Chapter 3England and Its Colonies

The Scots and Scotch-Irish

• Great Britain was formed in 1707: England, Wales, Scotland.– This meant some Scots

became colonial officials and royal governors.

• 3 Streams of Immigration – Highlands– Lowlands– Ulster, Northern Ireland with

mixed peoples– 250,000 arrived in the 1700’s

The Germans– 100,000 immigrants– Protestant– Came from the Rhine Valley

in SW Germany and Northern Switzerland

• They came to escape war, taxes, and religious persecution.

• 1682, William Penn recruited Germans to help settle an area of Pennsylvania.– An immigrant in PA could

obtain a farm 6 times larger than a typical peasant in Germany.

Africans Transported To America

• Growing colonies= growing crops= need for labor

• Early 1600’s, Africans were mostly treated as indentured servants.– Freed blacks could own land, vote, even buy

enslaved Africans on their own.

• Mid 1600’s, most colonies began to pass laws that supported the permanent enslavement.– “All servants imported…who were not

Christians in their native Country…shall be accounted and be slaves.”

– Children of slaves were also considered slaves.

– Change in legal status promoted a racist idea that people of African origin were inferior to whites.

Transatlantic Slave Trade– Once established, slavery

expanded rapidly.– During the 1700’s, the British

colonies imported approximately 1.5 million slaves from Africa.

– The majority went to the West Indies, but at least 250,000 came to America.

– Africans were kidnapped or taken in wars and sold

• 3 part voyage= Triangular Trade– Traders sailed from Europe to Africa

where they traded manufactured goods for Africans.

– Then, in the Middle Passage, shippers carried the Africans across the Atlantic to the colonies.

– After selling the slaves for colonial goods, the traders returned to their home countries to repeat the process.

Slavery in the North and South

• In New England most slaves were farmhands, dockworkers, and house servants.

• In the Southern colonies most worked in fields on plantations growing tobacco, rice, indigo, sugar.

• Most adopted Christianity from their masters, blending it with some of their own religious traditions.

Rebels and Runaways• Stono Rebellion in South

Carolina– 100 slaves tried to escape

and killed 20 white peoples before being caught and executed.

• Some fled to Indian villages, mostly in Florida where the Spanish welcomed them with food, land, and freedom.– They did this because they

thought it would weaken the British colonies and strengthen their own militia.

• Other forms of rebellion:– Working slowly– Faking illness– Pretending ignorance– Breaking tools

Magna Carta• Document English nobles

forced King John to accept in 1215.– It protected the nobles by

limiting the king’s ability to tax them and by guaranteeing due process, or the right to a trial.

– Before instating a tax, the king needed permission from the nobles.

– These nobles gained power and evolved into Parliament.

• House of Lords (inherited mostly through rank and blood line)

• House of Commons (elected commoners)

• Economic wealth– Exporting of raw materials and

importing British made goods– The colonies were being used to

provide the materials England lacked• Mercantilism- nations seek to increase

wealth and power by acquiring gold and silver through a balanced trade.

Change in Policy

• Colonists were shipping goods to other countries including England.– Spain, France, Holland– They were making money

• England viewed this as a threat.

• Parliament, or England’s legislative body, passed the Navigation Acts.

Navigation Acts• The Acts restricted colonial

trade:

Navigation Acts

All trade between the Colonies and Europe

must go through an English port.

Colonies could onlyexport certain products to

England.

Crew members And Captains had

to be ¾ English.

Trade permitted on English or

Colonial ships.

Positive Effects• More jobs for English dock workers• Import taxes on goods = more money

for English Treasury• Ship-building industry in the colonies

Negative Effects

• Colonial merchants did not like trade restrictions•They smuggled goods

• England punished colonists for smuggling

• Massachusetts gets its charter revoked

• Northern colonies are combined to make one colony – The Dominion of New England

– King James II

• King James chose Sir Edmund Andros to be governor– He was highly disliked

– Questioned the lawfulness of Puritan beliefs

– Strictly enforced Navigation Acts

– Outlawed local assemblies and levied taxes without consent from local leaders

Glorious Revolution• King James was a

Catholic• Most of England and the

colonies were Protestant• James had a son who

would eventually become heir to the throne and rule as a Catholic

• England did not want another Catholic monarch

• Parliament decided to do something about the situation

James II

Glorious Revolution• William and Mary

– Mary was James’ daughter and she was married to William

– Mary was Protestant

• Parliament voted out James II and put William and Mary onto the throne– This ensured the

continuation of a Protestant England

William and Mary

• When the colonies found out about the Glorious Revolution they arrested Andros

• Parliament did away with the Dominion of New England and restored the colonies to what they were before.

