their differences after Jefferson left office. They corresponded over the ensuing years. On July 4, 1826, Adams died; his last words being, “Jefferson survives.” But Jefferson had died at Montecello earlier that day.

Virginia Resolves: Passed by the House of Burgesses and delivered to Philadelphia by Richard Henry Lee, they declare Virginia’s support for independence from England; the resolves gave the needed boost to the Adams wing of the Second Continental Congress and virtually ensured independence

The Declaration of Independence:Founding document of the United States signed on July 4, 1776.  It was written by committee (Ben Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston) with most of the work done by Thomas Jefferson: the document is in four parts:
1. a preamble, offering an introduction as to the purpose of the document
2. declaration of natural rights, based on Locke's “social contract:” life, liberty, pursuit of happiness
3. presentation of the list of particulars or complaints against King George III: the “history of repeated injuries . . . ”
4. statement of intent, i.e. the actual declaration of that the colonies are now a independent, sovereign country: “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States . . .”

Battle of Brooklyn Heights (August 1776): Among the first defeats for Washington’s Continental Army, it occurred on Long Island and enabled the British to occupy New York City and make it their headquarters for the rest of the war. More importantly, it demonstrated Washington’s choice of military tactics – Fabian tactics  – meeting the enemy on the field, but making sure of an escape route; or, in other words, running away to live and fight another day.

Battle of Trenton (December 1776): Washington’s daring winter crossing of the Delaware River surprised the Hessians (German mercenaries fighting for Britain) and led to the Continental Army’s first victory and a morale boost. It demonstrated that the U.S. would be most successful employing hit-and-run, guerrilla tactics against the much stronger British force.

Battle of Saratoga, NY,  (October 1777): Defeat of British under Gen. John “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne and the turning point of the war: it led to an American alliance with France and eventually Spain

Washington winters at Valley Forge (December 1777 – June 1778): Perhaps the darkest and hardest time of the war for the Continental Army under Washington.  Ill-equipped, demoralized, hungry, and on the brink of defeat, the troops received proper training from Baron von Steuben, a German who came to America to help the cause of Independence. The troops were whipped into shape and, with Ben Franklin’s establishing the alliance with France, ready to face the British in the spring.

Battle of King’s Mountain (October 1780): American victory in the Carolinas that showed the effectiveness of the U.S. troops under Gen. Nathaniel Greene (known as Washington’s “ablest general”). After it Greene was named Southern Commander. His troops chased the retreating British under Lord Cornwallis to Guilford Court House (Greensboro) where another Pyrrhic victory for the British marked the beginning of the end British control in the U.S.

Battle of Yorktown (August – October 1781): Just miles from the site of Jamestown, the U.S., under the command of George Washington and with considerable help from the French, defeated the British after a long siege and Cornwallis surrendered, ending the war.

Peace of Paris (September 1783): Treaty ending the War of Independence, negotiated by Ben Franklin, John Jay, and Henry Laurens: with it the U.S. gained control of all the land east of the Mississippi River, north of Florida, and south of British Canada; U.S. gained fishing rights in the Grand Banks. In November, the British evacuated New York City. A month later, General Washington resigned his commission as Commander of Continental Army, showing that a civilian government would run the U.S.

Articles of Confederation: With independence, it became necessary for each state to reconstitute its government. Given their unhappiness with the monarchical experience, the states universally chose a republican form and a written constitution. Debates at the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention in 1779-80 offer an eloquent statement of the goals and beliefs:
    “The body politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals; it is a social compact, by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each with the whole people that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good.”
Each state had an elected governor and a senate, and most wrote bills of rights to provide basic protections to the people. The rights included: freedom of speech, the right to petition, trial by jury , and freedom from self-incrimination. In 1776, John Dickinson drafted a national constitution, called the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. It was adopted by the Continental Congress in 1777, but ratification by the states took until 1781. It created a “diplomatic congress of autonomous states.” Ratification of the Articles was delayed by the debate over control of western lands.

    The Confederation government did have some important achievements.

Northwest Ordinance, 1787: With the Land Ordinance of 1785, this law represents one area of success of the Confederation era. It organized the Old Northwest territory into states: Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and eastern Minnesota; it forbids slavery in these new territories.

