American Life in the Seventeenth Century1607-1692

THEME:In the Chesapeake region, 17th Century colonial society

was characterized by disease-shortened lives, weak family life and a social hierarchy that included hardworking planters at the top and restless poor whites and black slaves at the bottom.

By contrast, early New England life was characterized by healthy, extended life spans, strong family life, closely knit towns and churches, and a demanding economic and moral environment.

Role of Women

• Women have most religious freedom in Middle Colonies with Quakers, also in RI

• In South, women have more financial and legal independence due to higher mortality

• In North, more extended family unit, creates more “traditional” roles, Grandparents, etc., less social freedom and independence

The Quaker Meeting by Egbert Van Heemskerk

The Quaker Meeting by Egbert Van Heemskerk

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New England Culture

• 1636 Harvard founded• Town Meetings in New England –democracy• Puritans “city” in decline “jeremiad” preaching • “Great Awakening”• “Half-way Covenant” erodes the “elect” membership• 1692 Salem Witch Trials – 20 killed & 2 dogs,

symptom of social stratification and division• Idealism, Industry & Self-Sufficiency = harsh climate

Interior of the Old Ship Meeting House in Hingham, Massachusetts

Interior of the Old Ship Meeting House in Hingham, Massachusetts

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Agricultural South

Characteristics of the South

• Cash Crops: Tobacco, Cotton, Indigo, Rice• Rural society, along rivers• Plantations largely self-sufficient• Prosperous from cash crops• Women are second-class citizens• Scarcity of Women

Few Settlers & high mortality rates.S. attitudes toward women

• Slavery entrenched in Southern economy• New African-American culture• Slaves out # whites Stono Rebellion, 1739, Charleston, Carolina

SOCIAL HIERARCHY

SOCIAL HIERARCHY

Planters

Small Farmers

Former Indent Servants/Freemen

Indentured Servants

Slaves

CAUSE AND EFFECT

• Explain the factors that led early settlers to shift from family farms indentured servants slaves

Slavery in the Colonies

• 10 million slaves come to the colonies in 300 years• Fatality rates 20% or higher during “Middle Passage”• By mid 1680’s slaves outnumber indentured servants• Slaves eventually outnumber whites in Carolinas and

deep South• In South and in the Chesapeake region a new culture

emerges as slaves become Af.-Americans in music, religion and language

• 1739 Stono revolt in SC• 1740’s slave imports slow

Slave shipThis plan graphically depicts the crowded, unsanitary conditions under which enslaved Africans were packed like cargo and transported across the Atlantic. (Library of Congress)

Slave ship

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Olududah Equiano• The stench of the hold while we were on the coast was so intolerably loathsome

that it was dangerous to remain there for any time, and some of us had been permitted to stay on the deck for the fresh air; but now that the whole ship's cargo were confined together it became absolutely pestilential. The closeness of the place and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died, thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their purchasers. This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, now become insupportable and the filth of the necessary tubs, into which the children often fell and were almost suffocated. The shrieks of the women and the groans of the dying rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable. Happily perhaps for myself I was soon reduced so low here that it was thought necessary to keep me almost always on deck, and from my extreme youth I was not put in fetters. In this situation I expected every hour to share the fate of my companions, some of whom were almost daily brought upon deck at the point of death, which I began to hope would soon put an end to my miseries. Often did I think many of the inhabitants of the deep much more happy than myself. I envied them the freedom they enjoyed, and as often wished I could change my condition for theirs. Every circumstance I met with served only to render my state more painful, and heighten my apprehensions and my opinion of the cruelty of the whites.