• Salutary Neglect- England relaxed its enforcement of most regulations in return for the continued economic loyalty of the colonies.

• The King appointed a governor for each colony.– Colonists paid his salary.

– Governor appointed an advisory council a local assembly.

• Colonists were developing a taste for self-government.

ObjectivesObjectives

• Identify the major religious denominations of the 18th C. colonies, and indicate their role in early American society.

• Describe the origins and development of education, culture, and journalism in the colonies.

• Describe the basic features of colonial politics, including the role of various official and informal political institutions.

• Indicate the key qualities of daily existence in 18th C. colonial America, including forms of socialization and recreation.

• Agriculture= leading industry– Involved 90% of population

• Increase in grain/wheat production– Mostly in middle “bread” colonies– Grown in soil depleted from tobacco cultivation– New York exported 80,000 barrels of flour per year.

• Fishing-pursued in all colonies to some degree– Mostly New England

• Cod• Supplied predominantly Catholic countries

– Stimulated ship-building industry.

• Yankee seamen-skilled mariners and traders– Provided Caribbean sugar islands with food– Hauled Spanish and Portuguese gold, wine, and

oranges to London in exchange for industrial goods, which were then sold to colonists.

Workaday America

• Agriculture= leading industry– Involved 90% of population

• Increase in grain/wheat production– Mostly in middle “bread” colonies– Grown in soil depleted from tobacco cultivation– New York exported 80,000 barrels of flour per year.

• Fishing-pursued in all colonies to some degree– Mostly New England

• Cod• Supplied predominantly Catholic countries

– Stimulated ship-building industry.

• Yankee seamen-skilled mariners and traders– Provided Caribbean sugar islands with food– Hauled Spanish and Portuguese gold, wine, and

oranges to London in exchange for industrial goods, which were then sold to colonists.

Workaday America

Workaday America

• Colonial trade with non-British countries– Tobacco used all over Europe– British re-exporters were making additional money off

colonial tobacco

• West Indies– Purchases timber and food

• Provided colonists with money so they could then purchase manufactured goods from GB

• 1733-Parliament passed Molasses Act– Aimed at squelching colonial trade with the French in the

West Indies– Struck a blow to the colonial international trade and

ultimately the colonists’ standard of living– Merchants responded by smuggling and bribing

• Foreshadowing future rebellion of laws and acts• Headstrong Americans would revolt rather than submit to

the dictates of the far-off Parliament, whom they say as bent on destroying their very livelihood.

Workaday America

• Molasses Act of 1733, an act passed by the British Parliament. It placed prohibitive duties on sugar, rum, and molasses imported from non-British West Indian islands to the North American colonies. The act would have damaged the economy of New England, but it was never seriously enforced. It was repealed by the Sugar Act of 1764, which outraged the colonists by restricting trade more severely.

Workaday America

• Colonists had a difficult time getting their goods anywhere– Not until 1700 did roads connect even the major cities

and towns• Ben Franklin need 9 days to travel from Boston to Philadelphia in

1720 with combo of rowboat and foot• News of the D of I reached Charleston, SC from Philadelphia in 29

days later

– Dangers of travel• Dusty roads in summer• Muddy in winter• Tree-strewn roads• Rickety bridges• Carriage overturns• Runaway horses

– No surprise people tended to cluster near the banks of navigable waterways and rivers

Quicker, cheaper but mostly in good weather

Horsepower and Sailpower

• Taverns sprang up along main routes of travel and cities– Bowling alleys, pool tables, gambling – A place to rest and get warm– All social classes would mingle

• Another cradle for democracy?