Manumission: Independence and talk of freedom during the Revolutionary Era created an inconsistency for national leaders who were also slave-owners. The contradiction caused several masters to suggest that they would free (manumit) their slaves. And some, such as George Washington, actually did it. Meanwhile many northern states confronted with the inconsistency (and not being as economically dependent on slave labor) abolished slavery in the 1780s.

    The Confederation government also successfully created government departments to carry out its most essential duties: Foreign Affairs; War; and Finance, as well as the Post Office. Foreign Affairs was headed by New Yorkers Robert Livingston and then John Jay, but was ineffectual. The War Department was headed by Henry Knox; it was lucky we were at peace because without money for troops we would not have been able to put up much of a fight. Finance was headed by Robert Morris, the Philadelphia merchant who had almost single-handedly financed the Revolution. Morris created the Bank of North America, a privately-owned, part government-financed institution to hold federal deposits (if there were any) and to facilitate borrowing (which there was a lot of). An otherwise decentralized banking system, vested local interests, and general distrust of centralized authority stymied Morris’ attempts to organize the national government’s economic affairs.In frustration, Morris and others, including Alexander Hamilton threatened a coup d’etat, if the states did not give more power to the national government. When Hamilton solicited George Washington’s support for the coup, however, the Newburgh Conspiracy was ended. Washington thought the idea too risky and entirely too dishonorable.

    Despite these successes, the Articles were severely flawed. The federal government was too weak to take care of disruptions and disputes in or among the states.

Given the obvious flaws in the Articles, several leaders from Maryland and Virginia met at Mount Vernon to discuss how to fix them, as well as to speculate on some potential business ventures that might bring more development to the nation. They suggested a convention of the states to meet in Annapolis, Maryland (U.S. capital) at which delegates would discuss reform. The meeting was held in September 1786, but so few states sent delegates that no debate occurred. They decided to try again in Philadelphia in the new year. The failure of the Annapolis Convention further demonstrates the weakness of the federal government.
 
Shays’ Rebellion: Over the winter of 1786-87, farmers in western Massachusetts found themselves unable to pay their mortgages because of a poor harvest and a tax increase. Armed (and usually drunk), the farmers rose up in protest. Led by Daniel Shays, they took over courts to block judgments against their farms. Some began a march on Boston and rumors abounded that they were on a rampage and heading to Annapolis to overthrow the government. The government was thrown into a panic. The inability of the federal government to stop the uprising showed the weakness of the Articles and caused a national emergency.
 

“Miracle at Philadelphia”: Constitutional Convention of 1787—after years of ineffective government, the country’s leaders met in Philadelphia to create a new plan of government. George Washington presided and Benjamin Franklin gave his authority to the project. Thomas Jefferson (Ambassador to France) and John Adams (Ambassador to England) were not there. In the summer heat, with the windows nailed shut and the doors locked because of armed protesters marching outside, the delegates debated, disagreed, compromised, and drafted the Constitution of the United States, the oldest written constitution still in use.
 

Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804): In the early days of the Revolutionary War, he distinguished himself as a brave soldier when, in August 1775, he led a militia in seizing cannons from the English fort at Battery Park. He became aide-de-camp to George Washington in 1777. A lawyer and a formidable mind, he was one of New York’s delegates at the constitutional convention. He led the Federalist faction, calling for a strong central government. President Washington named him his first Secretary of the Treasury Department. Hamilton's economic policies, notably assumption of the state debts and creating a national bank, helped to establish a foundation on which the new national economy could grow. A rival and ideological opponent of Jefferson, he helped cause the formation of political parties in the 1790s. He left government upon Jefferson's election in 1800 and was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr in 1804.

 

James Madison (1751-1836): A wee man with a weak physical constitution, he was one of the most brilliant thinkers and writers of his age. He became known as the “Father of the Constitution”: he led the Virginia delegation at the convention; kept notes on the proceedings of the convention; devised the Virginia Plan (see below); and, with Hamilton, led the Federalist faction. To satisfy opponents of the Constitution, he wrote the Bill of Rights (1791) and led its ratification Congress. He split with Hamilton to join Jefferson’s Republican faction (mid-1790s), revising his earlier calls for a strong central government (see Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions below). He became the fourth President of the United States. (1809-1817).