– Gossips in taverns provided information and misinformation, impassioned political talk

– Green Dragon Tavern • Located in Boston, Samuel Adams

• Intercolonial postal system– Established by mid-1700’s– Service was slow and infrequent– Secrecy was problematic.

Horsepower and Sailpower

• Anglican (C of E) and Congregational churches– Both “established” or tax-supported

• Anglican– Official faith in GA, NC, SC, VA, MD, and part of NY– Served as a major prop of kingly authority.– Considered more worldly than Puritanism– Sermons were shorter, hell was not as feared– Did not have a resident bishop, which would have helped

ordain younger ministers• They had to travel to England to be ordained.

– College of William and Mary • Founded in 1693 to train a better class of clerics

• Congregational– Grown out of the Puritan church– Formally established in all the New England colonies,

except RI– MA taxed all residents to support it at first– Presbyterianism, closely associated, but never made

official in colonies.

Dominant Denominations

Dominant Denominations

• Education – Often seen as a blessing reserved to the

aristocracy.– Education should be for leadership, not citizenship– Males only– Puritan New England more interested than other

two regions• Stressed the need for the ability to read the Bible• Cambridge in England is considered the Puritan intellectual

center• Established primary and secondary schools based on

population– Instruction and length of school year varied

– Middle colonies schools were adequate• Some schools were tax-supported, while others privately

operated

– Southern schools were hampered by geography• Spread out • Private tutors

Schools and Colleges

• Academics– Religion– Languages; Latin and Greek– Focus not on experiment and reason, but on doctrine– Independent thinking was discouraged– Discipline was severe- “birched”– Indenture-servants were used as teachers occasionally

Schools and Colleges

• College Education– New England

• Geared toward preparing men for the ministry

– South• Many well-to-do families would send their sons abroad for a

“real” education in elite English institutions– More refined and philosophical

– Harvard• Instruction was poor by present-day standards• A few boys as young as 11 were admitted• Heavily loaded with theology and “dead” languages• 1750- movement toward more modern curriculum

– University of Pennsylvania• Ben Franklin played a major role in launching college• First American college free from denomination control

Schools and Colleges

• Artists would have to travel abroad for artistic education– Trumbull- “Connecticut is not Athens”

• Architecture– Imported style from Old World and modified – Log cabin- Sweden– Red-bricked Georgian style- introduced in 1720

in South

• Colonial literature– Phillis Wheatley-slave brought to Boston at age

8 and never formally educated.• Taken to England at age 20 where she was educated and

published poems.

– Ben Franklin- “first civilized American”• Poor Richard’s Almanac• Homespun virtues on thrift, industry, morality and

common sense

A Provincial Culture

• Science– Ben Franklin- kite flying proving lightening was

a form of electricity, bifocal spectacles, Franklin stove

• His lightening rod was condemned by some clergymen who felt it was “presuming on God” by attempting to control the “artillery of the heavens”

A Provincial Culture

• Most American colonists were too poor to buy quantities of books and too busy to read them– Mostly members of the clergy held fair-sized libraries– Ben Franklin established the first privately supported

circulating library– By 1776, there were about 50 public libraries and

collections

• Printing presses-mostly hand operated– Used to print pamphlets, leaflets, and journals– By the eve of revolution, there were about 40 colonial

newspapers– Newspapers proved to be a powerful agency for airing

colonial grievances and rallying opposition to British control

• Zenger Trial- John Peter Zenger, newspaper printer– He was charged with seditious libel and hauled into

court– Defended by former indentured servant turned lawyer

Pioneer Presses

• By 1775, 8 of the colonies had royal governors, who were appointed by the king– 3 of those 8, were under proprietors who then also chose

governors– CT and RI elected their own under self-governing charters

• Practically every colony utilized a two-house legislature– Upper house, or council, was normally appointed by the

crown in the royal colonies and by the proprietor in the proprietary colonies, chose by the voters in the self-governing colonies

– Lower house was elected by the people (men, white, mostly land owning, and in some cases, church members)

– Most backcountry folk were underrepresented leading to hate for the ruling clique, perhaps more than kingly authority.