Representation: The major disagreement among the delegates at Philadelphia was over how the states would be represented in the new Congress.  Less populous states wanted equal representation—to have equal number of representatives, as in the U.S. Senate (2 per state); the more populous states wanted proportional representation—a.k.a. representation by population–states with more people have more representatives than states with fewer people, as in U.S. House

Separation of Powers: Built upon Montesquieu’s ideas of (divided sovereignty), this system divides power and authority among three branches of government so that government will not become too powerful.

Checks and Balances: Coinciding with the separation of powers, this system gives each branch of government a check (control) on the power of the other branches and thereby balances power among the three: in theory, no one branch is more powerful than the others. A primary example of the system is the presidential veto wherein a President can reject a bill passed by Congress and the Congress can override the veto with a super majority (60%)

Virginia Plan: Conceived by Madison and offered by Edmund Randolph, it aimed to overhaul of the Articles and create a stronger central government: a bicameral legislature with representation based on population; a strong executive and judiciary selected by the legislature—also known as the “Large States Plan.”

New Jersey Plan: a.k.a. the “Small States Plan,” offered by William Paterson of New Jersey. It proposed tweaking Articles: keeping the unicameral legislature, but giving the national government the power to impose and collect taxes and to regulate trade; and creating a national judiciary. It would keep the relationship of the confederation, maintaining the sovereignty of the individual states.

Connecticut Compromise: offered by Roger Sherman of Connecticut, it split the difference on the question of how representation would be determined. Following the Virginia Plan (the Large States Plan), it called for a bicameral legislature with the lower house having proportional representation (by population), but the upper chamber would have equal representation (two Senators selected by each state).

Three-fifths Compromise: The most obnoxious part of the Constitution, this counted slaves as three-fifths of a person for representation and taxing purposes. It was forced on the convention because the South wanted to count slaves as a whole person so that it would get more representation in Congress; but it did not want slaves counted at all for taxes; non-slaveholding states opposed both positions and forced compromise.

Slave Trade Compromise: Opponents of slavery wanted to abolish the foreign slave trade (importation of slaves from outside the U.S.). Slave states opposed the plan and threatened to leave the convention. Framers reached a compromise whereby the slave trade could not be abolished for twenty years (or until 1808) and the federal government could not tax southern exports.

Commerce Clause: Art. I, Sec. 8, Pt. 3: Coincides with the agreement on taxing southern exports (export tariff): a federal government would have the power to regulate interstate and foreign trade (fixing a critical problem with the Articles) but it could not tax exports from any state.

Legislative Branch: Established in Article I of the Constitution, it is the law-making branch of government composed of the House of Representatives and the Senate

Executive Branch: Established in Article II of the Constitution, it is the law-enforcing branch of government composed of the President, Vice President, Cabinet, and agencies (i.e. bureaucracy).

Judicial Branch: Established in Article III of the Constitution, it is the law-interpreting branch of government composed of the Supreme Court, Courts of Appeals, and District Courts.

Ratify: “to accept” –each state formed a convention of delegates to debate and to decide on whether to accept the new constitution

The Federalist Papers: One of the most important documents in U.S. history, this series of essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay explains and defends the Constitution from the perspective of the Federalist faction (the supporters of a stronger central government). The essays were published in New York newspapers and were written to convince New Yorkers to ratify the Constitution.

Anti-Federalists: Unorganized group opposing the Constitution, they wrote essays answering the Federalists in which they explained the dangers of placing too much power in a federal government and defended the basic structure of the Articles of Confederation. The Anti-Federalists demanded that the Constitution be amended to include a written Bill of Rights to protect the people and the states from an aggressive federal government. They included Virginia’s Patrick Henry and George Mason; Samuel Adams and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts; and John Dickinson of Pennsylvania.

Bill of Rights: The first ten amendments to the Constitution, drafted by James Madison and written to satisfy concerns of Anti-Federalists. It describes the rights retained by the people and the states under the new more centralized system. Some of the rights include: freedom of speech, assembly, religion, and the press; right to a speedy trial before a jury of peers; right to bear arms; right against self-incrimination and double jeopardy.