– Legislatures voted on taxes as they chose for the necessary expenses of colonial gov’t

• Self-taxation due to local representation

The Great Game of Politics

• Governors appointed by the King– Mixture of competency and corruption– Lord Cornbury- 1st cousin to Queen Anne, was

made governor of NY and NJ in 1702• He was a drunk and spendthrift, embezzler, religious

bigot, vain, foolish, and accused of dressing like a woman

– Royal governors had trouble with colonial legislatures because they embodied a bothersome transatlantic authority nearly 3,000 miles away

• Assemblies asserted their authority and independence by withholding a governor’s salary unless he gave in to their demands– England was guilty of poor administration for

letting legislatures control governors’ salaries

The Great Game of Politics

• South- country government remained the rule for plantation owners

• New England- town-meeting government dominated– Open voting, direct democracy

• Middle- a mixture of the two above• Religious and property qualifications for

voting, even more so for office-holding• Only about ½ of the white men were voters

– Of those that could vote, this did not guarantee they would

• By 1775, America was not a true democracy but it was far more democratic then England and the European continent– More willing to give free rein to the democratic ideals of

tolerance, educational advantages, equality of economic opportunity, freedoms of speech, press, and assembly

The Great Game of Politics

• Food was plentiful but monotonous– Ate more than Europeans, especially meat

• Churches were not heated, inefficient fireplaces in homes, no running water, no indoor plumbing

• Candles, whale-oil lamps provided faint and flickering illumination

• Garbage disposal was primitive-hogs roamed many towns consuming refuse, while buzzards (protected by law) took care of the rest

Colonial Folkways

Colonial Folkways

• Amusement– Militia assemble periodically for “musters”; days

of drill practices– House-raisings– “Quilting bees”– Apple parings– Funerals and weddings

• North– Winter sports

• South– Card playing, horse racing, fox hunting, dancing

• All 3 regions– Lottery, stage plays

Colonial Folkways

• Similarities among the 3 regions– Social mobility– Self-government– Communication was increasing as well as

transportation

Colonial Folkways

The Enlightenment and

Great Awakening

Enlightenment• Philosophers in Europe began

using reason and the scientific method to gain more knowledge of the world around them.

• Scientists looked beyond religious doctrines to investigate how the world worked.

• Who did this influence?– Sir Isaac Newton

– Galileo Galilei

– Nicolaus Copernicus

– They soon determined the Earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa.

– They also concluded the world is governed not by chance or miracles, but by fixed mathematical laws.

Enlightenment• These ideas traveled across Europe and

eventually to the colonies.– People read about this in books and pamphlets.

– Literacy was high in New England. Puritans supported education so that people could read the Bible.

• Benjamin Franklin was the colonist who embraced this movement the most.– He thought he could obtain truth through

experimentation and reasoning.

– Franklin believed human beings could use their intellect to improve their lives.

– How did Franklin’s intellect better his life and ours?

• Lightening Rod

• Bifocals

• Franklin Stove- heating system

Enlightenment• Had profound effect on

politics

• Colonial leaders such as Thomas Jefferson used reason to conclude that individuals have natural rights, which governments must respect.

• These principles led to colonists questioning authority of the British monarchy.

Great Awakening• The Puritan church had lost its grip on

society, and church membership was in decline.

• People were more focused on their current world and not as worried about the next stage of life.

• Jonathan Edwards was from Northampton, Massachusetts and a member of the clergy.– He wanted to revive the intensity and commitment

of the original Puritan visions and beliefs.– He preached that church attendance was not

enough for salvation– People needed to acknowledge their sinfulness and

feel God’s love for them– Gave the famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of

an Angry God”• Described God’s mercy

– Other preachers traveled to multiple villages stirring people to rededicate themselves to God.

Great Awakening• More colonists, Native Americans,

African Americans were now into more organized religions.

• Some colonists abandoned their old Puritan or Anglican congregations and sought different denominations– Baptists, Methodists

• Led to an increase in higher education– Different colleges: Princeton, Brown,

Columbia, Dartmouth to train ministers.

Similarities• Both caused colonists to question traditional authority.• Stressed the importance of the individual• Colonists questioned Britain’s authority over their lives.